Mirroring, by mimicking physical posture and movements, is one of many ways to create nonverbal rapport. It is an effective and powerful tool but there are a few pitfalls waiting for the untrained user. Here is an example of a pitfall you can make while mirroring another person and how to avoid it.

When you mirror another person, you may be sucked in to their mood or mindset.

There are several ways to achieve deep nonverbal rapport – like synchronized movements and breathing. But once you have established nonverbal rapport, the trick is to stay in control of your own mood. If you happen to be deeply mirroring someone who is in a funk, the mirroring might make it difficult for you to maintain a good mood and neutrality. In other words, people in crisis can drag you into crisis, too!

This is usually not a big deal when you are with balanced, happy people. It becomes an issue when emotions are especially high or low, like when the other person is in crisis or euphoria. Who hasn’t gotten caught up in a moment of revelry or succumbed to the bad mood of another?

Over the last year, two of my dear friends have experienced life-changing events. On one occasion, I spent an almost an hour listening to a friend vent. He was clearly going through a tough time. For some reason, perhaps because he was a good friend, it did not occur to me to exercise the same degree of mental preparation that I use when working with a client. I was unprepared for the emotional impact it would have on me.

The change was immediate. I began to feel powerless and frustrated. Then I began to feel a little mad. Within two hours I was completely off my game and feeling devastated – like his crisis was happening to me. It was almost like I was experiencing sympathetic symptoms. We had fantastic rapport but it definitely resulted in radically changing my mood. And because I went into his mood instead of bringing him up into mine, it was not a very beneficial conversation for either of us.

Science shows us that posture alone can have an impact on mood and emotion.

According to research, my mood change was easily predictable.  If you adopt a certain posture, it will eventually affect your mood and decision-making.

Also, our mirror neurons help us to develop empathy for other people by activating the parts of our brain that would be working if we were personally having an experience. This is an ancient learning tool that allows us to learn from the experiences of other people.

When you watch someone do something, your brain automatically goes through the motions. You do it in your own mind. So just by engaging and listening, you allow your mind to mentally practice someone else’s experience.

If you happen to be working or negotiating with someone who is in emotional crisis, you want to help them make decisions that they will be happy with later. You will have to establish both verbal and nonverbal rapport with them and then lead them into a better decision-making state or mood. In order to do that, you must be able to control your own emotions.

The Here and Now Anchor is a great tool for maintaining control of your emotions.

One of the tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming is called the “Here and Now” anchor – a physical bookmark or reminder of one’s state prior to hypnosis. It is a safeguard that will bring someone safely out of a hypnotic state in the event they experience mental distress. I have seen what can happen without this anchor.

When I was 14 years old I attended my mother’s NLP practitioner class, one of the exercises involved a hypnotic regression to childhood experience. Participants worked in groups of two.

In one group, the person guiding the hypnosis forgot to establish a Here and Now anchor on his partner. Unfortunately, his partner revisited a really bad childhood experience. She had identified so deeply with the vivid stories of her mother’s Nazi concentration camp experience that she relived them as her own childhood memories.

She was in serious emotional turmoil. The instructor had to dismiss class so that he could gently bring her back to the present moment. If the anchor had been established, activating it would have brought her out of reliving her memory, easily and quickly.

Use the Here and Now anchor before any important meeting or negotiation. It allows you to reset your mood and reactivate an earlier, better mental state when needed. You can prevent your mood from being changed or thrown off balance while you were with a client who was in emotional distress, working with opposing counsel who bullies, or dealing with difficult people.

This is how to build a Here and Now anchor:

Be aware and present in your body, conscious of your surroundings, feelings, etc…Pay attention to you. In that moment of awareness, say to yourself, “I am here (in my car in the parking lot, Houston, TX). I am now (November 15, 2011 – 2:54pm, about to go into this meeting). I will return to this state when I recall this moment and when I pinch my earlobe twice, like this: (pinch your earlobe). I will remember to do this if my emotional state or physiology begin to be uncomfortable or too different from this state that I am in now.”

