Have you ever been in a situation where someone is angry? Like, not just a little bit angry but really angry? While human instinct is normally to get ready to fight or run for the hills there are other options available to us too. Recently I was emailed by a reader of this blog who had to write an assignment on dealing with unreasonably angry customers or co-workers and it has inspired this post today. These are the four techniques for using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) to deal with angry customers:
Get Angrier Than Them
This technique is a great quick way to diffuse a difficult situation. How it works is you allow yourself to feel much, much, much more angry than the other person about the situation which they are angry about. You will reach a point where they will become uncomfortable with how angry you are about the situation and they will start to try and convince you that actually everything is okay.
I experienced this many years ago, well before I knew about NLP, when I was working in a Retail Electronics Store. I had sold a big wall clock to a lovely man who had taken it home only to find that I hadn’t sold him the batteries he needed to go with it. He then drove back to the store, hunted me down and decided to angrily share with me how I had ruined his Saturday by wasting his precious time, the extra cost of fuel, the inconvenience etc. etc. etc! At first it took me off guard but then I started to get really angry too. But I directed the anger at myself and started saying things like, “I can’t believe I could be so hopeless, what was I thinking being so careless? What a huge problem I had caused for you and there is nothing I can do to repay you and I feel just TERRIBLE.” Suddenly, something peculiar happened. The man totally flipped his emotional state and started saying to me, “It’s okay, you didn’t do it on purpose. You probably sell loads of products, how were you to know this one didn’t have batteries” and so on, and so on. I calmed myself down, we found him the batteries and the situation was nicely resolved leaving a happy customer and without needing to involve my Manager.
Pacing and Leading
This technique has many versions but in this context I refer to pacing and leading the emotional state of the other person. To use this successfully you will need to be able to regulate how you feel from moment to moment. You start by pacing the angry customer by getting angry and worked up yourself. Once you have started to pace their emotional state you can allow yourself to calm down again they will often calm down with you.
Several years ago I used to own a beautiful fast black ute. It went like a dream. On one occasion I took a corner at some traffic lights a little bit fast and, as the tray of the ute was empty, the back of the ute fish tailed slightly out of control. I kept control of the vehicle just fine and continued driving home only to be pulled over a few minutes later by the angriest traffic cop I have ever met. He pulled me over, approached my drivers side window and before I wound the window down I could already see the veins popping out of his neck from how angry he was feeling. “Oh no,” I remember thinking to myself. I thought, this is going to take a bit of quick thinking on my part so I decided to do my best to Pace and Lead this cop. The window wasn’t even half way down when he started shouting at me, “Did I know what I was doing? Did I have any idea how dangerous my driving had been?” so, as with the previous example, I started getting angry with myself. “What on earth was I thinking? I can’t believe myself! I know what the ute is like without a load, what on earth was I doing taking the corner so quickly?” and before I knew it both the cop and I were in a similar emotional state. And then I paused and took a deep breath in and started to slow down the speed I was talking. I started to make myself feel more calm and relaxed. As I did I noticed the traffic cop’s neck started to show signs of relaxation too. Before I knew it we were talking much more casually and he allowed me to continue on my way – not even a Warning thanks to the power of Pacing and Leading.
Pattern Interrupt
A Pattern Interrupt is when you do or say something that distracts the other person from what they are thinking about or feeling. This is often done by bringing their conscious attention to something that they had previously been ignoring.
This is a nice simple technique and it will momentarily distract them from their anger. Simple examples include:
Did you realise your shoe laces are undone?
Wait…. (*point to the sky*) is that a UFO?
*start jumping up and down on the spot*
*dramatically pretend you’re about to sneeze*
You’ve successfully used this technique when you’ve distracted them from what they were thinking about in that moment.
I remember being in a Night Club and being approach by an angry (and apparently drunk) bloke who was spoiling for a fight. He came up to me with one of those standard lines, something like, “What do you think you’re looking at?” So I raised my right hand and moved it towards him in the way you would to shake hands. Without thinking he reciprocated and I started introducing myself. He lost his train of thought for a moment, stared at our hands joined together, then back at my face, then back at my hands and then he dropped my hand, turned and went back to his friends. The Pattern Interrupt had broken his state and dissolved the anger from the situation.
Confusion
This is my favourite and I originally read this in one of Derren Brown’s books. It is similar to a Pattern Interrupt and essentially it involves saying something that makes logical sense but it is totally irrelevant in the current context. The idea behind this is that when the angry person hears it and tries to make sense of it they will be left feeling confused and that confusion can replace their momentary anger.
