Having spent the past ten years working as a consultant, coach, and start-up business strategist, I am continuously researching market drivers, environmental influences, and emerging management imperatives. I cast a wide net, looking to divine what on the surface may appear to be independent currents that often coalesce into a confluence of sweeping change. Having just completed a new book on entrepreneurship, I had some time to reflect on several threads of real-world, market research that warrant further exploration.

Every year over the past decade or so, The Gallup Company conducts research on employee engagement levels. Their most recent report demonstrates the continuous slide companies continue to experience in this critical arena. Today, a little more than a quarter of employees are fully engaged with their employer, meaning they show up with passion and enthusiasm for their work. More than half are disengaged, simply going through the motions, contributing the minimal required effort, keeping their heads down, and voices low. Essentially sleepwalking, if you will. And strikingly, approximately one out of six employees is activity working at cross-purpose with their employers. The aggregate cost of this engagement crisis to businesses in the U.S. exceeds a quarter of a trillion dollars annually. More importantly to many individual businesses, however, is the fact that more than fifty percent of their payroll may be contributing little or no return on investment to the firm.

Interestingly, another recent study published in the Harvard Business Review demonstrated the next productivity breakthrough will come through cultivating the emotional engagement of both employees and customers. Also conducted by Gallup, the study explored the implications of Applied Behavioral Economics in actual enterprises. What they saw was the fact that creating rationally satisfied customers was no longer enough. The research showed that rationally satisfied customers purchased no more and were no more likely to continue doing business with a firm than dissatisfied customers. The difference in wallet share, future purchases, and customer loyalty was found to lie in creating emotionally satisfied customers. The study went on to demonstrate that companies that engage both their employees and customers on an emotional level enjoy a 240% improvement in financial performance. Apple immediately comes to mind as a company that fully understands and leverages this perspective. Their customers literally line up to buy their next product offering.

Here’s the final thread. IBM’s biennial Global CEO Study issued in 2010 indicated that creativity was selected as the single most important factor for success in the future. Not managerial discipline, integrity, or even vision. The more than 1,500 CEOs from sixty countries interviewed pointed to creativity as the critical success factor going forward. Less than half of those surveyed felt their firms were prepared to handle the increasingly complex, volatile environments in which they operated. More than sixty percent of CEOs reported that industry transformation is the top factor contributing to their uncertainty. They described an imperative need to discover innovative ways to manage structure, strategy, talent, and finances.

So let’s break these critical elements down and see if we can roll them up into a plausible solution. First, the majority of human talent is sitting idle on the sidelines in many firms. In light of the fact that we live in transformational times in which intellectual property is the driver of value creation, employee disengagement represents an astounding scrap rate of industrial raw material. How many firms would purchase millions of dollars of raw materials only to let fifty percent of it go to waste? But that’s exactly what is happening today in many firms when it comes to leveraging their talent.

Second, solid research coming out of Applied Behavioral Economics points to the emotional aspects of economic decision making. Most behavioral economist concur that upwards of seventy percent of economic decisions are emotionally driven with the remaining thirty percent based in rational thought. This is true in business-to-business environments as well as in business-to-consumer environments. It comes down to our human nature. Emotional gain matters to us. Emotions are part of our primary survival mechanisms. Core Emotional Systems are present in all mammals; it is how we evolved in nature. Genetically speaking, we haven’t changed all that much over the past fifty thousand years. To rule out emotions as a messy bi-product and ignore their economic implications disengages human beings from being human. The road to creating emotionally engaged customers is paved by emotionally engaging employees. The fact is, passion and intention resonates with others. This not only speaks to how we should view leadership but also to how we must take organizational culture into consideration as a strategic imperative as well.

Third, the consensus amongst a statistically significant number of chief executives is that creativity is the single most important factor for driving success going forward. Creativity not only in leadership, but also in leadership’s ability to cultivate creativity throughout the entire firm. This is a far cry from the demands for conformity and standardization that emerged out of our heavy manufacturing past.

