“Mind your language”

 

I understand that “But”. Most of us have encountered this sentence number of times while dealing with our clients. How does one get around it and help the client see what exactly we are trying to communicate with them? One of the aspects of NLP is to discover the internal experience that is elicited by the use of specific language. This enables us to use language in a very directed way to get the result we want. “But” is one of the words worth paying attention to.  Notice what happens to your internal experience when you take any two-sentence and connect them with “but” and then repeat the same two-sentence in reverse order, again with “but” in the middle. For example:

“I agree equity creates wealth in long term, but the volatility bothers me”

“The volatility bothers me, but I agree equity create wealth in long term”

In both cases, the focus on the first sentence diminishes in some way, while the second sentence becomes your principal focus of attention. You can deal with the situation whenever someone uses the “but” by reversing the uses of “but” in a way that diminishes something that is important to you, and you want to emphasize it. The old joke illustrates this nicely:

The mother says to the daughter “I know he’s ugly, but he is rich” and the daughter replies, “Mother, you are so right. I know he is rich but he’s ugly”

Knowing how “but” diminishes part of a sentence, you can use it whenever you want to (or have to) mention something to someone, but you want to diminish in importance or even disappear from listeners awareness altogether. “ I know that the volatility bothers you, but you agree equity creates wealth in long term.”

“Yes, but-“  When people say “Yes, but –“ they briefly acknowledge what someone else said, followed by something that negates it. When people are cautious or wary, they often tend to respond defensively and oppose whatever you say and find a problem with it, no matter how sensible your suggestion might be. “Yes, I can see that, but there is a problem with it”

Once someone is focused on a problem, it is easy to get “tunnel vision” and forget the reason for noticing and thinking about problems is so that you can find a way to solve them and make a proposal work. Reversing the focus can get the discussion back on track. “Yes, I can see there is a problem, but the proposal still has a lot of potentials,” direct the listener’s attention away from the problem and back towards the larger focus of the potential of the proposal as a whole.

The more you know how language works, it will help you connect with your clients better. Given below are a few examples you may use in your practice:

• Avoid using technical language. Use more of “You” language and instead of “Client”. For example, when you are doing Client Risk analysis – You may say this is specific for us to understand what levels of risk you are willing to take.
• Use the word financial goals less frequently – Most people have a negative feeling about goal setting process that failed in the past or sales goals pressed on them at different career positions they had. Instead ask them what aspirations/dreams, hopes/wishes they have for the future.
• During the discovery process, while we try to understand their beliefs and behaviours which can be construed as we are going to judge those beliefs/their behaviours, we may say that we want to gain an understanding of their perspective or preferences to craft our recommendation.

Coming back to “but”… try using “and” instead of “but”. But split our experience and divides our attention. In the sentence “I agree equity creates wealth in long term and the volatility bothers me”. Replacing “but” with “and” makes a huge difference. And connects experiences together, allowing us to think of both parts of the sentence simultaneously. Replacing “but” with “and” may seem like a ridiculously trivial change, but it’s very easy to do both in yourself and with others, it can have a very powerful effect.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world. – Ludwig Wittgenstein