The Importance of Calibration in NLP
Calibration is the art of taking a “mental snapshot” of a person’s emotional state(s). The purpose? So you know when they are accessing that state again. Another word for calibration is “measurement.” So, you’re looking/listening/feeling for clues and cues that mark a particular emotion in a person.
How do we use it???
- It’s useful for knowing when a person has changed their emotional response to a situation. It’s a channel of communication other than verbal content (and usually much more accurate).
- It’s helps you know when you’re moving toward a particular goal with a person (whether professional or personal).
- It helps you know if your NLP and hypnotic techniques (such as anchoring) have “taken.”
Examples Where Calibration is Useful
- Let’s suppose you’re working with a client and they have anxiety about a situation. You calibrate the anxiety state and a relaxed confident state. After you’ve done your work, you associate them into the formerly anxious situation. They say they feel fine but you notice they have several markers of the anxious state present.
- You’re doing a collapse anchors. You’ve calibrated both states and fired off both anchors. How do you tell what’s going on and if it’s working? Calibration.
- You’ve met someone you’re interested in. You’ve calibrated them to like/dislike. You can use your calibration skills to tailor your message to them to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.
Without Calibration Skills, You’re Driving Blind
In the above examples and in many other situations, without calibration, you’d be driving blind. More accurately, you’d be relying on conscious information and ignoring unconscious information. It’s not that people are lying all the time; it’s just that sometimes the conscious mind and the unconscious mind have different ideas or are in conflict about something.
Enjoy,
Keith
