You may have read a previous article I wrote about the SCARF model. I wrote it very much as a leaders’ guide to the model and focused on what leaders can do to maintain the elements of the model for their teams.

The SCARF model (developed by David Rock) is based in neuroscience. It defines the key requirements for keeping the human brain in Reward mode and out of Threat mode. Most leaders are happy with the idea that their people respond best when provided with opportunities for

Status

Certainty

Autonomy

Relatedness

Fairness

It’s simply a bonus that we know the model is backed up by leading–edge science.

Of course, when faced with the model and evaluating it against our own personal experience, it’s not surprising that we like the discovery that it matches with our own thoughts. This, after all, provides us with Certainty (we were right). That increases our Status (in our own eyes, at least) and shows that we are worthy of our Autonomy. Discussion with other leaders who also relate to the model increases our sense of Relatedness. Good job all round!

There are also different behavioural and psychological consequences associated with threat and reward:

Threat leads to:

• Reduced working memory
• Narrower field of view
• Generalising of threat
• Greater pessimism

 

Reward leads to:

• Greater cognitive resources
• More insights
• Increased ideas for action
• Fewer perceptual errors
• Wider field of view

 

The focus of this piece is how, as leaders, we can use the SCARF model to maintain our own performance. I started thinking about this after I wrote the first piece. It was easy to give guidance for leaders on how to keep their people in Reward mode. Then I started to think, well, if the leader is the main influence on whether the people are in Reward mode or Threat mode, what is the main influence on how the leader behaves?

Of course, whether the leader is in Reward mode or Threat mode will massively affect their ability to behave in ways consistent with keeping the team in Reward mode. If the CEO has announced a big re-structure of the company and you’re worried about your position, your Status and Autonomy are under threat and your sense of Fairness is being challenged. You may feel less Relatedness to others around you as you fall into competition for new roles and any Certainty you once had is rapidly ebbing away. Your brain slips into Threat mode.

Your job now is to impart the news to the team in a way that keeps their Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness intact!

It’s a lot to ask. To succeed in this important leadership task, you really need all your cognitive resources, you need more insights, lots of ideas for action, accurate perceptions and a good overview. Instead you’ve got reduced working memory, and you’re struggling to keep track of the discussion. Your field of view is constrained and you have an awful feeling of doom. You know that if you mess this up it could count against you in the re-structuring and that only increases the feeling of Threat.

What can you do?

In an ideal world, you’d have a CEO or Director as your boss who understood this important bit of neuroscience and did their bit to keep all the leaders in Reward mode.

Most of us don’t live in an ideal world!

This is why we need to be part of a Leadership Team. A well-functioning Leadership team creates a strong sense of Relatedness. It supports every member’s Status within the team and provides an element of Certainty whatever might be going on around you. So in tough times, the leadership team meeting is important, not just to agree a common approach to difficult tasks, but as a means of keeping the individual leaders in Reward mode and better able to carry out their leadership roles.

A well-functioning Leadership team is essential to the well-being of every organisation because it keeps the Leaders in Reward mode. Which makes it easy for them to keep their people in Reward mode. Which means better customer service, more creativity, more accuracy of work.

To find out how the Brilliant Minds Leadership Framework can help you and your leadership team achieve Performance Mode click here.

As we approach the end of 2021, have you reviewed your goals and renewed your commitment to everything that you resolved to do in 2021 and haven’t yet achieved? Are there some outstanding objectives or some abandoned aspirations that are sapping your energy or distracting your focus?

Goal-setting is a key part of NLP and a key part of business success. If you don’t know what you want to achieve it’s very hard to decide what to do! Of course, setting the goals is only part of the road to success. The first step is to make your outcome ‘well-formed’. (If you’d like to learn how to do that, please sign up for one of my NLP courses. I teach it on every course because it’s so useful).

Once you’ve got your well-formed outcome, the next step is usually to work out a strategy to achieve your outcome. So, if the outcome is to increase sales by 10%, then it’s likely that the strategy will involve extra sales conversations, incentives or networking. If the outcome is to increase motivation and morale in your team, then the strategy might include more one-to-ones and more good quality feedback. If it’s a personal goal like running a half-marathon then the strategy will involve regular workouts and a running plan.

