PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR CLIENT

“There’s no substitute for paying exquisite attention to your client.” Ericksonian Approaches (1999, p. 48)

“It is tremendously important to pay attention to all of the little things that enter into an investigation of an experience.” (Mind-Body Communication in Hypnosis, 1986, p. 24.)

These two quotations from Milton H. Erickson and the Ericksonian approach to working with people emphasize something that NLP learned from Erickson, namely, the importance of connecting with the person you are working with. Connect, pay exquisite attention, get rapport, and gather the information you need before you begin and as you go. There are many reasons why this approach is so important.

It is important first and foremost because every person you work with is different. And yet, we all tend to assume sameness—we tend to have a bias to thinking people are alike and we don’t have to make individual differences. But that’s the trick— everyone is different. Everyone has his or her own unique psycho-logics that makes up how he or she constructs meaning, filters information and it is built out of that person’s learning history, experiential history, natural dispositions, etc.