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Employee Counselling Today
Emerald Article: COUNSELLING MODELS IN THE WORKPLACE: TAKING NLP INTO COUNSELLING Gina Sanders

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To cite this document: Gina Sanders, 1990"COUNSELLING MODELS IN THE WORKPLACE: TAKING NLP INTO COUNSELLING", Emp Today, Vol. 2 Iss: 2 pp. 25 - 28 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/eb006082 Downloaded on: 22-08-2012 To copy this document: [email protected] This document has been downloaded 436 times since 2008. *

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VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2 1990

COUNSELLING MODELS IN THE WORKPLACE
TAKING NLP INTO COUNSELLING Gina Sanders
Organisations today are more aware of their employees' needs than ever before, and are responding to these needs. Tangible help is now offered to employees who find their work performance affected by domestic, social or health concerns. Some of this help is offered by external agencies and some, at least initially, by in-company staff. Here personnel specialists or line managers are usually the first port of call. It is these departments that are increasingly turning to the approach of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) to develop and enrich their counselling skills. coaching is unique, with his or her own individual behaviour patterns. The NLP model enables us to learn how to recognise these patterns so that we can respond to them sensitively and develop deep levels of communication and trust. It is how we, the counsellors, behave with people that determines the results we obtain. However, it is the way in which we think that influences our behaviour. By having a conscious awareness of "how" we think we can develop a range of ways of thinking; as a consequence, we develop a range of behaviours. This makes us more flexible in the ways in which we can help others. NLP offers an approach to interacting and relating with people that will help them to develop more choices in their life and their work performance. It is an approach that can be used in addition to any other model of counselling. Although NLP grew out of modelling by excellent counsellors and therapists in the early 1970s, it is so versatile that it is regularly used by managers, sales people, trainers and personnel specialists in any context where the quality of communication is essential. Counselling follows certain procedural rules. Your employee comes in with a problem; you discuss it together, gathering as much information as possible; together you agree an intervention and, if relevant, arrange a follow up. This is a simplification, but nevertheless an outline of basic counselling. It is important to remember that most personnel specialists and managers are not professional counsellors, and should not be expected to take on that role. The employee comes for counselling because of some circumstance beyond his control. He comes not with just this one occurrence, but with a whole life history of events that have made him into who he is.

NLP AND WHAT IT OFFERS
NLP has as many definitions and descriptions as there are uses for it. A psychotherapist might define it as the study of subjective experience. A person researching human behaviour might define it as the study of excellence — modelling excellent behaviour so as to teach that behaviour to others. A more general description focuses on the process of communication. NLP is the study of how people do what they do well. It offers a set of communication tools that improve interpersonal skills. It is about recognising that no two people are alike, and having choices for our behaviour so that we can meet the unique and different needs of each individual. Above all NLP is practical. It is about activity and experience rather than theory. The key is flexibility of behaviour. The more choices we have in our behaviour, the more likely we are to succeed with the people around us. Every person we meet in the course of our work in counselling and
The terms "he" and "his" are used throughout the text to refer to both male and female employees.

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This means he has his own way of looking at the world, coloured by his life history. He tells you about his problem in the only way he can. He uses words that are the best he can find to give you an accurate idea of how he sees and feels his current circumstances. It is possible that he has already tried some way of helping himself, using the best choices he had at that time and all the personal resources available to him.

A PERSON'S WAY OF PERCEIVING THE WORLD IS HIS UNIQUE REALITY

This brief outline carries within it some of the basic underlying philosophies of an NLP approach to counselling. These are that a person's way of perceiving the world is his unique reality; that people make the best choices available to them given this unique reality; and that language and non-verbal behaviours are ways of coding the deep experiences of one's life, and reflect the way one thinks because of these experiences.

way of thinking, behaving or experiencing the world. The act of joining a person needs to come first. There are many ways of joining a person in his way of perceiving the world. If you think about the friends with whom you are most at ease, you will probably find that you and they share common activities, interests and values. It is sharing on this level that permits the employee to feel at ease with a counsellor and develops an atmosphere of trust. An NLP approach teaches the counsellor how to use both verbal and nonverbal behaviour to join the employee. It is well known that matching body language occurs when people are in rapport. Deep levels of rapport are established when values and beliefs are matched. NLP offers the counsellor the skill of listening for the values, standards and criteria that underpin the employee's life. Then the counsellor can acknowledge them and use them as part of his framework to help the employee. NLP first became known for the high quality of rapport and respect that its counsellors create in their sessions.
LINK LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT THROUGH PRECISION QUESTIONS

CREATING ACCEPTANCE AND TRUST THROUGH YOUR BEHAVIOUR

When the employee brings his way of perceiving the world into a counselling session it is important that it is respected. So when he says "I feel I am being weighed down by the new work load", believe him. He is literally being "weighed down". So enter his world and share his perception. Talk about "redistributing the load" or "carrying a bit at a time", or ask how he could make it lighter. It is crucial to an NLP approach that the counsellors demonstrate through their behaviour, both spoken and non-verbal, that they appreciate, respect and initially work within the other person's way of experiencing the world — even if they disagree with it. When the counsellor is working this way there is no implied judgement. The employee is being accepted for who he is at that time, and that alone helps to establish a climate of relating that is very successful for the employee and invites confidence. Unless you join a person "where he is" it is extremely difficult to lead him to another 26

Put yourself in the employee's position. If you have made the decision to discuss your problem with a manager or personnel specialist, you want to feel that he understands you. Attentive listening may not be enough of a response. You want to feel that he is on the same wavelength, that he can help you clarify for yourself what is important and help you find solutions to resolve the difficulty. The way questions are asked can demonstrate whether the counsellor and employee are really in tune.