After you have established your safety net and ticket back to sanity, it will be easier and safer for you to establish rapport with people who are experiencing negative emotions. You will be able to guide the other person into a better state because you will be able to get back out. It is also a great idea to create a Here and Now anchor that is also a Peak Performance State – but that is for another post.

Stay tuned! In the next installment we will discuss how to break rapport with people who have become too attached.

Happy Negotiating!

Nancy

We Need To Talk About Rapport....

The Pitfalls of Nonverbal Rapport – Pt. 1

Who hasn’t heard about the magical power of achieving good nonverbal rapport?

Nonverbal communication constitutes easily half or more of your communications to others. It can be achieved many ways – from tonality and physical likeness to ethnicity and common hobbies to postural mirroring and even mimicking of accents. And it is powerful. Unfortunately, some of the subtle nuances of nonverbal rapport that are gained through early interaction may be lost in the technology age.

Learning how to achieve nonverbal rapport may soon be a mostly learned skill – for those who recognize the value of it. Luckily, there is a lot of research going on in the area of emotion and behavior that can be used to generate better and more elegant nonverbal rapport.

Mirroring, including postural mimicry, can be an especially good way of building rapport. In fact, in a recent study, researchers  found that physical mimicry lessened the affects, perhaps even permanently, of implicit prejudice. This is a big deal because implicit prejudice, beliefs, and behaviors are acquired without our knowledge and stored in long-term memory. They are like root programs running outside of conscious awareness. Both beneficial and non-beneficial beliefs at this level are deeply ingrained and acted on as truth. Changing them often takes effort so any new way of altering implicit prejudices is a real breakthrough.

If you think you don’t have implicit prejudices, check this out.  Implicit prejudices are not all bad. They help to define in-group from out-group. It helps us to better know who we are and who our people are. It can also be very handy information for the negotiator.

Many social, implicit prejudices are so cultural that they are subtly reinforced in the media and constitute deeply rooted beliefs for a large portion of the population. In fact, if you have not given much thought to your own ideas of in-group and out-group, society’s views will likely be your default.

So now we have even more evidence of the power mirroring or mimicking. It makes you want to go try it out, doesn’t it? Not so fast….

When done well, mirroring is a great way to build nonverbal rapport. It helps to create feelings of trust and familiarity between the parties. It is a very useful tool negotiation. But can it get you in trouble?

You bet.

Several things can happen. Here are a few of them.

• No Style – you can be clumsy and irritate people instead of making friends.
• Courting the Enemy – you may mirror the wrong person in front of other people and pay the price socially.
• Reflecting What They Don’t Want To See – you might inadvertently mirror unwanted or rejected aspects of the other person.
• In Too Deep – you can get sucked into the emotional state of another, especially when you are working with someone in crisis.
• Creating An Unwanted Attachment.

In this post, we will look at the first three pitfalls since they all involve things that generally happen when rapport is first initiated. In the following posts, we will look at a few of the more treacherous pitfalls and discuss a few ways of safeguarding against some of the unwanted outcomes of building rapport.

Here are three pitfalls that can ruin rapport building at the very beginning and a few things you can do to avoid them….

No Style

You can be too bold with mirroring – but that is determined case-by-case. I have seen blatant, obvious, over-the-top mimicry succeed undetected by the other person. You often see that in sales and smart people only fall for it once. After that, they are wary of being scammed. However, it can be done well by someone skilled….

In 1987 I went to Houston for a seminar with Dr. Richard Bandler. It was a small group.  One night we all wanted to see the town together but the group was too big for a cab. The hotel had an airport shuttle but said we could only go from the hotel to a single destination. We agreed.

