One of my lodgers is on an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) course and, on tidying his room today, I looked at one of his books on the mantelpiece. It opened at a page called, 'What do we mean by asking powerful questions?'. This is it:
' A question has power when it stimulates the listener to new thoughts; when it asks him to search and go beyond what he already knows; when it requires him to think out of the box; when it helps him to make new connections, and to see familiar things in a new light or from a different perspective. Such questions have great potential leverage and are one of the most valuable tools of coaching. They are not all alike in how they achieve their effects ... and so we want to look at three key types of questioning you can employ - inquiring, requesting and asking permission.. Then we want to touch on the magic ingredient that can supercharge all three - the investigative power of silence.'
Yes, you may think, I've heard this before. But have you? There is much available in the tools of business management development that could be invaluable for the School, especially for student-tutor-student. It goes far beyond 'What do we think of this?'
Saturday, May 20, 2006
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2 comments:
Spooky. I just read Jon Ronson's article in Saturday's Guardian mag about NLP. Ronson is an interesting character not unlike Louis Theroux, who loves investigating weird organizations, cults, far-right groups, far-left groups, whatever.
Anyway, he gives a good sense of what a strange thing NLP is, and then he interviews the former hypnotist Paul McKenna (who is now a leading light of NLP) and asks him to do something about his phobia about a terrible accident befalling his wife or child. McKenna does so - the description of the process is interesting - and Ronson reports 3 weeks on that he no longer has the phobia.
Last week I spoke to the group I tutor about silence. Someone I know talks about the 'tumbleweed moment' when the tutor asks "What of this?" and everyone goes "..." - you can sense the tumbleweed rolling gently through the empty streets.
I told them that isn't the way it should be. You have to love the silence. The feeling you have towards the silence is the feeling that fills the silence. If it's fear, anxiety, irritation, those things get picked up. If it's curiosity, willingness to hear something new, openness - that's what the other people in the room pick up.
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