Tools for Managers and HR Professionals:

Perceptual Positions
or
"Who said that, me you or him?"

When I asked him how he was doing, Jim ran his hands through his hair and sighed. "I hate the way Bob’s always on my case. He only cares about himself, he just doesn’t understand what I have to deal with!"

This sort of miscommunication between co-workers is well known to HR Professionals and other Managers. But what to do? Give Jim a pep talk? Go and speak to Bob to see if he will ease up? Cross your fingers and hope it will blow over?

One approach to a potential reconciliation is through the "Perceptual Positions" of NLP. Perceptual Positions encourage us to think from a point of view other than the one we normally adopt. In the above example, it appears that Jim, is viewing the world from Jim’s point of view and Bob from Bob’s (while this may seem self evident, you almost certainly know people who normally view the world from another’s point of view, who may be referred to by their colleagues and friends as "victims" or "martyrs").

By encouraging Jim to see the world from Bob’s viewpoint, and vice-versa, and by encouraging them both to see their own interactions from an observer position, the miscommunication between them may be smoothed, and any purely selfish behaviors eliminated. What sort of questions can lead to such a shift in viewpoint? Although abbreviated, perhaps something along the following lines:

"It’s obvious this is a concern to you. How are you feeling about it?...