Coaching with NLP For Dummies®

Working through Differences

Conflict arises when two parties become entrenched in their own ideologies. In this section, I explore some practical NLP approaches that offer ways to shift through conflict with greater ease.

Knowing the enemy well

The famous British military commander Field Marshal ‘Monty’ Montgomery kept a picture of his German opponent Rommel, The Desert Fox, on the wall of his desert campaign headquarters during the Second World War. In planning the strategy for war, he wanted to focus on his enemy in order to analyse tactics in battle through his opponent's eyes.

When negotiating through conflict, the NLP concept of perceptual positions can provide insight into opposing viewpoints and help you separate from your emotions in order to achieve an independent perspective. The three most useful NLP positions are as follows:

• First position is your natural perspective, where you are fully aware of what you think and feel, but not the thoughts and feelings of others around you.
• Second position is about imagining what it's like to be another person. (Monty was adopting the NLP second position with his enemy, Rommel.)
• Third position is an independent position where you act as a detached observer noticing what's happening in the relationship between two other people.

Turn to Chapter 12 for more on perceptual positions.

Team conflicts – and solutions

Teams and other groups ...