So here’s the challenge. Leadership must find a way to cultivate creativity with a highly disengaged workforce. In addition, leadership must find ways to emotionally satisfy customers in order to maintain wallet share, growth, and profitability. That sounds like some pretty heavy lifting is in order. The solution, however, isn’t so far out of hand as it may appear on the surface.

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, the problems of today cannot be solved by the same thinking that created them. A shift in perspective must occur. I’d like to reference an important book that Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky published in 2002 called “Leadership On The Line” (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA) to help frame a possible solution. In this book, Heifetz and Linsky point to two types of challenges companies typically face. The first are “technical challenges”. Relatively straight-forward challenges that are not terribly unfamiliar. Familiar enough that we already know the solutions. Such challenges require “technical change”, which is relatively low risk and easily negotiated. The second type of challenge is “adaptive” in nature. Challenges in which we do not have all the answers. Challenges that represent a landscape fraught with uncertainty in which we must, in many instances, discover the answers along the way. These challenges require “adaptive change”, which, by definition, requires creativity. This is what we face today.

The traditional path for leadership development, team building, et. al. is limited in its ability to solve these challenges. After all, as Einstein might have pointed out, these historical modalities are a part of the thinking that got us here. Traditional coaching models also fall short. They are built on a premise that all of the answers must come from the person being coached. This may have been effective for executives facing technical challenges, but by definition, this approach is incapable of guiding leaders attempting to navigate adaptive change. In these circumstances, the answers have yet to be discovered. What is needed is a transformational process for development that will instill a fresh perspective, tap into dormant creativity, and fully engage both associates and customers.

A new, integrated, developmental approach for addressing these adaptive challenges is the Accretive Coaching Process™. The term “accretive” refers to the growing together of separate parts into a single whole of greater value. The evidence-based approach integrates education, experiential learning, and coaching methods evolved from traditional modalities. The process delivers a positive shift in perspective while imparting tools grounded in emotional and social competencies, Applied Behavioral Economics, and recent discoveries from performance psychology and neurophysiology. This comprehensive approach elevates self-awareness and social awareness leading to competencies in self management, relationship management, and empathy; all keys to rekindling employee engagement. It also cultivates both non-verbal and verbal communication skills and an understanding and respect for individual boundaries. The accretive nature of the process enables leaders to fully connect and align their cognitive and emotional talents and attributes, tapping into their creative power. From this position of authentic, creative, and connective power, leaders can begin to inspire and motivate associates without dominating or coercing them. This approach is fully capable of igniting associate passion and cultivating a fresh, creative culture in organizations.

By aligning integrated, professional development processes with the challenges and opportunities companies face in today’s transformational economy, adaptive solutions can emerge. The key is to cultivate leaders, culture, and strategies that continue to fully engage associates, customers, and stakeholders. Technology will only take us so far. At the end of the day, it is the human element that will create, adapt, and shape the future of our success.

About the Author

Terry Murray is a professional coach and business executive with twenty-five years of progressive experience in strategic development, executive leadership, and the deployment of highly profitable business teams. 
Terry is the founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation, LLC. For more info, please visit us at http://www.performtransform.com or BreakThrough@performtransform.com.

“A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” – Author Unknown

Being a terrific leader takes commitment, confidence, and clarity. It doesn’t matter if you’re a supervisor, CEO or entrepreneur – the steps you need to know in order to motivate the people who work with you are the same. The old school method of employing ‘scare’ tactics, i.e. “If you don’t do what I TELL you do, then there’s the door!” doesn’t cut it anymore in today’s business world. Besides, if you still subscribe to the “It’s my way or the highway” way of thinking, you’re going to alienate everyone who works in your company or organization and nothing will be accomplished except for making enemies out of your staff.

Here are 4 steps that will take you from good to great leader.

1. Set a clear direction for your team. Clarity begets desired results. If you aren’t clear about where you’re going, do you think your team will be? As a leader, your role is to be the visionary who paints the picture for them to follow. If you aren’t clear about the necessary steps your staff need to take to accomplish a goal, then a lot of time is going to be wasted running around in circles. Create a clear action plan – one that shows exactly how and what you want to get done. If needed, draw a roadmap diagram on paper outlining the full process, starting with the objective and detailing what each person is responsible to complete. The better your directions are, the easier it will be to get the goal finished.