An example of something that you could say to create confusion in a retail environment would be saying in a calm normal tone of voice:
But isn’t it interesting how the people who aren’t not watching what isn’t not going on over there haven’t yet said anything to the people they’re not thinking about calling on their mobile when they get home?
This is not one I have had the chance to use and I have my fingers crossed I don’t bump into too many angry people in the future!
In the long run…
While each of these techniques are great to dealing with someone else that is angry in the moment it won’t be much use in the long term. Anger is a strong emotion and it is important that people express it both safely and appropriately for themselves and others. It is possible using Time Line TherapyTM Techniques to totally let go of Anger in less than 30 minutes. If you are currently experiencing Anger about something, or you know someone that could do with some Anger Management assistance then point them in the direction of a NLP Coach or Time Line Therapist ASAP.
Would you like to know what makes the difference between the earning power of someone on a factory floor versus the CEO? Do you want to know how to resolve disputes like a professional negotiator? Have you ever wondered why some people are easy to talk to while with others it just seems to be disagreement after disagreement? Would you like to know what most coaches do wrong, that if they did it right, would totally transform their clients? Then you need to know about the NLP Hierarchy of Ideas.
The NLP Hierarchy of Ideas is an approach to thinking that allows you to increase your flexibility of thought. It is based on the premise that every idea exists somewhere on a broader hierarchy of ideas. At one extreme you have ideas that are very vague and abstract in nature. While on the other extreme you have ideas that are incredibly specific and exact. But this isn’t a binary spectrum with just one extreme or the other, there are almost unlimited ideas in between those two extremes and because of that you are able to take almost any concept and start thinking about it in this way. Moving through the Hierarchy of Ideas is done using either the process of Chunking Up or Chunking Down.
Before we go any further though we are going to need an example. So imagine if we were to take a fairly simple idea – let’s say the idea of a ‘koala’. Now allow me to demonstrate how this can work:
Chunking Up
The process of Chunking Up is when you move from one idea and begin to move away from that idea and towards more vague and abstract. The way to do this is to ask these questions: What is this an example of? OR For what purpose?
So to work with the example of an koala we could ask either of these questions and we would move to a more vague or abstract idea. Here are some possible responses that are all examples of Chunking Up on the idea of a koala: What is this an example of? Marsupial For what purpose? Tourist Attraction What is this an example of? Animal Note: There will *always* be more than one answer and no answer is right or wrong.
Chunking Down
The process of Chunking Down is when you move from one idea and begin to move away from that idea and towards more specific and exact details. The way to do this is to ask these questions: What is an example of this? OR For instance?
So to work with the example of an koala we could ask either of these questions and we would move to a more specific and exact idea. Here are some possible responses that are all examples of Chunking Down on the idea of a koala: What is an example of this? A koala at the local zoo For instance? A koala plush toy Note: There will *always* be more than one answer and no answer is right or wrong.
Chunking Laterally
Now that you understand how to Chunk Up and Chunk Down you can also begin to Chunk Laterally. How do you do this? It is really straight forward:
Chunk Up
Chunk Down
Congratulations, you’ve now Chunked Laterally!
Putting the Hierarchy of Ideas to Use
Having read this now you are probably wondering how this relates to what I talked about at the beginning? Increasing your earning power comes down to your ability to think up and down the Hierarchy of Ideas easily and effortlessly. The faster you can do this the better you become at what business people call ‘Thinking Outside of the Box‘. When you think about what a Board of a large organisation talks about they are discussing trends in the market, changes in the economy and abstract ideas like consumer demand – these ideas are all waaaaaay up on the Hierarchy of Ideas. If you cannot get your mind out of the nitty gritty of the specifics then it is not going to be easy for you to think strategically. On the flip side if you spend your whole time thinking up in the clouds then you won’t be very useful either. True business leaders have the flexibility of thinking to climb up and down the hierarchy on demand.
Resolving disputes also becomes easier when you understand the hierarchy of ideas. When you chunk up to broader ideas it becomes easier and easier to create agreement. Very few people disagree about ‘World Peace’ being important but there can be a lot of disagreement when you get into the specifics about how ‘World Peace’ is to be achieved. The trick with using this for negotiations is to Chunk Up until you reach agreement and then Chunk Down only as quickly as you can maintain that agreement. This technique is surprisingly simple so give it a go and enjoy the results.
And as for what most coaches do wrong… To find that one out you will need to attend our next Confident Future NLP Practitioner Training. We have our next event coming up soon so if you are interested in joining us then send me an email now, mention that you’re a reader of this blog and I will organise a special deal just for you: lloyd@confidentfuture.com.au
Are you in Perth, Western Australia and looking for a group of like minded people to practice NLP with? Have you done a Practitioner or Master Practitioner Course yet still want a chance to get more experience with the various techniques? Are you totally new to NLP, Hypnosis and Time Line Therapy and you just want to learn more about it? Then the Perth NLP Practice Group is for you!
