Effective Communication With NLP & The Enneagram

Our interpersonal communication with others usually starts with our thoughts, resulting in words, tonality and body language. There are many ways to define “thoughts”, and one of them is how we use our senses internally.

We use our senses outwardly to perceive the world, and inwardly to represent experience to ourselves. When recalling experiences, such as a time you went to the beach, what appears in your mind first? Maybe a picture of the beach would appear. Perhaps you hear the sounds of the waves and children playing. Or the feeling of how relaxed you were just sitting by the sea.

Here’s another example. When you ask a group of students to describe their form teacher, you could get a variety of answers. One student might recall the hairstyle and dressing first, followed by the teacher’s voice, and how he or she feels about the teacher’s lessons.

Another might first recall that the teacher has a very deep and powerful voice, followed by how the teacher always makes the class feel interesting, and lastly, how the teacher looks.

This method of taking in and storing information in our minds, through our five senses (Seeing, hearing, feeling, taste and smell) is known as Representational Systems in NLP. Knowing that not everyone thinks in the same manner will improve our interpersonal communication skills significantly.

Here are the five sense and their corresponding systems:

Seeing – Visual

Hearing – Audio

Feeling – Kinesthetic

Taste – Gustatory

Smell – Olfactory

In my next post, I’ll cover ways for us to find out the dominant representational system of a person. Stay tuned!