Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Purpose: To score the Perfect Hat-Trick!
Developed in the early 1970s by John Grinder, a Professor of Linguistics and John Bandler, a young mathematician. NLP, sought to model how successful people achieved their results and how this could then be passed on to others.
They studied some of the greatest practitioners around – the “Messi” and “Ronaldos” of the therapist world and focused on what made them so effective.
Fritz Perls : A medical doctor and brilliant psychotherapist who was world renowned for his success with clients and the founder of Gestalt therapy.
Milton Erickson : Another medical doctor, who specialised in psychiatry and in particular hypnotherapy and had developed the art of conversational or indirect trance induction to great effect.
Virginia Satir : An expert in family therapy, with the ability to help people solve many complex relationship problems.
And guess what?
All three were masters of communication!
As the name suggests, NLP can be broken down into three parts:
Neuro – which looks at how you use your neurology to think, feel, see, hear, smell and taste and ultimately what you experience.
Linguistic – which looks at how you use language both with yourself and with others?
And finally,
Programming – how you act to achieve your goals.
So, combining these three elements together you can get a much clearer idea of why you do what you do.
You take in and process information using your neurology, you then have a conversation with yourself or others about what to do, and then you run the program or pattern of behaviour to produce the actions and results.
Essentially this is what top-class players do in every game, they assess the situation around them, decide on the best option and then execute the action.
I like to call this:
The Perfect Hat-Trick
In football, the Perfect Hat-Trick is scoring with your, left foot, right foot and head.
In Premiership Health it is – Head, Chest, and Boot! – The triple combination that enables you to succeed.
In other words, if what you think about in your brain (head) is what you believe in your heart (chest), you will take the necessary action (boot) for success.
For example, in terms of health, I think prevention is better than cure (head), I passionately believe it, I’ve made it one of my central beliefs (chest), I therefore take the necessary action, by leading the right lifestyle, to score that goal (boot).
Part of your job as manager, is to analyse the beliefs of your team and make sure they are consistent with Premiership Health status and do not lead to relegation. Because, as we have already seen, the beliefs you have guide your every behaviour, the way you think and feel and even the way you see the world.
The next component of NLP is language or linguistics, otherwise known as:
Team Chants.
All Football teams have chants their supporters sing to help create a great atmosphere, and if you’ve ever been to Anfield and heard the “Kop” sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” you’ll know exactly what I mean.
And, I suspect most of us have favourite songs we sing or listen to that have the capability to change the way we feel. However, we really must listen to these songs with care and attention because, what we say and what we sing on a daily basis, has the power to influence how we play.
As a family doctor I am very careful with the language I use with people, because I realise it can both help and hinder an individuals state of mind.
The age-old nursery rhyme,
“sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,”
is simply not true, words can kill!
For example, what effect do you think being told you have only 6 months to live has on your nervous system and all the other teams at your Club?
Indeed, one of the things that used to strike me when working in hospital, was how patient’s symptoms became worse at the time of a diagnosis, as they now had a label to attach to their symptoms.
Their beliefs about themselves would change in the very instant they were given a diagnosis and they would subsequently translate the language/beliefs about a disease into a biochemical reality.
I can recall one poor patient, when told his lung cancer had spread to his brain, started fitting almost instantaneously.
Remember: Beliefs become your biology. (See Placebo)
The final part of NLP involves the programming, and to understand how this works, we need to take a walk along the yellow brick road.
Now, I’m sure you’ve all watched the film “A Wizard of Oz,” a real Christmas favourite. Have you ever stopped to think about the deeper messages behind the story?
A Tin man, who believed he didn’t have a heart, a Lion who believed he didn’t have any courage, and a scarecrow who believed he didn’t have any intelligence. All because the Wizard had told them so, but, who was this Wizard?
In reality, he was nothing more than a little man speaking into a big tannoy, who had created the illusion of an all-powerful being, yet, once this illusion was broken and his true identity revealed to the world, by Toto the dog, the Wizard himself was able to help the adventurers change their beliefs about themselves and switch to different, more positive programs.
As Premiership Health Managers, we need to develop the brains, the heart and the courage, so we acquire knowledge and then have the self-confidence to use it in an empathic and compassionate manner to enable us to score the Perfect Hat-Trick and reach over the rainbow to the life of our dreams.