Episode Three – The Story So Far

Over the last couple of days we have been talking about how I ran a red light, was stopped by the police and am now in danger of getting a ticket. We looked at how I was using my persuasion state, gathering information and building responsiveness in the officer. Today you will see how I am a classic language pattern to subtly destroy the officer’s ability to deal with the situation. You can catch up with the previous lessons here:

Episode One – Developing a Relaxed Persuasive State as the foundations of being able to react: click here to read

Episode Two – Using social status as a way of building responsiveness in your subject: click here to read

A Propulsion System

People move away from pain and towards pleasure. You can use either or both to move people. As a rough rule of thumb people move away from what they don’t want faster than they move towards what they do want. And another rule that is worth observing is if you want to get people to change direction it is easier if you give them a huge obstacle to their original goal AND point them in a new direction.

Knowledge is a Great Base for Confidence

There is one thing that I know that has served me well in getting out of roadside tickets and fines. But, NOTE: if you are anywhere other than the UK make sure that the case is similar where you are before using this information. The law may be different in other countries.

In the UK you have to admit guilt before a ticket can be issued for driving offenses (again, NOTE: this is not the same for parking offences). If you protest your innocence or refuse to admit guilt the police cannot issue a ticket and they have to take you to court and try you for the offence.

You may think being taken to court is a worse situation but the reality is often the police don’t have enough evidence, it will involve a lot of tiresome paperwork and they don’t have as much probability of winning the case. The ticket system was devised to cut down on the time and effort it takes to prosecute traffic offenders, but it relies on an admission of guilt. Basically if you believe you are innocent you are entitled to your day in court and you are still innocent until proven guilty. In my case I knew the evidence would just be based on the two officers witnessing the event…and if I can make them doubt that I would be home free.

Meanwhile Back at the Story

As soon as the officer opened with that line, “Good evening Sir, Do you know why we’ve stopped you?” I knew my chances had significantly improved. Staying with the one down social status I replied with something like, “If I were to guess, you might think you saw me go through a red light.”

I got the response I was looking for. He replied, “You did go through a red light.” This gave me an opportunity to do two things. The first was make sure that he knew I was not admitting guilt and secondly making sure he knew that there would have to be a huge amount of evidence gathering for him to prove his case in court.

Here is, as close as I can remember it, what I said to him. I’ve split it into sections so you can more easily follow the deconstruction below.

• I can see how you might think that,
• because the lights you were at change at a slightly different time to the ones I was going through and I do admit my lights were on yellow.
• The issue isn’t what you thought you saw but what really happened. Do you think there are any CCTV cameras that could settle the debate between us?

The first line is an agreement frame and pace and lead. It shows empathy with his situation and still does not admit any guilt. The second line starts with a “because” and is a line just to make him less confident in his witness testimony and justify my agreement frame.

We then go straight into an X/Y reframe that tells him that I don’t agree and that he will have to find more evidence to settle the difference. Added to which think about what is presupposed in a phrase like “…what you thought you saw…”

Incidentally I have no idea if the lights change at different times but I was setting up for suggesting they get the council out to test the time difference between the lights as another point. This would be another hurdle and more work for them. But he didn’t take the conversation that way. Instead he did something that gave me complete control of the situation so I didn’t need that avenue.

I had very strongly just shovelled a massive amount of pain in front of the officer’s original intentions. At this point the thing I was struggling with was how to give him a new direction. If I couldn’t find one quick he would feel trapped and may become more resolved to see things through the way he originally intended.

Luckily he did one thing that allowed me to completely seize control, shove him into a highly suggestible trance and throw embedded commands at him as post hypnotic suggestions to let me go.

Responsiveness is a key part of your persuasion skills. On the Advanced Persuasion Patterns course you will learn how to develop responsiveness as part of your natural persuasive state. And you will also learn a way of delivering embedded commands that is so slick that within an hour of practice you will be throwing them out so instinctively that it will be difficult to stop.

Let me cut to the chase. I am giving you an opportunity that I have not opened up for over two years. Let me explain why I am doing this.

My publisher is pushing me for two new books. One I promised him almost two years ago and the other is a sequel to The Persuasion Skills Black Book that many people have been chasing me to write. Both are well over half way but I am having trouble completing them. I need to lock myself away, get my head down and just focus on completing these two books.