When we got into the van, Dr. Bandler began building rapport with the driver by mimicking the driver’s thick Texas accent. It was a surprise to all of us – especially after hearing him talk all day! At 17, I was fighting giggles. The tactic seemed obnoxious to us but it worked like a charm.

Dr. Bandler mimicked with style. Since he started the conversation with the accent, the driver didn’t even notice. Dr. Bandler was immediately accepted as an in-group fellow. Needless to say, we saw Houston. We drove around for hours. Great rapport ended up getting us a tour of town.

When you are using mirroring as a rapport tool, take your time. Watch and listen to the other person first. Start with small, subtle mirroring movements. For instance, if the other person crosses their legs at the knee, wait a minute or two before repositioning and crossing your legs at the ankle. You get the idea.

If the other person notices that you are you mirroring them, you have undermined communication. It will likely be much harder to establish any kind of rapport with them. They may perceive any further efforts to establish rapport as manipulation.

If you do get caught or notice that they are on to you, stop trying to get rapport and just be yourself. They will likely move on, too. If they point it out, let them know that you are a little bit nervous because the meeting/communication/etc…is very important to you. You were making an extra effort to establish good rapport to help things go smoothly. Then stop trying to get rapport and just be yourself.

Courting the Enemy

Tales of turncoats go back for centuries and it always starts with an ambassador who gets publicly friendly with the other side. People are wired to be wary of the teacher’s pet, the boss’s confident, and people who hang out with people who are known to be unscrupulous. It’s bad form to get too close to the bad guys – at least in front of other people.

In other words, if you mirror an undesirable in an attempt to build rapport with them, your reputation with onlookers may be imperiled. You don’t have to align with anybody really bad, either. In a recent study, people who were observed mirroring an unfriendly interviewer were rated to have low general competence, trustworthiness and likeability. The video reviewers were not instructed to look for mimicry and the results were the same even when the interviewer in the videos was blurred. It was the physical alignment that made the difference.

About the only way to get around this is to limit rapport building in public to verbal only. You could also do any nonverbal rapport on an energetic level. One way is to practice generating what Carl Rogers called unconditional acceptance for people. When you do that, they feel safe and you have accepted them without condoning or condemning. They are who they are, and that’s OK.

Rogers believed that a therapist could not render good client service unless they were able to set aside their own beliefs of right and wrong. By attaining a mindset of unconditional acceptance for the patient, the therapist could make the patient feel at ease, be more objective, and give better service – without creating too strong of a bond with the patient.

Reflecting What They Don’t Want To See

This one is a little tricky because sometimes it is hard to tell when someone has very low self-esteem or harbors self-hate. If they do, you may have more credibility not being like them. This situation may be the basis for the old adage that “familiarity breeds contempt”.

People who don’t like themselves generally feel safe with their in-group but also hold equals in distain. If you are like them, and they reject themselves, they may reject you, too. You will be accorded as much respect as they think they deserve – and that might not be much.

Pay attention to people and ask questions. Listen to them. Ask them about accomplishments and see how they act talking about themselves. Pay them a sincere compliment or show appreciation and see if they accept it, make a snarky remark, or downplay it. Responses like that can be revealing.

If you discover that you are dealing with someone who is obviously self-destructive or has obviously low-self esteem, practice unconditional acceptance. Accept them without creating the familiarity and try not to build likeness or familiarity between you. You want them to feel safe. You do not need to come across as an equal to do that.

Are you a rapport master like Dr. Bandler? If you are going to use mirroring or mimicry, be good at it. Learn about it. Become a master.

There are a few books available in the Negotiation Ninja Store that I highly recommend – The Magic of Rapport by Jerry Richardson, Persuasion Engineering by Bandler and La Valle, and Beyond Selling Bagley and Reese.

Next up, what to do to avoid taking on someone’s emotional state when you are mirroring – and what to do if it happens.

Until next time, happy rapport building!

Nancy

PS – If you want to learn this information and really master it, check out Negotiation Ninja coaching. You will learn exactly what you need to know to reach your negotiation or communication goals – fast.

