These Are Not the Response You Were Looking For

A typical stalling tactic for police officer is to start asking questions about you, where you are going and what you are doing. Sometimes they are obviously interested for a specific reason and often, like in this case it gives him some breathing space to think about what to do next.

You can read the previous parts of this story here:

 Part One – Setting the Scene

Part Two – Using Social Status

Part Three – Building Propulsion Systems

The reason this poor young officer went into asking these questions was because he could see his original objectives slipping away from him and he had nothing to replace them with. He had originally intended to speak to me about my driving and then issue me with a ticket.

Since I was not admitting guilt, in fact clearly stating the exact opposite and subtly asking for evidence either way the officer had a problem. The problem that I had was I didn’t have a way of getting him to a win / win situation. I had to find a way of guiding him to letting me go but feeling like he was in charge, it was his decision and he could justify it to his mentor who was still sat in the police car.

We were stalling and the officer started asking me general questions whilst we both tried to think of a way out of the situation. I normally refuse to answer anything unless it has direct relevance to whatever investigation the police are conducting. But in this case I didn’t really want the escalation or to annoy the officer unnecessarily. Staying in my one down position I started sharing information about my address, car, driving licence and insurance.

It was a cold night and I had got out of the car just wearing a tee shirt. The officer seeing me shivering was the one thing that allowed me to take complete control of the situation, talk the officer into great trance and load in a stack of post hypnotic suggestions.

Behavioural Flexibility, Being Able to Seize Golden Nuggets

Up to this point my plan was to keep stacking more and more implied work on the officer until he crumbled and decided that it was not worth the effort of saving face.

I had already subtly told him that he would have to take me to court because I was not admitting guilt. I had suggested he needs more than just his witness testimony and would have to apply for all the CCTV footage in the area. I was lining up to get him to call out the council to test the time differences between the various lights. And I was thinking of ways of getting him to check the car and breathalyse me, all of which would be fine but would just increase the paperwork, time and stress he would have to go through. All of this would work but it wasn’t going to get me to my poker game anytime soon.

But he then gave me a golden nugget that just allowed me to shortcut my plans and give him a way out straight away. The thing I was having difficulty with at this point I could not see how to let the officer to back away gracefully from the situation.

This is an important factor in persuasion. When you want someone to do something just giving them the motivation is sometimes not enough. You also need to remove obstacles and make the path obvious. Remember the propulsion systems we have discussed in the last article? I had put loads of pain in his way but I just hadn’t found a way for him to turn round and point him in the other direction yet. I was pretty sure the officer just wanted the situation to go away but just didn’t quite know how to make that happen. Nor did I until…

The officer saw me shiver and he said, “Why don’t you sit in your car and I will talk to you through the window?” As soon as he said it I was laughing on the inside. I knew I had won, I was getting away to play poker and everything was right with the world.

Interrupting the Click Whirr Response

An NLP Technique that has a lot of confusion associated with it is Pattern Interrupts. It is a really simple thing though. We do a lot of things unconsciously, on auto pilot if you will. Imagine the routine you go through from waking through to ending up at your workplace. How much of that do you do consciously?

In this particular case the officer probably had a clear idea of how the encounter was supposed to go, he may even have talked it through with his mentor. And all of a sudden I was not acting as planned. As a result he already had a level of confusion and uncertainty. He had now idea just how much I was about to deepen the confusion and completely interrupt his way of looking at the world.

Depending on the degree that it happens when people have their pattern interrupted they go into inside themselves to try and understand what is happening. From a persuasion perspective that going inside can be a great trance state to use.

Jedi Mind Tricks

As soon as he suggested that I should sit in the car I switched my social status from one down, to one up. I stood straighter, took on a more authoritative stance and I took a more commanding tone. Here is approximately what I said, “I’m sorry officer I cannot allow you to do that. I would not be able to live with you being run over standing in the middle of the road whilst talking to me. This is what we will do I will get my jacket from the car and then we can stand on the pavement and we can discuss the matter there. Just wait here”

You can see just in the words just how commanding I was and just how many instructions I issued out to him in just a few lines. The “just wait here” command was my test. If he complied I knew I would be able to give him post hypnotic suggestions.

I got my jacket from the car whilst carefully watching to see if the officer stayed in the middle of the road waiting for me. I needed to time this quite well, if I took too long the trance would break and he would be back to himself. But I also wanted to keep it going for as long as I could because it reinforces his compliance.

I got my jacket, put it on returned to the officer and led him to pavement whilst saying something like, “Come with me on to the pavement where you can be safe.” I don’t know if this actually happened this way but I seem to remember gently grabbing him by the elbow and actually leading him to the pavement.

Either way you can imagine how this young officer was struggling with the situation. In seconds he not only completely lost control of the situation but he is now following my commands.

Let’s make sure we are clear about the mechanics of this approach. Whilst I have taken charge I am also suggesting very reasonable commands. If I were making unreasonable demands I have no doubt that he would break out of the trance and come back at me. It is very difficult to not become compliant when the suggestions you are being given are things you would do anyway. This is the pacing part of pacing and leading. The next step was to lead the officer in to letting me go.

Process Driven Post Hypnotic Suggestions

Once on the pavement I said to the officer something like,

“Now we can safely discuss the issue I would suggest that you need to check out the details that I gave about me. So you could just go back to your car and check my details against PNC (Police National Computer). That way you can find out everything about me checks out and you can discuss with your colleague the best approach to letting me go on my way and we can get this over and done with quickly. That would be good wouldn’t it?”