But what happens if you don’t succeed in taking the actions required by your strategy? It’s not uncommon to begin a project full of enthusiasm and then get distracted, demotivated or demoralised and go off track.

You don’t just stop making progress towards your goal but sometimes you can start heading in completely the wrong direction.

So you need a recovery strategy. (Nothing to do with economic regeneration!)

Your recovery strategy is what you do when you realise that you’ve gone off track, stop making progress or become discouraged.

A recovery strategy is best devised at the same time as creating the well-formed outcome and the strategy for achieving it. It’s MUCH harder to do when you’re feeling discouraged or demoralised and if you’re distracted you might not realise that you need to do it!

The recovery strategy might include intensive activity to make up lost ground, or it might mean consulting with a coach or mentor.  It might simply be about reminding yourself of the outcome and its significance.

Its purpose is to get you back on track easily, without tears or tantrums and without delay.

The reason that most New Year’s Resolutions fail is for the lack of a recovery strategy. How many times has someone committed to a diet and stuck to it for some weeks or months, but then been tempted by something that should not have been on the menu? And how often does that herald the end of the diet completely?

Many people make the mistake of thinking that if they are truly committed to their goal then they will never stray from the plan. Then when it happens, they compound the problem by assuming that they cannot succeed, because of a single lapse in progress.

If you acknowledge the potential pitfalls when you make your original plan, and you devise a strategy for getting back on track, you seriously increase your chances of achieving your goal.

And this also applies to your big corporate initiatives. It’s not ‘negative thinking’ to identify the places where you could go off track, and have a plan in place to handle it – just in case.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? It seems like good management practice.

But the real beauty of a recovery strategy is the extra confidence it will give you. With a recovery strategy in place you no longer have to consider the possibility of failure, because you know exactly what you’re going to do to get back on track if something goes wrong.

It’s invaluable.

I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. My older sister says she taught me to read as soon as she learned, which would mean I was not yet three years old when the mysteries of the written word began to be revealed to me.

Whether or not that’s true – and you and I know that early memories are far from reliable – I do remember reading aloud fluently to the teacher in my first week at school, and wondering at the others around me who stumbled and mumbled and made no sense of the words on the page.

Perhaps that’s why I’m a compulsive reader.

I read everything. Books, newspapers, junk mail, the back of the cereal packet, billboards, road signs, public notices, planning notices and menus. Very little passes under my eyes without being read.

And novels. Everything from Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy through JRR Tolkein and George RR Martin to Bernard Cornwell, Iris Murdoch and Margaret Attwood.

For me, there isn’t much that beats the pleasure of a good book. I love to lose myself completely in a story. As a child, I used to read under the bedcovers at night. As a student, I would reward myself for ploughing through academic papers and text books by stealing an hour to read fiction.

An unhealthy obsession? A waste of time? A distraction?

Actually, I think not. (Well, I wouldn’t be writing about it if I thought it was a problem, would I?)

A large part of the learning we do as human beings is learning to live in social groups. We live in interdependent societies and unless, as individuals, we are able to cope with other people we are at a disadvantage.

Stories are part of the fabric of human history. Every culture and civilisation has its myths, legends and stories of everyday folk. These metaphors of everyday life teach us about others and – less obviously – about ourselves.

In NLP the power of metaphor has been demonstrated over and over again. A great story slides under psychological defences and engages directly with the deeper levels of the mind. What seems to the conscious awareness to be ‘just a story’ is taken much more personally at the below conscious levels.

Metaphor delivers subtle learning and intuitive insight. Reading offers a glimpse into the world of the writer – not just in the invention of the story, but in the use of words. Every writer puts together the language in their own unique style, giving the reader a privileged insight into the workings of the writer’s mind.

This is my justification – if I needed  one – for a lifetime of reading fiction and a dining room full of books:

Reading a novel gives the reader an alternative view of life. However divorced from current reality the story may appear to be, it speaks to our essential nature and leads the reader to explore new possibilities and different perceptions. It fills out our understanding of what it means to be human.

So, what have you been reading during lockdown?

I was having a conversation with a friend about the break-up of his long-term relationship. “Apparently,” he said, “I’m difficult to live with.”