In January 2011 we started getting together as a small group of just 3~5 members and since then we now regularly attract 7+ members. Our meetings are informal and happen on a monthly basis. It is totally free and hosted in Bull Creek, a short walk from the Murdoch Train Station. If you are reading this and you are interested then you are most welcome to join us at our next evening! For full information about the next event it is easiest to join the Perth NLP Practice Group on Facebook: » Find the Perth NLP Practice Group on Facebook
So far we have covered topics including:
Hypnosis Inductions
Chaining Anchors
Clare Graves Values Levels (Spiral Dynamics)
Parts Integration (Also known as Visual Squash)
And much, much more!
So what are you waiting for? If you are interested in NLP or Hypnosis and you live in Perth then join the Facebook group and join us for our next event!
If you have any questions or would just like to have a chat with someone before you come along then feel free to give the organisers a quick call:
Alana: 0415 879 100
Lloyd: 0427 384 547
A video about the Law of Requisite Variety – how the person with the most flexibility of behaviour has the best chance of getting the best results. Watch it to find out more.
Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from a board game you may have heard of, Trivial Pursuit. The first half were asked to take five minutes before the game to think about what it would mean to be a Professor and to write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6% percent of the questions right.
The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about Soccer Hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right.
The “Professor” group didn’t know more than the “Soccer Hooligan” group. They weren’t smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a “smart” state and associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a Professor, made it a lot easier to blurt out the right answers.
Now, the difference between 55.6% and 42.6% may not seem like much but it is actually enormous… Getting over 50% or under 50% is the difference between passing and failing!
So, the question is: What, if you were to think about being like it, would most boost your results in a given situation? Before golf maybe you want to be thinking about how Tiger Woods would be thinking (About the golf game, not what happens after!). Before you speak in public maybe you want to be thinking about how your favourite public speaker would be thinking. Before you make that sales call maybe you want to think about what would be going through Zig Ziglar’s mind. It may only make a small difference, but the small differences can quickly add up – especially when it comes to differences in mindset!
An often talked about topic in Introduction to NLP talks is that “You Get What You Focus On”. The general idea is that while our sensory receptors are capable of taking in large amounts of information our brains are only capable of processing a very small amount of that information. The number often thrown about (And in printed form in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow) is that we are capable to take in 2,000,000 bits of information a second yet our brains can only process 134 bits of information per second. That is less than 0.001% of the information that our brains process and we use that tiny subset to build our entire idea about reality! Pretty easy to see how mis-understandings in relationships can happen if you think about it like that! Our brain are pretty good at ignoring what isn’t important to us getting by on minimal information the rest of the time. NLP has some pretty good explanations for how all of that works but I thought it would be more fun to share this video of it in action with you. Watch the video and see what happens for you…
Now, you may have seen this before but it is interesting all the same. You get what you focus on! Focus on the ball passes and you see the ball passes. Focus on the moon walking bear, and, well! So… what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on the good things in life, or are you focusing on something else? Change your focus and change your life so start focusing on what you want today!
Old Spice have produced some ingenious adverts recently that have truly gone viral. At the time of writing each of these videos is well beyond 15 million views! So what is it that these adverts do so well that makes them so popular? What NLP elements do you suppose they’ve used in making these commercials so likable? Or, probably more accurately, what elements have they used in these adverts that could be explained by Neuro-Linguistic Programming theories?
Before we go any further here are two example Old Spice Adverts for those of you that are yet to enjoy them:
There is so much going on in these videos though the main things that jump out at me are:
State Elicitation: In my opinion this is where the video truly excels. Watching the videos elicits state after state after state. The target audience is obviously women with a male partner. To start with there are the states that a shirtless man in a bathroom elicits. Followed by the state of being on a boat with the man your man could smell like, oysters, tickets, diamonds and finally the horse. Slotted into the mix is, of course, their Old Spice product too.
Involving All the Senses: The video makes great use of each of several of the modalities to really bring the experience to life. It starts with Visual (“Look at your man, now back to me”), Olfactory (‘He could smell like he is me’) and of course Auditory (His voice and the sound effects such as the noise of diamonds running off his hand).
Ambiguous Language: The language used is very ambiguous. The language is a great example of the Milton Model. For example, “It’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love” – what thing that you love? It doesn’t specify – the viewer creates their own meaning! Another good example is the presenting of states (shirtless man in bathroom -> being on a boat -> oyster -> tickets -> diamonds) that are all pacing things that many women would feel positively about and then they slot in Old Spice – this is a great example of the Pacing and Leading language pattern.
