Have you ever noticed that some people keep on succeeding
while others have great ideas
but nothing happens with them in the end?

Do you know people who SAY they will do something
and then put it off repeatedly?
Do YOU do this?

But do you know what that seemingly small decision reveals about you? Continue reading →

If you know NLP, then you know that it has been a struggle to gain credibility and prove it’s effectiveness. The NLP Research and Recognition Project needs your help. Please see below. I hope you can help by writing a letter and giving $5.00 a month (or more if you can afford it).

Please forward this message to all the NLPers you know.

Cheers!
Shelle

Dear Leaders and Fans of NLP,

We at the NLP Research and Recognition Project (NLP R & R) are poised to receive major funding to continue our work, but need to demonstrate the support of the NLP community to increase our likelihood of success.

We need your support right now to help make sure that NLP is finally legitimized everywhere.

Here’s what you can do (before May 30, 2014):

1) Write a letter of support about NLP R & R to ([email protected]) that we can use in our bid to get funding for continuing our research. Please ask the other NLP Institutes that you know to do the same.  (Here is a sample letter.)

2) Please ask all your NLP contacts to go online to www.researchandrecognition.org and donate $5.00 a month for the next year to support the research and to make themselves a formal supporter of the research project. (We are regularly being asked by Foundations that we are soliciting for funds how much the NLP community is supporting our efforts).

3)Please ask everyone to link to and go often to the new NLP WIKI site and for those so inclined, send possible additions and corrections to the WIKI.

Please do this by May 30^th if you can, but do it whenever you can.

Thanks so much for all your help in this!

Best regards to our friends and colleagues,

Dr. Frank Bourke, Dr. Rick Gray, Lisa Wake and the whole team at R & R. including Trustees Judith DeLozier, Steve and Connirae Andreas and supporters Tim Hallbom, Shelle Rose Charvet, Michael Hall and Robert Dilts.

Here, is more background information on the NLP R & R Organization to keep you up to date.

Frank Bourke & Richard Gray

Telephone: 607 622 8054

Email:[email protected]

Website: www.researchandrecognition.org

This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day in Canada and the US, so I thought you might enjoy something funny to honour mothers everywhere.

Comedian Anita Renfroe sings “The Mom Song” to the tune of the William Tell Overture.

I think it’s funny, but really (of course), everyone should decide for themselves, don’t you think?

Here it is:

The Mom Song

Cheers!
Shelle

Cheers,

Shelle

http://www.WordsThatChangeMinds.com

Have questions?  Please contact Melody at [email protected]. 
She is always happy to help and to hear from you.

Nobody likes to deliver bad news. Nobody likes to hear bad news. That’s why it makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

For many, many years in management circles, people have been taught “The Feedback Sandwich”. I wrote an article called “The Feedback Sandwich is Out to Lunch”.

Click here to read the article “The Feedback Sandwich is Out to Lunch”.

I think it doesn’t work because the Feedback Sandwich consists of:

First you tell somebody something nice
and then
you tell them the bad news or what they did wrong or what they need to improve
and then
you give them an overall nice little complimentary something.
So the bad stuff is stuck in between. It’s sandwiched between two pieces of fluff.

Here’s what has happened as a result of that. People have heard the feedback sandwich so often that as soon as their boss or a colleague comes in and says something nice like, “Oh, you did such a good job on that report” or anything like that, they are then waiting for the bad news in between.  So we’re thinking, “Oh, my God! This person is now going to tell me something terrible.”

That doesn’t really work because already people start to feel bad as soon as you say something nice.

I’ll be talking about how to give compliments and praise in another of Shelle’s Top Tips, but today we want to talk about what you really need to do when you have something bad to tell somebody.

So first of all, what is bad news? Bad news is anything the other person doesn’t want to hear. So they can’t get what they want, they’ll have to do overtime, anything they don’t want to hear.