My way of making this happen is to open up the Advanced Persuasion Patterns course. My group of students and graduates are great and they have been with me for a long time. I need an influx of new students to keep me generating exciting new material to put in to these books.You can be party of this community. Students and graduates of this course get access to the private Facebook group where we can discuss advanced concepts and integrating new material.

Normally I keep the numbers static and you have to join a waiting list for spaces to open up. It has been over two years since I have had a big intake. I am opening the doors until 9:30 am BST on Monday June  3rd or I hit maximum capacity and then the doors will close again. Click through and find out about the deal here.

The Story so Far

I accidently went through a red light whilst being watched by a couple of police officers. They stopped me and one officer got out to speak to me. Things looked fraught, there was no way that they could have missed my running the red light so I went into my persuasive state and planned how I would approach the problem.

Observations Skills

The police car pulled in behind me and the officer in the passenger side got out and came towards my car. I could see that he looked very young, especially when compared to his colleague who was sat in the driver’s seat.

He also had in his hands his ticket book. There is no point in bring out your ticket book if you had no intention of writing a ticket. I knew I would have to use a lot of my knowledge and skills to get away from this one.

Using Social Status

Let me over simplify the world for a moment. We are social animals and we respond to hierarchical structures. So you could boil this down to in any given situation you could be equal to the person you are communicating with, one up from them or one down. This is just a simple way of looking at some of the systems in place when communicating and is similar to (but not the same as) a transactional analysis view of communication.

This is a useful structure to consider as you might already recognise:

• Being one down makes people more responsive to a plea for help or sympathy
• Being equal allows for freedom of discussion
• Being one up allows you to take charge of a situation

Obviously this only works to the degree that both parties are playing the same game. And there are interesting effects that you can create when thinking like this. For example when people are confused and looking for direction assuming a one up position can mean that people will automatically follow you without questioning your authority. I used to covertly coach some of the trainers I used to work with when I could see they were going off track.

I knew they needed bringing back but I needed to do that in a way that maintained their authority with their audience. What I would do is assume a one down position, and ask questions about their subject as if I were really curious. The questions were designed to either bring them back on track or alert them to the fact they had gone off. I was planning to control the conversation but from a one down position with this police officer. Often police officers will assume a one up role. They will abreact if you try to be anything other than the expected one down because it does not fit with their expectations.

In this case it would be useful to give the police officer an illusion of choice and to let him think he was in charge of the situation and everything was working as normal until I had a better handle on how I was going to get away from the situation.

So I got out of the car and approached the police officer with a big wide open palm stance asking him how I could help. Note, the custom in the UK is to get out of the car and approach the police. This strategy would not work in America for example where the police expect you to stay in the vehicle with your hands on the wheel. All I am doing is conforming to the police officer expectations bytaking a one down role.

Pay Close Attention to Detail

As I approached the police officer I noticed that his colleague was making no effort to get out of the car. The normal expectation would be that one officer would talk to the driver whilst the other would walk round the car checking for faults, roadworthiness or clues to criminal behaviour. But it was obviously not their intention in this particular case. I also noticed that the officer was fumbling with his ticket book.

The first thing the police officer said to me was something like, “Good evening Sir, Do you know why we’ve stopped you?” As soon as he said this several assumptions dropped into my head. The important point for me was that he said “we” not “I”.

The assumptions that I had was this was a junior officer and the guy still in the car was his mentor. The junior officer was still learning the job and this will be one of the first times he had filled in a ticket with a real life “customer”. They saw the opportunity I had presented them with and the guy was out to practice his skills. On the face of it my chances of getting away had just decreased significantly if it had not been for one thing.

Developing Sensory Acuity and Utilisation

One of the biggest areas of persuasion skills that is often missed is noticing what the other person gives you and then using it to your advantage. This is why on the Advanced Persuasion Patterns course you learn to create a state that has observation and reaction built in to it.

As part of the course you will learn how you can develop heightened sensory awareness to the point where you can often see the change in emotional states in people as you talk to them, understand their thought processes better than they understand themselves and some of their key motivations and drivers.

