Neuro-Linguistic Programming: A Tool for Developing Behavioral Skills and Competencies

In today's competitive business world, managing a knowledge worker has become complex as companies recruit people from across cultures, nationalities and gender in rather a seamless way. Generally, most of the employees who are hired have the necessary technical prerequisites, conceptual skills and to some extent human skills too. However, it is observed that people who join the organizations have generally all the needs fulfilled in the Maslow's need hierarchy, i.e., the physiological needs, social needs, safety needs, self-esteem needs barring the need of self-actualization. It is the need for self-actualization which plays an important role in the career growth of an employee, especially in the present scenario. Another factor responsible for this is the amount and variety of choice available at their disposal, be it either in terms of careers, people or even relationships. Therefore, in order to understand and support the real worth of an individual, to enable him to understand himself better in order to understand others in a better way, it is the responsibility of the trainers to understand various psychological patterns of behavior of an individual. This paper focuses on neuro-linguistic programming, a tool that recognizes various psycho-behavioral patterns of an individual.This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.- Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)IntroductionNeuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has evolved from the studies of Bandler and John (1975 and 1976). In these studies, they examined the internal and external behaviors that made the psycho-therapy effective. They started developing models based on their behaviors, tested those models and developed the main modalities of NLP. Thereafter, subsequent inputs were provided by Erickson and Rossi on psychotherapy (1975), Gestalt therapy of Perls (1973), the change process model and family therapy of Satir (1988), etc.Wikipedia describes NLP as "a field of human endeavor concerned with empirically studying and modeling human performance and excellence, with the goal of creating transferable skill sets." Primarily, it is a technique of influencing the conscious thought and action by working upon the unconscious thought and action. It fundamentally helps people to change themselves by teaching them to program their brains. It is a user manual of our brain and is also referred to as 'Software for the Brain'. It unknowingly works on the unconscious mind, constantly influencing the conscious thought and action. In sum, it is a subjective experience.NLP is applied in various fields ranging from very delicate areas like healing patients to some flashy fields like sales training. On the one hand, it can be used by the doctors to heal their patients suffering from severe ailments like cancer, etc., on the other it can be used to improve the selling skills of the salespersons by means of establishing a rapport with the customer instantaneously. NLP becomes really effective if it is intertwined with the brainwaves, e.g., ?-waves, β-waves and γ-waves, each having a distinct purpose and effect. These waves can be used in the form of music to relieve various types of stress, provide a good environment for creativity or brainstorming at work, motivate people to perform well by boosting their confidence through self- realization, etc.By using various techniques of NLP, a trainer can make the trainees realize the following things, which can be put into practice in order to improve their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.* Recognize the congruent and incongruent states of people whom you guide and be able to facilitate the appropriate emotional state for any given situation.* Identify with those that you guide or coach in such a way that they create a climate of trust, respect, and confidence. …