Anchoring: The video elicits a really nice, positive state. And right at the end of the video, when that state is peaking, they supply the little Old Spice whistle jingle perfectly anchoring us. To test it just try listening to the first video from 0:28 – do the good feelings come rushing back for you like they do for me?
These are just four components of this amazing video that NLP can shed some light on. Can you spot some more? Love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Have you ever met someone that just took your breath away? Someone that you just knew you wanted to spend more time with? And have you ever thought about a person from the minute you wake up until the moment where you put your head on the pillow at night? But then, one day, maybe things change. And they’re no longer the person for you – something has changed and you know that they’re not the one for you… but you keep thinking about them. And instead of those moments of thinking about them being happy joyous moments they have become moments that leads to heartache or frustration. What if you could do something about that? What if you could take control of your thoughts and remove that unwanted infatuation? Well, the good news is that you can. You definitely can, and best of all it is something you can do yourself with a tiny bit of practice.
Not long after I had started working with NLP I had a client session with a man in his mid 20’s. He had been in a loving relationship for several years and, all of a sudden, the relationship ended. There was no explanation given by his girlfriend, none at all. He was left questioning everything he had, and hadn’t done, and wondering why it had happened? But, worst of all, every time he thought of her the thought was closely followed by a horrible feeling of knowing that he could no longer be with her. This process that I am about to share is one of two processes that was all it took for him to totally forgive his ex-girlfriend and begin to move on with the rest of his life. So that when he thought about her he had only good and neutral feelings – that horrible feeling had totally disappeared and he had a tool, this tool, to tackle it should it ever return in regards to another person.
You may not have thought about this before, but every time you think about something your mind will have an internal picture. If I were to ask you, “When you think about a car, do you have a picture?” and you were to fully consider it then the answer would have to be, “Yes”. And the interesting thing is that the picture would be in colour or black and white. The picture would be big or small. The picture would be framed or panoramic. You’d either be able to see the picture through your own eyes, or you would see yourself in the picture. The picture would be in a certain direction from you (Maybe to the left, or the right) and the picture would be close to you or far away. There may even be sounds or feelings that are important too. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming we call this picture an Internal Representation, or I/R. And all of these finer distinctions about an I/R are called Submodalities, or SMDs. And the interesting thing is that the Submodalities are what determine how you feel about the Internal Representation.
So here is where it gets interesting. Let’s try a little exercise together. Is there someone that you can’t stop thinking about? Maybe an ex-lover, someone that was you trouble or an irritating ex-coworker. Have that person in your mind and go through the following exercise:
How do you feel about that person right now, on a scale of 0 to 10? (Where 0 is absolutely fine and 10 is the most intense it has ever felt)
Then ask yourself, “When I think about this person, do I have a picture?”
And with that picture then ask yourself:
Is the picture colour or black and white?
Is the picture big or small?
Is the picture framed or panoramic?
Do you see the picture through your own eyes, or do you see yourself in the picture?
Is the picture bright or dim?
Is the picture near or far?
What direction is the picture from you?
Note: The faster you ask these questions the better as if you don’t move quickly enough the Internal Representation in your mind may change.
Great, so now you have a list of the submodalities of the Internal Representation you have about that person. Now you know where you need to hold Internal Representations to think about a person in the way that you currently think about this person. The next step is to change the submodalities of this Internal Representation.
Ask yourself again, “When I think about this person, do I have a picture?” and now, with that picture firmly in your mind, I want you to make some changes… Essentially you want to jumble up the submodalities until the feeling disappears. Start by turning it from colour to black and white (Or vica versa if it were black and white already). Then try making it really small, say the size of a match box, or really huge, say the size of a billboard – which one feels the most neutral? Then put a frame around it if isn’t framed already or otherwise take the frame away and see it panoramic. If you’ve been seeing yourself in the picture then see it through your own eyes, if you don’t see yourself in the picture then see yourself in the picture now. Play with the brightness, make it so bright it almost washes out as white, or so dark it almost washes out as black, and see what feels the most neutral for you. Finally try sliding the picture around so it is waaaaaaay away from you and behind you, or really close and to the left, or wherever you can think of until you find the spot where it feels most neutral.
With those changes made I want you to lock those changes in there. You know the sound a padlock makes as it locks tightly shut? Yeh, that sound… Great, with hearing that sound just lock those changes firmly in there.
