Introduction

This chapter will review the operating philosophy that NLP is built around which could be categorized under the meta-idea ‘The Law of Requisite Variety’. NLP has a conceptual structure around which its capacity for practice as a change methodology is enabled. I call this the ‘architecture of ideas’. I do not think that practicing NLP methods without having a fundamental appreciation of these foundational ideas benefits either the trainer or the practitioner. I invite you to think about these ideas as resources you can use as a conscious change leader to broaden your perceptual map and, thus, increase the range of your behavioural, cognitive, and emotional flexibility.

The Law of Requisite Variety

There is a general principle in NLP that advocates the quest for a ‘richer perceptual map’ of the world. This involves developing multiple perspectives regarding an object of interest and building a collection of conceptual frames of reference through which we can consider reference objects. Dilts (1998) calls this principle ‘The Law of Requisite Variety’ which originated from Systems Theory. The law advances the idea that we need to be continually adapting and changing our social strategies to ensure that we maintain and build upon our desired social results. This means that we must always be open to reviewing strategies that have served us well in the past and perhaps in the present and look for opportunities to change or transform these if required. This is the principle of Personal Mastery as developed by Peter Senge (2006) and Organizational Learning as developed by Chris Argyris (1990). Dilts (1998, p. 9) states that the underlying principles governing The Law of Requisite Variety is that “in order to successfully adapt and survive, a member of a system needs a certain minimum amount of flexibility, and that flexibility has to be proportional to the potential variation or the uncertainty in the rest of the system.” For Dilts the person with the greatest behavioural, cognitive, and emotional flexibility in the system will be the ‘catalytic’ force for change. He perceptively notes that this has significant implications for leadership in organizations. In terms of conscious leadership mediated through NLP applications The Law of Requisite Variety is a meta-guiding principle that motivates the quest for self-mastery over our behavioural, emotional, and cognitive flexibility to maximize our intra and interpersonal skills.

Senge (2006), in his seminal book The Fifth Discipline, implicitly advances the principle of The Law of Requisite Variety with a five-point framework he argues is required as a catalyst for the emergence of the learning organization.

The five disciplines are:

The Law of Requisite Variety also applies to the world of change management in organizations. The wider and richer the perceptual map that the manager can develop and access, the deeper the understanding they can glean regarding situations and the wider range of strategies they can conceptualize. For example, if we think of strategy we can think of emergent strategy, planned strategy, localized strategy or even micro, or macro strategy. We may have a concept relating to strategy enabling us to develop concepts such as unconscious strategy work. These are all different conceptualizations of strategy work and they enable us to structure our strategic thinking around multiple perspectives. Compare this to leaders with strategy as a core function who, at best, can only think about strategy as the, or our, strategy in the singular. Clearly their perceptual map is poorer and, thus, their capacity for considering strategic thinking is more challenging, unless, of course, they have a gift for strategic thinking and practice. Imagine, though, the benefits to a naturally gifted strategic thinker if they also had a very rich perceptual map regarding the sociology of strategy work.

NLP provides an operating philosophy which resonates very strongly with The Law of Requisite Variety which is based upon an architecture of ideas, each of which can be flexibility catalysts. I have identified 12 meta-ideas, or flexibility catalysts, that belong to the conceptual structure of NLP and form its guiding paradigm and I will review each of these below.

1 The world as we know it is our own social construction

This idea advocates the belief that the social and natural world does exist independent of mind (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). All we can do is form sense impressions of the social and natural world. These sense impressions are products of active sense making and are based on symbolic systems that are, themselves, social constructions through which humans allocate meaning to objects that they signify as important in their world. This meaning-making process is the basic dynamic of all world cultures. All human beings will identify with a group culture through which they will share meaning systems. Human beings will also have idiosyncratic meaning systems that are relative to themselves on a personal level. Meanings drive emotions which drive attitudes which, in turn, drive our choice of social strategies and our resulting behaviours. This cycle is what NLP practitioners call change work. NLP practitioners assume that everyone has their own world view and that this should always be respected regardless of how strange it may appear, unless, by a global standard, the world view is unethical and harmful to others. Detailed below is a list of the primary sense-making mediums that NLP practitioners study when facilitating change processes in both individuals and in groups.

In terms of flexibility, the NLP strategies of meta-reflection and state management have a range of techniques that help us to calibrate the resourceful nature of the actual content of all the above and induce specific transformations when required. This is a core conscious change leadership skill set and is based upon the principles of critical thinking and reflexivity (Boddy, 2017).