2. Make sure your actions match your intentions and visions. You, as the leader, need to know what you envision being the final outcome of the project/task you’re asking your employees to work on. Do you want to ‘wow’ a client with an exceptional product presentation? Can you see the final project completed? What does it look like to you? Are YOU excited about this task? Your own level of commitment and enthusiasm needs to come across loud and clear to your team. If you’re ho hum about the outcome, then guess what – that’s the attitude that will be adopted by members of your team. Some of us are ‘big picture’ thinkers. We forget about all the details on how to get to that big picture, but as the leader you can’t allow yourself to let those minute details slide. If you do, then the final outcome will definitely not be to your liking.

3. Create a cohesive team. You must have confidence in your team and their abilities. Knowing who fits in where in your team is crucial to creating success. You need to assign the ‘right’ people to the ‘right’ tasks. If Suzie doesn’t like concept writing, but loves to work on graphics, then make sure you assign her that portion of the job. Knowing the strengths of each member of the team is crucial in achieving a super end result. No one likes to work on something they detest doing. By forcing them to take on duties they absolutely hate creates resentment, and resentment either slows down the entire project or provides a poor performance.

4. Work smarter, not harder. I know you’ve heard this phrase a million times, but it bears repeating. By learning to delegate the workload to the right person will lift some of the weight of turning in a top-notch end result off your own shoulders. Your role is to be the visionary – not the micro-manager! You role model what it means to be a leader and a follower, and in turn you inspire and create great leaders for the future.

And isn’t that the purpose of being a great leader?

About the Author

Cookie Tuminello, also known as ‘THE Team Builder of the South’, has been empowering CEO’s, managers, business owners, and team members and igniting productivity since 1999. To find out more about this sassy, savvy and successful coach, get her FREE Report 50 Ways To Take Your Power Back Now and receive weekly Coffee With Cookie success tips, you can visit www.cookietuminello.com

The power of vision in business is perhaps the most important strategic advantage available to businesses today. If businesses don’t have a vision of where they want to be in 5 or 10 years then they are treading water in the present. Every business decision made in the present affects positively or negatively where the company will be in the future. If they don’t know where that future is then decisions made today are like shooting in the dark.

Noted futurist, Joel Barker, says “Neglect the Future and no one will thank you for the present”. Nothing could be truer in the business world. Most businesses spend all of their time in the present putting out fires. Every day is spent trying to catch up with work that should have been yesterday or handling emergencies as they arrive today. Almost no time is spent on strategy and goal setting.

Leaders in the business world are responsible first and foremost for leading people into the future. As such, more time should be spent on the direction of the company than on the everyday fireman duties that every leader gets caught up in. In Barker’s work he talks about three keys that all leaders should be focusing on – excellence, innovation and anticipation.

Every year the marketplace becomes more competitive and every company should be constantly focused on excellence. Ask the following questions – how can we be an industry leader in extraordinary service, how can we have excellence in every level of our organization and lastly how can we be an industry leader in quality.

Innovation is the next key. Every available resource should be spent on innovation. Most organizations have a large staff of diverse employees. Use all of your human resources and make a consistent, focused effort to find ways to innovation.

The last key is anticipation. Companies need to utilize every resource in anticipating the future. Without these efforts, businesses are just blindly hiking through the wilderness. Make every effort to study the landscape, so that the future doesn’t come as a complete surprise and your efforts today anticipate correctly.

Make sure that your decisions today are working towards a future goal and vision of the future. As Joel Barker astutely points out – the present means very little if you have no direction. Find the power of vision and give your company a clear and bright future.

About the Author

Charlie Bentson King is a writer and producer of training videos for TrainingABC. TrainingABC is a distributor of Joel Barker Videos including The Power of Vision.

An essential part of business presenting is having a clear message and making sure that the audience come away with the same message you intended to deliver.

