• To the optimist, the glass is half full.
• To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
• To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
• To the marketer, the glass is a handy new special beverage container solution to your drink related problems
• To the hypnotist, the glass is just a metaphor for how you store all your fluid knowledge deep inside now…that’s right
• The NLPer just asks which glass specifically and then models your answer
• And the Persuasion Artist would just drink and then talk you in to buying them another

Want to develop the attitude of a Persuasion Skills Artist?

If you want to learn how to install the attitude, develop the skills and stay motivated to achieve massive results for both yourself and others click through and find out more about the only NLP Practitioner Course I am running in the foreseeable future.

I am often asked about recommendations for books. And the truth is I will eventually put up a page on the website  and the hundreds of books that I think are worth reading subdivided into categories. But in this article I want to just focus on two rather special and unique books that I think you should have a look at and what makes them special.

These two books were written by graduates from my NLP Practitioner Course, in fact they were on the same course.

A Brief NLP Interlude

I should make people aware that my NLP Practitioner Course is not about creating authors. The course is about learning the tools and methodology of modelling. Both John and Joe have taken this idea and applied it twofold. Firstly they have modelled the process of writing a book and applied that to themselves. And you will see when I start talking about their books they have also modelled a whole bunch of processes within their chosen subjects.

I am only running one NLP Practitioner course this year. And I can’t promise that you will become an author as a result of it. What I can promise is that you will learn to model and apply learning processes. And you will test your ability by doubling your reading speed, learning to juggle and use hypnotic language patterns.

You will learn a whole load of tools and techniques but the whole point is you will learn the core fundamentals that will allow you to create, improvise and synthesise new tools and techniques when you want them.

Find out more, including what recent graduates are saying when you click through the image below:

Meanwhile Back at the Point

John McKinstry – War Stories, A parable about anger in the office

There are lots of books and material around anger management. John has done a great job at taking the subject of workplace anger and treating it with a fresh new approach. He skilfully describes a range of ideas and tools that have proven value.

But the important thing is not just the content but the way that John skilfully demonstrates and teaches you the skills by using the story of guy having trouble both in and out of work.

Obviously if you have had challenges with misplaced anger at work then this book would be ideal but there are so many other reasons for looking at this book.

If you are interested in NLP then this book is packed full of the stuff on at least three different levels. There is the first level of just tools, techniques and content that John is teaching the reader. That on its own is valuable. But then there how John skilfully uses metaphor. This you need to look at from two different levels. Firstly he is demonstrating the tools and techniques he wants the reader to learn. And he also uses the story to motivate the reader to engage the reader and draw them in. You can get the book on Amazon:

Joseph Benn – Brilliant Business Ideas – The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Profitable Creativity

Joe’s book appears more straight forward. Joe has a lot of experience with business start-ups. His source of frustration would come from people coming in wanting to start a business but with no idea what in all the way through to people with really strange ideas but so invested in them that they were not prepared to listen to any advice no matter where it came from. I remember having discussions with him about the fact that there are hundreds of books on creativity but most don’t have a process for doing it and rarely to they talk about being creative within parameters.

Joe has been spending time developing a set of techniques designed to get people very creative but within a business context. So this book is about having ideas, being creative and problem solving but from inside the box. Again the book is quite superb but the issue isn’t just about the content. Joe is another one who has taken key NLP material and used it to create a great result for himself and his readers. You can get the book on Amazon

A Big Book of NLPness

Don’t be fooled by the guys that want to sell you some rot about a book of NLP techniques or a course of the same nature. NLP is an unregulated industry with and no standard definitions. So they can do whatever they like and call it NLP and they are most welcome to do that.

For me there are two reasons why I take the approach I take. Richard Bandler, the co-founder of NLP defined this body of knowledge as; an attitude (of wanton curiosity) and a methodology (of modelling) leaving behind a trail of techniques. This spoke volumes for me when I first heard it. If we take on the attitude and learn the methodology we can create our own techniques.

Both these great books come from practitioners from my NLP course that espouses this approach. In both books you will find tools and techniques that almost but not quite look like standard NLP techniques. They have either been altered or created from the ground up by the authors to create the specific results they were looking for.

But beyond this they also figured out, modelled if you like, the process of writing a book. Just as a little thought experiment have a scan around the internet and find a few NLP Techniques, if you don’t already know some. Ask yourself the question, would knowing a bunch of these techniques allow you to write a book. Or would you prefer to develop and attitude and learn a methodology? Find out more about the one NLP Practitioner Course that I am running this year when you click through here:

Persuasion Skills don’t have to be Rocket Science

There are all sorts of clever ideas, tools and tactics that you can use in persuasion. And the issue is if you have missed the foundations you are doomed to make things hard work. A key element that I see missed out a lot is just seeing things from the view point of the person you are trying to persuade. It sounds simple but so many people just either get it wrong or refuse to even look from that perspective.

