How To Develop Effective Communication Skills With NLP
Neuro-linguistic programming or commonly known as NLP has been around since a couple of decades. During all this time, it has helped many people improve their emotional intelligence, their communication skills and their empathy.
Article Index:
- What Is NLP?
- Learning NLP Is Now More Affordable
- Why NLP Helps Improve Communication?
- So Where Should You Start?
What Is NLP?
NLP is frequently used by all working professionals, from helping individuals to speak confidently to improving their sales results. Many politicians are known to also use NLP to detect the emotions of their audience so they can better engage and connect with them.
Learning NLP Is Now More Affordable
When NLP first became popular, there were only a few certified trainers to teach NLP. However, as more and more people became licensed NLP trainers, the course fees became more affordable and students now have more choices as compared to the past.
Besides, there’s a lot of literature on this topic. If you don’t want to invest in NLP practitioner course just yet as it requires a lot more commitment from you, you can start off by reading and applying a few NLP techniques from books or articles on the web.
Why NLP Helps Improve Communication?
NLP is one of the more sought-after techniques by many individuals to help them develop better and more effective communication skills. There are various techniques such as anchoring and mirroring that enables you to lead the conversation with your interlocutors while building rapport with them at the same time.
NLP anchoring technique is also used by many great speakers with great success in overcoming their fear of public speaking.
Become an Active & Better Listener
NLP too can help one in becoming a better listener. Too often, we wanted to be listened to when we speak. In today’s societies, many are caught in a dialog of deaf people. We take turns when we talk, changing the subject continuously, without even trying to listen to the other person.
All we care about is to express our thoughts and ideas a clearly as possible. We don’t care about understanding what others say to us.
NLP has the power to show you how to s
top focusing on yourself during your conversations with other people. Once you direct your attention away from yourself, the other party is going to notice & appreciate that.
As the trust between you and the other party grow, so will the relationship.
Funny enough, the only thing you have to do in order to trigger this reaction is to stop talking and start listening.
NLP Mirroring Technique to Help Build Rapport
Mirroring is a very powerful technique. It occurs naturally up to a point anyway, but when you do it consciously, it can bring you a lot of advantages.
This technique consists from adopting the position of your interlocutor. For instance, if she crosses her legs, by adopting the same position, you transmit a signal of empathy. This signal is received by the other person at unconscious level, so she may becomes more willing to listen to your arguments without realizing the real reason behind this change of attitude.
Understand the Map Is Not the Territory
By understanding that the map is not the territory, you can enhance your communication skills.
NLP can teach you to make the difference between the meaning of your words and what the other party understands. This is one of the biggest problems of our society, that affects all its levels, from politics to family life.
We say something, but we don’t realize the other person understands our words in a different way. Next, we gt upset when they reply in accordance with their understanding, as this isn’t at all what we’ve expected to hear.
Many quarrels have started because of communication issues, and many couples have divorced as consequence of poor communication skills.
Be Aware That Different People React to Stimuli Differently
Become aware of the different types of persons you have to deal with in your life, and learn the right ways of addressing each of them.
Some individuals react better to visual stimuli so you need to show them photos and images to bring your point across. However, if you’re communicating to an auditory person, he or she will have to hear the information in order to understand it better.
Kinesthetic people can be convinced more easily if you can touch their emotions and activate their imagination with your words and let them experience or have a feel of the surrounding or the product.
Once you understand the differences between these people, and you learn how to address each of them, you are going to be an effective communicator.
So Where Should You Start?
When trying to develop better communication skills with NLP, you have to start with the beginning.
Try to learn and understand the basic principles of NLP. Alternatively, you can always attend a short 1-2 days workshop to jump start your education on how to use NLP to become a better communicator and skyrocket your sales results.
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