Review 
What’s In Decision - An NLPer’s perspective?  Stephen Cotterell 
www.executivematters.com

Stephen opened our curiosity and encouraged us to find out what is useful and enabling for us when making a decision.

Paul Chadwick was on the ball and the first and only person to decide to take the £10 note Stephen held up, in only 3 seconds if I remember correctly, great  decision making Paul!

Stephen told us about Professor Michael Gazzaniga a neuroscientist who received the Nobel Prize for his work on split brains and epilepsy – (in which connections were severed between the two hemispheres). He discovered people will seek to justify their decisions – even in the absence of any evidence at all, and also the phenomenon of post decision justification.  For example if it just feels right, they will find reasons to justify it.

Then we heard about Lens new bike and all the decision processes he went through, he took a long time.  In the end he came to a decision to buy the right bike but not to order it until 4 months later – when he had the funds, he went on to mention those who shy away from making large decisions but make many smaller decisions regularly without much thought.

In groups of 4 we explored our own decision making strategies and what strategies we used -followed by a discussion on the process.  It was interesting from my point of view as I am good at making good quick  decisions and the exercise increased my awareness of what information and resources that other people need, and how they can be motivated to make decisions. We also considered what representational systems others are using,  what meta models and convincer strategies they are using and what needs to happen for them to make a decision. 

Then another story about Ian who is an IT Consultant who found difficulty making decisions. Stephen asked for a volunteer to come forward to demonstrate the process. The volunteer chose an unresolved issue around 5,6  on a scale of 1 to 10 , nothing of great  importance . He asked the volunteer to decide to ‘do nothing’ ‘do something’, or ‘do something else’.  He then asked our volunteer to drop one choice and allocated the other two to heads and tails on a coin.  He tossed the coin and asked the volunteer for his response,

We then tried this out ourselves in groups of 4 of course; as usual I thought of all the things I should have asked and tried out afterwards.  Mike didn’t make his decision - at least not then.  It is always useful to use all of these strategies to persuade and influence, and I am always good at making ‘good’ decisions. But this night I learned something different, and  that is how to help others make up their mind from the other side, the other persons perspective.– Oh and there was the ‘frogs sitting on the log’, but that’s another story.

Thank you Stephen for an entertaining, memorable, and thought provoking presentation.

Katie

Last Meeting
Great to see you all at the meeting, the group is growing bigger and faster than I had anticipated.  There was great atmosphere a good mix and everyone up for participation

 

After the introductions Martin Philips provided the warm up session for the evening. A little Tai-Chi exercise for all. Thanks Martin you did a great job getting everyone involved! A discussion of body awareness of both ourselves and others followed, including Feldenkrais and modelling of performance.  The conversation prompted a demonstration of Ki Energy from John Baker, showing what happens when we move our centre of awareness – totally fascinating, I’ve been playing with this one  …… You’ll have to show it to me again I can’t reproduce it! I can now have lots of centres (at least I think they’re mine) and I can move them where I want (at least I think I can)
 

After the break Stephen Cotterell provided the presentation for the evening

 “What’s In Decision – An NLPer’s perspective”  which was an entertaining mix of storytelling, demonstrations and exercises; enjoyed by all. Thank you Stephen and thank you all those who gave me your much appreciated feedback.

 

Next month Tim Davies will be our presenter, and the warm up session by Michael Lank – more to come soon.