Your persuasion task for today (should you choose to accept it) is to get someone to work with you in practising reading another individual. This will be easy, because they get to sharpen their skills too. Here’s a simple exercise you can do:
- Ask your partner to think of someone they dislike. Notice their facial expression, eye movements, breathing, and any postural changes. You may find it easier to pick up information beyond the facial expression if you go slightly into peripheral vision.
- Now ask your partner to think of someone they really like, and observe them again. You will probably notice some differences.
- Now, ask them to think of one or the other, without telling you which. See which set of cues you observe, and tell them which one they are thinking of. You may be surprised at how easily you can ‘read their mind’. If your reading wasn’t accurate, go back to calibrating – first as they think of the person they dislike, then the one they like. Do this as many times as you need to in order to make an accurate reading.
If they want, swap roles so they can have a go too.
In our live NLP Practitioner training we do a more developed version of this exercise – and if you are a trainer and you want step by step instructions to this and many other exercises around rapport and sensory acuity, you can download 15 Exercises For Training Listening Skills And Rapport from Amazon.
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