[Neurons] 2019 Neurons #46 SEVEN DISTINCTIONS OF A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATOR

Sun Oct 13 17:54:00 EDT 2019

From: L. Michael Hall

2019 Neurons #46

October 14, 2019

How to be a 

Professional Communicator #1

SEVEN DISTINCTIONS

OF A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATOR

While many people don't seem to know what NLP is, the answer actually is
very simple.  Most essentially NLP is a Communication Model and,
Neuro-Semantics, as a development within NLP for higher quality and
professionalism, is most essentially an integrated and systemic
Communication Model.  Now while just about everyone knows that
"communication" is important, most are clueless about how important it is.
So, how important is it?

Communication is critically important because communication drives
everything human-relating, parenting, managing, leading, self-awareness,
emotional intelligence, persuasion, wealth creation, expertise, etc.  In
each of these domains, the quality of your communication is the quality of
your experience, your skill, and your expertise.  Communication governs each
of these areas and many more.  Now you know why we so intensely focus on
high quality communication skills in Neuro-Semantics.

Further, because "mastery is in the details" in every area, there are
critical distinctions about communication for knowing how to unleash your
highest quality communication skills.  If you learn these, you will be able
to become a professional communicator. If you don't, you will be
unprofessional, and possibly a toxic communicator, and worse, not even know
it.  The following seven critical distinctions are based the extended
Meta-Model of NLP and on the Meta-States Model (see Communication Magic,
2000, Meta-States, 2012).  I wrote it in 2005 and have updated it here for
this series.

Here are core distinctions of every professional communicator.  Given that
mastery involves making critical distinctions, how well do you make the
following seven critical distinctions? 

1) Map and Territory                   2) Person and Behavior

3) Meaning and Response          4) Sensory and Evaluation information

5) Frame and Feeling                   6) Advocacy and Inquiry 

7) Current and Desired state

There's also an extra benefit in learning these.  When you use these
distinctions, you eliminate major communication diseases.  What creates
dis-ease in the process of understanding each other?  Ellis and Beck in
Cognitive-Behavioral psychology describes these as the ways to make yourself
(and others) miserable. 

              - Confusion of words with reality

              - Mind-reading and hallucinating

              - Judging, being judgmental, exaggerating

              - Emotionalizing: minimizing, maximizing

              - Personalizing: over-identifying, defensiveness

              - Blaming, accusations, insults.

              - Distracting, changing the subject, refusing to focus.

Conversely, the seven distinctions create the foundation for those
powerfully profound skills and states that facilitate excellence in
communication. 

              - Sensory awareness, able to observe what is present. 

              - Present in the moment and focuses on the now.

              - Stepping back into an observing state (to be as objective as
possible).

              - Getting the ego out of the way to be "clean" intentionally.

              - Staying open and receptive to feedback.

              - Flexibly adjusting to real-time feedback and making
on-course corrections.

              - Thinking systemically and recognizing leverage points.

              - Exploring curiously to discover what is.

              - Seeking clarity in problem-definition.

              - Solution-focus thinking in creating forward movement.

              - Suspending meaning and opening up dialogue.

No wonder these distinctions are the prerequisites of true mastery in
persuasive communication.  These distinctions, as high quality frames,
facilitate mobilizing your best resources for dialogue, co-creating mutual
understanding and unleashing new possibilities.  As this fits for coaching,
training, educating, therapy, parenting, managing, and leading-these
distinctions are essential for any and every Professional Communicator.

Distinction #1: DISTINGUISHING MAP AND TERRITORY

It is common-sense wisdom that "The map is not the territory."  A map is
never the territory it represents just as a menu is not the meal; a sex
manual is not love making; a photo is not the person.  As different
phenomena, map and territory operate in different dimensions and at
different levels.

Simple, yet so profound.  Simple enough to know also simple enough to
forget.  How and when do we forget it?  When we think that our thoughts,
beliefs, values, and identities are real.  That's the delusion.  What you
think as a mental map is not real and never can be.  When you forget, you
identify and create identification. You identify map and territory as one
and the same.  Further, when you think that X is real, you think it is
absolute; you think it is beyond question (unquestionable).  This describes
the concrete thinker, the absolutist, the pulpit-pounding pundit who has
"the answers," the guru who demands blind and unquestioning obedience, the
fundamentalist in any system (Christian, Moslem, Liberal, Conservative,
Political, etc.).

Map is the stuff inside which is generated from the way you code and
represent the outside world. Map is your ideas, beliefs, understandings,
feelings, memories, etc. which you create about the outside world of
experiences.  You do not deal with the world directly, but indirectly (the
basic epistemology of NLP).  You interface with the electromagnetic spectrum
as mediated through your sense receptors, neuro-pathways, brain cortices,
beliefs, belief systems, etc.  Territory is the outside world, all of the
experiences, words, events, and happenings "out there" which we can
represent in only a very limited way. 

"The word 'pig' is not a pig.  It is a word."

              Neo: "You believe in 'karma' ... in 'love?'"  "These are just
words."

For someone mapping what's "out there" in the world and seeking to create an
internal map that's useful, the direction of fit should be from world to
mind.  A world-to-mind fit means that you are letting the world determine
what you think- facts first, then thought.  The reverse mind-to-world fit
first thinks and then imposes that thinking on the world.  This is never the
way to start.  It works only after you have thoroughly studied and mapped
the world.  Here you push the envelop through your imagination to see what
else is possible.

As a masterful communicator you also know that all of your mapping is
fallible, and even at its best, is only a guess.  You also knows that the
value of a map lies in its usefulness, in it being able to provide
navigational guidance for moving through the world of experiences.  Does the
map correspond well enough so that you can use it to direct your thoughts
and actions?  Does it facilitate you having the experiences you want to have
and to achieve the things you want to accomplish?

           How well do you recognize that all of your mental mapping is
just a map? 

           How integrated is this as your frame of mind?

           How quick are you to ask questions rather than tell, demand, or
give advice?

           How grounded is your recognition that your feelings come from of
your maps?

           How intuitive is this distinction so that you recognize that
every emotion is the difference between your map of the world and your
experience in the world?

Distinguishing map and territory enables you to begin your journey to being
a professional communicator.  When you distinguish map and territory, you
tend to be much more careful about your words and sentences.  As maps you
know they all suffer of the limitations involved in mapping- you know you
have generalized things, deleted things, and distorted things.  You know
that your verbal map is partial, incomplete, and therefore inaccurate.  And
knowing that, you cannot be an absolutist about your map.  It is just a map
and always can be improved.

For more on this, see The Structure of Magic, Communication Magic,
Inside-Out Persuasion.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   look for the special offer

Author of the stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

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