Introduction

In this chapter I will consider the deeply personal nature of NLP and argue that all changes in behaviours or values and beliefs within an organization start with the self. Organizations are socio-cultural systems and are characterized by the butterfly effect which dictates that a change in one part of the system will result in a vibration throughout the culture that creates systematic change. NLP is a valuable personal development toolkit as well as a resource to enable broader behavioural change. This chapter will also consider unconscious and conscious modelling as a transmission strategy for inculcating preferred leadership styles throughout an organization. I will take our preferred leadership style, conscious change leadership, as the working model and explain how this can be taught at both conscious and unconscious levels of learning to others throughout the organization.

The butterfly effect

The butterfly effect is rooted in Systems Theory and was originally applied to explain systematic changes in weather conditions by the scientist Edward Lorenz. The idea is powerfully simple and can be applied to behavioural and cultural change thinking and practices. The premise of the idea is that there is the implicit promise of group and society change through the concept of the butterfly effect. The basic principle is that any change in the composition of a system will result in wider change throughout the whole system. If I change my values or beliefs and social strategies then you may choose to consciously or unconsciously model and internalize these changes and, thus, we have group change. To be an effective conscious change leader, I must be the change I want to see in the world. I must model the changes I want to see in others with integrity and authenticity. It is this capacity for modelling behaviour that is relative to all human cultures that enables the butterfly effect in the context of organizational change.

If we accept the idea that people are natural modellers, that they instinctively model the behavioural, cognitive, and emotional strategies that they perceive to be socially desirable, and/or are successful at generating desired results, then we can also accept that as conscious change leaders what we believe in and value really does matter. Our beliefs and values are the batteries behind our behavioural, cognitive, and emotional strategies and, as such, they are evident to others. Our expressions reveal our beliefs and our values. What we do reveals what we value and believe in. In change leadership terms this principle cannot be overstressed. If your change leaders start to act as conscious change leaders and create micro changes in their presentation of self, rooted in a shift in form and content of their values and beliefs, you will stimulate the butterfly effect. Assuming the potential role models sustain the changes and inculcate these into their cultural habitus, and assuming they stand as significant others in their organizational culture, then there is a likelihood that all or part of their new habitus will be adopted consciously or unconsciously by the generalized others throughout the organization.

The theory is that throughout the cultural landscape of the organization there is a network of cultural domains, pockets of localized culture where the various managers and team leaders practice their craft as leaders. Within these cultural domains there will be active leadership/follower relations of various qualities being enacted daily. As the butterfly effect ripples through the cultural fabric of the organization, the modellers become cultural carriers of the new value, beliefs and associated behavioural, emotional, and cognitive strategies. This network of cultural carriers can be understood to be culturally contagious and the new leadership model will spread organically and, through time, become established as a cultural norm. This is the butterfly effect.

NLP concentrates on micro strategies aimed at creating sustainable changes in one’s leadership or management style. Yes, there is always the idea that as an individual making a difference in terms of established cultural norms it is very difficult to achieve. However, if you assume the philosophy implicit in the butterfly effect you can and will generate changes in the cultural habitus of others and you will create a ripple effect throughout your organization; even if the ripple effect is minute, it has the potential to graft onto the established culture and grow rapidly as a new and dynamic leadership culture. NLP methods are ideally suited to enabling this process of cultural change in an organization. One additional principle or belief that you will need in order to adopt the butterfly effect as a philosophy of behavioural and cultural change is that we are all integral elements of a complicated social and cultural system.

Individual or Holon?

A conversation that needs to be conducted in an organization facing pressure to change, and possibly change rapidly, concerns the ways in which managers and staff perceive themselves. Do they think of themselves as individuals separate from the overarching cultural and social system; or do they see themselves as integrated social beings that are part of an organic and dynamic socio/cultural system that they have considerable influence over? The answers to these questions are of strategic importance to change leaders. This question explores identity: specifically, the two mutually inclusive identities of ‘ego’ and ‘soul’.

