Effective Communication With NLP & The Enneagram

In my previous post on Ambiguities In Interpersonal Communication, i mentioned about how generalisation, deletion and distortion would normally occur when we are communicating, and how we can ask questions to clarify, or even help empower the other party.

One common scenario is when a person’s behaviour is being confused with his or her identity as a result of some limiting beliefs. An example of this could be, “I’m a slow learner”.

In this example, the individual views himself or herself as a slow learner because of experiences where more time was required to learn new things. Some ways to help loosen that self identity include asking questions such as:

• What did you learn that required more time than usual?
• What do you consider a fast learner?

Alternatively, you could reframe the content of the statement (Reframing is a very powerful NLP technique to help suggest new meanings to an experience or belief, and I’ll be posting stuffs about it in the future so stay tuned).

By agreeing with the person and changing the meaning of the statement, you can help redefine what was initially an identity label, into a skill, behaviour or feeling. Using the same example of “I’m a slow learner”, you could agree and reframe the content in this manner:

• I understand, there are definitely times when you feel that the rate of learning isn’t as fast as you would like. This will improve over time as you pick up new skills along the way.

Responding in this manner loosens the identity label, and imply that it is actually a feeling. It also allows the person to look at the issue from another angle, that he or she will pick up new skills with time and improve on their learning ability.

Here’s another example of confusing behaviour with identity, “I’m a shy person”

• Yes, I understand that there will be situations where you would feel shy, and it’s perfectly alright to take your time to feel comfortable in such situations.

This response also implies that it is a feeling, rather than an identity. In addition, it assumes that the person just wants to take a longer time to feel comfortable and confident.

When you are more aware of this common error due to limiting beliefs, you can help empower others when you notice that they are confusing behaviours with identity. More importantly, you can stop yourself from making the same errors.

What has Effective Interpersonal Communication got to do with Personal Mastery? Well, for a start, I strongly believe that what we communicate is a reflection of ourselves. As we all know, communication is made up of verbal and non-verbal elements.

The verbal element is all about the words that come out of us, which is not too difficult as long as you have a good grasp of your language. However, being a master communicator isn’t all about the words you use. I’m sure many of us have come across people who made us feel that what they say isn’t really aligned with what they are.

That brings me to my point. Effective communication is made up of many things, the words we speak is obviously one of them. In addition, our body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, these are things which can be seen or heard on the surface.

Going deeper, our beliefs, our identity, our personality, our character all adds up to the way we communicate. And crucially, these are things that make up who we are. Things that cannot really be seen on the surface, yet constituting to a potentially greater aspect of the communication that comes out of us.

So there you go. In order to communicate effectively, we must first live effectively. This site is dedicated to sharing the strategies of effective interpersonal communication through mastery of ourselves.

I’ve trained in countries across Asia and interacted with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and one consistent thing i noticed is that many people don’t realise they have total control over self excellence. Very often, an individual is let down by his or her own limiting beliefs, and they wonder why they could never achieve success. Of course, success is defined differently by every one of us. Be honest with yourself, are you denying yourself greater success because of limiting beliefs?

Through my postings, I’ll be sharing skills that you can apply in work and personal life, that will enhance the way you communicate. So let us embark on our journey towards effective interpersonal communication through self excellence and mastery!