Friday - Now That's What I call Neuro Linguisitic Programming

This is probably one of those posts where I get a little too philosophical for my own good. For those of you that don't know, NLP is the scientific of the individual interpretation of language and even those who are not aware of its principles often find themselves using its techniques.

For instance, Anne couches her language in these ways - she refers to herself, in very positive powerful ways such as "I have solved this problem," "I understand what he really means," "I will give you the benefit of the doubt,".

When referring to others it is always the opposite. For example, "You cannot see the big picture," "People are incapable of following simple procedures," "You've got this completely wrong you absolute imbecile!" and so on.

None of this means that she is actually capable or any good at running a department efficiently but it certainly can help her to pull the wool over her superior's eyes. I can imagine the post interview review amongst the board.

"Wow, she is very positive,"

"Yes. She certainly knows her stuff,"

"You're right she was the loudest and brashest person we've interviewed. And she is a woman. She must be good. We'd better hire her!"

Another interesting fact about NLP is that Derren Brown uses it in his mind control performances. Those of you that saw the Special this Christmas would probably have been as astounded as I was when he got random members of an audience to pick a random word from a random cutting of a randomly selected newspaper. Of course it all became clear when he explained that he did it by suggesting rather obviously through his performance that they "Choose 'Daily Mail' a number from the board,".

I will try these techniques this year.

"Anne, I'll just bring that (promote Luke) report over right now,"

It just might work!