Humanistic Intelligence Articles
Are You Going Down The Right Road?
I was on a consulting project when I got a call from a friend. He had a new product that he wanted to sell to TV companies and was completely stressed out. So he called and asked for my help. Now, I always say to my friends, you will only really know the quality of my friendship when “the chips are down”. This is a British saying that means.... “When things get bad” You will find some friends will stand their ground with you while others leave and it is only when the chips are down that you find out who your friends really are.
Anyway, it was not easy as I was in the middle of a consulting assignment but I managed to rearrange my schedule and create a gap to help my friend. I said to him, “I know someone in a TV Shopping company, who might see us at short notice. Now, if I create a meeting at 4pm on Friday afternoon”, I said, to him, “you would have to come up to Birmingham (where I was working) and take me to London, where I can introduce you to my friend at the TV Company”.
I made the call and we got the meeting. I arranged for my friend to pick me up in his car at 12 noon and off we went to London.
Problem! My friend had a satellite navigator (SatNav... this is not the name of the product but an abbreviation).
On the way down to London, the SatNav kept taking us down the wrong way? I said “We needed the M40 and then the M4 as this would lead us to the right side of London”. “No, no”, my friend said, “the SatNav knows where we are going” and even though the sign posts showed him over and over again, he was going the wrong way, he kept following the SatNav. It was no good. No matter what I said. We ended up on the wrong side of London and we had to battle through the London traffic on a Friday afternoon and we arrived over an hour late.
Luckily, the TV person was a friend and saw us anyway, and I managed to rescue the situation and I hope to get him a deal with the TV company that will lift him up into the sky.
Unfortunately, on the way back home the SatNav wanted us to go back the wrong way again and battle through the London traffic. This time I said “NO! Follow me, London is my home (he was from Scotland) and I know my way around here”. And although all the way home he kept saying SatNav is telling us to go in the other direction, I made him follow me and we got home really easily, quickly and avoiding all the traffic.
Now, is this situation familiar to you? Do you have a friend, whom, no matter how many times you tell them, “I am not sure you going down the right road...” they keep on going down the road they think is right even when the universe keeps banging them on the head saying “no, no, no”!
The situation is because you have what I call, Meta Personality Values (MPV) that affect your behaviours, beliefs, attitudes and actions. Your MPV are deep values within your unconscious mind that you are not consciously aware of that affect how you think and why you do the things you do.
This is because as you grow and experience life you create a unique way of responding to life experiences that is unique to you. This defines a signature way in which you code your reality. This, consequently, defines the way you mentally process information and over time, these mental processes form into, what they call in NLP, Meta Programmes. The rationale is, just in the same way a computer programme affects the functioning of other programmes, your Meta Programme affects you by shaping the way you think and behave and how you communicate with people.
It is how your Meta Programmes shape your overall personality, how these values affect the way you create your reality and the conscious and unconscious impact you make, that I am calling your Meta Personality Values.
Now there is a wide ranging debate about how many Meta Programme we have and therefore how many different ways your MPV affect your behaviour? Leslie Cameron Bandler originally defined 60 Meta Programmes. Subsequently, others combined these to make a much smaller and they say more useful Meta Programmes Law...
My thinking is you cannot define people and put them into boxes and say there are only so many Meta Programmes Laws of behaviour! You cannot put the people into boxes... People, like the universe are unlimited in their potential. So why create laws that put people into boxes?
I think a smarter thing to do is to define the principles behind why things happen. And the way to do this with MPV is to look at people’s behaviours and understand the overall context of the attitudes, perceptions and perspective of whatever the situation is that is creating behaviours? And from this define the MPV that are at work.
Usually there are two MPVs at work that are opposite to each other but paradoxically connected in an inversely proportionate relationship
For example, the MPV at work with my friend is being totally “Internally Referenced”. The opposite MPV to this but paradoxically connected in an inversely proportionate relationship is being “Externally Referenced”
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Now, all of us can exhibit both MPVs different contextual situations while one MPV can be more dominant than the other depending on the emotional flexibility and awareness of the individual
People with dominant “Internally Referenced” MPV are usually very self reliant and internally strong. You do not need positive feedback and are usually self driven and self reliant. You have your own internal standards and make your own judgements. Your judge external information against your own internal judgement system and if you receive negative feedback that goes against your beliefs you question the judgement of the feedback.
The positive worth is that you are mentally strong and stay motivated, even when the positive feedback is limited. This enables you to break through barriers and keep going until you succeed.
Great leaders exhibit Internally Referenced MPV. The challenge is, this MPV needs to be balanced against sensitivity to feedback with good judgement about when to keep going and when to change your road.
Tony Blair is a good example of how it can go wrong. When millions of his people, from all walks of life that represented every segment of Great Britain, went out marching in London (I myself was one) protesting against going to war in Iraq... He did not listen and (I believe) made the world a far more dangerous place while enabling the massacre of millions of innocent lives on all sides, for no good reason.
People with dominant “Externally Referenced” MPV are usually very caring. You value what people say and their feedback, whether positive or negative, matters. You measure you judgements based on external evidence and concrete facts. How people feel, what they think about you and being recognised matter to you.
The positive worth is that you are a very giving and caring person and you like helping people. This enables you to keep giving and giving to people who need you. The challenge is this MPV needs to be balanced with self sufficiency because if there is no external feedback this can affect your motivation and make you question yourself and your actions
Doctors and Nurses exhibit “Externally Referenced” MPV but they also need to be “Internally Referenced” in the right balance, at the right time, in the right way. This became really clear to me recently when a friend suddenly went into hospital. A little worried, I went to visit him and we chatted and I asked how he was being treated. His answer interested me as he said “Some Doctors really care about you and make you feel cared for while other Doctors, think they know what is good for you and just do what they need to do for your welfare without involving you or making you feel important”.
Mmmmmm, I thought, this is a good example of some Doctors having External and Internal MPV just in the right balance and others with a dominant Internal MPV.
The important thing for the healthcare industry is you need to get this balance right otherwise this affect the quality of your health care experienced. More importantly studies show Doctors who spent over 18 minutes with their patients, on average, were less likely to be sued if they got things wrong, than doctors who spent 15 minutes with their patience on average. The quality of their knowledge and experience did not matter it was the quality of care that the patient experienced that mattered and this depended upon the quality of their MPV
Momen's Acid Test
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Momen's Law
As you grow your MPVs are likely to change with your life experiences. However, the best way to get the most out of your life is to balance the right MPV at the right time, in the right place, in the right way. So, for example, if Tony Blair had listened to his people he would be known for many good decisions he made during his leadership and not for causing the death and/or wounding of hundreds and thousands of people and for the many lives he has destroyed – on all sides! The scars he has left will still reverberate across the world long after he is dead.
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