Inspiration day

NLP in DesignRepublic

In DesignRepublic we like to have an outward-in look: looking what is happening in other industries, investigating what is working in other fields, being curious what is out there… and bringing best practices back to our own industry, our office and our team.

For this years’ inspiration day we wanted to focus on communication: what are best practices or techniques that are used to better understand our customers, our team members and ourselves? And for those who are not completely sure: NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. This has nothing to do with computers but more with how your brain is wired.

We invited Ann Ravoet, international NLP trainer associated to Arcturus, a reference in organizing trainings around communication, awareness and NLP.

She organized an in-house inspiration day for the team whereby different models and techniques were highlighted, all with one main focus: ‘AWARENESS’:

Becoming aware of how your brain works, how you think, how you have your model of the world that is different from someone else’s. But also imagine how someone else is thinking or how an independent observer is looking at the situation:

And this leads to one of the great insights of this day:

’the one who is most aware of a situation, has most influence on the interaction’

Of course this can be an interaction on different levels: with your colleagues, with your superior, with your customers, with you suppliers, etc…

But how do you create awareness? How do you make sure that your communication is effective. How do you increase chances of being understood, and of understanding the other? One thing is clear: to assume won’t bring you anywhere near because:

‘if you ASSUME, you are an ASS 2 U & ME’

and

‘commUNIcation unites U & I’

Better make some time for framing: understand each others frame, each others model of the world, values, story…not with the goal to understand each other completely, as there you will never succeed, but to understand the situation, and to build rapport, to build connection. And of course understanding each other frame will take time, but in the end you will gain time.

Our inspiration day ended with the rose of Leary, a great tool to understand how the communication of one person triggers the communication of someone else. And here we end how we started: awareness is key to everything.

A big thank you to Ann!