The officer nodded and I sort of shooed him off in the direction of his car saying that I will wait for him on the pavement. It was really difficult not to laugh as I watched him shuffle off towards his car still in deep thought trying to work out where exactly the situation reversed on him and he found himself following my suggestions. The most difficult thing in Hypnotic Persuasion is not to laugh whilst doing it.

If you reread that paragraph again you will notice that I again am making suggestions that seem reasonable. I give him specific step by step instructions that are easy to follow.

I also gave him stuff that I know he would feel good about. It was obvious that he was starting to feel out of his depth and I was giving him the opportunity to take time out as well as consult with his mentor. This should be an emotional release for him. And in the middle of it I am suggesting all my details will check out and that they will be discussing how best to let me go.

I think it can come as no surprise that he let me go. After a brief discussion with his mentor he came back; because everything checked out and I was being so open and honest he thought he should just ask me to be careful when approaching traffic lights and let me get on my way.

Any other day of the week I might of asked him how he came to that decision but I was late for my poker game.

Let me cut to the chase. I am giving you an opportunity that I have not opened up for 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.

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:

A recent email I received spurred me to write a little about dealing with subtle aggression. If you have a difficult person in your life that is never quite openly abusive but is constantly putting you down in small ways this article may help.

Subtle Aggression

People that you interact with frequently, like family members or co-workers, can easily use patronising words and phrases together that taken on an individual basis may not mean anything. But when you put all the instances together they form a subtly aggressive attack on you.

These sorts of attacks are notoriously difficult to deal with because if you get angry they will most likely respond with things like:

• “Your blowing it out of proportion.”
• “It’s only a joke.”
• “You are too sensitive”

It can be a difficult thing to deal with because that one act on its own doesn’t seem like a big thing and it only becomes so once you see it in the context of other conversations.

Here is the email that I was sent:

A Process to Tackle the Problem

Here is the process:

State Management

The first thing you need to do is keep hold of your emotions. They are doing this to get an emotional response, so let’s start by denying them that. Also by keeping hold of your emotions you are able to think and use your skills more effectively.

Here is one way I personally do this. I imagine myself as a stealthy crouching tiger just stalking my prey. I know if I keep calm and clear headed just waiting for the right moment the person that is doing the attacking is going to get seriously mauled and it will be me doing it.

I like this imagery because it gives me back the psychological edge that the person was seeking to deny me. I am now stalking my victim rather than reacting to whatever they said.

Pause

It may take you a moment to get a grip of your emotions and that is great. Just pause, ideally just look at the space between their eyebrows as you pause. By staring at this point it looks like you are making eye contact, but obviously you aren’t quite. This is good for you because not making eye contact means it doesn’t get any more intense for you. But for the person you are just about to deal with the situation is starting to ramp up.

Remember they are looking for an emotional reaction from you. What they have got is you holding their eye contact without giving them anything. If you can keep looking unemotionally at that space between the eyebrows until it feels really uncomfortable and then count slowly to ten before speaking. If you manage this, and it is easy with just a little practice, I will guarantee that the other person will start to speak again. It is almost impossible to keep that void in conversation.

Reflect the Offending Behaviour Back and Ask for an Explanation

Depending on how forceful you want to be either stop them from saying anything else or let them say whatever without responding and let them run out of steam. Then use the super redefine pattern to get to the heart of the matter. Here are a couple of examples of the whole phrase getting more extreme as we go:

I agree you want me to prove it and the issue isn’t my having to prove anything. It is about you explaining why you think I should have to justify anything to you at all. Explain to me what makes you think that is acceptable behaviour.

I agree that you need more information on how I form my opinions and the issue isn’t the information you need but how is it that you have so low self-esteem that you need to try to put me down constantly. Where did your low self-esteem come from?

I agree proof is useful and the issue isn’t about proving my point, it is about explaining why you constantly need to prove that you have no social skills. How have you managed to grow up without developing proper social skills?

Toning it Down a Bit

I agree that these examples might seem a bit extreme and the issue is not about the language and is everything about the pattern allowing you to deflect from they are talking about and point directly to the heart of the matter. And then by asking a question about that heart creates a totally different conversation that is focused on their behaviour.

And trust me this will make them squirm. Especially if you keep using the pattern as they try to get away from discussing their behaviour. My favourite way of doing this is to keep repeating the pattern but getting more extreme as I go just like the above example.

Remember I am not trying to be conciliatory here. And just because I am choosing to deal with this in an adversarial, almost confrontational manner doesn’t mean that you can’t turn this into something much more collaborative and reconciliatory for example:

I can see that proof is important to you and before we discuss that I would like you to be aware of the impact that your behaviour is having on me. Let’s discuss how you can talk to me without me feeling like I am being attacked.

You can find this and many more patterns in the international bestselling Persuasion Skills Black Book. But the key that really makes this work is the state management and emotional handling skills. The Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed course gives you emotion and state control techniques as well as a method of developing a persuasive personality that can handle stressful environments like when you are being bullied. Click Through and find out more here.

Reshaping Reality Using Hypnotic Language

One of the great things about language is that we can use it to frame our reality. Imagine how great a persuasion tool you have if just by the very words that you use you reshape reality around you. I suspect some readers won’t believe that it makes sense, it is possible or that it is easy to do. In this video you will see me doing it as part of teaching a bunch of student how to do it.

This video is almost an hour and half long and this is just the start of the material we discuss. You can imagine just how powerful the rest of it is. If you want an opportunity to see the rest of the video keep an eye on this article page or sign up to my list. I will be releasing details on how you can get a copy in the next few days.

Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed

Alternatively if you want to start studying how you can apply these concepts to everyday persuasion situations then click through and find out more here.

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.