It’s been a great spring here at Negotiation Ninja and now Memorial Day is upon us.  Time with family and friends is always the perfect time to enhance your negotiation skills by practicing on people who will probably love you anyway.

Here is a useful little tidbit to play with this holiday weekend… This information is powerful and will help you navigate the many power and control issues that inevitably arise when families get together…

The Study

This relatively simple study has articulated what many seasoned negotiators know instinctively.  Now you can put this knowledge to work for you in life and in negotiation.

Researchers have discovered that two types of control – power and personal choice – are interchangeable [i].

The researchers found that if someone is satisfied with the amount of control they have over their own circumstances, and have choices and options, they do not seek to exert power over other people.  And why would they?

Choice

People with an array of personal choices and the ability to control their own destiny are probably too happy to care about pushing other people around.  They have little reason to exert power and control over other people.

Power

Conversely, someone who is deprived of choice, options, and control over their own circumstances will attempt to exert power over others.  This, of course, makes perfect sense.  Someone who has no choices, no options, and lives life according to someone else’s rules would likely feel cornered and seek to exert power and control over anything.

Another caveat is that the idea of “choice” is subjective.  Keep in mind that while many options might be available to someone, they might not be the “right” options and therefore cause a power scramble.

What comes to mind is a boss, politician or leader – they have different options while in office than out of office/position.  If those options prove to be unsatisfying, they might begin to abuse the power they DO have.

Effects

The study also found that people who felt like they had less (or no) power would go to great lengths, spend more time, travel further, and make greater sacrifices in order to gain more options.  Marketers and sales representatives play on this all of the time and now we know exactly what they are doing – and can use it too.

People, especially those with little want options.  They are looking for choices. This makes it easier for you to introduce them.

How to use this information

Know Thyself

How about you? Take some time and identify areas of your life in which you feel like you have plenty of options and choices and those in which you do not.

Assess areas of your life in which you feel the need to (or just daydream about) exert power over others. Can you imagine options or choices that would allow you to release the need or desire to exert power over others?

Knowing these things about yourself will make it more difficult for other people to exploit them as “chinks in your armor” during negotiation.  It will help you to identify some of the beliefs that can lead to behaviors that are detrimental to negotiation – like the need for power and ego-driven decisions.

It will also give you an opportunity to open up options in areas in which you feel relatively powerless and release the unnecessary stress that accompanies the ongoing need to accumulate power and exert it over other people.

Know Others

This new understanding sheds some light on why people grasp for power – and it is really useful information for negotiation.  If people have options, they do not seek to assert power over others.  If they are deprived of options, they do.  It would seem that options are more important than power.

Knowing this, if you experience a power monger in negotiation, you have an idea where that behavior might be coming from.  They may be grasping for power because of a perceived lack of options in some aspect of the negotiation.  It’s a clue for you to investigate.

It might signal that you are their only (or best) option.  It might signal that the deal is a make-or-break one for their company.

Get Creative!

Wake up your creative mind – your whole brain – and come up with some options!

Knowing how to access your creativity AND activate other people toward new solutions is a huge asset in negotiation. Oftentimes you get so mired down in the particulars of a negotiation (even those at the dinner table!) that you lose the focus on interests and solutions.

When power struggles show up in negotiation, use your creative mind to design novel approaches to problems and open up new potential solutions.  You might even be able to prevent impasse or other fear/ego/no-choices driven power struggles at the negotiation table.

How?  Rapport. Questions.

Introducing options to a power-driven negotiation partner can be tricky.  It has to be done in a way that doesn’t threaten their perceived power in any way.  Rapport skills are the key.

In order to find those options, you will likely need more information.  In order to get that new information in a way that doesn’t seem like an interrogation you need good rapport skills (more on that later).

If you are new to the art of rapport and want to get started learning more, here are two of my favorite books on the subject:

“The Magic Of Rapport” by Jerry Richardson.