Well, he’s my friend. So I won’t hear a word against him. But it did get me thinking about why it can be hard for two people who love each other to share a home without driving each other crazy. Or at least, one of them driving the other crazy.

I think that it all comes down to Strategies. That’s Strategies in the NLP sense, not the business sense.

In the NLP sense, a Strategy is a ‘programme’ of thinking and behaviour that achieves a specific result. For example, you have a Strategy for learning, a Strategy for remembering, a Strategy for taking a shower, one for falling in love (and out of it!), another for getting motivated, one for relaxing and so on.

In fact, you have a Strategy for absolutely everything you do. You’re never NOT running a Strategy. One follows the other in a seamless flow of thoughts and actions.

So, when you live alone, you have Strategies for relaxing alone, for cooking a meal alone, for tidying the house alone, for going to sleep alone and everything else that you do alone. Even down to little things like locking up the house when you go out.

Now, enter the Love of Your Life. Who presumably also lives alone at first.

You begin to spend time together and at each other’s homes. At first, the person whose home it is might take the lead and do things ‘their way’ – which means they still run the same Strategies. In the other person’s home, both you and your new love might be inclined to go along with whatever the homeowner wants.

At this stage, the fact that you HAVE to tidy the kitchen before you leave for work or that you leave the ironing until the weekend is irrelevant. Your habit of leaving a light on when you go out in the evening is your affair. And let’s not even talk about toothpaste!

So, everything is going wonderfully well. Time passes and you and the Love of Your Life decide to move in together.

If you’ve ever moved in with a partner at their house or had someone move into yours, you’ll know that this can be a very challenging time. This is when you have to learn to do a lot of those things you used to do alone all over again – this time with someone else either involved, watching, present or not involved when you think they should be.

For example, I remember that when my ex moved in with me I used to get quite irritated because every time we left the house together he would ask me, “Have you locked the door?”

Once or twice this wasn’t a problem. But catch me in a hurry or stressed about something and I’d react: “Of course I’ve locked the door. I’ve been living here for 9 years. I don’t need reminding to lock my own front door.”

So what was going on here?

Well, I was running the same Strategy for leaving the house that I’d had for a long time. I was doing it on autopilot.

My ex was in a totally different position. He could no longer run his old ‘leaving the house’ Strategy because now it was a different house, different keys and so on. He was trying to create a new Strategy that worked.

His old Strategy (I later discovered) involved locking the door, then checking it by trying the handle and leaning hard on the door to see if it would open.

If I was the one wielding the key, I was depriving him of the opportunity to do this. The next best thing he could do to reassure himself that the house was secure was to ask me as wielder of the key, “Have you locked the door?”

Do you see?

This is a really trivial example, but the perfect demonstration of how learning to live with another person is an extended process of learning how to do what you do with that other person around, involved or taking over. As well as retaining the ability to do whatever it is alone and unaided.

The reverse is also true. When you break up a relationship, you have to remember – or learn – to do lots of things alone. This is why people who have been together a very long time sometimes feel a bit helpless when they’re first faced with the single life. They keep starting to do things and finding that there’s a bit missing in their Strategy – the bit their partner used to supply.

Now, I’m not suggesting that adapting your Strategies to the presence of another person is something you need to do consciously. Mostly it will evolve naturally.

What I do recommend, is that if you find yourself thinking your partner is ‘Difficult to Live With’ or your partner’s having that thought about you, that you look at the specifics of how each of you wants to accomplish some everyday activities. Get right down into the detail. Have a good laugh about the absurdity of human nature. And then agree a compromise.

And in case the thought hadn’t yet occurred to you…

The same principles can be applied to working in a team. Or with a colleague you find ‘challenging’. Or with a supplier who annoys you. Or, in fact, anyone else with whom you share some of your daily life.

A CIPD Annual Learning & Talent Development survey of a few years back highlighted coaching as one of the top five talent management activities. Of the companies that took part in the survey 51% offered coaching to managers.

When I saw that, I couldn’t help wondering how varied that ‘coaching’ might be and how much value it added to the managers and the businesses.

‘Coaching ‘is one of those words that means different things to different people. It’s often confused with Mentoring and sometimes means little more than giving feedback.