WORDS ARE A TRUE REFLECTION OF WHAT, WE MEAN TO SAY

Language, even one as rich as our English language, can be a poor way of expressing what is going on inside us. However, the words we use or the way we put our phrases together are not random. They are a true reflection of what, at an unconscious level, we mean to say. Like the man who spoke about

VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2 1990

getting a troublesome client "off a junior's chest", when the more usual phrase would have been "off his back". But this man suffered from angina when under stress, and the phrase he used was true for him.

THROUGH CAREFUL QUESTIONING A MUCH DEEPER LEVEL OF PROBLEM WILL BE REVEALED

Very often a person will come in for counselling with one problem, and through careful questioning a much deeper level of problem will be revealed. The deeper, unconscious problem presents itself on the surface in a very different form. NLP offers a questioning strategy that enables the counsellor to proceed from the surface structure of what is said to the deeper level of what is meant through a few well-chosen, precise questions. It involves listening to the language the employee uses to express ideas, and questioning the thoughts behind the words. So, when he says "My manager never listens to me", it might be relevant to pick up on the word "never" or to ask how the employee would know if his boss were listening. Both questions widen the frame. One asks the employee to search for exceptions to the rule he himself has constructed; the other is asking for concrete evidence of what the employee considers to be "listening", and will give him a guide on what he might ask his boss to do differently. Precision questions are an elegant way of getting beneath the surface of what a person is saying, and revealing the deeper meaning. It is possible in a few questions to arrive at useful insights before the employee's threshold for questioning has been reached.
GATHER INFORMATION CREATIVELY

You may set out on your chosen journey with a plan of the motorway system and find yourself diverted on to major roads or even country lanes. But as long as you know where you are heading and have a map, you can be flexible and creative. That is the way counselling works. There is no one way to "intervene" or help the client create solutions. Unless the outcome — the results the employee wants to achieve from the session — is clearly, positively and concretely specified, the questioning process has no direction. Let me illustrate this in a word picture. An employee has started turning in his reports late, which is unusual, and the manager decides to find out what is causing the delay. He might start out by stating the problem and then asking the employee what is causing it. That would mean that the manager has started to ask questions about the current state of affairs. On the other hand, the manager might start by discussing with his employee the results he would like to achieve, and talk about wanting reports to come to him at the expected time, asking the employee what resources he would need to achieve that requirement. This would encourage the employee to look into the future and create an ideal world. At this point the manager is beginning to create a "want box" of what the employee wants to be, do or have that is different from the current state of affiars.

IF HE IS TO MAKE A SOLUTION WORK HE NEEDS TO TAKE OWNERSHIP OF IT

Questions need to be "relevant" because in any communication it is always important to discover the results the employee wants to achieve, then all the counsellor's questions will take him towards that outcome. Counselling without clearly defined outcomes is like leaving your front door and taking any street or mode of transport you fancy at that moment. Now you might want to finish your journey in Blackpool, but equally you might not; so a well specified outcome is essential.

No matter how the manager starts the session, it is always useful to explore in full both the want box and the current state. Very often by the time precision questions have been used to explore the two, the employee has two or three possible first steps towards the solution of the problem and a motivating and compelling outcome towards which to work. The simplicity of this picture and the elegance of the precision questions make the gathering of information a quick, clear procedure. However, the precision question has another advantage. Each question asked arises out of something the employee has

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said, something he has shown is important to him. If he is to make a solution work he needs to take ownership of it. Because the precision model focuses on how a person expresses himself, and not on the content of what he is saying, it is ideally suited to encourage ownership of the solution. So the next time an employee comes into your office with a "monkey" on his shoulder that he wants you to take from him, remember that a few precision questions will help keep the monkey where it belongs — on his shoulder! Let me offer a timely reminder that not all the information available comes from words. After all how do you know which words are the important ones to check up on if you do not pay attention to the total communication. Psychologists indicate that most of the message received when someone speaks comes from the body language; the next richest source of information is the voice tone, and finally the words we use provide the rest of the message. The nonverbal behaviour (body and tone of voice information) can let us know to which words special attention should be paid. It is not easy to condense the richness of NLP into a short article, so I have offered only a flavour of what is possible. You can see how NLP encourages a counsellor to pay attention to detail, as well as the overall view of the counselling process. NLP is renowned for the way it enables the counsellor to experience how the other person perceives the world, and to step into that world by paying attention to language and nonverbal behaviour. By exploring possibility, within the framework of what the person wants to achieve, the counsellor can enable that person to increase his choices so that he is better able to reach their outcome. Maybe this sounds like an "NLP washes whiter than white" advertisement; so I do not ask you to accept any of my claims. I would be delighted if you were curious to know more; then you can bring NLP into your organisation and try it for yourself.

Gina Sanders is a director of ACTS Ltd, and has been applying NLP to industry and commerce for three years with both incompany and public programmes.

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