Experts in different fields (World Economic Forum, McKinsey Consultants, prominent OD-HR-LD Practitioners, Universities etc.), are still reeling from the onslaught of these disruptive changes environmentally, economically, technologically, politically, and socially. No one has the final word on what to do, the best way to move forward, nor a simple explanation to put these VUCA elements into neat boxes. Experts on VUCA have also highlighted the importance of being able to act without full information and learn from failures effectively.

As mentioned earlier, these “spontaneous” skills that emerged to respond to VUCA situations are “yet to be fully conscious” skills. The world is still too busy to unpack these new complex skills. One of the meta-skills that NLP discovered in modeling is the art and science of turning the not fully conscious skills in experts into inner and outer verbal and non-verbal strategies. Hence the expression “NLP is the art and science of turning excellence into strategic thinking, feeling and actions.” At Mind Transformations, we strive to turn these strategic thinking, feeling and actions into Neuro-Actionables, i.e. a framework of linguistic expression that our nervous system can easily understand and execute.

This is an important strength in NLP—that is to turn a named skill (e.g., ability to collaborate with people) into mental, verbal, emotional and behavioral processes. Without it, an important skill remains a “string of words” which may be profound and inspiring, but may not produce an effective performance. With information easily accessible today, many people know a lot about a wider range of topics, but that does not mean people automatically know how to turn that information (head knowledge) into effective behaviors—at the right time, in the right place. So, this strength of NLP is critically important to people in the digital age.

The notion of “knowing” is traditionally pegged to something that occurs in the head (brain). But with recent scientific discoveries³, it has created a paradigm shift in our understanding of where “knowing” takes place in our bodies. It is now proposed that there are at least three ways of knowing, not just in our heads (cephalic), but also in our hearts (cardiac) and guts (enteric). If we consider the notion of knowing how to sense and respond to situations as a form of intelligence, then we can say that there are at least 3 forms of intelligence: mental, emotional, and physical intelligence. In other words, today’s understanding of intelligence is not single, it is multiple.

Mind Transformations (MT) has served South-East Asia for 25 years, and in its continual research and using NLP, they have come to appreciate the wisdom of “multiple intelligence⁴”—first coined by Dr Gardner of Harvard University in 1987. Among the many practical insights that MT gained from integrating multiple intelligence into NLP is that intelligence is not just in the head (IQ), and more powerful performance is possible when we integrate our emotional (EQ), physical (PQ) and spiritual intelligence (SQ), i.e., our ability to expand our self-awareness and connect to our higher purpose. According to Zohar & Marshall, SQ examines our meaning-making, contextualizing and transformative intelligence⁵.

Orchestrating our breathing and physiology to think and feel better, progressively train our body to respond appropriately to unfamiliar situations, proactively work on shortening our time between thinking and acting, sharpening our senses to pick out useful information in any situation, consciously working towards integrating internal knowing and external sensing.

A large portion of the above-mentioned skills are unconscious to many people. The lack of awareness, under-utilization, lack of education, distrust, or outright fear of the unfamiliar—stops people from fully utilizing what they are born with. These multiple intelligences are inherent within us, some are more developed or perhaps innately stronger, nevertheless they are seen by neuroscientists and psychologists as capabilities and capacities that we can develop and integrate. Mind Transformations’ Multi-Intelligence NLP (MI-NLP) fully supports this premise, and they have seen results in their work with countless individuals and organizations.

In MT’s continuous journey to serve its customers, they first strive to bring awareness to people, for people can’t change or utilize what they are not aware of. Followed by helping their customers to expand their understanding and appreciation of multiple intelligences by creating a safe and rich learning environment. Through teaching, demonstration and well-crafted experiential activities, customers begin to experience practical new ways to get results. Through post course group collaboration and facilitation, customers get to execute and follow through their MI-NLP in their personal and professional lives. To reiterate, the strength of NLP is turning a named skill into mental, verbal, emotional and behavioral processes, so that a skill does not remain a “string of words” but is turned into neuro-actionables that produce behavioral change and results.

To give weight to the relevance of MI-NLP knowledge and skills in the age of VUCA, this article taps into the academic research (released in June 2021) done by McKinsey Global Institute⁷ that spans across 15 countries and 18,000 people. They uncovered 4 broad skills and 13 specific skills that will help all people to have a higher likelihood of employment, higher income and job satisfaction in the post-Covid-19 world, which is also the world of the 4th Industrial Revolution, therefore VUCA.

In the area of employment, the broad, specific and delta-skills most related are: Cognitive—mental flexibility—adaptability; Cognitive—communication—synthesizing messages; Self-Leadership—goals achievement—achievement orientation; and Self-Leadership—coping with uncertainty. In Mind Transformations’ MI-NLP terms, it corresponds to IQ, PQ & SQ: “seeing and understanding situations with different viewpoints,” “correlating and integrating different sets of data,” “outcome framing, concretely visualize, plan and adapt ahead,” “progressively train our body to respond appropriately to unfamiliar situations,” “chunking information and communicating it optimally” and “developing resilience and self-trust.”

Not surprisingly, “self-confidence” and “coping with uncertainty” are two delta-skills ranked top of the three outcome areas (employment, income and job satisfaction) by McKinsey’s research team. They defined “self-confidence” as the quality of trusting one’s own abilities and judgements, and “coping with uncertainty” as the ability to operate effectively in situations with high uncertainty. In MI-NLP, challenges are seen as lessons to be learnt, involving the skills of recoding and re-chunking information obtained through sensory observation and framed as solutions to move forward. Getting into the right state to execute an improved plan and learn from it, is the hallmark of an exquisite NLP practitioner. The ability to observe one’s own thoughts and feelings, and examine our assumptions of the unknown to make better decisions, is another MI-NLP process of intention setting and self-acknowledgement.

In McKinsey’s research, they proposed that adult-training systems be reformed. In their extensive online search on adult-training programs, they found courses on developing self-leadership, self-awareness and self-management 20 times less common than those advocating the improvement of communication skills. Many Organization Development experts assert that occupation-based qualifications run the risk of becoming outdated as the VUCA world demands new skills. Hence skills-based accreditation may better suit employers. Especially when adult-training bodies develop programs that cover the delta-skills mentioned in their research.

It is clearly shown here that Mind Transformations’ MI-NLP programmes are well-suited to train and empower working adults with the “delta-skills” that McKinsey is advocating. These “soft skills” (non-occupation-based) are crucial future-fit skills for all working adults today. Another important set of skills that is not mentioned so far is Digital proficiency, and it is highly correlated to high income. At Mind Transformations, the usage of virtual applications, such as online survey and feedback, online written exercises, google doc, virtual demonstrations and practices in zoom classes are intensifying and improving from class to class. At Mind Transformations, we fully acknowledge that the digital world has changed the way we think and live our lives, and it is important for us to expand our digital literacy and usage.