The Bad News Formula
One of the objections to the Bad News Formula is that people say, “Well, what if you have something devastating to tell somebody, like if they’re losing their job or if you get really bad news from a doctor or any of those things that can happen that are really bad news.  Does it work then?

Well, it doesn’t make the bad news go away. The Bad News Formula doesn’t do that, but what it does do is make it easier to hear.

It’s based on two very important memory principles. People remember what they hear first, what they hear last, and they don’t remember so well what they hear in the middle. So I believe that the most important thing is what you leave people with.

Here’s the Bad News Formula.

First of all, you sit down with the person or you set up a situation where it’s okay and comfortable for them to talk. So that’s the first part. Establish rapport. Make the person comfortable, and then tell them the bad news. “You know, I wanted to let you know that the resources you asked for are not going to be there. You can’t have them. But we have thought about your request and we know that it’s important, and what we want to look at with you is some alternative ways of getting there and looking at what we can do in the short term that gets somewhere towards where you want to go and we do recognize that it is really important to you.” So that’s an example.

So the formula goes like this:
bad news
but good news
and good news
and good news.

What if you have no good news? Find something positive in the relationship.  There’s always some good news there, but if you put the bad news at the beginning and then put the word “but” there and then you have three pieces of good news, what you’re doing is you’re setting it up so that the person can balance out the one piece of bad news with three pieces of good news. In that way you get to move toward something a little bit more productive.

I had an example of this in my e-newsletter that I send out. I have an irregular e-newsletter. It has tips and advice and some of the events that I’m doing around the world. One day I wrote an article, and I can’t remember what the article was. It could have been Bloopers, Blunders, and Faux Pas. That was an article I wrote on what you do when you open your mouth and say something that you shouldn’t have said.

Click here to read my article “Bloopers, Blunders, and Faux Pas”.

I got an e-mail from somebody who said to me, “Shelle, I really liked your e-newsletter topic. I’ve tweaked it a bit and I’d like to send it out to my customers. Is that okay under my own name?” Is that okay? I was sitting in my office going, “No, that is not okay. It is not okay to put your name on my ideas.”

So I set up a meeting with him because I don’t think it’s a good idea to do this on email. I said to him, “George, there is no way that I’m going to give you my permission to put your name on my ideas, but I’m delighted that you liked my email and I do want you to send it to your clients, and all you have to do is leave it exactly as it is, forward it to them, they’ll be happy, you’ll be happy, and I’ll be happy.”

Now, he was quite okay with that, but if you listen to what I said, my bad news at the beginning was very tough. I said, “There is no way I’m going to give you my permission to put your name on my ideas, but…” and then I gave him three pieces of very positive information. I think that’s something that everybody can do.

I know a couple of people who now have the Bad News Formula on a sticky on their computer so that when they have to do bad news on email, the Bad News Formula is right there.

For more tips, check out http://www.shellestoptips.com  

I’d love to hear your feedback.  How was this article useful to you?  You can leave a comment below or message me directly at [email protected]

Hope to hear from you.

Cheers,
Shelle

If you’re a salesperson, there are five questions that will let you know exactly what your customer wants, what they don’t want, and how to propose and position what it is you have to offer.

If you’re not a salesperson these questions will be useful every time you really need to understand what’s important to someone.

So here they are.

Questions #1 & 2 – What Do You Want? and What’s Important To You?

Many salespeople just forget to ask these questions.  A while ago, I went to buy a new luxury car. I decided to abandon my old mommy-mobile and get a new car for me. My kids were grown up.  It’s my turn for a beautiful luxury car.  We went to seven dealerships.

Out of those seven dealerships only one salesperson said, “Shelle, what do you want? What’s important to you about this car?” How are you going to position anything to me or show me a car, for example, if you don’t know that one of the things that’s important to me is that when I drive my new luxury car up to my prospective client’s place of business that they’d be impressed by my new car.

Now, I know that sounds superficial but that’s one of the things that was important to me.