Here’s my take on what it means and why it’s useful…

One of my earliest experiences of coaching was with Sir John Whitmore (his book, ‘Coaching for Performance’ is still one of my favourites). Sir John defines coaching as ‘helping people to apply what they already know’.

Straight away, we have coaching defined as an activity that acknowledges the ability of the client. I think this is important. I might take it a step further.

There is a presupposition of NLP: Everybody has, or can create, the resources they need to succeed.

If we look at coaching in the light of that presupposition then we can enlarge the definition to:

Coaching is helping people to access the resources they need to succeed.

The way I see it, the coach is there to help the client use the resources they already have, in pursuit of some specific goals. The paradox is this:  if the client already has everything they need to succeed, why do they need a coach?

Usually, the reason why a person benefits from working with a coach is this: working alone, many people get stuck. Faced with a new challenge, it can be hard to tell the best way to approach it. It might be difficult to break out old habits, or the thinking process might get into an endless circle of non-productive worrying.

The job of a coach is to provide a process to help the client move forward in his/her thinking. Sometimes this means mostly listening and asking questions to help the client clarify his own thoughts.

Sometimes it means providing a framework to ensure that a new idea is considered from all useful angles, such as when goal-setting. Sometimes it means taking a systematic approach to overcoming a mental block.

Sometimes, if the client is stressed or dealing with the results of major changes, it can mean guiding the client through a process to release negative emotions and restore the mind to a resourceful state.

Often, coaching works with behaviour patterns that are normally outside of conscious awareness. Anything you can do really well, you can do without thinking. Unfortunately, there are also lots of things we do less well that we also do without thinking!

Of course, I’m talking about coaching where the coach has the full range of NLP tools and techniques to draw on. NLP is an excellent addition to any coach’s skills, because it actually enables the client to re-wire their thinking. It creates new neurological pathways in the brain.

The more of this kind coaching a client participates in, the more the mind is re-trained to use the processes unconsciously to resolve issues before the client is consciously aware of them. The key to success is nearly always in the unconscious habits.

The aim of coaching is to replace habits that lead to stress and failure with habitual processes that lead to success and satisfaction.

And the real value of coaching at the unconscious level?

The client does not have to remember to do anything different, there is no fighting against natural inclinations, often clients forget that they ever had a mental block in the first place!

Done well, coaching is a very powerful means of unleashing talent. One of the keys to success is in the relationship between coach and client. If there is ‘chemistry’ between the two, then results will follow. Without that chemistry, we can be less certain of success.

So what is coaching?

Coaching is a relationship between a coach and a client that enables the client to access the resources they need to succeed.

At least that’s what it is in my map of the world!

 

Click here for details of the ‘How To Be A Brilliant Coach’ training.

This is a programme for coaches who want to take their skills to the next level; and for managers who want the ability to increase their team’s performance.

I was talking to a friend about her business mentor.  “I love working with her”, my friend said. “I feel like she really ‘gets’ me”.

Whilst the pedantic old fogey in me deplores this abuse of the English language, the psychologist in me can’t help but pursue this line of thinking. What is it in the communication between two people that creates this valuable sense that the other person just ‘gets’ you? Is it magic, or something more scientific?

On the surface it might be tempting to think that it’s a simple case of shared experiences. I’m fairly sure it’s more than that. How often have you discussed a shared experience with a friend or colleague only to be disappointed that they hadn’t felt what you felt or had interpreted events very differently. No, this is more than ‘you had to be there’.

So does the connection come from similar personalities? To some extent maybe. But how often have you realised that the person who was driving you crazy with their unreasonable behaviour turned out to have the same personality profile as you? It often turns out that people with similar personalities rub each other up the wrong way and find it quite hard to connect.

What about values? Does having the same values create that sense that someone else really understands who you are? No, not necessarily. For most people, values are outside of conscious awareness. So you and I may share a value but it’s possible that neither of us knows we have the value and therefore can’t be aware that we share it.

What I think is the most important factor in that affirming sense that another person really understands me, is the use of language: the particular patterns of speech that match the way I think and communicate, both inside my head and in the outside world.

And this is good news, because it means that it’s possible to create a meaningful connection with another person without having to pry into their personal life, their past history or their private opinions.

By paying attention to the specific language a person uses, it’s possible to unlock the patterns driving the way they think and communicate. And if you know that, you really do know what makes them tick!