“How To Win Friends And Influence People” by Dale Carnegie.

In order to prompt creativity and introduce new solutions without seeming to take away power from your negotiation partner, you will also need to know how to ask open-ended questions that identify the interests of the other party.

Open-ended questions encourage discussion because they cannot readily be answered with one word or phrase.  They get the conversation going.  Here are a few examples of open-ended questions that can help you to get the information you need in order to introduce new options to a power-hungry negotiation partner…

“What is the most important aspect of ____ from your point of view?”

“What would happen if_____…?”

“How did you decide to_____…?”

“Can you please explain the process for_____…?”

“How did you get involved in____…?”

“What prompted you to seek our services?”

“How would your situation be different if_____…?”

My upcoming book, Super Learning Secrets, is full of innovative and easy ways to tap into your creative abilities. In the meantime try using the questioning methods and see what happens.  You will be surprised how well they work!

So go forth into the weekend and try some of this new knowledge.  See if you can’t be the person that keeps the holiday running smoothly!

Happy Memorial Day (in the U.S.)

Nancy

Spring Into Change!

Spring is a time of spring-cleaning, graduations, weddings, and newness.  Though it never occurred to me before, even good change can be stressful – and needs to be handled with a little bit of change management!

Let me explain…

I’m finishing up my book about accelerated learning and decided to offer a special gift for people who sign up for advanced notice of publication.  This special bonus is about about how to stop, reverse, and turn around overwhelm meltdown.

The upcoming book is designed to teach people to how learn faster and manage information overwhelm.  So it seemed like a good idea to address the overwhelm meltdown aspect as well.  It sometimes happens to people who are working toward big goals AND balancing the rest of life too.

As I was writing, my mother sent me a book about crisis management.  Though it was more about handling “major” crisis, it was a great read and on point for me.

It showed me that my own observations and suggestions for resolution of overwhelm meltdown were accurate.  I also learned something really valuable: even “good” change can cause extra stress that can lead to overwhelm meltdown.

Who knew?

According to researchers Holmes and Rahe “Life Change Index Scale” (LCIS), marriage is more stressful than being fired from your work; taking out a big loan (as for a house, etc…) is more stressful than foreclosure; and major personal achievement is more stressful than “empty nest” stress.  It’s time to rethink stressors!

So why does this matter?

It can have a major impact on your health.  One study found that the LCIS enabled researchers to accurately predict how many and which Marine and Navy personnel would be in sick bay on a 6-month cruise.  Another study used the LCIS to accurately predict player’s injuries during a football season.

The message for people working toward big goals is this: use change management techniques to mitigate the stress from predictable change so that the unpredictable changes don’t throw you for a loop.

How can you do that?

One way is to spend time each day thinking about how things will be different and what life will be like after you achieve your goal.  Begin to create familiar feelings about the upcoming, changed, situation.

Don’t limit this exercise to your goals.  If there are other things going on (marriage, graduation, holidays, baby on the way, diet change…), spend time doing the same thing for them.

This simple exercise is called “Future Pacing” in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and it has many benefits.  It helps you become familiar with new circumstances before they are realized.  It also helps you to recognize kinks in the plan and things you can do to ease the transition for yourself and for people around you.

What I do

I write down my current stressors, any upcoming events, and any goals I am working on.  For each one, I write my “best-case scenario” (BCS) and visualize or imagine my desired outcome.

If it is easy to imagine my BCS, I move on the next item.  If it is difficult to visualize (hazy, dim, or distant), or I can’t imagine what the achievement would feel like, I investigate.

Maybe part of me doesn’t believe it is possible. Maybe there are outside factors to consider.  Maybe my BCS needs to be re-worked.

Whatever the case, I make adjustments until it’s easy to imagine my BCS for each item.  If time allows, I create more than one BCS just to remind myself to be flexible.