2 We possess the capability to reconstruct our meanings

This idea is rooted in the first presupposition that the world, as we understand it, is a social construction, an interpretation of some external reality that we construct within our minds and which we hold to be real. It advances the premise that human beings are active meaning-makers, that the world as we know it is our invention and that we can author our realities as we deem fit and proper depending on the purpose our social constructions serve. In NLP terms, we can work on our own, and on clients’ established meaning systems to change these and, thus, break the cycle of meaning-making and behaviour and recurring emotional states by accessing the following resources:

Our attitudes, emotional states and social behavioural strategies are products of our sense-making and, thus, meaning-making processes. As we build these we can deconstruct and reconstruct established constructs; and, if we chose to, we can make deliberate meaning constructions and, thus, select our attitudes, emotional states and, of course, behavioural social strategies. Therefore, we must take responsibility for our social results.

When we internalize this perspective, we can build in ontological flexibility and be comfortable and, thus, tolerant of the interpretations held by others, even when these appear to contradict our own. Ontological flexibility also ensures that we can adapt our social strategies to evolving shifts in our meaning systems. The opportunity to reframe our reality constructions is made far more accessible to us and these skills enhance our capability as conscious change leaders. This principle also concurs with the work of Alvesson and Sveningsson (2008) who advance the idea of change leaders as ‘meaning-makers’.

3 We can be authors of our social identities

In NLP terms, if our identities are products of meaning-making then, again, we choose to accept social identities, or we do not. Others cannot impose an identity upon us; we agree to adopt a social identity or we do not. Identity can be either the most enabling or disabling social device in terms of our social development as human beings. Identities are fluid and dynamic; they are not static. Therefore, we would reject the statement ‘I am this kind of person’, or ‘He is that kind of person’. In contrast we would say ‘I choose to be like this kind or person’. Or ‘He chooses to be like that sort of person’. This change in language is incredibly important for conscious change leaders as it implies a powerful NLP principle that advances the premise that who we are, who we can be and who we will be are choices that we make. This does not dismiss the deterministic argument of class; for example, we recognize that economic, social, and cultural factors can present significant challenges to our emerging identities though they do not define us. We define ourselves and, thus, once we decide the kind of identity we wish to adopt we can then also identify the resources, for example modelling, to help us enable the establishment and then the wider social recognition of these identities. This flexibility of identity construction is necessary if we are to emerge as capable conscious leaders and coaches to enable such identity work in others.

4 We can change our emotional state at will

Central to our model of conscious change leadership is the ability to calibrate our emotional states and, when required, either pre-programme these in advance of a specific social encounter or meta-reflect on a primary emotional state and change its form if we feel it is proving to lack utility. For example, if we are to deliver an important presentation then the ability to recognize excessive anxiety and shift this to a state of confidence would be an incredibly useful conscious change leadership capability and NLP provides techniques for doing just that.

It is important to understand that our emotions are products of our attitudes which result from our meaning-making processes. Our emotions and attitudes do not, or should not, lead us; rather we should consciously choose them and lead them, they are our resources and, as such, are there to help us be the best version of ourselves as change leaders.

Our attitudes are based on a scale of like to dislike and, thus, we classify the objects of our attitudes on a scale of importance versus unimportance (Maio & Haddock, 2009). Our attitudes are locked into our belief system and, therefore, our expectations of how everything in the world we define as objects of our attitudes should operate. This means that we have both cognitively and culturally wired into our attitude system a programme of predisposed judgements. If, or rather when, our attitude objects do not match with our judgemental models we call forth emotional responses that will be intense depending on the degree of valence we place on the attitude object. The following spectrum of emotional responses in terms of intensity levels will occur when attitude objects do not meet with our prejudged expectations.

Scale of importance of attitude object to the self

Emotional intensity elicited

Our emotions are controllable variables that we can influence. When we are faced with incongruence between our expectation of an object of our attitude and its empirical manifestation our emotions do not simply engulf us with a life-force all of their own. We enable the emotional process through our choices. It is well understood in some cultures that crying over bereavement of a loved one is not an acceptable emotional response. Some communities are well-known for holding ‘wakes’ which are particularly celebratory and festive. Family and friends stay up during the entire night during a wake, and watch over the body of the deceased to honour their life while celebrating. How emotions are experienced, expressed, perceived, and regulated varies as a function of culturally normative behaviour by the surrounding society. In Japanese culture, emotional expressions are tightly circumscribed. This means that emotional expressions are cultural products. Our culture teaches us which emotions are appropriate for cultural situations. However, we forget that our emotions are social resources that we have culturally learned from others. We demonstrate emotional expression unconsciously and unreflectively. If our emotional expression varies from normative expectations, it is regulated by our peers. The conclusion one draws from this scenario is that, through NLP, we can access our unconscious resources and consciously choose, moderate, or intensify our emotional expressions.

5 We can model excellence of capability in others

When Grinder and Bandler initially developed their framework, and understanding of NLP in the mid-1970s they did so with the central aim of developing a modelling technology that is easily taught to others and which enabled the modelling of excellent practice in others and reproducing their results. They analysed the methods of Dr Milton Erickson as a therapist and broke these down into learning units or ‘patterns’ that they could learn themselves and apply in practical situations with clients and then document these patterns and teach them to others through NLP practitioner courses. They studied Erickson very closely and mapped out each discreet strategy that he employed as a therapist to build a catalogue of the patterns. This modelling process implies that we can all study what people do and learn how they do it. NLP provides the learning methodologies we need to do the modelling with success.

For example, if someone is a very successful presenter it is not only their natural charisma that works; it may be that they adopt a presentational strategy that paces the world view and the active experience of their audience. They may match their audience’s lead representational systems by employing a mix of auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic predicates. They may employ a mix of social strategies that involves the audience at the level of their own identities and they may access the unconscious mind of the audience and utilize their inner resources as part of their presentation. These methods are what NLP modellers call ‘patterns’ and they can be learned and adopted from people who are excellent at some task or another.

An appreciation of one’s capability as a modeller gives the conscious change leader incredible behavioural, cognitive, and emotional flexibility. We simply identify an area for improvement and a role model who demonstrates a high level of competence in this capability and then start to model them.

6 We can design and operationalize our future self

Much of our existence is based in the here and now, in the moment of each day. We operate on a conscious level dealing with mundane or interesting social activities to manoeuvre through the day. We may have ambitions in terms of what we want to be and what we want to experience at a future point in our lives. This process is called ambition. However, much of the time ambitions remain ambiguous or top level social constructions that serve to comfort us through the gritty reality of our day-to-day existence. We can lack definition, emotional substance and a strategic framework of activities that move us towards the realization of our ambitions. NLP can enable us to correct this flaw in ambition management.

Through NLP we can access our unconscious mind and build a future self that possesses all the attributes we desire. We can envisage this future self along our timeline, perhaps a year, two, three or even 10 years in the future. We can dissociate from this vision of our future self and watch what we do and see how successful, fulfilled, and happy we are. We can then associate with our future self directly through an NLP technique known as imprinting and kinaesthetically experiencing what our future self is feeling. Then we can ‘anchor’ this experience in our unconscious mind and place our future self in a place that we will arrive at and meet that version of our self through the passing of time.

This process of socially constructing a vision of our future self and meeting with it by building the memories we will have in the future, now in the present, and anchoring these will drive us unconsciously towards the end state which is when we meet our future self and realize that they are us and we are them and that we are at one with them and living as them. We have achieved our ambitions.

Having an awareness of this capability and a belief in its enabling properties in terms of identity work is a crucial property of the effective conscious change leader, particularly when one is coaching either formally or informally behavioural, cognitive, or emotional flexibility in others. Being able to co-author with others a developmental road map based on personal identity work connected to vision, mission, purpose, and ambition that they commit to and which guides their choices regarding social strategies is a central conscious change leadership capability. NLP provides a range of techniques that can enable this social construction process.

7 We can regress backwards through time to change meaning systems

NLP practitioners are sensitive to the idea of evolutionary memories. Our unconscious mind reaches operational status whilst we are still in our mother’s womb. As soon as we sense our environment we start forming memories. This means that our memory formulation is linear. It has a starting point and an end which we assume is when we die. NLP practitioners employ a useful metaphor through which we can appreciate this concept which is referred to as a ‘pearl neckless’. Each pearl represents a modality experience that we have memorized, and which is stored in our neurological vaults as a memory. It is within the structure of our modalities, the sub-modality structure, that our values, beliefs, assumptions, identities, and attitudes are formed. Often if we are experiencing the totalizing impact of a limiting belief that is manifesting with toxic effect on our lives, the best way to treat this is to regress back along the pearl neckless to a point before we had the limiting belief. We can then, through meta-thinking, locate the formation point of the limiting belief and deconstruct its sub-modality structure and then re-construct it but with different sub-modalities and, thus, a different meaning thereby changing our personal history and freeing ourselves from the toxic impact of the limiting belief in question. This can be a very intense and peculiar experience, but it is a very effective NLP methodology.

