It is estimated that 75% of your working time is spent communicating.

If you are interested in seriously improving your skills in this area you may like to consider NLP. Since the 70s NLP has gradually become one of the "in" subjects for professional communications experts.

There is only one way to study properly i.e. through "experiential" training at one of the UK's accredited centres. You may contact the Institute for NLP in the UK for details www.anlp.org . Here we try to give you a flavour of the subject.

There are many definitions of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). It has been described as 'the study of the structure of subjective experiences' - that is understanding how humans think and experience the world.

Each person has developed their own specific set of strategies for dealing with the world as they encounter it from day to day. Some of the strategies prove to be effective, others are adequate, and some prove to be so inadequate that they cry out for change.

NLP provides a series of models, or ways of thinking, that enable us to describe and understand our own specific internal strategies and recognise other people's. By testing out different variations of such strategies, we should eventually be able to find one that is useful which we can use productively in our future experiences.

Using NLP to improve communication

By exploring the ways in which we respond to given stimuli, and comparing these reactions with other peoples, it becomes apparent that some responses are more productive than others. For example, why are some people better at poker? Because they have learned not to show their thoughts through their body language. NLP offers you the opportunity of learning how to adapt your responses to any given set of stimuli.

Body Language

NLP looks for patterns and one of the earliest patterns recognised in humans was a tendency for the eyes to look in a certain direction when thinking in a certain way. To expand on this, people generally look:

® Up and to their Right - when thinking about a remembered image
® Up and to their Left - when creating an image
® Directly Right - for a remembered sound
® Directly Left - for a created sound
® Down and to their Right - when having an internal dialogue with themselves
® Down and to the Left - when experiencing feelings

By becoming aware of patterns such as these, you can use them to positively improve your communication with others.

For example, if you are worried that you might have said something to upset somebody then you can usually tell by checking whether they are looking Down and to the Left - if they are, then they are probably feeling upset. If when you are interviewing a potential employee and throughout the interview they are looking Up and to their Left, then they are probably either very eager and imagining their future with the company or they are not very interested and hence simply daydreaming.

By studying more complex behavioural patterns and using the results to adapt your internal strategies, you can effectively help to choose the way you want to be in life.

There is more on NLP in the www.skillgate.com 'Library', see "Interpersonal Skills".