Two Words to Avoid Running a Business

There are words in the English language in terms of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) that are generalisations. I have found when I am helping clients who are running a business the two words that I listen for that have probably been holding them back are “Never” and “Always.”

In NLP Generalization is where the speaker takes a particular experience applies it generically to a multitude of other situations (generalizes). Source

Lets discuss the meaning of these 2 powerful words and how they are used to limit you in your business and the changes that can be made;

Never as I like to say after someone has said it is “Never Ever”. This means that whatever you say after never means you will or have never ever done or do that.

An example that happened recently is a client, lets call her Nancy was talking about running a business through a growth stage to that next level from being a solopreneur and hiring staff for her business, says “I could never manage people”. Nancy didn’t even think about the use of the word never and unfortunately the brain captures this generalisation and turns it into reality now for you.

Every time Nancy goes to manage people in the future, she will have something in the background saying that she just is not good at it.

As I started to question the reason for Nancy, saying I could never manage people, it turns out that this was one experience she had in the past when she worked in a large organisation and she had a lady working under her that was very disruptive and could not be managed effectively by any manager. Nancy took it upon herself to now come to the generalisation conclusions that she was not good at managing people. Now Nancy has given herself a handicap because of that experience.

The approach to take when you find yourself using the word NEVER is to be specific about the never. This is a great indicator that you need to improve in a certain area and you just don’t understand it as well as you could.

Turns out Nancy was hesitant to hire people that were hard to manage and that’s a good thing. A better way for Nancy to talk about this part of her business is that now she is ensuring that she puts in place a solid hiring and vetting process for future staff.

When hiring the person will be a self-starter and is able to adjust and listen to what Nancy says and quickly implement the changes.

Always means every time and it's usually used in the case of “I always do that”. People make statements not thinking about the “that” they have linked to the Always word (generalisation) meaning this will happen every time.

A great example of this was my clients, I will call him Joe who was just the other day saying to me “I always struggle each month to have enough clients to pay my expenses” I said straight back to him “ALWAYS?” And as soon as I said that he was ok so not always but it seems that way.

As soon as I said there is a better way of thinking about that scenario and changed his perspective to be “How could I better forecast the clients for each month to feel secure that I will pay all my expenses” then he was able to focus his attention on the result being achieved as opposed to it being a struggle.

The 2 words you want to avoid when talking about your business are very useful to point out where you may have an opportunity to dramatically change your business by listening to yourself, make those generalisation and then drilling down to find out specifically why you are thinking that way.

Language is very important to how we communicate to ourselves while running a business, it’s a quick way to improve your mental state.