Introduction

In this chapter I will define the concept of a mindset. In doing so I will unpack the mix of variables that generate our mindsets. Our mindset shifts throughout the day. In NLP terms, we would call our mindset a nominalization; the conversion of a verb into a noun. There is a tendency to reframe the process of mind that influences our choices of emotional states, cognitive states; and behavioural states from a process of symbolic interpretation and social construction into a thing, a part of us that is somehow fixed and outside our control. In this chapter I will define mindset as a process, as a verb, that is very much under our control and open to our influence if we can access a meta-reflective state.

If as change leaders we are to master what Dean and Linda Anderson (2010) describe as conscious leadership which calls for an ability of change leaders to access their mindset and adjust their cognitive, emotional, and behavioural strategies and critically review the values, beliefs and attitudes that are state generative, then we must have a model to reflect upon. This chapter will build such a model starting with the central component ‘meta-reflection’.

Meta-reflection

When we are experiencing the enactment of the emotions, cognitions and behaviours stimulated by our meaning system we are experiencing a primary state. A primary state is the state of being we happen to be associated with in the moment; for example, the emotional primary states of being happy, or sad, or the cognitive primary states of being curious or bored, or the behavioural primary states of being energetic, or passive. When we are in a primary state we tend not to notice its characteristics or give it a name. Neither do we notice how these states are influencing the energy field we are generating and how this is then influencing the quality of rapport we are having internally and externally. This also means that we are not noticing how our primary states are influencing our social results.

When we access a meta-state, and engage in meta-reflection we are going above the primary state. A meta-state is a state of interest about a state. For example, if I like the idea of NLP then I can develop an interest in NLP. My meta-state is that I like NLP and my primary state is that I have an interest in learning about NLP. My meta-state is above my primary state. It drives my movement towards and into my primary state. My meta-state is a reference point to my primary state. Another example is when we experience a state of frustration, and instead of simply experiencing frustration unreflectively we become actively aware of our state of frustration.

This process we call meta-reflection. It is a critical change leadership skill that is largely underdeveloped throughout the global change leadership community.

Many change leaders are led by their states. They are not consciously aware of this leading process. They enter a primary state, and this influences their choice of social strategy and, thus, their social results. We aim to disrupt this habit. It is our aim to encourage change leaders to lead their states consciously rather than have their states lead them. Conscious leadership involves the calibration of our internal states and intervening in the process via state management enabled by meta-reflection and selecting the primary state that is most resourceful for us in each situation.

Defining mindsets

Our mindset can be defined as a state of mind that results from the combined influence of our selected attitudes, meta-programmes, reality frames, beliefs, values, and emotional states manifesting in our body language. The psychologist Carol Dweck made popular the concept of mindset when she developed the model of a ‘growth’ and a ‘fixed’ mindset. Dweck, (2012, p. 6) defines a fixed mindset as: “believing that your qualities are fixed in stone”. In contrast she defines a growth mindset as: “a belief system that your basic qualities are things that you can cultivate through your efforts”. She argues convincingly that the mindset that you internalize as a habit will significantly influence your social results. Our mindset is the established set of attitudes held by someone. This is an accumulative result of our meta-programs, attitudes, beliefs, and values that generate our social strategies and, therefore, our results. Our mindset is not fixed. It is very plastic and, therefore, we can change its content and structure if we can access ‘Meta-states’.

For example, we may find ourselves adopting a fixed mindset towards learning something new via a planned course of study; alternatively, we may adopt a growth mindset. What is important is that this is a choice we deliberately make, even if this choice is made at an unconscious level of thought. Through meta-reflecting we can audit our mindset and, if we choose to do so, change it. The following table highlights the mindset mix or internal variables that underpin the manifestation of each of the two mindsets, fixed or growth. I have used the example of a study course to flesh out the key points.

The process of mind that we go through to build our mindset involves relations between all the above internal variables. It is not a linear process, it is a deeply complex fusing together of the mindset mix dependent upon the importance of each variable that the unconscious mind allocates that establishes the final mindset.

Our mindsets are incredibly important regarding change leadership outcomes, yet, sadly, the practice of meta-reflecting towards our mindset is, again, not a standard change leadership practice. Hitherto, research studies by organizations such as IBM, the British Computing Society and Google reveal that the inability to reflect upon and shift mindset purposefully is a major fault line undermining change leadership efforts.

Modality Frame Directive

The Modality Frame Directive is our model of the world analysed in micro detail. What this means is that it is a very small slice of our sense-making experience that is framed and used to generalize experience. Some scholars call this phenomenon our sense impressions, schemas, our interpretive frames, or our cognitive maps. Modality frame directives are basically memories or sense experiences we have had in our lives. They are very important as they have meanings attached that we unconsciously assume to be fixed and these meanings drive our attitudes towards things and thus our emotional states and social strategies. Modality frame directives heavily influence our social results. For example, if our early life experience involved our parents tutoring us and believing in us and if our subsequent experience of school is positive then these modalities guide our attitude towards our ability to learn.