Here are a couple of examples of this can lead you in to trouble or create instant success depending on how much you consider the other person.

Job Hunting an Exercise in Perceptual Positions

We are seeing a growth of people self-publishing on social media platforms as a route to employment. There have been a few media events, like the guy who set up his website with the “honest” CV, the “worst CV in the world” and that sort of thing. And several people setting up websites complaining about traditional job search methods not working any more so they are driving traffic to their CV on a website they have set up.

I suspect this sort of thing will get you noticed and possibly get you in front of someone that might hire you. With a little bit of thought this could be enormously successful. In fact I have seen a few people that have used social media to get great jobs. Below I will outline one strategy that I have seen used several times and has been so successful each time I have seen it used that I recommend it in my book; the Persuasion Skills Black Book of Job Hunting Techniques. But before we get to that I want to hit home the important point so let us switch contexts.

Whose Needs are We Talking About?

I spend a lot of my time on the internet and find myself raging at a lot of web sites. Many websites have lots my custom instantly because in their excitement to tell me all about themselves they don’t bother to tell me why I should want to know about them. It might be really nice for them that they have been in business for hundreds of years, have a great list of values and won so many different awards…but why should I care? What I want to know is what are you / your company / your products and services going to do for me.

Over the years I have been taken through a sales process many times over. In fact I am a complete pushover, love being sold to and as a consequence will buy almost anything when they do a good job of selling. But if they start with what a great product / service / company it is; or hit me with benefits without finding out my needs first, they will not get my business.

On the same grounds in a recruitment situation if an interview candidate can’t tell me how their skills, experience and attitude will fit with my company or the role then I already know they are thinking about themselves and not what they can do for my company. I am already less inclined to hire them.

Perceptual Positions are Key

Imagine you are on the internet and you are looking for a particular service, for the illustration let us say you need an accountant for your new owner run one person start up business. As you search the internet you come across three websites:

1. Accountants ‘R’ Us – We deal with all your accountancy needs large companies, small start-ups, international tax law, dealing with insolvency, audits and mergers. If you need an accountant we will have one for you. Here is a list of all the accountancy awards we have won from around the globe and a list of all the huge mega corporations we have worked with.
2. Small Business Accountant – I specialise in accountancy services for small owner run start-up businesses. Here are a number of case studies of successfully run one person business operations I have helped to get started. Give me a call and I can arrange for you to go and speak with any of these businesses about the quality of service that I provide.
3. Accountants ‘n’ Chips – I run a Fish and Chip shop and do some painting and decorating jobs on the side. I also do all my own accounts. Since the economy is slow at the moment I need to bring in some extra cash so I am hiring myself out as an accountant, any takers?

Are there any of these three that you would automatically call or any that you would automatically reject?

Appeal to All Appeals to None

You might thing the example above is a little silly and I would agree with you. I have recently seen a number of websites with people using social media to try and get a job doing exactly this. In all the recent cases I’ve seen they have posted a general CV that is nothing more than a list of their experience and have listed several unrelated jobs that they would be willing to do. To make things worse they generally start with saying that they have tried the “traditional route” and it hasn’t worked so they are trying this instead.

Now look at the impression this creates for any potential recruiter. For me it shows that they are desperate, they are just thinking about themselves and doesn’t sell me any benefits of employing them. Unless I have a specific role or unique place for them I will have rejected them as quickly as I would if their CV / Resume had landed on my desk. Bluntly if they just did some decent work on their CVs / Resumes they would find that the “traditional route” still works fine.

Whenever I have spoken to guys doing this sort of thing they usually tell me that this strategy has generated more interested than their months of sending out CVs and Resumes. And I can see this, at the moment it is a quirky, relatively unknown and newsworthy way of job hunting. So people will watch with interest and with a little activity traffic will get to the CV / Resume.

Over the last six months I have seen this strategy being employed four or five times. When the novelty value wears off I suspect this won’t work as well and even if it does targeting is the key. How much more effective would it be if you wrote your CV / Resume to target a specific job and then drove specific targeted traffic to it? To do this you need to get into the heads of the people that you want to see your CV / Resume.

A Social Media Job Hunting Strategy

Compare and contrast that approach to something I have seen work several times over.

The candidate builds their CV relating it specifically to the role they are searching for. Instead of a bland list of “work experience” (Who except a 16 year old just leaving school describes their career as work experience? ) they have a highly targeted profile that links their experience to the specific job. They fill their professional experience with key achievements that provide evidence of the benefits they can provide.

Once they have the CV up and running they join forums and groups related to the job. LinkedIn is the perfect environment; in fact it was developed for this sort of networking. The candidate asks opinions, writes articles and debates key issues within their industry. On LinkedIn you can set up groups for specific niches, you can also ask or answer questions about relevant topics. A few days of this sort of activity will allow you to demonstrate your expertise and if you are not already talking with the people you need to network with you are better placed to approach them directly.