In the pop music world where it’s fair to say most people have short attention spans, we can learn a lot from pop diva Lady Gaga. Recently Lady Gaga managed to take a stand against an issue and at the same time mention her new album numerous times (Born this Way) and still arouse the love / hate responses she is known for. One article on Lady Gaga had over three thousand comments. Not many blogs can rival that response!

So what can we learn from Lady Gaga:

1. Clearly define the issue.

Lady Gaga starts off with a succinct definition:

“The funny thing is that some people reduce freedom to a brand,” Gaga said between tears.

This is a great tagline (with pop diva emotion) that positions her against her pop rivals. By clearly defining the issue, she is now ready to lay out her position.

2. Give your opinion on the issue

Lady Gaga now states her opinion on this pressing issue:

“They think that it’s trendy now to be free. They think it’s trendy to be excited about your identity. When in truth, there is nothing trendy about ‘Born This Way.”

Did you notice the beautiful bridge to her album. Sentence starts with talking about the issue and ends with bringing the attention to her key message – which in this case is her album.

Now, having made the segue, it’s time to hammer home the message:

3. Deliver your message vividly

A powerful way to connect with an audience is to use a metaphor:

“‘Born This Way’ is a spirit, and it is this connection that we all share.”

This metaphor has now linked her message to the audience. Now it’s time to get vivid and have a dig at her pop rivals:

“It is something so much deeper than a wig or a lipstick or an outfit or a [expletive] meat dress. ‘Born This Way’ is about us, ‘Born This Way’ is about what keeps us up at night and makes us afraid.”

Injecting emotion and making her message relevant to people’s lives is another technique that business presenters can use although probably in a toned down fashion.

So while you may not know who Lady Gaga is or whether you love or hate her, make sure that you take away these important lessons:

1. Clearly define your issue

2. Give a direct opinion

3. Use vivid language to deliver your message

About the Author

Warwick John Fahy works with high-potential senior finance executives who struggle to get their point across and influence their key stakeholders. Warwick helps the executive gain respect by quickly and powerfully expressing their opinions. Clients hire Warwick for his highly practical approach. For free executive speaking tips http://www.oneminutepresenter.com/blog

To arrange presentation skills coaching visit http://www.warwickjohnfahy.com. For a media interview call +86 1391 786 7502.

During my youth, my father (a 20 year Air Force veteran) used to tell me; “You are born with just one last name, you need to work hard to protect its reputation”. That was good advice to remember. The same holds true with your professional reputation.

Building and maintaining your reputation can be one of the hardest tasks you will ever undertake. Why? Because your reputation is built every day, it is not just a static event. Furthermore, consistent execution on a day in and day out basis on any task is a challenge. Few are as important as your reputation. It is important to recognize that your reputation is what others believe about you, not what you believe about yourself.

Most everyone is aware of the high profile visibility surrounding the departures of Robert Moffat, ex-SVP of IBM, and Mark Hurd, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Each had reputations of being squeaky clean, fiercely loyal, and two of the most effective leaders in a Fortune 50 company. Both lost their jobs in disgrace. Hubris and poor judgment effectively ended their public careers.

Beware of letting a prideful act tarnish or even ruin a lifetime of building your good reputation, no matter how innocuous it may appear at the time. As a litmus test, if you are not willing to have your mother read about it on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, you probably are at risk of exercising poor judgment. People and companies have long memories. The advent of technology and social media can easily magnify the awareness of a poor decision.

A good reputation allows you to aim higher in life, personally and professionally. A good reputation attracts positive attention, and can inspire others to do well. A good reputation can never be bought; it can only be earned. A person with a good reputation does not need to worry about what others think about them, for their actions speak louder than words. Go out and do something good for yourself and others today.

About the Author

Wayne Rampey is Vice President at the InSource Group (www.insourcegroup.com), an IT Staffing and Recruiting Agency in Dallas, Tx

I have learned from experience that behavioral change always begins with awareness, because awareness leads to new choices. People will always choose to change when they are aware that the change will serve their best interest. Awareness of the dramatic impact of apathy and how it works to keep us where we are, is the key to next level of achievement.

