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You have been invited to work with someone, formally or informally, as part of your business working relationship or as part of a therapeutic relationship. How do you go about deciding what you could do to enable this person achieve his or her outcome?

1. Second position the problem and the person. This way you will feel what adds up and what doesn't. You will discover where the gaps are and know what further information you need to gather. This way you will shed the importance of content.
   

2. Detect patterns. What are the themes that are emerging? Often the person will not consciously know what the problem is, nor what patterns are underpinning their behaviour.
   

3. Evaluate the range of techniques and strategies that are available to you, with an understanding of which will give you what results. Techniques are made up of basic NLP components and become a 'technique' only through the sequencing of their combination. You can select components and combine them any way you like.
   

4. Evaluate the entry point. Determine which are the primary issues and which are secondary. Determine if it is an issue predominately about behaviour, or is it belief based, for example.
   

5. Determine the time available to you. There is no point starting something that you can't finish in the time available. It may be that you streamline the technique, or that you divide the intervention into several stages.
   

6. Match the patterns you've detected with patterns inherent within the techniques or strategies you know of. Do they fit? What modifications or adjustments might you have to make? What will be your evidence of success, to exit your TOTE?
   

7. Test your own congruence. We all know the trap of fitting every problem into our favourite technique! However you need to feel comfortable and secure that you have the skills and understanding demanded by any intervention. If you are feeling incongruent, then it will show. This will have a direct impact on the level of confidence felt by this person in you and the process.
   

8. Test the overall ecology. Will this intervention serve the other person? Do you have sufficient information from all perspectives - have you included their colleagues? wife? son? Will this intervention reflect well on you the practitioner, and on NLP as a whole?
   

9. Test your overall congruence signal. If you have any reservations, recheck all the previous stages. There is some information that you don't have yet.
   

10. Explain to the person what you intend to offer them, what the outcomes could be, how long it might take and what is involved. Once you have gained his or her agreement to the process, let your genius continue.
    

Fran Burgess
© July 2004