“Leaders are born, not made” is one of the common misconceptions that have prevailed over centuries.
Better leaders CAN be made… one hundred percent! Leadership is an art which can be developed and enriched using the tools and techniques of Neuro Linguistic Programming. Effective leaders require a combination of three types of skills.
Administering emotions, gearing up learning, induce and convince.
Here, balancing or managing emotions particularly centers around you. When you manage others’ emotions it comes under influencing led by convincing them.
Leaders work towards a common goal with their team, and in this growth and developmental process, various kinds of conflicts and disagreements can arise which tend to split the team. Different circumstances can create pressure, for example, in the form of meeting deadlines. In these cases NLP works as an excellent starter to ease these issues. The leader must know how to manage and control his own emotions.
Handling a situation under pressure and keeping your nerves cool is the first basic criteria of leadership. NLP has some common and wonderfully effective tools to deal with this. One of these is the “circle of excellence”. Showing examples of excellence and achievements in similar situations, motivates the team and increases their self-esteem. The positive state can then be anchored to gain instant access to it when it is required.
Leaders are human beings, so undoubtedly they commit mistakes! No one is Mr/Mrs. Right here but leaders, who make mistakes, admit them and redirect the whole ideology into a positive flow. The team can easily relate to such leaders and follow them, so persuasion in not required. It’s the Leaders’ action that makes his team follow his ideologies towards a common goal, SUCCESS!
An effective leader constantly upgrades herself/himself by enhancing her/his knowledge, be it about techniques, process or about his perceptions and beliefs. Accelerated learning becomes effective only when a leader implements the knowledge in an appropriate manner.
A leader must be able to communicate the visions with a structured guideline. NLP has tools which help in building visions which work in a realistic, sensible and ardent way.
The next step is rehearsing, which can be done using the NLP perceptual positions. Rather than the traditional technique used for conflicts between people, you can use the technique when imagining yourself as an ideal leader. In doing so, you have to utilize your internal resources in such a way that it gives you a well structured work plan. It also gives you ample of scope for mental rehearsal in formulating your action plan and acting accordingly.
In this rehearsal you have to imagine yourself as three individuals. One will be the normal you, the second will be the hypothetical leader in a particular situation and the third will be an observer.
The “old you” will judge, decide and act in a given situation in a particular way that you already know. But the “hypothetical you” will think of the different aspects and then decide. The “observer you” will be neutral and emotion free, encouraging the “older you” in transformation.
Now the big task! It solely depends on you whether you want to transform yourself into the new version, merge your old and new version, or be selective. Being selective means you would choose how to act depending on the circumstances.
So go ahead with the different NLP tools, practice, rehearse and organize yourself in becoming an excellent leader.
By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk
