Working with Teams - NLP Article by Jonathan Altfeld

One of the things I occasionally do in consulting is work with teams of people. And a lot of teams don't communicate together as well as they could, so they're not always as successful together as they might be.

I learned a lot about teams before getting into NLP, and then I learned a lot more. And I know there's even a lot more to learn still! I learned a lot this very week from some of the others posting in these forums!

This past week I worked with a team both briefly and rather unexpectedly, just for fun, at a nearby restaurant! I was getting a quick bite up at the bar of the restaurant, and someone from a nearby group came up to ask something at the bar. Since they were having a good time, I made a short joke and laughed with him briefly. Somehow, without my asking, I was invited to join the group! I hadn't used any NLP up until then except to put myself in a magnetic mood, ;) so I guess it was that they were friendly and the only group there, and I was out running errands so I was the only individual there. Who knows. They invited me.

One thing led to another and as I learned that they worked together on a software development team, I began to get a sense of each of their personalities. I focused on one thing at a time, just enjoying the conversation. It was actually difficult, at times, to think about tracking certain things, because the rapport was so real, and the conversations so interesting, there were moments I was lost in the fun of it all! Cool, huh? But I did stay reasonably focused on what I was learning!

I found that there were areas of less rapport (which was hard to notice when there was real rapport there), amongst combination's of major rapport. So I took the pairs of people that weren't in rapport, paced both of them together, and then led them incrementally to be in closer rapport. I learned that through experience of knowing I can get rapport with a group of people all at once by picking up one major physical attribute of each person concurrently. Not easy at first, but it gets easier with practice. Trust your peripheral vision.

I've learned a lot about Rapport not only from books but also through trainings & personal experience. And I also I learned how to rapidly pace & lead each person in a group individually/separately... so all I did was fuse each of those efforts in a concurrent way. Why do things in a linear fashion when you can get several at once?

I also did a number of other things but this will suffice to keep the 1st post reasonably sized! ;) Remember that I only had about an hour to play with improving their communication!

What ended up happening was that even though we had a GREAT lunch together, the moment the check came, they all agreed they had a lot to do at work, and felt better about doing it than they had in the morning! Cool! I just received a call from one of them, so I know I didn't chase anyone away (their call prompted me to write this article).

Regards,

Jonathan Altfeld