I felt a little bit sorry for one of the younger salespersons and I said to him, “You didn’t ask me what was important to me.” Okay, he got a little defensive. I would have gotten defensive too. He said, “Well, I tried to find it out in the conversation. I think I did okay.” I said, “Oh, really? So what do I want? What’s important to me?” and he didn’t know.

Now, all of those salespeople asked me, “What car are you presently driving?” I said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” So it’s hidden in the back somewhere.

Write down what they say because the words the customer uses are the words that have a resonance for them.

If you want more information on Top Sales Questions and how to use them, check out my
Sales Booster Package – Increase Sales, Marketing & Customer Retention »

Question #3: Why Is That Important?

 Here what we’re trying to find out is one of the important motivations for you. Is the person trying to achieve or gain something from that or are they trying to prevent or solve a problem?

So if you say, “Shelle, why is it important for you to impress your customers?” I might say, “Because I want to feel successful” or “Because I want to look successful.” Those are things I want to gain. The Toward trigger.

Or I might say, “Well, I don’t want to look like I’m not successful,” and that would be moving Away From, and you may have heard me say this before, the trigger that’s moving away from what I don’t want.

This gives you an indication of how to speak to your customer. Either you show them what they’ll gain, this will enable you to look more successful with your customers, or what they’re trying to avoid. This way you won’t look like you’re unsuccessful with your customers.

Question #4 – How Will You Know if You’ve Made The Right Decision?

 “Excellent question,” you say.  With this question you’re trying to find out does the person decide for themselves, by their own criteria and their own judgments and we call that Internal or did they decide based on outside criteria or outside influences?  

“So Shelle, how will you know you’ve made the right decision about your car?” Shelle might say, “When it feels good. When I’m behind the wheel and I love it.” Well, that’s clearly Internal. So although I did seem to have some external influences, I know I’ve made the right decision myself.

Now, I could have answered the question, “Shelle, how will you know if you’ve made the right decision?” by saying, “When all those people I’m driving by smile at me and look like they’re impressed.” That’s more External.

So this gives you more information about what’s going to help that person decide or buy.

Question #5 – Why Did You Choose To Look For A Car Now?

The question, “Why did you choose..?” is going to give you two kinds of answers.

If the person gives you a list of reasons: an old car was rotten; I want a new car; I want something that fits me; as a salesperson you need to talk to them about all of the options that the car you are selling comes with.

If they don’t tell you why but instead they tell you the story of how it happened that they ended up needing a car, so for example, they’ll say, “Well, my old car broke down for the last time and it was going to cost a lot of money to fix it. So then I realized it probably wasn’t worth my while to fix it so I ended up having to look for a new car.” If they give you one of these stories that has all these events in it, they’re not so interested in all of the options with the car. They want to know how does it work and what do you have to do to buy it, what are the steps in the buying process.

So those are the top sales questions. What do you want? What’s important to you? Why is that important? How you know you made the right decision? And why did you choose to look for or to search for this thing now?

If you want more information on Top Sales Questions and how to use them, check out my
Sales Booster Package – Increase Sales, Marketing & Customer Retention »

For more “Shelle’s Top Tips” visit
http://www.ShellesTopTips.com »

I’d love to hear your feedback.  How was this article useful to you?  You can leave a comment below or message me directly at [email protected]

Hope to hear from you.

Cheers,
Shelle

I have a resource for you that I highly recommend.

This information is for people who are corporate trainers or NLP trainers.

Would you like some new group exercises

or additions to the ones you’ve already got?

As you know, it can take hours and hours to find (or create)

the right exercises to fit your group and your program,

but it doesn’t have to any more!   

If you have some familiarity with NLP, here are

practical step-by-step exercises with instructions (with all the handouts etc.).

No more having to wade through loads of theory

to find the right activities.  

My friend, the talented NLP Trainer Andy Smith, has designed

The Trainer’s Pack of NLP Exercises specifically to

save you days or weeks of preparation time.