Modality frame directives have a structural composition. They have sensory characteristics such as: colour, sound, smell, taste, time, location, purpose, characters. These aspects of the modality frame structure are known as ‘sub modalities’. For example, we may attend a progress meeting with our senior manager to discuss how the change project is progressing set against pre-planned performance indicators. As we experience the meeting in the actual moment we are unconsciously building our modality frame directive. Just as an artist creates their own unique impression of reality, so we create our own unique modality frames. These modality frames constitute our memory of the meeting.

The relevance of this idea for the change leader is based upon the principle that underpins symbolic interactionism as described by Blumer (1969). His first core principle of meaning states that “humans act toward people and things based upon the meanings that they have given to those people or things” (Blumer, 1969, p. 2). Symbolic interactionism holds the principle of meaning as central to human behaviour. What is particularly interesting in NLP terms is that these meanings are social constructions that the change leader has, themselves, created. They are not reflections of an objective reality, rather they are maps of a perceived reality, and imperfect maps loaded with deletions, distortions, and generalizations. A central aspect of NLP is that we can meta-reflect upon our modality structures and frames and disassociate from the established content and review and reframe this resulting in a change in the meaning attributed and therefore a change in our attitudes, emotions, cognitions, and behaviours. This is a significant conscious leadership skill.

Somatic anchor

An anchor is any symbol that one associates with an experience. The symbol can be abstract or it can be a material object that you can touch, or it may be a sound you can hear. We also have somatic anchors. These are anchors that we imbed into our physical demeanour. The somatic anchor is the posture we adopt when we think about the modality frame directive. It is an expression of our cognitive and emotional states. It tends to manifest as a closed and contracted physical expression. The somatic anchor not only represents the mindset, it also reinforces it by anchoring it to our psychology. If we regularly enter a particular state it is highly probable that we will fire a somatic anchor. To fire the somatic anchor means to activate the state by physically expressing the form of the somatic anchor. For example, when one sits back sharp and tightly folds one’s arms this could be a somatic anchor that puts one into an aggressive or frustrated state. Sometimes we can change our social dynamics simply by reflecting upon our somatic anchors and deleting these from our expressions if they are proving to fire un resourceful states.

It is commonly understood that ‘emotion follows motion’ and this principle is very useful for us to remember that often somatic anchors become habits. We express the somatic anchor and fire its emotional references unconsciously. For example, entering closed body language posture when attending a meeting one is not connected to reinforces our fixed mindset and enables a decent into CRASH state. Meta-reflection helps us identify these un-resourceful habits and change them.

Anchoring

In contrast to a somatic anchor are visual anchors. An example of a visual anchor that is used for marketing purposes is the McDonalds logo. As the brand logo of this fast food business it is intended to anchor the association of McDonalds in the mind of a consumer with a satisfying and enjoyable catering experience.

Anything that is meaningful to the self can function as an anchor. Whenever one thinks about an anchor, either at a conscious or unconscious level we trigger an emotional state which generates an attitude and a social strategy. In terms of change leadership, the change leader can function as an anchor in the mindset of change participants and the very voicing of the change leader’s name will generate the associated emotional state and behavioural strategies. This has significant implications for change management leadership. An anchor in NLP terms can be understood as any symbol that an individual or group associates with an experience and related emotional states and attitudes.

By simply thinking about the anchor one can access the emotional state that one previously associated with the anchor.

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”. For example, if some individual wishes to deliver a public presentation with confidence whilst controlling their anxiety levels, they could access a memory of when they had this social and emotional state and think strongly and with acuity about the anchor associated with this experience. The anchor can be any kind of concrete or abstract symbol we choose. By simply focusing in on the anchor we fire the previous experience and use this process to enter the social domain of presenting and bring with us the highly resourceful state elicited. Anchoring is the process through which we accept an experience and store it in our memory for future retrieval.

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 would be:

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

Understanding how to calibrate our anchors is a fundamental meta-reflective skill. If our anchors can fire our primary states and if these have such a powerful influence upon our choice of social strategies and our corresponding results, then knowing how to meta-reflect towards our choice of anchors and what they anchor is a fundamental change leadership skill. Also, we must always bear in mind that our audience will have their own anchors. For example, there may have been a past change project that promised much yet delivered little. The language of change leadership may therefore itself be a significant anchor that when fired releases cynical and negative states in your audience connected to past failures. This is particularly relevant when these people may have engaged with optimism and hope in the earlier initiative only to be let down in some way by those in charge of the change project or able to influence its delivery outcomes.

