Understanding Behaviour

An Introduction to Neuro-linguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistic programming was developed in the mid 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California (where else!).  They examined the behavioural processes used by excellent communicators.  They worked on the principle that everyone is excellent at some things, average at some others and just awful at the rest.  The reason for this is that everyone has a different combination of genetic makeup and life experiences.  We have discussed limiting beliefs and they are what make people awful at some things, and these beliefs are embedded (programmed) in the brain (Neuro).  What NLP proposes is that we reflect these beliefs and behaviours in the language we use.  Now this opens up a great raft of possibilities – if we can understand from listening to the language people use, why they behave in certain ways – that has got to help us in understanding individuals and will really help us to motivate them. To explain this further Bandler and Grinder developed the theory of Meta-programmes. 

I am sorry about this complicated language, but the originators of NLP did it as a research paper and had no idea of how popular or influential their work would become – otherwise they would have called it something else.  We are just stuck with these pretentious words!  Back to Meta-programmes, the originators of NLP identified more than 50 behavioural patterns that make up each individual identity.  If you can imagine a sound recording desk, with more than 50 slide controls, then each person’s behaviour is represented by a combination of these slides in different positions, giving millions of possible patterns.  Each of these 50 or more behavioural patterns is called a meta-programme. 

To give you an idea of how meta-programmes define our behaviour we will look at the behavioural traits that effect motivation and work.

Motivational Traits

1.    Toward or Away From.  People work towards goals or away from problems.  There are the classic entrepreneurs who have made and lost several fortunes.  These people work away from problems, in this case away from poverty – the dilemma is that as soon as they are rich, they have no motivation, so they then lose their money until they are back in poverty, and start all over again.  The distribution of people for this trait is 40 –20 –40 (with 20% not showing either trait strongly). In modern business terms it is much better to recruit someone who works towards goals.

2.    Internal or External.  Some people are internally motivated, and just know when they have done a good job, others are externally motivated and need others to tell them how ell they are doing.  In our industry we are looking for mainly externally motivated people.  The distribution is again 40 – 20 – 40. 

3.    Options or Procedures.  Some people are motivated by options, having several choices of what to do and being able to choose, they are interested in why to do things.  Others like working to set procedures with no choice, they are more interested in how.  Two interesting points with this trait, the best people for writing Standard Operational Procedures are Options people, however they are normally awful at following procedures as they can continually see better ways to do things.  The distribution is again 40 – 20 – 40. 

4.    Sameness, sameness with exception, difference, sameness with exception and difference.  A bit more complicated this one, but you will recognise the traits.  Sameness people do not want any change; they are motivated by everything staying the same. I am sure we have all met some people like this in our working lives. They will only accept change every 10 years!  Sameness with exception people will accept some change every year, but major change only every 7 years.  Difference people love change and look for it.  They need drastic change every 2/3 years.  Sameness with exception and difference people are really a bit of the last two, they like evolution and revolution.  They need major change every 3 – 4 years.  The distribution for this trait is 5 – 65 – 20 – 10. 

Working Traits

1.    Feeling, choice, thinking.  This is really a measure of stress response.  Under stress feeling people go straight into their feelings, they become emotional and their responses are based totally on their emotions.  Choice people under stress go in and out of their feelings, sometimes thinking about their response, other times responding emotionally.  Lastly the thinking person does not go into their feelings and always gives a measured thoughtful response.  An example of this is airline pilots and air traffic controllers.  They have to be thinking people, all our lives would be in danger if under stress they just lost it and went into their feelings.  The distribution for this trait is 15 – 70 – 15. 

2.    Independent, proximity, co-operative.  This is an indication of how people want to work.  Independent people want to work alone and have sole responsibility; they will work in an office with the door closed.  Proximity people will want a clear area of responsibility but their tasks must involve others.  They will not work so well with shared responsibility.  Co-operative people want to work with others and share responsibility.  The distribution of this trait is 20 – 60 – 20. 

3.    Person, thing.  Person people pay attention to the feelings and thoughts of themselves or others. They will organise their work so that they can focus on people.  They are good at building rapport.  Thing people focus on products, ideas and tools, they are unemotional.  They want to get things done.  I know you are thinking that we should look for totally person people for our industry, however, beware you may not get any basic tasks done as they will be talking to each other and customers so much (does that ring a bell?).  The distribution of this trait is 15 – 30 – 55. 

4.  My/My, My/*, No/My, My/Your.  This trait is to do with rules of work and values.  My/My people have their own rules and expect others to follow their rules, they are good at telling other people what to expect.  My/* people have their own rules but do not care about others at all.  No/My people do not have any rules for themselves, but have their rules for others.  This pattern is seen in middle management in big businesses.  My/Your people have their own rules, but leave others to their own rules; these people will be hesitant to tell others what to do.  Distribution is 75 – 3 – 7 – 15. 

5.    See, hear, read, do.  This indicates how people gather information; most people do it primarily in one sensory channel.  See people need to visualise the information, see it in real or imaginary terms.  Hear people need to be told via an oral presentation or just hear it.  Read people need to read information, and obviously do people need to actively do a task.  This is an important trait to consider when a new employee will be expected to learn so much – if training is based on reading Standard Operational Procedures, then you need read people, if the training is very hands on, you may prefer do people.  Distribution of this trait is 55 – 30 – 3 – 12. 

6.    Number, automatic, consistent, time.  This trait indicates what convinces people that information is right.  Some people (number)  are convinced when something happens a number of times.  Others (automatic) will be convinced immediately, they tend to jump to conclusions.  Some people (consistent) are never convinced; they need to continually re-evaluate things, and are impossible to please.  Finally some people (time) need to have information for a period of time before they are convinced.  I worked with a general Manager once who was a consistent.  He could never delegate as he was never sure that people would do the job properly, however many times they demonstrated that they could.  Not very motivational.  Distribution for this trait is 52 – 8 – 15 – 25.

This is just an insight into how understanding behaviour can help you motivate your team, further details can be found in the Fact Sheet about Recruitment which can be downloaded from the shop for a small fee.