And for a limited time you get it for 25% off; an exclusive discount

just for my subscribers! (I asked him and he said yes!)

This special price is good until February 21^st! Don’t miss out.

Want to see if you like it?  

Click here to download 3 group activities for free:

Want to get it right now? Click here 

Enter Coupon Code  

shelle

in the shopping cart to get it for 25% off.

You may already know Andy’s work. He is the acclaimed author of

Practical NLP: How to use NLP principles

to improve your life and work, even if you’re not NLP trained.

Andy says:

“My aim in writing this exercise pack was to make it the best resource out there for trainers. Pretty much everything I have learned in years of running NLP courses is in there. It’s the resource that I wish had been available when I was a newly-qualified NLP trainer years ago!”

I’m not the only one who really appreciates Andy’s work:

“At last! – an outstanding, comprehensive and tremendously practical collection of dynamic NLP exercises skilfully brought together that you can adapt to use in trainings, coaching, therapy or NLP practise groups. 

Andy has generously included an invaluable in-depth introduction that includes design of content delivery, how to frame exercises, choosing and briefing assistants and terms and conditions for your course.

He efficiently sets out each exercise with the timing, objective, procedure, what to expect, points to look out for, check and clarify and even FAQs where appropriate, thus ensuring you feel briefed, prepared and confident in your usage.

Andy has produced a resource of fantastic value, that no NLP professional (beginner or experienced) can afford to be without, which includes not only exercises but handouts and wall charts too!”

Balbir Chagger, NLP Trainer, Coach and Speaker 

www.balbirchagger.com 

“I’m pleased to wholeheartedly recommend this book to NLP Trainers, NLP Master Practitioners, AND well-trained NLP Practitioners alike. As one of the trainers Andy graciously referenced in this book as one of his sources for some of the exercises quoted in the book, I was profoundly impressed with this collection of valuable resources, organized beautifully and usefully. The book is written at a high enough level that even newly certified trainers will be able to make immediate use of the exercises for the groups they work with.

My opinion: New NLP Students ought to know that exercises from a book like this alone will never lead to becoming a great practitioner, so I don’t think this book is a good substitute for live training. Without the kind of knowledgeable mentorship that expands a students’ resources in optimal ways, exercises by themselves are aimless (and many are described at trainer level, with practitioner-candidate-level relevant knowledge omitted). But once you’ve become a Practitioner with 10 days or more of training behind you, get a copy of this book, and you’ll be able to continue developing your NLP skills powerfully!

This book is a phenomenal resource for skilled trainers who know what signs and patterns to look for in audiences, student behavior, awareness, filters, beliefs, limiting beliefs, learning patterns and strategies, and more. I’m confident it will expand any trainer’s repertoire of learning experiences. Every trainer should acquire a copy!

– Jonathan Altfeld (Mastery InSight Institute of NLP)

www.altfeld.com

“Absolutely fabulous, packed full of enough detail to run the exercises with little preparation. Thanks for a great product.”

– Jenni Miller

“This is a must have if you are running NLP courses – and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing it. Andy has long had a reputation for providing top notch training, and this book is a wonderful and generous extension of his standards. It’s not only a resource, it’s a companion, packed as it is with his advice and commentary. This must have been a huge undertaking, and many will thank him for it for many years to come. I’m definitely one of them.”

Trevor Silvester, NLP and Hypnosis trainer

Author of ‘Wordweaving’ and ‘Lovebirds’ 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is so what I was looking for as I am teaching my first NLP Practitioner Course next month.  

I asked for it and there it was so much appreciated. 

Also love the way you present it.” 

Regards Maz, NSW Australia

– Maz Schirmer, NLP Trainer

“Andy’s excellent ‘The Trainers Book of NLP Exercises’ is a very rich gold mine of exercises for both the NLP Trainer as well as NLP Practitioners and those of us who run NLP practice groups. The wealth of experiential exercises and structured, yet ‘pick and mix’ learning format is a absolute must have. Buy yourself a copy right now, you will be very very pleased!”