A belief

A belief is simply what we hold to be true about the attitude object that is driving the construction and maintenance of the modality frame directive. Beliefs are reality perspectives we hold to be true about ourselves, others, and the content of the universe. Beliefs can be based on material constructs and conceptual constructs. Beliefs are extremely powerful filters which guide our sensory acuity as we experience our external and internal representations. Beliefs are often unconscious and so, much of the time, we do not think about them. However, they can guide our conscious mind and have a substantial influence on our social strategies of choice and, therefore, our results. For example, if one has a belief that leaders should be strong, decisive, and confrontational then one could spend one’s life unconsciously judging people in leadership roles against the model that the belief generates. Our ability to meta-reflect on the nature of our belief system and how the discrete beliefs influence our social results is an important aspect of change leadership.

A good example of this was developed by the management guru, Douglas McGregor, in his seminal work The Human Side of Enterprise (1960). McGregor provided an analysis of two contrasting belief systems that managers may relate to. He called these ‘theory Y’ and ‘theory X’. McGregor firmly believed that managers, influenced by their life history, internalize the beliefs associated with either theory Y or theory X. These belief systems heavily influence the kind of corporate and organizational culture that will develop through time. They become the unconscious guiding compass for managers and they are taught through attitudes and behaviours to other managers. Table 10.2 details the model.

It appears clear to me that theory X and Y are both examples of a fixed and a growth mindset. If one is trying to encourage the emergence of a learning culture, then perhaps our choice of mindset really does matter in acutely strategic terms. The challenge for change leaders is whether they are willing to meta-reflect on their belief system and, if required, intervene, and delete beliefs that are proving to be incongruent with the values of the change project and best practice change leadership and replace these with new beliefs that are congruent.

A value

A value is the sense of worth that we assign to an attitude object. This is the mechanism that guides our attention and generates our internal motivations. Our value system is directly connected to and rooted within our belief systems and thus our choice of mindset. Values are concepts that reflect the beliefs of an individual or culture. A set of values may be placed into the notion of a value system. Values are considered subjective and vary across people and cultures. Types of values include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (political, religious) values, social values, and aesthetic values. For NLP a practitioner’s values are cultural productions and the batteries behind our social strategies.

Integrity in the application of a value refers to its continuity; persons have integrity if they apply their values appropriately regardless of arguments or negative reinforcement from others. Our values are key drivers of our sensory acuity; they heavily influence what we pay attention to and for how long and to what depth. This is important for change leadership. One would think that it would be common sense to engage in meta-reflection regarding one’s own value framework if one is entering a change leadership role. To identify values that perhaps are incongruent with the change project and develop a management strategy for these would be useful. For example, if I am the change leader yet I do not value detail though I value high level description, then clearly this could be a problem. Therefore, if I can meta-reflect on this as I sense my discomfort when someone engages in a detailed account of a change situation, ask myself why I am feeling uncomfortable, identify my lack of value for detail and make a conscious effort to change this and accommodate or even welcome detailed accounts as well as high level accounts then, arguably, I will be more effective and enjoy higher levels of rapport.

An attitude

One of the substantial targets for NLP interventions is attitude. An important premise of NLP is that we can select an attitude and, so we do not adopt an attitude because people make us; we select an attitude as an act of personal power. Therefore, we have the power to change our attitude at will and, thus, change our emotional state and associated behaviour and physiology.

An attitude is defined by Maio and Haddock (2009, p. 10) as: “an association in memory between an attitude object and an evaluation of it. An attitude is defined as an overall evaluation of an object that is based on cognitive, affective, and behavioural information.” Attitudes drive our reality constructions and they determine our state of mind. Attitudes control our very existence and one could also claim that they have significant control over our destinies. If we are to engage in the artful practice of NLP intervention, then an understanding of the dynamics of attitudes is crucial. Attitudes also vary in valence and strength. The object of an attitude can either be abstract or concrete in form. NLP interventions aim to dilute or strengthen the valence or strength of attitudes.

Attitudes are deeply imbedded in the unconscious mind. The nature of an attitude can be inferred from our behaviour and therefore the NLP technique of calibration is so important. It is what people do, or say, which reveals their attitudes and the nature of these in terms of valence and strength and how attitudes manifest in behavioural strategies. To understand the process of attitude at work one should break it down into its sequential parts.

The cycle depicted in Figure 10.1 illustrates the wheel of repetitive behaviour we find ourselves trapped in that, over time, can have disastrous results for us. NLP is ideally suited to intervene in the pattern and change its structural content by altering the meaning we attribute to the attitude object. This results in an altered emotional state which induces us to select a new behavioural strategy which then results in a new kind of social feedback.

