NLP and Management
Management is a very important part of society. Organizations, businesses, churches, and even families depend on it. Management differs from leadership in many ways. To manage means more than just handling people. It involves handling all resources and tools in an organization to meet specific goals, by uniting people to work together for that specific purpose. Thus, without effective management skills, a business enterprise, organization, or family will experience disorientation and confusion.
Neuro-linguistic Programming, or NLP, offers a myriad of techniques and methods that can help improve management skills. Many managers and leaders are starting to look into the very rich study of NLP to find solutions to the management related problems they usually face everyday. By learning and applying these NLP tactics in day to day situations, a manager, CEO, father, minister, or any kind of person tasked with any managerial responsibility, will be able to handle people better.
Taking multiple perspectives is a basic NLP principle that allows an individual to see through the eyes of others. Most people usually have only one dominant perspective, and that is, their own way of looking at things. However, for a manager to be truly effective both at home and in the workplace, he or she needs to see through various perspectives and assess how things look like from each point of view. A single event or situation can be seen four different ways. It can be seen from a personal point of view, the other person’s point of view, from a casual onlooker’s perspective, or from the point of view of the organization as a whole. Thus, a manager should carefully put himself in each perspective before making crucial managerial decisions. This will ensure that the decisions made will work effectively for the common good of the organization.
Because a manager deals with people all the time, it is important for him to be an expert both at verbal and non-verbal communication. Studies show that a greater percentage of communication comes from body language and not words! Thus, if a manager wants to inspire confidence and trust among his subordinates, his body language should reflect that he is a firm, trustworthy and tough leader. He must also be able to put other people at ease when he is around. NLP provides a lot of insight about body language and how it affects human relationships. Effective non-verbal communication helps build rapport, establish trust, handle organizational problems, and give people an overall feeling of enthusiasm that will help increase work performance.
There are two major types of management styles in NLP. The first is management by exception. This is a leadership style wherein the leader only intervenes whenever problems or conflicts arise. It delegates a lot of responsibility to supervisors or mid-level managers who perform a bigger part in the daily handling of people. The second management style is management by objective. This is results oriented leadership. It involves close collaboration with top leaders in the organization and setting clear and measurable …