WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU ABOUT ANCHORING IN THE

SEMINARS!

A True Story By

Master Trainer Michael Breen

It was during a late morning break in one of those seemingly interminable all morning meetings. It was noon and we had been scheduled for a break at 11. The internal team and the external suppliers for the big new initiative had been brought together for a succession of presentations consisting of people reading powerpoint slides out loud, after which a pep talk was to be administered. I had gotten a cup of coffee, revived my will to live and was making my way for a quick pit stop before the next session began when a gentleman approached me and said: “Mr. Breen, my name is Robert and I’m with the marketing team. I know about your involvement in NLP and I wanted to ask you a few questions if that’s okay.” Now, ordinarily, I am more than happy to answer questions but the time and the… pressure that was building meant that I was possibly not in the right state for an extended grilling. “How can I help?” (I’m such a sucker). Robert said: “I’ve trained in NLP, I’m a Master Practitioner and I really love it but there are some things I haven’t found much use for in my professional life – like anchoring others. I know you use NLP in business and I was wondering how you apply it in places like meetings?” I’m afraid I didn’t respond well at first. I thought he was joking. I mean, how can you not use anchoring if you have a pulse and are walking around? I said: “But Robert, anchoring IS the process of learning. How can you not use anchoring?”

He gave me a look of incomprehension. I asked him what he thought anchoring was. He said: “Well, on the trainings I’ve attended, we would elicit states (MB internal dialogue – “Yeah, how?”) and then use a kinaesthetic anchor…”, I interrupted: “You mean a touch on the shoulder, or stroking their finger or somesuch?” Robert said: “Yes and we also did some spatial anchoring… talking about one thing while standing in one place and then moving a little bit to the left to talk about the next thing… but I’ve never really been able to put it to much use.”

Got it. Robert didn’t know what anchoring was and had been fooled by the specificity demon. The very thing (behavioural specificity) that allows us to learn a procedure quickly can also stand in the way of learning to generalise or create variations. Essentially, Robert had been anchored into thinking that anchoring was what he had been taught, when he had merely been shown a few anchoring procedures. He didn’t have the principle and therefore couldn’t generalise. Oh dear. Oh my. I said: “Robert, are you telling me there has been no anchoring going on in the presentation room this morning?” He said: “None that I could see.” (Remember what I said about specificity and inability to generalise?) “How would you describe the state in the room?” “It’s okay. The presentations have been informative…” “Robert… they’re dead. They’ve been killed. Do you remember how bright and bubbly everyone was when they came in this morning?” “Yes.” “And do you remember how everyone looked and sounded just before they came out for the break during the last Q&A?” “I see what you mean.” “You probably didn’t notice that after the first two presenters got up and bored everyone witless, that each time someone new went to stand in exactly the same place, the audience sank further down into their chairs and got ready to be bored again. That is anchoring.”

“Anchoring is how the brain puts two or more things together – essentially learns that they are one thing and not two or that they are a sequence. The brain is really good at putting things together and even predicting that something that has happened before, will happen again. Your brain anchors

for you. There’s nothing that needs to be added from the outside for anchoring to happen.”

“Most of the anchors that we have are spontaneously generated, completely outside of conscious awareness but not every anchor we have is helpful. What we do as NLPers is, in the midst of our communications, conversations or interactions, when it would be helpful to be able to make use of some state or other, some reference, some specific piece of experience, we elicit the appropriate state or catch some of what is arising naturally in the situation and create an anchor – it’s more than only touching the shoulder or knees. If you come on one of my workshops; I’ll even teach you how to use other people’s unconscious anchors (most powerful stuff you’ll work with in business).” “Every single meeting and conversation that you have with another person or group will present myriad opportunities for working with anchors. And I’m not talking about just plunking yourself on different spaces on the platform.” “I’ll tell you what, I’m up second after we come back. What I will do for you is show you how anchoring works and how to collapse bad anchors with good stuff. But you have to agree to show me that you’ve paid attention by patterning out what I did. Now either I go the toilet or your shoes are going to get we So the next session started and the host got up and walked to the same place that everyone else had, summarised the morning, fiddled with his laptop and the projector and finally a slide came up with my name on it. He introduced me and invited me to come up to take over the place where he (and everyone else) had been standing all morning. I walked around him to the other side of the screen, tapping the “B” key on the laptop as I went past.

I wonder if those of you who use Powerpoint know about the “B” key? It’s magic. It calls up a black slide – very useful for when you need to go off topic or want to… create a little break in the flow of your presentation.

I said: “Please switch on the room lights. Good afternoon, my name is Michael Breen” – not in a “presenters voice” or “business voice” or like a greeter at the International House of Pancakes – but like a human being, meeting other human beings. And one of those wonderful, funny and spontaneous things occurred that every presenter dreams about: A woman who was sitting a bit further down the table let out an involuntary, but fairly soft “wow” (almost in relief)… and everyone else heard it and laughed. I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the God of Serendipity (Robert was blown away by my amazing covert “technique”) and I said again: “Good afternoon” with the biggest grin on my face and everyone said “Good afternoon” almost as one. I couldn’t have intentionally set it up and better (and Robert was so very, very impressed – being friendly and human – what an amazing technique). I then said: “How y’all doing? Ready for some fun?” and I started in – not by going through the powerpoint presentation (that was already printed out and in the meeting folders anyway) but by walking around the table, stopping here and there, and telling them what my role and function was to be. I also demonstrated a point about projects by getting one of them to hand me a sheet of scrap paper, which I crumpled into a ball in an overly fussy and precise way and then had all of them crumple a piece of paper into a ball in the same way… and then, after trying several “experiments” relating to my point (“passing the ball”), we ended up throwing them at each other… and generally being little scamps for 30 seconds… and all in the name of good project practice.

Now, with spirits a good deal higher than they’d been for the morning. I picked up my paper ball and calmly walked to “the presentations spot”, “unblacked” the slide and finished my talk – all the while, my paper ball was in hand, ready for “application”. I got the only round of applause for a presentation. More importantly, the other presenters upped their energy levels, and the participants stayed present during the other presentations. The paper ball was used or referred to by other presenters and became a motif during the project. Even the threat of pulling out scrap paper was enough to lift people’s states.

That night, I had trouble sleeping, which is a very rare occurrence for me. I kept going round and round how Robert could have missed the significance of anchoring. He wasn’t even my student but his lack of connection with the principle of anchoring really bothered me. I had my “Jerry McGuire Moment” with regards to anchoring, and the teaching thereof, in the middle of the night.

Anchoring is how we learn. Anchors trigger strategies. Anchors are present in external environments and also internally (as thoughts, feelings, etc.). The trick is not in “finding” or “making” new gestures or sounds that will stand as anchors but by learning to see how states are generated, maintained and developed in groups, in conversations, informally – in life. From there you will find the clues you need for developing your anchoring strategies for use with NLP skills. Anchors are a part of the flow of ordinary conversation and life. Look there. If you want to improve your anchoring; practice tracking in conversations. Literally keep track of what happens behaviourally, first, second, third, etc. You’ll start to notice sequences in people’s behaviour, in groups you’ll notice patterns of response and you’ll start to see hear and sense what “triggers” it off. You’ll notice repeated themes, topics or motifs and notice that someone uses certain gestures, postures and breathing patterns – ways of accessing (anchors) – and if you use those gestures, in a particular way, it will trigger the same states in them.

The traditional focus in teaching anchoring is the moment of “doing” the anchor, getting the students focused on the bizarre activity of touching people in odd places and in odd ways (and, for the record, knees should be left alone unless you’re looking for something deeper in terms of relationship). The way of teaching induces a kind of stupidity in the sense that anchoring is made to look and seem so outlandish that the student is almost guaranteed to miss the ubiquity (“being everywhere”) of the phenomena.

If you really want to improve your anchoring; improve your ability to elicit states first. If you are ever going to escape the “1-2-3” level of NLP practice, you will absolutely have to develop your ability to use anecdotes, metaphors and stories to involve other people in what you are saying. Skill with language patterns becomes useful once you can effectively tell stories (hold a narrative with a point and elicit specific states while doing that) but before that, too much emphasis on “magic words and phrases” can make people sound fake and sound like idiots (which they are – Direction & Strategy comes before Expression). I’ve given up counting the number of times I’ve watched people in business contexts who “know a bit of NLP” completely destroy their credibility and rapport by starting to “use NLP language techniques” that were just plain daft – they looked like caricatures.

The main thing about learning the NLP approach is that you incorporate that principles into your own work but make sure you integrate them fully into your own style. It’s no good becoming a bad copy of someone else – no matter how good they are; you will always be behind them. And worse, the tendency is to “quote” technique rather than use it. One ends up looking like an idiot rather than a master. The “technique” of creating an anchor is the simplest thing you can imagine. When I’m offering students clues for developing their ability to create anchors (beyond touching someone – in other words, kinaesthetic

anchors); I usually suggest they start by watching, transcribing and patterning the work of a favourite comedian. Several reasons for this: 1. Comedians have explicit directions that they are heading in (“OBTAIN LAUGHS…”). 2. Comedians use exaggerated forms and strategies (hence easier for novices to detect). 3. Good comedians are “feedback machines” – their riffs and routines are tightly coupled to audience response. 4. Many good comedians use anchoring, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. 5. Anchoring is a matter of timing; the quintessence of comedy is timing. Learn from those who have mastered it. 6. The exercise itself is fun. When watching comedians, pay attention to what happens between the jokes. Watch the non-verbals as these will often be the anchored “punctuation” in a routine. For example, British comedian Billy Connelly has an extensive repertoire of looks and gestures and tones of voice (often used for caricaturization) which follow consistent patterns – one specific thing follows another. He will often “punctuate” his stories in such a way that even though you have no idea where he is going; you are certain that it will be hilarious – as you already recognize the feeling that is building and, you’ve heard this particular “way” of telling before. That question that Robert asked me, set me off in a new direction. I abandoned a good deal of what other people were doing and looked for something different for my students. In summary, I’d say find the principles of NLP, where they function well in ordinary life, if you want clues about how to develop and refine your skills. In other words, get out of your head and come back to your senses.

A Personal Note From Vik and Tom

If you are interested in learning ‘real’ Anchoring we have worked with Michael to develop on special new DVD set called – ‘30 Days To Masterful Anchoring’

This DVD set includes my most up to date training on Anchoring and was in fact created from a special master class Michael did for NLP’ers in Dec of 2007. We have since broken it down into a 4 week program giving you training on one specific area of anchoring to focus on each week, and exercises to do during the week. It’s a practical real life approach to anchoring that will ensure you never have to ask questions like Robert. How would you like to become fluent at the art of anchoring in any sensory system? What’s more is we have invited Michael to provide a special “Anchoring Applications” CD in which he shares how he has used anchoring in a wide variety of contexts. If you haven’t already done so make sure you go over to www.nlp-anchoring.com website and get your self on the early notification list to be kept updated. We will be releasing video material showing NLP Anchoring in action. So check out www.nlp-anchoring.com today to stay informed.

WWW.NLP-ANCHORING.COM