An example of this cycle at work would be a change leader who has a phobia regarding public speaking. The act of public speaking is the attitude object and the attitude could be described as a feeling of lacking in confidence that the person has and, thus, a deep dislike of the object. The meaning attribution could be that the person feels that no one is really interested in what they have to say and that they will lose their belief in their material as soon as they start to present their subject. The emotional state thus elicited may be one of intense fear and anxiety. The behavioural strategy adopted may be to simply avoid at all costs the attitude object. The resulting social feedback would be a public perception that the person lacks self-confidence and does not like engaging with people. This social feedback then reinforces the attitude and the object of the attitude. If the person must experience the attitude object then the resulting anxiety and nerves, most probably, will show in their presentation and the social feedback, it is likely, will prove to be negative. NLP aims to intervene at the meaning attribution stage. If one can work with a client to shift the meaning from negative to positive, one can alter the cycle in totality.

Emotion

Dilts and Delozier (2000: 355) drawing from Grolier’s Encyclopedia define emotions as follows: “Emotions are biopsychological reactions of an individual to important events in his or her life.” Emotions are ‘feelings’ that we get that cause physical changes in us. Emotions have an important purpose in that they move us to action. If we feel fear we normally flee, or we may attack. These strategies are driven by the intensity of the emotional charge and are influenced by our culture. Emotions initially generate changes in our inner state and then are observable in our physiological state. We can become prisoners of our emotional states. They can become deeply habitulised and ingrained on our physical, cognitive, and behavioural habitus. NLP provides tools that enable one to audit one’s emotions and assess their resourceful nature and identify the habits of thought and the modality frame directives that generate the emotional states. Daniel Goleman (1996) has written extensively about ‘emotional intelligence’ and he advances the idea that we have two minds; our cognitive mind and our emotional mind. Often, the former influences the latter, intellect follows emotional sense making. This occurs at a deeply unconscious level of thought and the sense making of the emotional mind is incredibly quick and outruns that of the cognitive mind. This a basic survival mechanism as in the past our ancestors had to act swiftly based on instinct that triggered defensive emotions if they were to survive. NLP is a valuable resource to enable the development of our emotional intelligence which involves us being able to heighten our powers of empathy, social awareness, internal management of our emotional states and the ability to generate at will emotional states that are highly resourceful for us situations. Finally, emotions generate an energy field around us that can be contagious to others and in some cases can be unsettling. NLP helps us be self-aware regards our energy fields and enables us to change these or increase or reduce their emotional intensity.

Meta-programmes

A basic component of mindset structure is our meta-programmes. One of the fundamental innovations of NLP was the identification of meta-programmes. Hall & Bodenhamer (2009, p.30) define meta-programmes as “Different frames of mind that colour the way we see and experience the world. Meta-programmes are the mental and perceptual filters for paying attention to information. These perceptual filters govern our attention as our frames of mind or thinking patterns.” Thus, meta-programmes are a fundamental aspect of our mindset of choice, change the meta-programmes we use, and we can either reinforce our mindset or change it quite significantly. Meta-programmes are patterns of thought that guide our perceptual awareness and heavily influence the way we distort, delete, and generalize our experiences. Meta-programmes are biased compasses of the mind that lead us to behave in very specific ways. Meta-programmes navigate our perceptual awareness and provoke selective representation of reality and generate the ‘model’ for every social strategy we operate. Thus, meta-programmes have a very significant impact on our social results. I shall examine meta-programmes in greater detail in the next chapter.

Closing comments

Most managers will understand software systems such as Excel, PowerPoint, and the Internet. They will have a working knowledge of the processes that support the organization of work. They will no doubt have a deep understanding of the technical aspects of their specific occupational identity, e.g., HR Manager, IT Manager, Services Manager, Production Manager, or Marketing Manager. However, when they enter a change leadership role this knowledge is useful though not enough. They need a working knowledge of how people tick. They need to be able to figure people out and, importantly, they need to be able to figure themselves out. This knowledge is concerned with unpacking the vital mix of variables that influence the form and content of our mindsets. They require a competent understanding of the constituent elements that shape mindset and how to think about this and act towards it. This chapter has presented a model that enables such a learning outcome.

References

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

Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic Interactionism, University of California Press.

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

Dweck, S. C. (2012) Mindset: How You Can Fulfil your Potential, Robinson.

Goleman, D. (1996) Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury.

Hall, M. and Bodenhamer, D. (2009) Figuring People Out, Reading People Using Meta Programs, NSP Neuro Semantic Publications.

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

McGregor, D. (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise, McGraw-Hill.