Now before you roll your eyes and ask, “What does apathy have to do with anything?” allow me to share my working definition of apathy:

A natural, human instinct, common to us all, that consistently encourages us to seek a comfort zone in which nothing ever changes.

If you really look at your business with an objective eye, you will probably find areas where apathy has set in. After all, it is only natural. In your organization, apathy may look more like burnout, stagnation, indecision, lack of creativity, lack of motivation, and lack of productivity.

Sound more familiar now?

According to Maslow’s famous book, A Theory of Human Motivation, most all human behavior can be traced back to the basic motivation of self-preservation and security. Some may be motivated by higher-level needs, but as soon as their security is threatened, they quickly revert to self-preservation. This process of seeking security and building unproductive comfort zones, if left unchecked, leads to behaviors that are usually described as the causes of people problems and ineffectiveness.

Consider the example of a significant international company in the food services industry that I worked with. It had been operational since the 1970s and had grown revenues to a high of over 200 million dollars, but had leveled off three years prior and was in the beginning stages of decline. When I began to talk to the company leaders about becoming aware of the forces of apathy, the CEO responded “We are debt free with five years of operating capital in the bank. Why should we be concerned with growth? We’re doing just fine.”

The truth that this previously successful CEO had not yet embraced is this: the only alternative to growth is decline, and every organization must choose growth if they want to achieve.

This company and its leaders were clearly in the beginning stages of apathy with all its declining effects. My first step was to generate a new level of awareness of the available untapped potential existing among the leadership team. From this new level of awareness among the leadership team, I started a proactive leadership development process for everyone from the top leaders to every level of the organization.

So what was the result of this new-found awareness? The company began a new phase of growth within 24 months and has never looked back!

The same thing can happen with your business. Take a moment to identify key areas where apathy has set in and you are not experiencing growth. Remember – if you are not growing, you are declining. There is no in-between position in life. Your human instincts will always direct you toward safety by consistently encouraging you to stay where you are and to not change.

Achievement begins with awareness, and continues with effective choices and actions. You can achieve by simply doing the right things consistently over a sustained period of time. But as you strive to achieve, guard against apathy at every turn.

It takes constant diligence and focus to stay on track, but don’t give up. With continued awareness and dedicated focus, achievement is right around the corner!

About the Author

Inspiring genuine growth and achievement in leaders, David Byrd has 30 years of experience working with top business executives and their organizations. He is a master of effective leadership and works closely with leaders worldwide to maximize their leadership potential. For more information about The Next-Level Achievement System® or David’s book, Achievement – A Proven System For Next Level Growth, visit http://www.authorsup.com/David-Byrd.

Internet Marketer says Change the Game for Success

Not feeling challenged by your everyday “norm” of a schedule? You can effectively remove yourself from that ho-hum cycle and super-charge your day by making the commitment to create a new game.

Re-write your playbook

Creating a new game for yourself is simply looking at your situation differently in terms of your Daily Mode of Operation. To reach your desired level of success, you may need to re-configure your playbook a little. Look at your schedule. Make sure you are not in “Training Camp” mode for 80% of your day. You’ve got to get off the bench and out on the field is you want to score. Identify the distractions and excuses that keep you from actual revenue producing work and structure your schedule accordingly. “Warm” up before you play by spending 15 to 30 minutes reading some motivational material and mentally visualizing your goals. If you aren’t currently experiencing success, you might be calling the wrong plays or putting the wrong resources in the game. Having the wrong equipment and resources can bring alot of unnecessary distractions. Re-writing your playbook can eliminate these distractions and give you a fresh perspective on the game!

Celebrate your victories!

It’s important to celebrate the small victories on the way to your success. If it was a victory to get out of bed today, then celebrate, but remember that you need more than one score to beat the competition; they get chances to score too. Don’t wait until you’re financially independent to celebrate; celebrate your first sale, your tenth sale and your fiftieth sale. Heck, celebrate generating your first 100 leads! While celebrating the small victories are important, you also need to set goals that challenge you. If you don’t like writing ads, set a goal to write 20 new ads, then celebrate when you reach that goal. This will break the over-all learning and working down into smaller chunks because it’s very important to feel successful in the journey to your over-all success. Dividing your day up into victories means that you’re preparing for that victory and making the important decisions that are game changers for yourself and your team.