A significant skillset characteristic of an authentic conscious change leader is the ability to perceive themselves as a Holon (Dilts, 2016), as a part of a broader social and cultural system, and to have a strong sense of soul, an orientation towards serving others and facilitating their development. Ego involves motivational drivers that focus upon self gratification whilst Soul involves serving others; ego motivates individualism ,whilst soul motivates tribalism. Maslow (1943) perceptively identified the idea of a ‘Hierarchy of motivational needs’ that is arguably universal across the world’s cultures.

Maslow recognized that we have safety and physiological needs at our basic core. These are the needs that ‘benevolent autocrats’ can satisfy that are traditionally associated with transactional leadership which is not normally aligned with the idea of conscious change leadership. Then, we have higher needs such as a need to be recognized and to self-actualize to develop as part of a group. These needs are normally associated with transformational leaders who are orientated towards a conscious leadership and a diffusion approach to change management , which involves generative dialogue and participative leadership as cultural norms. Conscious change leaders have developed the capability to minimize the constraining influence of their ego which privileges their own perspectives.

Anderson and Anderson (2010) develop a useful model of ego. The ego, according to the authors, involves the socially desirable and insecure version of the self, operating instinctively in the world. The ego is our identity as we would like to believe it. Our ego is made up of our socially constructed beliefs, values, and meta-programmes. We use our ego to gain our sense of individuality and it is against our ego that many of our decisions are made. If we are imbedded in an ego state then, arguably, we will also be entrenched in our first perceptual position, be heavily invested in our own ethnocentric maps, and have low tolerance towards other people’s maps.

The challenge with the ego is that its primary purpose is to protect us from failure, to separate us from ‘them’, or the ‘other’, to give us ontological certainty. Our ego can be considered as our auto pilot, that helps us navigate social dynamics, often unreflectively and in most cases unconsciously. This means that we can lose our powers of empathy and restrict our emotional intelligence development and, finally, minimize the power of our conscious change leadership skills. This is all bad news for organizations involved in leading change when major blockers include fixed mindsets, organizational culture and highly ingrained defensive routines aiming to maintain the status quo. As we develop from childhood to adulthood we become socially conditioned and programmed to unreflectively be led by our ego.

However, we can control our ego and limit its power of mastery over us and enter a state of conscious leadership. This involves recognizing what Anderson et al (2010) refer to as ‘our higher being’. For me this is the window into my unconscious mind and I can view from a position of a meta-state the programmes I am running that are generating my emotions, thinking strategies, behaviours, and attitudes that are producing my social results and fuelling my ego. In NLP circles we call this process meta-reflection. Meta means above or beyond something. What we do when entering a state of meta-reflection is we create an internal mentor and we build rapport with this resource. Our internal mentor is the inner voice that we all have chattering away in the background. The value of this strategy is that our internal mentor can move into a meta-state for us and disassociate with our primary emotional, cognitive, and behavioural states and critically examine the resourceful nature of the meta-programmes that are generating these primary states. Our internal mentor can challenge the controlling power our ego has over us from a safe place. Our internal mentor can enable the emergence of our soul as a counterpoint and regulator of our ego.

In NLP terms, our soul is not a kind of spiritual entity. Rather, our soul is that aspect of our unconscious mind that connects our desires and motivations to serving others; to being curious about other people, their culture, world views, values, and beliefs. When we are in a good state of rapport with our soul we are both internally and externally focused. We are in touch with our own world views, beliefs, values, emotions and meta-programmes and we can empathize with the internal representations that others create that generate their maps of the world as they see it. We are in a generative state, an internal state that generates resourceful strategies that resonate with the people around us and establish opportunities for collaborative action and dialogue.

I am not saying that having an ego is a bad idea. Rather, what I am advancing is the premise that we need a relationship between our ego and our soul that is evenly balanced if we are to operate as effective conscious change leaders. We need to identify ourselves as Holon’s, as part of a broader integrated system, who can act as role model for others in the organization at both an unconscious and conscious level of active modelling. We can use the NLP method of meta-reflection to maintain a balanced relationship between our ego and our soul.