Life keeps us on our toes.  There will be stress, good and bad – especially for people who are always pursuing the next worthy goal!

By mitigating stress from the “known” stressors, we can lighten the effect of those surprise stressors that come along from time to time.  Start using a little change management in everyday life and it will be easier to roll with whatever life dishes out!

Cheers and Happy Spring!

Nancy

12.8.10

The other day I was at the coffee shop and overheard a lively conversation about property.  These guys were talking (loudly) about buying, selling, and renting property and tax benefits etc…

I couldn’t help but listen in a little bit.  After a minute or so, I packed up and on my way out, asked one of the guys for his card.  He seemed to really know his stuff! He laughed and said that he was “just getting into all of this” and wasn’t an expert but was learning.  I’m learning too and we got into a fun conversation.

After a while he brought up his realtor and said, “He’s such a nice guy.  You’d never guess how smart he is or what a great negotiator he is.”

Take that quote apart and you are left with a few assumptions:

1. Nice people aren’t smart and can’t negotiate
2. Smart people are mean or socially deficient
3. Negotiators are mean or socially deficient

Now, I’m sure that’s not what he consciously meant.  He was just reflecting common cultural beliefs that we all have (in different degrees).  After all, everybody knows, “Nice guys finish last”.  Many people believe that you have to be tough and “hard nosed” to be a good negotiator….

The truth is, “Nice” works and it’s a profoundly powerful negotiation tool.

“He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of a diplomat.”

~ Robert Estabrook

But when you say “nice”, don’t you really mean “likable”?   What’s the real difference between “nice” and “likeable”?

Nice people sometimes get “short end of the stick” in negotiation because they don’t want to upset the other person.   Smart and likeable people wield influence and confidently ask for what they want.  “Nice” might get you an acquaintance but likable will get you friends and long-term business.

In fact, the 10^th lesson of Napoleon Hill’s “The Law of Success” is to “Develop A Pleasing Personality”.  That’s really what developing likeability is.  It’s purposefully cultivating your likeable personality traits so that you are a better communicator and negotiator.  So what are the likeable personality traits?

Dr. Robert Cialdini talks about the “liking principle” in his book “Influence” and describes three elements or traits that he says makes a person likable: Being Attractive, Being Similar, and Compliments.

I’ll add at least one more to that and it is the easiest to incorporate into your daily interactions: Genuine Interest In Other People.

“Likeable” is also a building block for developing “charisma” and “charm”.    While those personality traits are kind of hard to pin down, when I ask people what “charisma” is, I usually hear confident, likeable, and happy…  Likeable is always on the list, so let’s look at a few elements that go into likeable, that powerhouse of a negotiation tool…

Being attractive

It’s a fact of life; people like pretty people.  We are attracted to them.  That’s why the “popular” kids in school were usually the best looking.

People can judge a lot about other people by looks alone.  A study done at Duke University showed that research participants could gauge the business success of a CEO from a photograph.

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”  ~ Dorothy Parker

Luckily, personality traits can influence perceived attractiveness – so you have an opportunity to be “better looking” based on your personality.  So when you develop a pleasing personality or likeability, you are actually perceived as better looking to other people.  What an easy way to improve your looks!

Being similar (creating a sense of similarity or familiarity by getting rapport)

It is well known that people like to do business with people they “know, like, and trust”.  It’s human nature to be wary of the different and unfamiliar.  We generally prefer the known and like to deal with insiders.

You can create that feeling of similarity and familiarity by incorporating more rapport skills into your conversations.  Rapport is the essence of charm and is essential for flirting, sales, etiquette, and even diplomacy.

Rapport is easily one of the most important elements of negotiation and communication.  It enables you to generate familiarity fast.  It helps you to gather information in subtle, low-key ways that are both ethical and respectful.