How do you feel about that person right now, on a scale of 0 to 10? (Where 0 is absolutely fine and 10 is the most intense it has ever felt)
Enjoy the result!
So, there you have it. That is the basics of the process and that should be enough for you to successfully use this process with yourself. There are a few things to be aware of when you use a process like this. The first is Ecology. It is important that you only make these changes if it is in your best interest to do so. For example, if someone is hurting you then it is appropriate for you to feel unpleasant – those feelings serve as the drive for you to keep yourself safe around that person. So in that situation it would be inappropriate to use this process. While if someone is no longer in your life and you still think about them (Such as an ex-lover or an ex-neighbour) then this process could be very useful. Secondly, there are many, many submodalities to be aware of and I have just listed a few of the more common submodalities. It is normal for one or two submodalities in particular to make the biggest difference as to how you feel about an Internal Representation (The ones that make the difference are called ‘drivers’ in NLP jargon) so if the list I’ve provided doesn’t include the submodality for you then the change won’t be as profound or noticable. That’s okay – just drop me an email or a Facebook message and I can send you a full list of submodalities or even walk you through it over the phone/Skype.
So does it work? Here is some feedback from a reader:
“Well Lloyd, after reading this and trying out those listed technique things I must say it really helped – really pushed the worry head out my head after a year of trying to get over it all ”
If you are interested in this, or anything else of mine that you have read, then remember that I offer a free 15-minute phone or Skype session to each and every one of my readers. These sessions are also really useful if you want to be pointed in the right direction in relation to a personal situation, goal you are striving for or even for technical NLP/Hypnosis questions.
A key concept in Neuro-Linguistic Programming is that reality and our Perception of reality are two entirely separate things. While our body’s nervous system has the ability to take in 2,000,000 (2 million) bits of information per second our brain is only capable of processing a mere 134 bits of information per second. That is a lot of information that our brain ignores, or in NLP jargon there is a lot of information that our brain generalises, distorts and deletes.
But, I hear you saying, surely that’s not true for me? I know what is and isn’t going on. I’m not ignoring large chunks of the world, I couldn’t possibly be… could I? Well, stop for a moment and fully consider these questions:
How do your feet feel against the floor?
How do your clothes feel against your skin?
Can you hear any noises when you listen for them that you weren’t previously aware of? (Such as the hum of a computer)
What is the taste in your mouth at the moment?
As you read those questions did it bring something new into your awareness? My guess is that is probably did. As soon as you read those questions your brain was able to focus on those bits of information to know the answer, yet up until that point you’d probably been blissfully unaware of how your clothes felt against your skin.
So here is where it gets interesting. There is a phenomena that exists that relates to Phantom Pain, and more specifically Phantom Limbs. These terms are often used to describe people who have physically lost a limb, for example in a military accident, yet they still have the feeling in their limb as if it were still there. Imagine if you had lost your entire arm in a car accident, yet you still got an itchy elbow! How do you scratch an itch that wasn’t there? Or what if there were tingling in your fingers and no matter what you did you couldn’t get rid of it?
And this leads me to the main purpose of this post. Thanks to a very dear friend I have stumbled upon an amazing article in the New Yorker. And I wanted to share something from it in particular with you about Phantom Pain:
Ramachandran performed an experiment with volunteers who had phantom pain in an amputated arm. They put their surviving arm through a hole in the side of a box with a mirror inside, so that, peering through the open top, they would see their arm and its mirror image, as if they had two arms. Ramachandran then asked them to move both their intact arm and, in their mind, their phantom arm—to pretend that they were conducting an orchestra, say. The patients had the sense that they had two arms again. Even though they knew it was an illusion, it provided immediate relief. People who for years had been unable to unclench their phantom fist suddenly felt their hand open; phantom arms in painfully contorted positions could relax. With daily use of the mirror box over weeks, patients sensed their phantom limbs actually shrink into their stumps and, in several instances, completely vanish. Researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently published the results of a randomized trial of mirror therapy for soldiers with phantom-limb pain, showing dramatic success.
So this is just one experiment. But it sounds pretty extraordinary. The jury is still out and by no means is there any consensus as to what science attributes this to. There is a lot of weight been given to the theory that maybe these results are because of the change in Perception that this experiment allows. By tricking the brain to take in new visual information (Of having the second arm) they are able to get rid of something that may have made their life less than comfortable for more than enough time. Perception is so easily played with – I wonder what else could be improved through a change in somebodies perception? In my experience coaching I find that when you change someone’s perception, you change their life.
Want to learn more? Then get in touch! We regularly teach NLP, Hypnosis and Time Line TherapyTM Techniques around the world. The best way to learn more is to get in touch with us by email:
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