Member Article

How will the digital age affect NLP?

Interesting blog by Gary Pickering of NLP Business School. We thought we’d share it:

Earlier this week, Ofcom released data that highlighted just how much our attention has moved from face to face conversation to online, digital chatter].

Their research revealed that over half of adults (51%) now own some form of smart phone - almost double the proportion two years ago (27%) - and 53% of UK adults are now media multi-tasking while watching TV on a weekly basis.

Whilst the data is not surprising (the media has kept us well informed on the digital shift), it did cause us to reflect on how this ‘move to digital’ might affect the traditional world of NLP.

As we know, NLP is the ‘process of modeling’ and explores the relationship between how we think, how we communicate and our subsequent patterns of behavior. Basically, it focuses on how ‘what we think about the world’ and ‘how we interpret it’ affects what we do.

Traditionally, NLP has encouraged us to develop our behavioural competence by understanding the mental and cognitive processes behind this behavior. Yes, NLP provides tools and skills for developing excellence, but it also establishes a system of empowering beliefs about what human beings are, what communication is and what the process of change is all about.

The shift to digital doesn’t affect any of that in terms of our approach to improving our performance and communicative ability through the practice of NLP – we still need to mange our cognitive processes to model excellence and engage people purposefully. What is does change, however, is the way in which we receive information about our world and the way in which we engage with people and this is something that needs to be built in to modern day NLP training and practices.

With so many people now ‘multitasking’ as they engage with you, perhaps in a meeting, over dinner or indeed in front of the TV, we therefore need to think about how our ability to listen, share and persuade must be developed in order to keep up with the new world of digital media.

On another level, NLP is about self-discovery, exploring identity and achieving life goals. It also provides a framework for understanding and relating to the ‘spiritual’ part of human experience that reaches beyond us as individuals to our family, our friends and our colleagues. In this fast paced, global, media rich world we need to find the time required to reflect on our own behavior and focus on aligning our performance to our expectations of ourselves.

At NLP Business School, we don’t just teach the theory, we show you how to apply the traditional techniques to the modern world to help you achieve your goals as well as help other people to achieve their goals.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Digitia .