Be Decisive

Decide to play the game every day and decide every day to WIN. Taking action is crucial every day if you want to make it to the Super Bowl of internet marketing.

About the Author

Helping others break into the online arena, Matt makes a living working from home. He holds himself to a high standard of daily discipline in faith, family, and business. To have a look at this peticular opportunity: Click Here

Immigration law firms are the firms dealing with immigration related issues. It is very important to have better knowledge about the immigration laws of a country before entering there. Every country has its own immigration laws. Immigration law firms help their clients to solve immigration related problems. There are many such firms working all over the world. These firms are consists of a very experienced group of immigration lawyers who can easily handle complicated problems very easily.

Immigration laws in America are very strict compared to other nations. So there are many immigration attorneys in different states. San Francisco and Sanjose are very rich in the case of such firms. Immigration Attorneys in San Francisco are very famous for their activities. Shah peerally law group is such a group. It has branches in California and San Francisco Bay Area. It’s a very good immigration law firm in San Francisco. This immigration law firm is giving legal advices for almost all immigration related issues.

Each day they are dealing with these types of issues with their very experienced immigration lawyers. Immigration lawyers are those who are specialized lawyers for this particular subject. In San Francisco and San Jose it’s an easy task to find good immigration lawyers comparing to other states. Immigration lawyers in San Francisco and San Jose are very high in number also, when choosing an immigration lawyer or a firm there are so many things to be considered. If the person is not good the client will loss his life an existence. So the selection should be always accurate and precise.

At first the lawyer must have good knowledge in his profession. Depending on this factor it is advisable to acquire some basic about their problem knowledge by the clients themselves when they are approaching such a person or firm. Then only the legal advice becomes productive. For example H1B Visas related issues.

An H1B visa is a specialty occupation visa issued temporarily for foreign citizens for working up to three years in the country. After this period it is effaceable to stay in the country. If such a problem occurs one can directly approach an H1B lawyer. HIB lawyers in San Jose are very good at this job. San Jose immigration lawyers are daily meeting with such issues and are capable of solving complicated issues. So one can bravely depend on them without further thinking.

About the Author

California Top Immigration Lawyer provides Best and Affordable immigration Citizenship services. The Shah Peerally Law Group is a leading full-service US San Jose immigration lawyers.

Do you need to locate a motivational speaker who is an expert in leadership skills training?

If you’re involved in an organization that wants a inspirational speaker who can encourage and inspire the dormant leadership attributes inside the members of of your crowd, this report will reveal to you how to locate a keynote speaker who can bring that out of them.

Leadership inspirational speakers can be vital for your company. Even so, the right speaker can additionally be somewhat hard to find. It is quite irritating to end up with a keynote speaker who doesn’t deliver. Your conference will bomb and the attendees will be left disappointed and the organization’s investment will provide no useful returns.

Adhere to these guidelines on how to choose a leadership keynote speaker:

Leadership Keynote Speaker Search Tip #1: Value Content Over Entertainment

Although amazing stage presence and fantastic tales are good benefits, it’s the content of the presenter’s material that will give you the long lasting end result you’re looking for. The most essential quality of a keynote speaker is their content. If your aim is to gain greater leaders in your group, look for keynote speakers who have stable teachings that are supported by fantastic stories, not the reverse . Content is king! If you want to boost the bottom-line of your company, that is how it’s done!

Leadership Professional Speaker Search Tip #2: Observe Their Speech!

Before you sign a contract with a speaker to speak to your people, you should see the presentation they’re going to deliver. Why is that? Due to the fact most leadership speakers are also really great at marketing . They make talk a good talk over the phone and provide you a quite persuasive deal, but once they turn up to speak, they’ll stink up the stage.

You wouldn’t imagine the number of inspirational speakers who are not all that wonderful of 1-on-1 conversationalists over the telephone, but can hit a home-run once it comes to giving a speech.

