Perceptual Positioning - Seeing The CLIENT's Reality, Not Just Our Own.

Now most of the working population are good to go again in most cases (almost!).... are we losing sight of customer service... and customer care, as well as employee welfare?

With the huge focus on employee engagement, wellbeing, mental health and perception of brand, are we forgetting...

Customer loyalty is priceless..

Being brand conscious to attract new customers is vital, but do we do it so much we are forgetting the customers we already have? 

Perceptual Positioning is taking another position outside of the view you may normally hold. For example, if you are having difficulties in a relationship or experiencing a conflict, you can use Perceptual Positions to step outside of your own position and explore other angles.

This NLP technique is widely used in business, political conflict situations and transformational development. In addition to being useful for improving one to one interactions, it’s great for sales teams to consider the position of the customer. It can also be used for presenters considering the position of the audience. The process will enhance your opportunity for success and expand your thinking and awareness.

It can be used before important interactions to prepare, or after in order to learn from the experience.

A powerful tool for ultimate self-awareness.

Perceptual positioning is a form of modelling that allows us to step into somebody else’s shoes, and see what they see, hear what they hear, and feel what they feel.

Perceptual Positioning can be used to help you step back from your own mental map to get distance from emotionally charged representations. You can also use the process to create empathy and even learn new things by getting valuable insights into another person’s map of the world.

Have you ever had an experience that particularly aggravated you or annoyed you long after the event occurred? Attached to this experience would be some feelings in your body and perhaps some internally generated images and sounds connected with the event. You may have realised you needed to change state and move on but somehow you were continually sucked into the representations. The same process can and does occur for highly positive experiences the feelings, internal images and sounds of holidays, concerts etc can hold a state in you long after the event

Perceptual positions help us get a much better impression of the client’s ‘reality’.

This is because when we imagine we’re sitting or standing as someone else, in their posture, speaking with their voice, we pick up a lot of information about what they’re thinking and how they are feeling. The scientific explanation for this is that adopting the other person’s positions triggers our mirror neurons, which enable us to get a far better understanding of others than would otherwise be the case.

In NLP, this process makes it possible for us to improve our interpersonal results by seeing (and hearing and feeling) things from someone else’s perspective.

The five perceptual positions.

There are five positions that we can adopt to fully understand another’s point of view. These positions fall under different types :

• 1st position is where we are associated, and we see things from our own point of view.
• 2nd position is where we dissociate from ourselves and image we’re in someone else’s body. We see things from their point of view.
• 3rd position is where we’re an independent observer and can watch the interaction between positions 1 and 2. We see things from an outside point of view.

There are also a 4th and a 5th perceptual positions:

• 4th position is observing the 3rd position in relationship to 2nd position i.e. how neutral are we as an observer?
• 5th position is where you observe how you relate to yourself as an observer.

Suggested perceptual positions exercise.

Let’s say that you have an important meeting coming up with a client or stakeholder :

1. Imagine yourself in 1st position. Imagine a 30 second movie of the meeting from your perspective, now describe the meeting in one word.
2. Imagine yourself as the client in the 2nd position, then replay the movie. In one word, describe the meeting from the client’s perspective.
3. Imaging you’re an independent (invisible) observer in 3rd position, and now replay the movie. Are the participants showing the same or different behaviours? How is each affecting the atmosphere of the meeting

• (For example, are they both being aggressive, friendly, respectful etc or is one being friendly and the other unfriendly, or is one being aggressive and the other passive?)

1. Then, go back to to the 2nd position and play the movie again from your client’s perspective. Has anything changed?
2. Finally, think about what you could do to improve the meeting, then play the movie in 1st position again, but incorporating your improvements. Now what’s changed?

Most of my clients are surprised by how much they learn about their own clients – and themselves! – from this exercise.

Contact me personally to discuss: chris@chesterjames.co.uk / 07796 304469

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