If we use the technique of meta-reflection we can self-calibrate how our relationship between ego and soul is influencing our emotional states, thinking strategies, and behavioural norms and question the resourceful nature of these in relation to the change programme and the kind of productive and collaborative relationship we are trying to build with the change teams. Anderson and Anderson (2010), in their work on change management, refer to this process of internal state management as basically constituting conscious change leadership.

Anderson and Anderson (2010) also argue that a major problem with many change leadership projects is that the senior team are in autopilot mode. This is an unreflective action orientation relying on instinctive retrieval of models of management that worked previously. This may be an effective strategy when dealing with either developmental change or transitional change, but not so when dealing with transformational change. In fact, it is probably a weak strategy for managing developmental and transitional change projects also. This is because the effect that one is having on team members is not being critically assessed by the leader and, thus, problems can be created that could be avoided if the leader applied conscious leadership via meta-reflecting to carry out their duties.

Once, a very experienced HRM executive at the end of an NLP course turned to me and asked “David, I understand how this NLP would be helpful to me in terms of my own issues, though I am struggling to understand how we would use it to sort out… well… the prickly customers we have to deal with.” I think this, at one level, was a reasonable question though it also struck me as evidence that they had missed the point of the course. To change a cultural system, one must make changes in one’s own internal cultural system, meta-programmes of the mind, attitudes, and social skills, if one has any chance of stimulating change in others. One of the significant advantages of NLP is that one can apply many of its strategies to one’s self. To emerge as a capable conscious change leader, one needs to be able to morph into a Holon, appreciate and value your being as existing in a cultural and social system that rewards you if you feed it. This involves us committing to the idea of service; we are, by nature, leaders only if we have followers and followers choose their leaders based on how best they serve their interests. To establish a culture of conscious change leadership one needs role models and an understanding of modelling processes.

Modelling

Modelling involves internalizing as a habit of mind the cognitive, behavioural, and the emotional strategies that another person uses to generate a social result. Dilts (1998, p. 29) defines ‘modelling’ as “involving observing and mapping the successful processes which underlie an exceptional performance of some type. It is the process of taking a complex event or series of events and breaking it into small enough chunks so that it can be recapitulated in some way.” Dilts (1998, p. 29) explains that the purpose of modelling is to “create a pragmatic map or model of that behaviour which can be used to reproduce or stimulate some aspect of that performance by anyone who is motivated to do so.” Bearing in mind that the purpose of culture is to gain control over one’s environment so that the group may be successful, then it is logical to assume that if a leadership style is seen to be successful others will unconsciously model the success factors that generate the leadership style and its social results.

Modelling was the original intention of Bandler and Grinder (1975) as pioneers of NLP. The principles of modelling are that:

Modelling is not always done at a conscious level. We are all culturally wired to unconsciously model excellent social strategies demonstrated by significant others in our experiences. The most powerful example is that of modelling habitus which is defined as the manners, ways of speech, accents and physical expressions adopted by a member of a particular class. As a child matures, it models the habitus of its parents and, thus, reproduces the identity culture of the class from which it originates. This is a good example of unconscious modelling. In corporate settings, leadership styles associated with significant others may be modelled unconsciously by those who aspire to similar leadership positions. The power of NLP modelling is that one’s modelling capabilities are greatly enhanced when one becomes unconsciously competent at the modelling process through study at a conscious level of modelling processes. Reflective practice makes perfect practice.

Anthropology as a source of modelling catalysts

There is no doubt that to change a leadership culture we need to use proven methods. Within anthropology we have the basis for a very successful cultural change intervention regarding the leadership style associated with a cultural group. This resource can be usefully described as modelling catalysts which are defined as cultural processes which enable the modelling and inculcation of behavioural, cognitive, and emotional strategies imbedded in a sense of identity that is approved of within the culture. We know that anthropologists have studied the sense-making process, rituals, routines, stories, values, and beliefs that generate cultural themes that guide the expressive choices and capacities of cultural members. And we know that they, in partnership with sociologists and psychologists, have identified the micro processes or strategies people use at an unconscious level of thought to model cultural norms. There are three modelling catalysts that we use in NLP to enable successful modelling.