Your goal in establishing rapport is to create an atmosphere and relationship of trust, credibility, and safety that lead to clear communication and understanding.  To do that, you must pay attention to them (more on that below) and have a variety of ways to establish rapport so that you can do it with a variety of people.  Luckily, rapport skills are pretty easy to learn.  The catch is that you usually have to unlearn some negative communication habits too.

I have found that Tapping (EFT, MT, Energy Tapping) is a really great way to replace those old, bad communication habits with new, useful ones that help you get the results you want.  It’s also a useful tool for incorporating new communication habits into your daily routine, fast.

The real magic comes when you begin to develop confidence in your communication abilities.  There is something special about smoothness that comes from practice.  It shows up in your verbal and non-verbal language as ease with other people.

Practice your rapport skills at home.  The more you use them with family, friends, and co-workers and when you don’t really need them, the easier they are to use when you do.

Compliments

“Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself” ~ Dale Carnegie

We are all suckers! Look, no matter what you say, compliments work well and they work well on you! I know because you are obviously a sophisticated reader – intelligent and clever enough to recognize your own vulnerabilities (and because you are such a fox)! See, that worked (just a little) didn’t it?

Sincere compliments, given with true admiration are unbeatable.  People (including you!) melt when someone sincerely compliments you on something you have worked hard to achieve – especially if it has gone unnoticed or unappreciated for a while.

Insincere compliments work too!  Yes, you love an ego stroking but only because you deserve the praise.  After all, not everyone can be as enlightened, wonderful, and fantastically good-looking as you are.

Genuine Interest In Other People.

Dr. Carl Rogers called it “unconditional positive regard,” just accepting people for who they are without judging them.  And if you think about it, who doesn’t want to be loved and accepted – unconditionally?

This is an extremely powerful negotiation tool!  Still, sometimes that’s a lot to ask!  We are hardwired to be at least a little judgmental but you can change that with practice. Here are two ways of using this amazing communication tool:

Pay attention to the person/people you are talking to.

“Of course,” you say, “that’s obvious!”  But do you do it?  Do you really do it?  Try this for the next week:  treat everyone you meet as though they were THE most important person on the planet.

See what happens and report back please.  I’m writing this during the holidays so you all should have no trouble finding willing subjects to practice this on.

I read an article written about Tony Robbins by a satirist who fully intended, at the outset, to make fun of Tony and make him out to be a “snake oil salesman”.  In the end, he couldn’t do it.  The whole article ended up being about how great it felt just to be around Tony.  The writer said he felt amazingly important appreciated and that nobody had ever made him feel that good about himself.  He said that nobody had ever paid that much attention to him (not even girlfriends!).

Look for something to like, respect, or appreciate about the other person.

Even the Scroogiest person has admirable traits.  When you can identify something (anything!) to like, respect, or appreciate about the other person, you will begin to evoke more positive traits from them.  It’s like when you pull a frayed shoelace through a rivet hole – all you need is a single thread to pull the whole lace through (though it may take some effort).

Again, try this right now!  Focus on the things you like about your friends and family – it will make it easier to find those likeable qualities in other, perhaps more difficult, people.  Looking for likeable traits in others will make you more likeable as well!

Make These Skills Your Own With Negotiation Ninja Coaching!

These skills usually take a long time to master.  Major changes in your beliefs and behavior are usually difficult to make… unless you have the right information and Negotiation Ninja coaching.

Negotiation Ninja coaching can help you learn these skills and make major belief and behavioral changes, fast.  You’ll be able to make them automatic and natural (so you don’t have to think about using them), fast. You’ll build confidence in your abilities, fast. You’ll learn to use leading edge belief and behavior change tools – so you can master your mind.

Happy Holidays!!

Nancy

P.S. Look for a Negotiation Ninja class on developing “likeability” in the New Year!

