Perceptual Positions

Your perception of any experience depends on the position from which you perceive it.

In coaching and mentoring, encouraging your clients to look at situations from different perceptual positions can really help to open their minds to different perspectives, the feelings of others and the impact of their behaviour on others. It can also help your clients to increase their own self awareness, identify different options and to decide on the best way forward with a particular situation.

Taking different perceptual positions is a NLP technique. NLP defines three perceptual positions that are known as the first, second and third positions. There is also a fourth position that can be used.

The different perceptual positions are as follows:

-First position - This is when you are yourself, in your own body, looking out through your own eyes and seeing things from your own point of view.

-Second position - This is when you imagine what it is like to be someone else and to see things and experience them from their point of view.

-Third position - This is when you take an observer's point of view of a situation you are involved in, seeing things from their perspective and taking an impartial view.

-Fourth position - This is where you take a holistic view and experience a situation from a position where you see all the other different positions and the system in which they are operating.

There are many ways in which taking different perceptual positions can help you and your clients including:

-Stepping outside what you are currently experiencing.
-Seeing things from different perspectives.
-Understanding how your behaviour is impacting on others.
-Ascertaining how others are feeling about you.
-Experiencing situations from different perspectives.
-Getting an overview of a situation.
-Understanding a situation in its entirety, rather than just from your own perspective.
-Evaluating a situation before taking action.
-Trying out different options to see how they may be perceived.
-Getting unstuck when you cannot think of a way forward.
-Taking the emotion out of a situation.
-Improving your self-awareness.
-Looking at different options that you could take.
-Deciding the best way forward.

Taking different perceptual positions is a very useful technique to use in coaching and mentoring. You will be able to see from the above how you can use it to really move your clients forward in a variety of coaching and mentoring situations.

It is also an invaluable technique to use yourself when you are reviewing your own performance as a coach or mentor. Reflecting on your coaching and mentoring sessions and client relationships from different perceptual positions will give you new insights and learnings.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the June 2008 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.