I only have restricted numbers for the Advanced Persuasion Patterns course. I will be opening up registration for a limited number of users this week. You can visit the FAQ page here.

Revenge of the Sith

Just these few small observations were enough for me to drive a wedge right into this poor young officer’s ideas of how the world works, drop him into a heavy duty trance and shovel massive amount of post hypnotic suggestions into his head. Tomorrow I will tell you exactly how you can do the same.

]]> http://www.thenlpcompany.com/using-covert-hypnotic-persuasion-tactics-with-the-police/feed/ 2 http://www.thenlpcompany.com/persuasion-techniques-attitude-is-everything/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=persuasion-techniques-attitude-is-everything http://www.thenlpcompany.com/persuasion-techniques-attitude-is-everything/#comments Sun, 26 May 2013 14:23:26 +0000 Rintu Basu http://www.thenlpcompany.com/persuasion-techniques-attitude-is-everything/ Do you want to become a Persuasion Skills artist? Then you have to develop the attitude.The Attitude of a Persuasion Skills Artist

• 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.

NLP Techniques for the Impatient

I have been studying Hypnosis, Accelerated Learning and related topics including NLP since I was fifteen years old. I was a really impatient teenager and wanted to learn everything fast, in double quick time. I have not got any less patience as I have got older. When I started getting into the whole coaching malarkey I wanted a system where I could assist a client to make dramatic changes instantly. The vision I had in my head was a client would come in with a presenting problem and leave after a short session having made dramatic changes. NLP is great for this sort of thing. And having that sort of mindset I spent a lot of time developing techniques to really create fast changes with clients. But as my experience grew I discovered that a lot of deep changes can be made with people easily if they didn’t know it was happening.

People are Invested in their Problems

Reading that headline and thinking about the statement will be enough for you to recognise how true this is. Because people can never truly see anything except through their own eyes it makes them feel like their problems are bigger, better and more deep seated than anyone else’s. This is the root of all the “man flu” issues. We also know that the reality is a little different and having a different view on the problem is what keeps it in perspective. Using this idea I developed a whole slew of techniques where I would covertly blow out the problem conversationally.

Destroying My Coaching Business

Prospects would phone be and I would start with something like this; “Before we agree to work together I would like to ask you some questions to find out if you and your problem are a suitable for my approach.” I would then under the guise of assessing their suitability start working on the problem. Most of the time it would take me a few minutes of chatting and asking questions to take the problem away from them. I would then find out that they didn’t feel the need to book my coaching services. At one point I got so desperate that I would still blow people’s problems out (I just couldn’t help myself) but then I would try to put just a little bit of it back so they would book a coaching session with me. But as I got better and I developed more techniques I found I got more dramatic results in shorter time. And I enjoy watching people with deep seated problems that they have had for a long time notice that the problem has suddenly vanished. And I love developing these processes. The truth is it doesn’t always work and some stuff need / takes time to work on. But those were never the clients I wanted except when I was working on another way of accelerating the process. Eventually I got to the point where I am today where I take on just a few coaching clients for the practice and joy of working with them or if they have interesting problems. But most of the time I am busy with other things.

And then the Phone Rang

Every now and again I would answer the phone to someone that wants some help and I would forget that I don’t really do this stuff anymore and I would get really curious about their problem to the point where they will just blow it out completely. This happened to me last month and I asked Jane (name changed for anonymity) to briefly write up the experience from her perspective:

How do I spend my time now?

So having developed tools and techniques that covertly blow out people’s problems…can you imagine the joy I have when I get the opportunity to do some of this stuff with a random stranger in a pub?.. I teach people how to do this sort of thing. Here are some of the ways some of my students are using the tools and techniques I have developed:

• Teachers and trainers are blowing out the fear of failure in groups of students
• Coaches, therapists and change workers taking out the presenting problems before they “start” their session
• Job Seekers reframe the holes in their qualifications and experience as key strengths
• Sales professionals undercutting objections and creating better buying opportunities
• Parents developing self-esteem and confidence in their children just by asking how their day went

Right here is a short interview from Carol Seaborne about how she is using these tools and techniques in her practice, her business and her life. Just click through the link in the picture to find out what impact learning these skills has had.     If you want to learn how to develop these skills for yourself then click through and read about the NLP course right 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.