If you know NLP, you’ve probably already realised that I’m talking about metaprogrammes. Metaprogrammes are the structural filters on everyday experience that show up as patterns in language and behaviour. They are what the LAB Profile measures.

Metaprogrammes are patterns in the ways that a person thinks, acts and speaks. They are important because they are independent of WHAT a person is discussing and shed light on HOW that person is thinking and speaking. Although metaprogrammes are specific to a context, they are still very useful in understanding what is driving a person in a particular situation.

Let’s do an example. If you’re the kind of person who likes to get on with the job, to get started and make progress, you like to DO something, then certain patterns of speaking will connect with you.

Suppose you’re about to make a presentation. You’re all prepared and keen to get started. If the person introducing you were to say, “When you’re ready…” that probably would jar slightly. You wouldn’t be likely to feel that they understood you well.

Suppose the person introducing you turned to you with a swift ‘the floor is yours’ gesture and urged, “Go for it!” Would that be a better connection with your frame of mind?

And if you’re not so proactive in your approach, if you prefer to take your time, wait and see a bit, think things over, am I right in thinking that the gentle, “When you’re ready…” would match your style more effectively?

Now that’s just one metaprogramme. It’s rare that only one metaprogramme is relevant at a time. Usually, there are several in operation. Let’s add in the towards/away from motivation pattern.

If you’re a proactive type and you like to get on with the job then ‘go for it’ will work nicely if you’re also Towards motivated in that context. But if you were Away From motivated, ‘Don’t hesitate’ might be more appropriate.

I could go on, I could combine 3 or 4 metaprogrammes to show you how the meaning doesn’t change but the form of language can be endlessly varied to suit different combinations. One of them would strike the right note for you; the rest would seem boring, contrived, clichéd or shallow. I could only know which one is the ‘right’ one by listening to you talk and observing your responses.

In general, all of this happens below conscious awareness. When someone ‘speaks your language’ you’re unlikely to realise that’s what happened. You just feel understood. You feel a connection to that person. You feel like they ‘get’ you.

So you see, it’s not some mystical, magical process that creates that experience of connection between two people. It’s a shared structure of communication. And it can be cultivated. We can all learn to adjust our turn of phrase to meet the style of our listeners. We can all develop flexibility of expression in the way we speak.

And in my experience, when I get exactly the right phrase to reflect the way that a person is thinking, the degree of connection that results is more than magical.

Some years ago I read a post on Bob Howard-Spink’s blog in which he compares to-do lists with Leonardo Da Vinci and suggests that as well as a ‘to-do’ list, we can all benefit from having a ‘things I’ve done’ list.

(You can read the complete post at http://dld.bz/brfZr – I checked and it’s still there).

So it got me thinking. Have you ever noticed that there’s something you find easy to do, but which other people admire and regard you as very skilled because you can do it when they find it hard?

Chances are, you acquired that skill in a completely different phase of your life or in a different context, but nonetheless it gave a capability that you can be proud of.

For example, in my 20s, when I did a lot of competitive debating, I never imagined that one day it would give me total confidence in front of a video camera! But when I trace back the origin of my ability to speak to camera without any notes, I’m pretty sure it’s a consequence of many hours spent at a particularly barbaric form of debating known as ‘2-person debating’. (Five minutes to prepare then the toss of a coin decides which side you’re on).

Whatever the niche that you currently operate in, I’m sure there’s a lot more that you can do and many more activities that you enjoy.

What about making a list of your capabilities? Not the kind of list you make to impress a potential client or to put on a CV. Just a list for your own pleasure. A list of things you can do. To remind you how far you’ve come in your journey through life and to appreciate the opportunities you’ve had.

My list would include: Hanging wallpaper, baking a cake, reversing a canal boat into a berth (you don’t know how impressive that is unless you’ve ever tried it!), ballroom dancing and chairing a meeting with formal progress of a motion in line with Roberts’ Rules of Order. And I might add measuring a man for a bespoke suit but I wouldn’t want to brag…

So, come on, today celebrate the amazing skills that you’ve picked up over the years and revel in the variety of different things you can turn your hand to.  There is more to life than niche marketing!

Add your list to the comments, please!