The only way to tell who can really deliver the goods is to observe the presentation they’ll be giving at your meeting. Doesn’t make any difference if it’s online, on a DVD, or live, but you must see it.

The only alternate to this is to get suggestions from other conference planners who you have connections with and completely trust. If these folks point out to you there’s a excellent leadership inspirational speaker out there, you can rely on their opinion.

Leadership Professional Speaker Search Tip #3: See Their Credentials

After you’ve identified somebody who can deliver content in an engaging presentation, your last step is to ensure that they’re credible enough to really educate about leadership. Take a good hard look into the companies, businesses, or groups they’ve led and what they’ve accomplished with those people. Let’s face it: anybody can talk about leadership. But somebody who is really an effective leader? That’s a absolutely different story, and you need to be able to distinguish between those who are the ‘real thing’ and those who aren’t.

Utilizing these tips, you’ll speedily be able to pick the correct leadership professional speaker for your upcoming meeting.

About the Author

If you’re trying to find the perfect motivational leadership speaker for your next event, consider hiring John Beede to present at your next meeting. Visit http://climbonsuccess.com for more details.

Rule 1: Say what you want (not what you don’t want)

This is probably the most important rule of NLP. It is very important to remember that EVERYTHING that we say, think or do has an impact on our unconscious mind. It is our goal as NLP practitioners to continually programme our minds with what we want rather than what we don’t want. Here is a prime example of this.
A good friend of mine, Pete, continually says to himself and his colleagues “I have a terrible memory – I’m always forgetting things”. What Pete doesn’t realise (he does now since a little coaching from me helped him to become more aware of his unresourceful linguistic pattern) is that every time he uses this expression, either out loud or quietly to himself, he is further reprogramming himself to forget things. This in itself sets up a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies where Pete is continually presented with evidence that he has a poor memory, he then further embeds the instruction to his unconscious mind to “always forget things”. The unconscious is nothing more than a compliant machine that will do you bidding so we must be very careful about what we feed it.
So when speaking we must be mindful of what we are saying, continually. We must use our conscious mind for what it does best, screening for any inappropriate data then deleting it. So in the example of Pete, what would be the best course of action to improve his memory? Well, one place to start is by identifying how often does he tell himself that he is forgetful? When he finds himself saying that he is forgetful he can catch himself at that point and can ask himself if more forgetfulness is what he wants. Usually the answer to this is no, but Pete’s forgetfulness might also be another strategy that helps him to achieve other benefits, this is something that we call secondary gain in NLP terms. So helping Pete improve his memory might take more than changing his words, but this is a good place to start.
So when programming yourself for success you should use the formula of POSITIVE, PRESENT and BELIEVABLE:

POSITIVE:
Express everything in the positive i.e. what you want.
PRESENT:
Make what you want “live” in the present tense. The past is gone and is now only for your learnings and the future never happens so make all of what you want to have happen to you be stated in the present tense.
BELIEVEABLE:
Be real with yourself and ask yourself if you believe what you are saying. If not: change the expression or statement to something which you do believe.
Using Pete’s memory as an example he would be better saying something like:

“I don’t remember that right now. It is coming back to me”

This is a direct instruction to the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind doesn’t understand how to NOT do something (it can only do something or do something else) so saying “NOT remember” is cute way of saying “remember” in effect the unconscious mind (UCM) will delete the NOT. The “right now” is also an instruction to the UCM and such will help it to process or service that command quicker. “It is coming back to me” is also present state and hopefully believable for Pete.

An exercise to deepen your learning

In your daily life begin to notice what you say to yourself and how you say it. Are you expressing your desires positively or are you telling yourself more about what you don’t want? It is a good idea to keep a daily journal of those thoughts and feelings so that you can chart your progress over time so why not start now and begin to notice more and more of the changes and impacts that take place in your life as a result of this small change.

About the Author

Mark Buchan, one of the UKs top performance coaches who specialises in leadership coaching. His clients have included Rolls Royce, British Telecom, Bombardier Transportation, Nokia, Credit Suisse and many others. To have a free introductory executive coaching session with Mark just click on these links to visit his site to email him