– Nigel Hetherington – Master Clinical Hypnotherapist and NLP Trainer

“A fantastic book full of doable exercises. I can’t wait to start using them. The world of NLP owes Andy a huge gift of gratitude.”

– Peter Hirst

“Bought and used. Saved massive amounts of time and got a better result than I could have done under my own steam. Excellent product.”

– Rintu Basu, NLP Trainer and author of ‘The Persuasion Skills Blackbook: Practical NLP Language Patterns for Getting The Response You Want

Here’s Andy’s description:

What’s in the Trainer’s Pack:

A printable e-book – 411 pages, 128 exercises,

plus handouts and wall charts.

PLUS

Word versions of the handouts and wall charts so

you can tailor or rebrand them for your courses!

  This resource kit could save you days or weeks of preparation!     

Exercise instructions with:

• Objectives
• Timings
• Procedure
• Suggested clear-up questions
• Handout pages (where needed) that you can copy or modify
• Wallcharts (where needed) that you can copy or modify

Clear exercise formats for:

• developing NLP skills such as rapport and sensory acuity,
• practising techniques such as anchoring and sub-modality shifts
• learning language patterns and hypnotic skills
• formats for problem solving and exploration, such as the “Disney Strategy”, “Neuro-Logical Levels” and the S.C.O.R.E. model
• clarifying values and setting goals
• sharpening questioning skills
• strategy elicitation and modelling
• increasing emotional awareness and social intelligence

The Trainer’s Pack of NLP Exercises also includes a

Microsoft Word document version of the handouts

so you can modify them, and searchable keywords so

you can quickly find activities for workshops on any topic

such as listening skills, self-esteem or assertiveness.

I suggest you check it out to see if this resource is right for you.

Click here for more information. 

Andy tells me that the exclusive 25% discount, with the   

Coupon Code:  shelle 

applies to any product in the ‘Tools For Trainers’

section of his store.  But only until Feb. 21st!

You can download three activities

from the Trainer’s Pack of NLP Exercises for free.

Check them out for yourself: Click here 

Or want to get it right now? Click here 

Enter Coupon Code  

shelle

in the shopping cart to get it for 25% off. Until Feb 21st.

If you are a trainer, I really think you will appreciate

the quality of Andy’s work.

Cheers,

Shelle

PS: I am recommending it because I think it is a great resource for trainers.

Let’s talk about ourselves for just a minute. A lot of people tell me they have tons of stuff that they want to do but they’re not able to get as much done as they would like and I’m not talking about time management issues. It’s about your strategy for achieving and your strategy to avoid dropping things that you really want to do.   Here’s a few tips.

1. Your Success and Failure Strategies
   Write, jot down a quick list of the things that you’ve actually achieved over the last few months and the things you started to do or wanted to do but didn’t get done.  At a big picture level, can you see any success strategies from the things that you wrote down or any failure strategies that stop you from achieving that?

2. Level of Importance
   If you have a look at your two lists and you’re able to identify what’s important and what isn’t important to you, do you see any patterns? Are your success strategies the ones you succeeded at more important to you and the other one is less important to you?

3. Negative Consequences
   Here’s something that I found in my studying of what makes people successful in their goals and how do they avoid falling off the wagon. Well often people who are focused have deadlines and there are negative consequences for not achieving what you wanted to do at the time that you wanted to do it.  So have a check for the things that you succeeded at. Was there a negative consequence or something that you didn’t want to have happen? 

   I remember when I was writing the first draft of my very first book. I gave myself until September to finish the first draft.  The beginning of September arrived and guess what? I had a whole pile of courses and training and consulting lined up. The negative consequence would have been I wouldn’t have been able to get back at that book for months and that was something I really wanted to avoid.  So if you’ve got a negative consequence that you really want to avoid, that’s going to help you be more focused to be more motivated.
   

