I remember once slamming the phone down and saying some choice words about the other person (thankfully without the media quoting them) and one of my colleagues asked “have you given up NLP then?”

What my colleague had observed since I’d undertaken the Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)  practitioner was that I no longer blamed others for the difficult relationship I had with them nor was I directing my anger and frustration at others either. Except that occasion – when I was simply having a bad day and had forgotten all that I’d learnt or chose not to apply it anyway.

As I mentioned last week it’s really important to take personal responsibility for our life and our relationships and not simply blame the other person. However sometimes we really do think the other person is to blame and can’t see the part we’ve played and certainly can’t see what we can do differently?

One tool I learnt on the NLP practitioner is called perceptual positions and is a great tool for understanding how to change our behaviour in order to shift a currently difficult relationship with someone. It’s best done standing up and moving about rather than just in your head and even better if you can get someone to talk you through it:

Identify a person with whom you would like insight on how to behave differently with.

1. Pick a spot (1st position) and decide where to imagine the person with whom you wish to improve your relationship is.
2. Stand in this 1st position imagine ‘looking’ at the other person.  Fully associate yourself into the situation and notice what you are experiencing.  What are you thinking?  How are you communicating?  What words and tone are you using?  How are you feeling emotionally? Do you feel the emotion anywhere in your body – ie do you notice anything in your shoulders, hands, stomach, face, chest etc?  
3. Move to the spot where you have imagined the other person (2nd position) and, in whatever way is best for you, associate into them.  Imagine looking back at yourself in position 1. As this other person looking back at you fully associate yourself into the situation and notice what you are experiencing.  What are you thinking?  How are you communicating?  What words and tone are you using?  How are you feeling emotionally? Do you feel the emotion anywhere in your body – ie do you notice anything in your shoulders, hands, stomach, face, chest etc?
4. Step into a neutral/disassociated position (3rd position) from where you can observe both the 1st and 2nd positions.  What do you observe? What insights do you gain about the relationship?  What advice would you give you in that 1st position?
5. Step into a even more disassociated 4th position.  One where you make a quick assessment of the feelings associated with the 1st and 2nd positions and noticing the advice given by the 3rd positions. Do you have any further advice to give you in that first position?
6. Using the insights and advice given in the earlier steps now associate fully again into the 1st position.  How is the situation different?
7. Briefly associate again into the 2nd position and observe the new you in the 1st position.  Notice what’s different?
8. Complete process by returning to 1st position.

I’ve successfully used this in many business contexts and have used it with other buyers to help identify strategies with suppliers .

For a handout of this process please see my web site http://www.alisonsmith.eu/site/AS_Difficult_Relationships.pdf