Whenever we train NLP and Leadership workshops, one of the questions we always ask upfront is, “what is the difference between a leader and a manager?” There are usually many different answers, but the most common boils down to: leaders have people follow them, while managers have people who work for them.
If you are a business owner with staff or even an exceptional leader, you need to be both a strong leader and manager to get your team on board to follow you towards your vision of success. Leadership is about getting people to understand and believe in your vision and to work with you to achieve your goals, while managing is more about administering and making sure day-to-day activities are happening as they should.
Another question we ask our workshop participants: “Is leadership a quality that people can learn?” The overwhelming response we hear is, “Yes.”
This is where NLP comes in. NLP is about understanding how the language of your mind creates the patterns that you run. You have patterns or programs for how you do everything; how you get motivated, how you motivate others, how you make decisions, how you communicate, how you achieve your goals. Once you can identify various programs in your life, you can then use NLP to enhance what is working well for you and change what is not.
For example, you might be amazing at giving constructive feedback to your children or friends, but you might have trouble doing the same in the workplace. With NLP, you will be able to identify your personal psychology, including your beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes to model how you give constructive feedback in your personal life so you can do this same thing in the workplace.
You may also have a pattern of self-doubt or self-trust. With NLP, you will learn many tools to help you uncover the root cause for these and change beliefs and behaviours associated to them. Because NLP is working with your unconscious patterns, if there is a desire to make a change in something you do, we can create the programming of your mind to fit your desires.
From an article in Forbes Magazine a few years ago, some key characteristics of a strong leader include: honesty and integrity, a strong and dynamic vision, the ability to inspire teams and individuals, the ability to challenge the status quo by pushing the boundaries and thinking outside the box, and exceptional communication skills.
As a leader trained in NLP, you will be heads and shoulders above the rest in your ability to adapt these characteristics into the situation presented to you – whenever and wherever you are.