I have seen this approach work several times and I can see it work in wider, more general social networking groups.

Getting the Foundations Right

All the people I have seen that are bemoaning that the traditional route doesn’t work and are trying a social media strategy have been missing some fundamentals. The biggest part being they fail to look at this from the employer’s perspective. If they did they would have better CVs / Resumes displayed on their websites. The odd thing is if they had a targeted CV the traditional route still works very effectively. All you need to do is understand what your potential employer needs and then write your CV / Resume to demonstrate how you meet those needs.

Here is an email that I received a couple of days ago:

The Key Point in Persuasion

Just learn to see things from the other guy’s perspective, find out what is in it for them and then present that to them in a way that is compelling for them.

In the job Hunting context the NLP CV Writing and Interview Skills Course shows you have you can write your CV / Resume so that your targeted employer is almost compelled to call you for interview. It also shows you how you can answer most interview questions leaving the interviewer with an image of you as the perfect candidate. And for all those difficult questions; the course shows you have you can reframe them into questions that you want to answer. Click through and find out more here:

So Far Removed from Conscious Experience

My mother is fluent in English and Bengali. So much so that she can switch from one language to the other and back again without realising that she is doing it. Everyone that knows her ends up knowing enough of both languages to keep up with her. But in my younger days I loved watching her meet new people.

My mother would try very hard to stay speaking English but usually as she got in to a conversation she would forget and would switch to Bengali and then switch back without realising. From the other person’s perspective it would sound like they were in a normal conversation and then, just for a few seconds there would be a series of words that they just could not understand, and then the conversation would go back to normal.

Of course, being a little mischievous in my youth I would stand next to them getting in to the conversation, nodding along and pretending nothing had happened. Often I would see people glaze over and sometimes drop in to the deepest trances. Just like one or two people did in the video from my last article.

But in That Video it didn’t Work with Everyone

I once stood on Paddington Train Station practising instant trance inductions. I would approach people, smile, hold out my hand as if to shake hands (but it would be my left hand) and I would say something like, “Good Bye, I’m UpChuck and I need to know. What colour does your favourite TV Show smell of?”

Most of the time people looked at me like I was a loon and walked round me. Sometimes people would get confused about hands or the question and would then either avoid me, ask me questions / start a conversation or do something that was quite conscious. A few times people would just drop into trance for a few seconds, literally freeze or go inside to process what was happening and then pop back out again. These people I shovelled some positive suggestions at, wheeled round and set in different directions, got them to buy me coffees and generally had fun with.

Consider the situation where, like in the video a total stranger comes up and starts talking word salad at you. For some people this is completely outside their normal experience and it might drop them in to trance. Others might be a little more wary, or have encountered something similar, or are just less susceptible. And these people might not drop in to trance with this situation as easily.

The Structure of a Pattern Interrupt

The reason it worked so well for my mother was simply because the other person already had some idea of what was supposed to happen. And then something so strange and outside their normal range of experience occurs. That is what was creating the pause between thoughts.

The same was true of the Paddington Station scenario. The more I could pace their normal situation and then suddenly turn it bizarre the more likely I could drop them into a trance.

How is this useful for me?

In any sort of problem solving or change work there is usually some work that needs to be done to break the old patterns of behaviours, beliefs or thoughts before building new ones. A reason why a lot of personal development, coaching and training doesn’t work is because people build on their old thoughts, beliefs and behaviours. It is like pouring a cup of coffee in to an unwashed mug. Especially if you had soup or tea in the mug before you poured in the coffee you can be sure that the taste will show through. Pattern interrupts are a great way of breaking out of the old patterns so you can develop new and more useful ones.

Influence

Ciadini’s book Influence is required reading for anyone in the persuasion field. And whether you have read the book (you really should) here is a video that very neatly summarises most of the key points brilliantly.

Using Cialdini’s Principles Linguistically

Having watched the video means you are committed to developing your persuasion skills. You will get a great result if you to explore some of these ideas through some examples and I can help with a few of those.

As a bestselling author on Persuasion Skills many people suggest that I am good at demonstrating persuasion concepts like Cialdini’s ideas. For example here is what Kevin has to say about my courses:

But the reality is I am only as good as the results you get from my teachings and in that we are similar. I want you get the best result possible for you. It has been shown that motivation drops off dramatically if you don’t put the principles in place as soon as you have the information. So do us both the favour of reading this little section again looking for how I have applied Cialdini’s Principles throughout.

 Teaching Through Principles and Demonstration

If you like the idea of learning persuasion principles on multiple levels in the way this article demonstrates then you may want to find out more about the Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed Course. Click through and find out more here.