Mirror neurons

A mirror neuron is a neuron that stimulates the matching of a behavioural, cognitive, or emotional state being projected by a significant other (Hatfield et al., 2014). The neuron mirrors the behaviour of the other, as though the observer were themselves acting. If a leader adopts a critical mindset towards a change programme, then there is a strong possibility that their followers will match their mindset and even the corresponding emotional state and behavioural model. The stimulant for this is the firing of the mirror neuron. The mirror neuron will only be activated if the role-model is regarded as a significant other by the observer and their peers. The peer group is ‘the generalized other’ which has considerable influence over the sense-making processes of its members. If the generalized other subjectively interprets an individual as a ‘significant other’ then there is a high probability that they may model aspects of the significant other’s world view and social strategies at the level of cognition, emoting, and behaving. As stated earlier, this process of modelling will also involve the values and beliefs of the significant other.

Matching

Matching as a modelling catalyst involves adopting similar cultural attributes to the other such as:

Matching is defined at one level by Dilts and Delozier (2000, p. 698) as: “The process of reflecting or feeding back the cognitive or behavioural patterns of another person.” If you do this effectively you will act as an unconscious mirror to the other who is more likely to relax with you and enter a state of dialogue. Matching is a fundamental process which is essential to building and maintaining and developing a culture. When we are infants we unconsciously match and, thus, model the culture of our parents which includes language, customs, and behavioural norms. It appears that human beings are culturally wired to respond favourably to matching and that it is fundamental to cultural change processes. Moving from a transactional leadership culture to a transformational leadership culture characterized by conscious change leadership traits would require active modelling and acute matching throughout the cultural group involved. It is difficult to conceive of a culture that does not, at the level of a critical mass, share many of the above cultural attributes. Thus, matching is a very important modelling catalyst.

Anchoring

Anchoring is a modelling catalyst; it enables us to deeply imbed the cultural traits we want to model into our unconscious mind so that they become part of our cultural habitus. Dilts and Delozier (2000, p. 29) define anchoring as “The process of associating an internal response with some environmental or mental trigger, so that the response may be quickly, and sometimes covertly, re-accessed.”

Anchoring, involves directly associating an experience with a core symbol. For example, the act of prayer is an anchor as the ritual directly associates the person praying with their religious belief system and fires the state of faith. All cultures are founded upon a system of anchors which may be in the form of material symbols, or they may be imbedded in language activated through rituals and routines, or they may be more abstract rooted in ideas or beliefs. What the pioneers of NLP did was to use the idea of anchoring as a modelling catalyst. If you wish to model a conscious change leader’s cultural trait then you would directly associate with their model of the world and anchor the state of mind this generates in you.

The anchoring process, when it occurs organically, is arbitrary. However, change leaders trained in NLP can purposefully set up an anchor in the mind of a change audience. For example, they can use change mantras repeatedly to anchor ideas and belief systems to experiential reference points. A change mantra is a short sentence that contains anchors relating to an outcome. Examples of change mantras that contain anchors would be:

The choice of words is evocative and intended to stir internal representations in an audience’s mind and trigger specific emotional states. The organization can then design marketing images around these verbal mantras that visualize the empirical context.

Unconscious modelling

We can use success factor modelling techniques as analytical tools (Dilts, 2016) to unpack the cultural traits that sustain a model of leadership in a significant other. Then we can develop training programmes based on modelling principles to inculcate our management community regarding the conscious change leadership model we are advancing. However, we can also encourage unconscious modelling based on organic sense-making processes.

When people start to unconsciously model the cultural traits of someone in the workplace what they are doing is signifying their acceptance of this person both as a role model and as a leader. Let us consider the following example.