Contact Negotiation Ninja today for your free consultation

Nancy T. Hand, JD, NLP Trainer, EFT-ADV

nancy@negotiationninja.com

334.524.8437

11.11.09

EFT & The Well-Formed Outcome: How EFT Can Save Your Butt Before Mediation

I heard once to begin with the end in mind.  It’s always amazing to me how many people never think, “What do I want at the end of this?” or “How do I want to feel when this is all over?” and start there.  It’s an easy way to discover the over-arching best possible outcome.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of working with someone on the verge of a very intense and life-changing negotiation.  I was attending a meditation class and had an opportunity to offer a taste of my services to the other attendees, free of charge, of course…

I did not expect to encounter such a loaded situation.  This person had so much money stolen by their son that they were going into legal mediation to sort it all out.  This person, we’ll call her “Chris”, was devastated and exhausted by the whole affair.

The thing that struck me was that the mediation was only 2 weeks away and she was so completely unprepared.  She was also tightly focused on the worst possible outcome.  She was under too much stress to change her thinking on her own and too emotionally wrung out to even imagine a best possible outcome.

A while back I worked with a gentleman (“Bob”) 24 hours before his divorce mediation – custody, visitation, assets, etc…all on the line.  He was livid!  All he could talk about was how awful his soon-to-be ex-wife was and how certain he was that things would go badly in the mediation.  He had not given any thought beyond the mediation, about the days and weeks, months and years that would follow – about how his daughter would be molded by their behavior…he had not given any thought to his BEST possible outcome…

I have seen this over and over again, people so upset or stressed about something that they can’t even think about it – and because they “can’t think about it” they can’t prepare.  Failing to prepare = preparing to fail.  It’s true.

People tend to put off thinking about a scary situation and when they do think about it, they typically run variations of the worst-case scenario over and over in their minds until it becomes like a mantra or a horror movie.

The power of a well-formed outcome.

With both of the above clients, I asked them “what is your best possible outcome for all of this?”  The first answer I got was, “I want her to…” The other answered similarly.  Each of these clients wanted someone else to act differently in order to please them.

When I pressed for a more subjective best possible outcome, neither could tell me.  So that was the first order of business.  With each of the above clients I elicited their best possible outcomes using classic NLP well-formed outcome criteria:

Is it measurable?

Is it within your control?

How will you know when you have achieved it? (I go for a feeling here, like “relieved”)

Does anything need to be done in order to achieve this outcome?

What is the benefit of achieving it?

Is there benefit to NOT achieving it? (secondary gain)

How will your life be different when you have achieved it? (ecology check)

Once we established the best possible outcome, it was a matter of building some congruence with it – some belief in the possibility of achieving or attaining the outcome.

Just a little bit of EFT can take the panic edge off, build core congruence with the goal, and pave the way for better decisions.

I could tell that not only was it difficult for them to wrap their minds around a positive outcome, but they both, respectively, had serious doubts about realizing a positive outcome.  That is where EFT comes in.  Here are some of the things we tapped on – in no particular order.

Afraid of/expecting confrontation at the mediation

Feeling like the best possible outcome was “impossible”

Focused on worst-case outcome

Fear of failure

Feeling powerless

Anger at the other side

Inability to fathom any relationship (esp. a good one) with the other party after mediation

Resentment

Exhaustion

The tapping protocol was pretty simple – at first we tapped while they vented their worries and in doing that we were able to pinpoint a few particular areas to concentrate on like anger, disappointment, worry about the future, failure as a parent, etc…

More information about how I use tapping is in the post: How To Tap

In the end, Bob was able to release some of the anger/hate that he felt toward his soon-to-be-ex and focus on building a harmonious relationship that would serve as a basis for all of their future interactions and set the best possible example for his daughter.  He began to see real value in the happiness and well-being of all parties involved and his mediation was successful.

Chris was able think about what life would be like post-mediation and view the mediation as a new beginning and an opportunity to re-work her relationship with her son.  Her entire demeanor shifted and she “brightened up” after releasing the fears.  When I find out how this mediation went, I’ll let you know!

Cheers,

Nancy