Of Words, Filters and Styles (I Hear You)

What you say betrays what’s in you. Everything that enters and exits your mind is filtered. You have a preferred way to communicate. This in short, are the three lessons I picked up from web-torial 20 Filters and Styles. As with all the other web-torial, these lessons are both applicable to the coach as well as the coachee and if understood, given attention and responded to properly, will increase awareness and effectiveness.

Your Words Betray You

Jesus is recorded to have said that from the abundance of the heart, we speak and what we speak is just a revelation of what is in us, in our mind and heart. Thus, paying attention to our selected words when speaking can be very beneficial in revealing our true nature, our beliefs and values as well as our self-imposed blocks towards success. I enjoyed Coach Mel’s emphasis and example’s on how even one sentence from a client contains so much revelation if we just pick up key words and emotions our client attaches to a just uttered sentence. Indeed, there is ‘so much behind everything said’ and every repeated or emphasized word is full of meanings and is multi-layered. Our client’s tongue will always reveal what is lurking in her psyche and it is our responsibility to be aware of the language being used, the way the words are spoken and certain trends that may begin to form as she continues speaking.

We are enormously revealing to others if we know how to recognize the content and style of our words. This is what The Secret Life of Pronouns author and University of Texas psychologist James Pennebaker described in his book and TEDx talk. When listening to words people use, he says confident people use fewer “I” words as well as older people who also tend to use more positive emotional words. He also discovered one’s health is more likely to improve with the increased use of cognitive words (know, realize, understand) and open, honest conversations about traumatic or painful life experiences. So, pay attention to style words your clients use (conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions) and how they describe things or themselves.

It's All Filtered

Next, from the NLP communication model, we were introduced to Filters, the process we all employ that produces the things we say in the way we say them. So looks like what I think and say and what my client thinks and say has all been filtered through one or more of three recognized filters – Delete, Distort and/or Generalize.  Here then is what I currently understand about these filters we apply to filter incoming information relevance.

• Delete – We use this to remove everything we consider irrelevant so that we have room to focus on what is considered important to us at any given time.
• Distort – This usually happens at an unconscious level and is used to distort our perceptions in such a way so we are not hindered by them. This would usually be changing what a thing may represent to us (for example sickness is not a source of pain but an opportunity to practice patience and faith). This filter helps protect us and keep us in the positive.
• Generalize – a process where from only one or a few experiences a conclusion is created. This has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, as a child you hear from your parents and teachers repeatedly that you are stupid and soon you come to believe it. As an adult, whenever you fail at a task, the conclusion is the same – “I am stupid” – though there may be many other possible reasons.

These filters and their effect on our clients play an important role in understanding and creating awareness both for us as coaches as well as for our clients. By being aware of their effects, we can better perceive reality and help our clients see how often they mislead themselves or hide behind these perception filters. This is certainly important to know when seeking to create or raise awareness in our client’s mind.

Love Your Communication Style

Lastly, we were required to take a VAKAD test and I got 37 for AD and 32 for K which in general says that my preferred communicative style is Auditory Digital meaning I prefer to deal with logic and tend to talk to myself, using a collection of word symbols and the rules that govern their use to best communicate with the world. But what is VAKAD? It stands for Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic and Audio-Digital, the four sensory modalities used in NLP to determine which representational system and individual prefers when processing and sharing information. Using this NLP Representational Systems, we can accelerate our ability to know how our mind works and helps us unlock and access a wealth of information inside us and to connect with our clients. It also helps us understand how our clients internally represent their everyday experiences.

A dead giveaway in identifying which modality you and/or your client’s function from is the words they use when describing situations or themselves. A Visual person will use visual words like: see, looks, appear, imagine, crystal clear. The Auditory person will go for words like can you hear, sounds good, all ears, that rings a bell and How does that sound to you?. On the other hand a Kinesthetic person may say words such as grasp, get a hold of, catch on, tap into and Can you handle this?. Lastly the Audio-Digital person will usually be found saying I understand, consider, know, perceive and Does that make sense?

Each modality reveals itself in unique ways through certain common characteristics. Being aware of this helps you understand your client – how she processes and presents information during a session for example – and gives you clues as to how best you reflect and relay feedback and questions to your client. Here are some generalizations on the characteristics of people with a preference for one of the four modalities.

Visual

• Organized, neat and well groomed and they expect the same from you.
• Visualization and imagination are key in getting insights and making decisions. Metaphors are important when communicating with them
• They see and speak from a big picture or a series of pictures. This is commonly results in them speaking faster, seem disjointed when sharing information and resorting to using pictures to explain something.

Auditory

• Learn by listening and asking questions
• Talk through problems with someone available as a sounding board
• Aware of voice tone change and distracted by noise

Kinesthetic

• Learn by doing, moving or touching
• Make decisions based on feelings
• They tend to speak slower and stand closer – helps them get in touch with how they feel about the topic and the listener’s energy.

Audio-Digital

• Have a need to make sense of the world, to figure things out, to understand
• Learn by working things out in their mind and by talking to themselves.
• Generally not open to spontaneity as they like to think things through.

I am fascinated by this NLP tool as it has helped describe me and very quickly reveals how important it is for me to be aware from which modality my client is operating from so I can respond and relate effectively thus enabling understanding and awareness to quickly be present. Identifying which Representational System my client is using guided by common generalized characteristics or by taking an assessment may be a good thing to do at the early stages of coaching especially if there is a block or interference in communication during the coaching sessions.