For example, I once had a traumatic and disturbing association with two colleagues whom I used to regard as personal friends. By employing the pearl neckless metaphor, I could view all the modality pearls that constituted my relationship line with these people. I could enjoy the immense friendship we had shared, the support and loyalty they had given me and the respect we had for one another. These modalities stood before the specific modality that generated a significant source of disappointment and upset. I chose to focus in on the positive modality experiences and, thus, reduced the significance of the one large negative, marking it down to experience. I consequently chose my attitude, selected my emotions, and constructed my own unique perspectives. Again, the ability to choose which element of experience we identify with demonstrates cognitive and social flexibility.

8 We all possess the resources to manage any of our problems

NLP practitioners do not solve the problems that people have, their gift is enabling us to work with our own talents as meaning-makers and to access our own inner resources and solve our own problems. In this way, NLP practitioners are closer to the model of organizational development. Thus, a principle has evolved in NLP circles advocating the idea that we have the resources and capabilities to manage our own problems. In many ways, NLP practitioners are trained coaches who can coach you to be the very best version of you, who coach you to solve your own problems, to model excellence in others and to dispose of limiting beliefs and to realize your ambitions. This principle forms a powerful belief that drives a very optimistic view of human nature in change leaders. If they believe that all people have the inner resources to manage their problems, then they will naturally orientate towards an identity that seeks to collaborate and enable the realization of the potential that lies within all of us. This provides the catalysts for a coaching culture to emerge and a dilution of the traditional paternalistic leadership style.

9 Be curious not judgemental

This principle of NLP is central to understanding rapport-building processes and mastering relationship management through the establishment of active rapport. Human beings have a powerful tendency to orientate their social expectancies around their own model of the world. As individuals, we naturally adopt an ethnocentric perspective which privileges our own standards, values, and assumptions over those of others. When this happens in a group context we experience cultural hegemony or group-think. The ethnocentric character of the individual is predicated on a system of predisposed judgements relative to social phenomenon. An ethnocentric approach to sense-making and cultural inculcation is profoundly useful in that it provides group cohesiveness and social stability as well as functioning as a teaching device. Our culture is built on an ethnocentric character and our schools, colleges and universities award qualifications based on the judging of the knowledge claims and capabilities of students. Managers often judge the performance of others from the basis of their own subjective opinions and from formal performance management criteria. So, it is difficult to avoid an ethnocentric position that is based on a system of concrete judgements.

However, if the ethnocentric character of the group and of the individual is to operate without a counterweight to limit its extreme influences then a state of toxic ethnocentricity can evolve which we call ‘cultural hegemony’. This phenomenon is characterized by low tolerance towards alternative perspectives and cultural relativism. Cultural and individual differences are given no discursive space. This means that learning is stunted, and individualism devalued. This situation is the antithesis of NLP.

In NLP circles a counterweight to ethnocentric and judgemental behaviour is encouraged which is to be critically self-aware of one’s own world view and to encourage the expression of the world view of others and seek to understand the point of view of others. This perspective of curiosity is one that is characterized by a desire to learn from others, to understand the motivations of others, to gain insight into the meaning behind people’s acts and talk. This process of curious behaviour is essential if one is to pace the reality of the other with the aim of distracting them from their reality and leading them towards new meaning constructions and, thus, new reality perspectives. It is an essential strategy to secure rapport with people.

10 Rapport is the key to social success

In their book ‘Introducing NLP’ O’Connor and Seymour (1990, p. 234) define rapport as: “The process of establishing and maintaining a relationship of mutual trust and understanding between two or more people.” Rapport is the aim of NLP. It is the meta-guiding principle of NLP. No NLP pattern can be effective unless one has established rapport with the client. Beyond the practice of NLP, the ability of the individual to function competently and with success in the broader social world is hugely influenced by their ability to establish rapport with people. For change managers rapport-building skills are essential. The ability to build rapport with your peers, your customers, your team members, and your line managers is a source of substantial competitive advantage that can provide you with the edge over others who are competing with you for scarce resources and rewards. Selling, which is arguably the basis of all business success, is dependent upon the sales team or person establishing successful rapport with their customers. Companies which are in the product development business need to have strong internal and external rapport with both suppliers and customers to emerge as a learning organization and produce a learning culture that enables innovative product designs before the completion. In political organizations, such as local authorities, rapport with constituents can, and often does, keep the ruling party in power. In today’s media friendly and globally accessible society the ability to maintain positive rapport with pressure groups and wider society stakeholders is a basic competency for the ongoing development and survival of the organization. NLP provides a framework of methodologies which can, on their own and in operation with others, provide you with enhanced rapport-building skills.

11 Uptime and downtime

The bedrock of NLP is the idea that we all have access to conscious and unconscious mind. This concept can be usefully thought of as uptime and downtime. The former involves conscious thought that we are aware of. This is when we can literally hear our own thoughts; we can visualize the objects we are thinking about; we can feel the presence of others. Conscious thought is the main medium through which business academics channel management thinking and sense making. To think at a conscious level is often assumed in mainstream management as rational thinking. It is presumed that to think rationally and intelligently we must be conscious of our thinking. Therefore, the desired state of cognition and sense making is uptime in management circles.

However, within NLP we think that to channel attention mainly towards the conscious mind seriously limits creative thinking and sense-making. NLP practitioners acknowledge, and even privilege, downtime or, as it is conventionally known, the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is the database and control centre of all of our sense-making functions and memories. From the moment we can think, we form sense impressions and we store memories. These memories do not disappear; in fact, when we form an impression of someone or of a non-human object these impressions form into memories which, literally, become part of us, we never lose them. Much of our sense-making takes place at an unconscious level and this sense-making drives many of our attitudes and social strategies and, thus, generates many of our results. NLP shows us how to access our unconscious mind and work with these resources to become aware of parts conflicts, or limiting beliefs that may be contributing to attitudes and social strategies that are hindering our development. Also, many of our values and beliefs operate at the level of unconscious thought and NLP also shows us how to loosen the lid on our conscious mind to access in a thoughtful and sensitively aware way unconscious thoughts.

The ability to move purposefully between uptime and downtime is characteristic of the ‘Mindfulness Movement’ that is permeating the corporate world. It is also the foundational capability to enable a successful conscious leadership identity. We cannot manage our internal states, such as our emotions, thinking patterns or beliefs and values, if we are always in uptime. We need to be able to access, at will, downtime states to work with our inner world and bring forth the changes in states that we require to be successful conscious change leaders.

12 COACH versus CRASH state

The final principle that, I think, merits attention is the idea that we must all work towards the attainment of COACH state in our daily lives. COACH state is a ‘super resourceful’ mind-set that enables high performance conscious leadership. A fundamental aspect of conscious change leadership is being able to self-calibrate one’s states and to manage these accordingly. The COACH and CRASH state models provide us with a tool for doing this.

In contrast to COACH state we have CRASH state which is a super toxic negative state or mind set. CRASH stands for:

Concluding thoughts

This chapter has reviewed the ideas framework which NLP is built upon. And I have sketched out the 12 key ideas of NLP. Other NLP trainers and practitioners may include other meta-ideas, although these are the ones that impressed me the most. The meta-theme or idea that underpins NLP and provides its source of value to conscious change leadership is The Law of Requisite Variety. Each of the 12 principles I reviewed, if internalized as part of the belief system held by conscious change leaders, are, in themselves, incredibly useful resources as they increase our flexibility and broaden the variety of social strategies we can access as we lead social and cultural change in organizations. The next chapter will complement the ideas framework reviewed above and consider the nature of the core paradigm that NLP orientates around.

References

Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S. (2008) Organizational Culture: Cultural Change Work in Progress, Routledge.

Argyris, C. (1990) Overcoming Organizational Defenses, Facilitating Organizational Learning, Allyn & Bacon.

Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality, Penguin.

Boddy, D. (2017) Management: An Introduction, Pearson.

Dilts, B. R. (1998) Modelling with NLP, Meta Publications.

Maio, R. G. and Haddock, G. (2009) The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change, Sage.

O’Connor, J. and Seymour, J. (1990) Introducing NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming, Mandala.

Senge, M. P. (2006) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization, Random House.