We would need to take some time unpacking the success factors that enabled John to be perceived as the natural successor to the MD. However, what we can see at a glance is that it is highly probable that John was successful because he mirrored the leadership model that his MD was operating through. He may have done this at a conscious level of social strategizing, though this is not that probable. It is more likely that he simply unconsciously modelled his MD because his meta-programme was strongly orientated towards matching and away from mismatching. He had an ability to hold onto difficult feelings and not reveal these, to build connections with his MD and build rapport that smoothed their working relationship. He was a talented modeller. If he had a different MD with a very different cultural profile in terms of leadership traits I think the likelihood is that John would have modelled this just as effectively. The challenge for John, and for his colleagues, is authenticity. Does he have an authentic model of the world that leans towards behavioural, cognitive, and emotional flexibility that is generative in the absence of a role-model, a significant other? If you formally teach John how to model and how to meta-reflect then I think he would self-generate the behavioural, emotional, and cognitive flexibility he requires to adapt to a given situation. If he did not have a role-model in his social space, then he would simply reach out beyond his comfort zone and locate one. This kind of reflective awareness is essentially what is involved with conscious leadership skills.

There is much we can learn from other disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, and systems theory to help us be far more effective conscious change leaders. There is a compelling case for the fusion of theory and practice and to encourage the cross fertilization of ideas if organizations are to balance their ego culture with their soul culture. Dilts (2016) argues for the ideal organization that is characterized by a culture of conscious change leadership through which the ego and soul, as collective subjective entities, are held as generative and complementary which enable ambitions to be pursued whilst maintaining a healthy commitment to a broader sense of mission based on a vision of a world that organizations want to live in.

In my experience, a common mistake that potential leaders make is to assume that they, on their own, cannot change the culture they work through. This is both a leadership failure and the philosophy of an individual, not of a Holon. Through NLP we can loosen such limiting beliefs and encourage and facilitate the acknowledgement of each person being a Holon and of their power to activate the butterfly effect throughout the organization. This, of course, depends on each person identifying with the overarching systems and taking responsibility for the part they play in sustaining established cultural norms that privilege ego over soul, individualism over holarchy, and ambition over vision. The ideal scenario is a heathy equilibrium between these forces; as they are not necessarily mutually exclusive they can be mutually inclusive and establish what Dilts (2016) calls ‘The circle of success’ that unites all stakeholders behind the strategic change agenda for the organization.

Concluding thoughts

NLP is based upon the principle of systems thinking and the meta-idea that as we are all individuals and Holons that connect to a broader holarchy or cultural system, when we make changes in ourselves at the level of cognition, emoting and behaving we can stimulate changes in our broader cultural system. By taking responsibility for our social results we can use these as feedback mechanisms to refine or transform our social strategies through modelling processes and, thus, change the nature of our social results. The argument that states that culture cannot be changed, or if it can it is incredibly difficult to do so, is a limiting belief. All individuals have the power to model new behaviours, values and emotions and this modelling process can and does trigger broader cultural change through the butterfly effect. Once our basic motivational drivers are satisfied we have a need for self-actualization and the desire to serve a greater propose, to belong to the broader community as a valued and respected community member who adds community value. NLP aims to enable the alignment of our ego (ambitions) with our soul (our higher purpose) and integrate this alignment into the broader organizational and cultural system. The NLP strategy of modelling, which is firmly established in cultural theory, is an effective way to develop new behavioural, cognitive, and emotive strategies that will help management teams prosper in a dynamic and often unpredictable environment and work based culture.

References

Anderson, D. and Anderson, L. (2010) Beyond Change Management, Pfeiffer.

Bandler, R. and Grinder, J. (1975) The Structure of Magic, V1, Science and Behaviour Books.

Dilts, B. R. (2016) Generative Collaboration, Dilts Strategy Group.

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

Dilts, B. R. and Delozier, J. (2000) Encyclopedia of Systematic Neuro-Linguistic Programming and NLP New Coding, NLP University Press.

Hatfield, E., Bensman, L., Thornton, D.P. and Rapson, L.R. (2014) New Perspectives on Emotional Contagion: A Review of Classic and Recent Research on Facial Mimicry and Contagion, Interpersonal.

Maslow, A. H. (1943) A Theory of Motivation, Psychological Review, 50: 370–396.