So my question to you is do you have lots of things that you’d like to be more successful at doing? Would you like to avoid having to put them off or just live with the fact that you didn’t do them?

Check out my mini E-Book. It’s called Wishing, Wanting and Achieving.

If you go to http://www.WishingWantingAchieving.com you will get this very short E-Book that will tell you how to model your own success in more detail so that you can find out exactly all your own success strategies. It also comes with a free MP3 download that you can listen to that’s going to help you focus and achieve more success and avoid having to live with the things that you didn’t do.  Hope this helps.

To enquire about booking me for a speaking engagement, please click here.

Today, our topic is overcommitting. What do you do once you have enthusiastically jumped in and said yes and then you realize you have no time?

The first things I’m going to look at are prevention strategies, and then some tips for how to cure it, how to get out of the commitment once you have made the commitment.

Prevention

Prevention is a question of calming down and breathing. Lots of people are going to come to you and say, “Hey, Shelle, we’ve got this great idea that we would like to get you involved in.” Instead of saying, “Really? Yes I’ll do it!” breathe. Ask questions:

“Tell me more.”

“What does it entail?”

Take some notes and make sure you thoroughly understand what the person is asking you to do.

Once you’ve had all your questions answered, I suggest you say,

“You know what? I’m going to check with my other commitments to see if I can fit that in. Let me get back to you,” and then let them know when you can get back to them.

Breathe, stay calm, ask questions, and promise that you will check it out with your other commitments. The other person will know that you are taking them seriously. You’re weighing whether or not you have time to do it properly and then promise to get back to them. This gives you the opportunity to see whether or not it will be an over commitment.

The Cure

You’ve said yes. What do you do? First, as soon as possible, you need to do something. Don’t wait. Don’t hide. Don’t chew your fingernails in anxiety. Do something as soon as possible, as soon as you realized you’ve overcommitted.

Secondly, what do you do? Apologize. Use the Bad News Formula. Check out my Shelle’s Top Tips on apologizing and the Bad News Formula for exact instructions on each of these.

Lastly, offer the other person something. You’ve let them down, maybe you can help them find a replacement for you or perhaps there is a part of the task that you can do that will help them out. Find something that you can do and remember to think about this before you speak to them. I suggest you do this on the phone or in person rather than by email. It will go over much better and keep your relationship in good form.

For more tips on how to get out of those sticky communication situations, check out my book, The Customer is Bothering Me. It’s also an e-book that you can download and it’s got lots of hints and tips for difficult communication situations.

To enquire about booking me for a speaking engagement, please click here.

My friend Steve Andreas, the well-known NLP developer and trainer has an amazing video program that I want to share with you.

You have probably been hearing a lot about PTSD lately, particularly with regards to returning soldiers and other front-line workers who deal with violent events. PTSD happens when people experience an unexpected or shattering event that continues to have a serious effect on them, long after any physical danger involved has passed.

It’s a disaster that is more and more prevalent. You’ve seen the news; our war veterans are taking their own lives (4 in the last 2 weeks alone in Canada!!), unable to deal with the effects of their war experiences. Those who seek treatment learn that it can take months, sometimes years to see results. And in many places, the military just dismisses these soldiers as “unfit for duty”, with no further help or compensation. (I am SHOCKED by this!)

But there are effective treatments —- and that is why I think it is important to send you this.

Steve Andreas uses NLP methods to transform PTSD symptoms in hours.

In this video program, you’ll see how to help someone resolve flashbacks, nightmares, rages, grief, perfectionism, anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and the internal critical voices that trigger many of these – as well as work with the impact of these problems on relationships at home and at work.

Click here to learn more about this program. Just check it out. Steve has put together an amazing program, that anyone can learn from.

Do you know anyone who could benefit from Steve’s video program “Releasing PTSD”?  Please feel free to share this email.

I hope it makes a difference in your life or in the life of someone you love.