Recruitment and Teambuilding with Heleen van Elburg

Meet Heleen van Elburg, a Dutch trainer/coach who works primarily in team building and recruitment. In this video she describes how she uses MindSonar in recruitment  and to help teams become more efficient.

It is interesting to hear Heleen describe how, in recruitment, she looks at profiles in four different ways. She goes beyond recruiting and selecting the candidate. She also works on the fit within the organisation after the person has been selected.

  1. Does the candidate have the right thinking style, the right meta programs and values for the task?
  2. Does the candidate fit with the other team members in terms of their profiles?
  3. What is a good sequence for the team, given their profiles?
  4. What is the best way for a supervisor to motivate this candidate (once they have become a team member, of course)?

Building a New Team: Alignment or Diversity?

A colleague from the US asked me: when profiling for a new team, would I want to see great diversity? In my mind that would make sense, but in reality I might want to see it aligned in some areas. What is your opinion?

In my opinion, the desired meta programs depend on what the team needs to accomplish. A sales team is different from a policy team. So in terms of priorities I would say: first of all you want the team to have the required meta programs and values to be successful at their main tasks. Once that is accomplished, you want to have as much diversity as possible. It is a bit like the relationship between towards (achieving goals) and away form (solving problems) in coaching. You want away from in the frame of towards. With team you want diversity in the frame of alignment.

If you want to put it in a procedure (which I often like to do) it would be something like this:

1. Define what the team’s main task is

2. Define what the necessary meta programs and values are for that task.

3. Make sure some team members have all (or as many as possible) of those thinking style elements.

4. Find additional team members how have some task-critical meta programs but who also have some meta programs an/or Graves drives that are distinctly different.

5. Explain thoroughly to the team why you composed them like this, and what the benefits of thinking style diversity are.

6. Prepare the team for dealing comfortably with conflicts that may arise from this engineered meta program diversity.

Good luck!

The Development of MindSonar

The Dutch Society for NLP made a professional looking series of movies about the ‘Emergence of NLP in the Netherlands’.  Since Jaap Hollander and Anneke Meijer brought NLP to the Netherlands, they were interviewed too. One part of the movie is about MindSonar and it was recorded in English, so we thought we’d put it here for the international MindSonar community.

How Do People Make Decisions?

The Thinking Style distinction that we will be exploring this week has a huge impact on how people make decisions, as well as what motivates them. You will notice an increase in your effectiveness in dealing with others if you know which Thinking Style they are operating out of in that specific context.

Internal vs. External:

“Who Decides, Me or Someone Else?” How do we know when we’ve done a good job?  Is it an inner Continue reading

Seven Proven Ways to Drive Yourself Crazy with Thinking Styles

Most people are already pretty good at crashing relationships and goofing up communication. Different people have different thinking styles. And people usually like their own thinking just fine, it’s the other people they have trouble with. Look around you, and you will see plenty of irritation, anger, frustration and conflict. How do they do it? How do they succeed in creating all this trouble? Or even more important: How do you do it? Let’s have a look at seven effective and time-tested ways to get frustrated through thinking styles. Seven proven ways to drive yourself crazy with Thinking Styles.

What are Thinking Styles?
Thinking Styles are elements of your mindset, things like ‘towards’ (focus on goals) versus ‘away from’ (focus on problems). Your mindset is a combination of Thinking Styles and values. Your mindset often determines what you do and how you feel.

MindSonar Thinking Styles

1. People with a different thinking style suck
Let’s start with one of the most effective ways to get frustrated: believe that your own thinking style is the best one in the world. If not to say the only one. So for instance, let’s say you think in terms of the future and you like options. You could then simply call anyone who thinks in terms of the past and procedures an ‘old-fashioned coward’. This is a great technique, because it guarantees that you will meet old-fashioned cowards everywhere.

Guiding Principle: My Thinking Styles are the only sane Thinking Styles there are.


2. Mismatch proactively and in great detail
Let me explain the jargon here: ‘mismatching’ means that you focus on what’s bad or wrong. Its counterpart is ‘matching’: looking for what is right and good. If you mismatch proactively, that means that you do it without thinking about it much. You just simply do it all the time. And if you mismatch on all the details, you have a huge number of things you can find fault with. Everywhere you go, you will notice lots of things that are bad or wrong or incorrect or just simply ridiculous. Especially when you are an emotional person, this can be a perfect self-despairing technique.

Guiding Principle: Use the Thinking Styles ‘mismatching’, ‘proactive’ and ‘specific’ in combination with each other.

MindSonar Thinking Styles

3. If it doesn’t work, do it some more
Your thinking style is great for some things and not so great for other things. It may be great for designing buildings but not for playing with children. That’s why some people are flexible in how they think. So here is another great frustration booster: if your thinking style is not working, do it some more! For instance, if you feel strongly responsible for things and you are exhausted, do it some more of that: start taking even more responsibility.

Guiding Principle: Stick to your Thinking Styles no matter what.

MindSonar Thinking Styles

4. Find derogative words for other thinking styles
If you are a very practical thinker, you like to ask: what are we going to do with this? How can we use this? And if you work or live with someone who is more of theoretical thinker, they like to ask: what is the essence? Now watch out! You might be tempted to appreciate them for their different thinking style. Don’t! Instead, call them ‘cerebral’ or ‘vague’ or ‘pedantic’. Finding derogative words for their thinking style works great as a relationship destroyer!

Guiding Principle: People with other Thinking Styles are dumb, ugly and [fill in negative qualification here].

MindSonar Thinking Styles

5. Try to motivate people without understanding them
Sometimes you want to suggest to people what would be a good thing to do. And their thinking style usually differs from yours. And this provides you with yet another great opportunity for self-frustration! Lets say, for instance, that you think in terms of goals you want to achieve, and they think in terms of problems they want to avoid. So you vividly describe the things they can achieve with your plans. And they respond with a blank stare. An awesome self-frustration technique!

Guiding Principle: Everybody has the same Thinking Styles I have.

MindSonar Thinking Styles

6. Explain to people what is wrong with them
You have probably had someone, a friend, a co-worker, a family member, whoever, come up to you and start complaining to you about you. You were not doing things right, you wanted the wrong things, you didn’t treat them right, and so on. Remember: if they can do that to you, you can do it to them! For instance, if you are focused on the future and they are focused on the past, explain to them – in great detail and at great length – how much better it would be if they focused on the future more. Just like you do. And if they protest? That’s because they are so focused on the past. Explain that to them.

Guiding Principle: Clearly explain to others why they use the wrong Thinking Styles.

MindSonar Thinking Styles

7. Surround yourself with people who think just like you
This last technique can defeat not only individuals, but whole organizations; whole countries even. And yet it is quite simple to do. Just select people who have the same thinking style you have. And then simply refuse to talk to anyone else. Do you think in terms of goals? Only work with goal oriented people. Avoid anyone who thinks in terms of problems, they just make things difficult. Do you focus on feelings? Only work with other feeling types. Avoid anyone who focuses on pictures or stories, they just confuse things anyway. And so on. The beauty of it is: you can use all of the other techniques I described above to support this one!

Guiding Principle: Find people with the exact same Thinking Styles and talk only with them.