How to Using Spatial Anchors in Persuasion Skills
NLP Techniques, Using Spatial Anchoring in Training
For those of you that are not NLP Jargon Junkies this article is about how you can use your hands, body and gestures to help move people along your agenda. At their most powerful you can use these techniques to install or trigger emotional states.
In the video connected to this article you will see some subtle use of these techniques in a training context. Below I will deconstruct what I am doing, why I am doing it and the impact I expect it to have on my audience.
NLP Anchors, a Quick Foundation
Anchors are NLP Jargon for a trigger that creates a response in your subject. For example consider when your favourite song is played on the radio, the alarm clock goes off first thing in the morning or someone you intensely like / dislike walks into the room. My guess is that in each case there is a particular internal reaction in you that might even be followed by a physical reaction.
Can you imagine what would happen if you could set up these anchors and then fire them off at will? If you are using them on yourself you might have a confidence anchor to fire off when you are facing a problem, a giggle anchor to cheer yourself up or an anchor to fire off that makes you focused and ready for work when you need to be.
Anchoring Others
Rather than repeat myself here are some links to previous anchoring articles that really deconstruct the process:
- Installing Emotional States using Anchoring
- Using Chaining Anchors in Training
- NLP Sales Techniques, Using Anchors to motivate a Sale Team
- NLP Poker Playing Using Anchors
All of these articles will explain different ways of overtly and covertly using anchors with others.
Video Demonstration of Spatial Anchors
This link will take you to a short video clip from a Persuasion Skills Workshop where you will see me covertly demonstrating some more subtle applications of spatial anchors.
Here is a short review of what I was doing and why.
Connecting with the Audience
This is a common pattern that I use when training. My intention is to connect more directly with my audience and I know some people build a wall between themselves and the guy out the front of the room.
To deal with this I deliberately get the whole audience to visualise a wall between me and them. This means now everyone has a wall that I can then step through. This is a very deliberate way of breaking down the barrier between my audience and me. In this clip you will see me do this and then start talking about drawing out emotions.
Boxing and Moving Learning into the Past
When training it is sometimes useful to box a subject up, move it into the past so the audience can open the box containing the new subject up and start cleanly with it.
Earlier in this workshop I set up the audience to locate the past towards their left and the future on their right. Since we read from left to right the majority (but not all) will tend to favour this so I may as well work with the norm. This is easy to do as all I have to do is reference the past whilst indicating to the audience’s left side and reference the future on the right. Once you have done this a couple of times it is safe to say the audience will get the idea.
What you see me do in this clip is box up the last topic, move it into the past, bring out the next topic and open the box. This keeps each of the topics we discuss on the course clean and separate from each other.
Spatial Anchors Made Easy
The examples in this video clip are simple straight forward and are not designed for a huge emotional response. They are a simple way of using your gestures to carry the meaning of your conversation and to keep your audience up with your agenda.
Finally here is another application of the same sequence. In sales I will talk about typical objections to buying, put them in a box and move them into the past. As an alternative I might build the objections into a wall and either step through the wall or even better get the prospect to step through the objections to see the benefits.
To get more ideas on how to use anchoring in the real world come and have a look at the Advanced Patterns of Persuasion. This is a comprehensive course on all aspects of NLP Persuasion Skills.