6 personal growth strategies to advance your career with Multi-Intelligence NLP

Personal growth is professional or career growth.

In this new era of work, it is no longer enough to rely on our job experience, titles, knowledge, credentials and qualifications to be relevant and be in high demand.

In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) fast-changing market, the employment landscape is disrupting itself fast. More companies are pressured by the forces of globalisation to shift their talent management, hiring and performance appraisals approach.

Even if you were to change your job, work for different bosses, move to a new company or start your own business, the forces of VUCA still apply no matter where you go. With increasing demands, we require not only skills, experience and knowledge, but more of finesse, agility, innovation and the capability to deliver under constraints.

To 10x your career development is to start from your personal growth because that is where your capacity for excellence lies.

Whether you like it or not, work is continuously changing.

More so than ever, companies are rewarded by professionals who can lead, perform, coach, influence and collaborate beyond the “good practices” we’ve been brought up. These are the people who push beyond boundaries. They propel their companies and businesses into the world that is emerging.

Let’s use the Cynefin framework developed by David John Snowden as a reference for a case study of Apple to illustrate this strategy.

How did Apple manage to transform itself from an innovative but struggling PC maker to selling around 6 billion songs to 75 million customers by 2008, making a remarkable feat in the digital music market?

Those were the days when there was Napster, where other subscription-based online music models started sprouting, like MusicNet and Pressplay.

Steve Jobs then knew Apple isn’t just going to jump the bandwagon by starting another subscription-based model like their competitors.

In today’s context, this is what people would do in the domain of the obvious – responding directly to what’s most evident by merely adopting the success formula of others.

If you are competing with your skillsets in this domain, you will soon be taken over by automation and artificial intelligence.

Or someone could easily hire a better-skilled talent from an outsourcing virtual assistant market in the Philippines or India at a fraction of the cost.

Neither is Apple trying to venture into the digital music space by having smarter tactics or by being more agile – faster, better features, bigger by allowing more songs than their counterparts or having more sophisticated devices.

That is the domain of the complicated.

Even though you’re adopting a better or smarter strategy, you are still playing at the same level as everyone else. You are still fighting and confronting the old.

That is why a lot of people are stuck, despite having the relevant hard & soft skills that are in demand.

There will always be someone who has more extensive knowledge, experience, better accomplishments and smarter than you.

Instead of doing what the rest of the people would generally do, Jobs and the Apple team lead the business in an entirely new direction – building the new, not fighting the old.

This is where one thrives in the domain of the complex and the domain of the chaotic. In the case of Apple, there was no reference for a different model that worked at that time.

Yes, by assessing how the market responded, it was clear that users wanted all their music in one place. They wanted to own songs and be able to play on their portable devices, not rent. Besides, they wanted songs, not albums.

However, even with the possibilities and opportunities, multiple variables could make or break. Nothing can be fully understood when you are living in the reality of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). A linear and silo approach of working won’t cut it either.

Despite that, Apple took a leap of faith into launching iPod (hardware) that people would pay a premium to store, own and organise large amounts of digital music via iTunes store (software) without the restrictions of subscription and usage like their competitors. Not only that, but they were also the first to negotiate and reach an agreement with five record companies to sell thousands of songs from artists across five major labels at 99 cents each. They found a way to legalise wide downloads without getting into copyright troubles with the authority the way Napster did.

Learning from Apple, they don’t build a better mousetrap; they created a new ecosystem! And the rest is history.

As what Nassim Nicholas Taleb highlighted in his book Antifragile, disorders, randomness, volatility, chaos and disruptions are the conditions that help us thrive. These are the forces that continue to govern our business landscapes, and hence, changing our careers and work in radical ways.

Acknowledging that, there are two ways you can go about professional development or career progression.

You can operate within the domains of the simple to complicated. However, given the nature of the VUCA world we are living in, this approach isn’t robust enough to even survive.

Or you can evolve yourself to thrive in the domains of the complex and chaotic by embracing and developing new & breakthrough qualities.

So how can you revolutionise your career to thrive in the domains of complex and chaotic?

Creating meaningful change in complex environments requires us to embrace a more generative & forward-thinking process. It starts by identifying a shared, visionary purpose. From there, it is about cultivating opportunities to increase connection, communication, and collaboration throughout the whole system.

Whether as business leaders, entrepreneurs or corporate professionals, your career success and growth depends on your multi-dimensional capabilities. They include your abilities to communicate, lead & set people up for success through coaching in the workplace. It also involves developing & selling your talents, qualities and skills. Most importantly, your credibility increases with your ability to deliver impactful results under constraints and limited resources.

All these challenge us to level up our psychological maturity, attitude and to expand our mental, emotional & physical capacity to successfully lead our professional outcomes forward in the dynamic and constantly evolving landscape of VUCA.

Multi-intelligence Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) enables us to enhance our personal development for professional success with a strategic, methodological and dynamic process, suited for evolving with the conditions of our VUCA world.

How is that possible?

7 elements are working together to help professionals thrive:

That said, the gap we see today is that a lot of training programmes & coaching schools still focus on linear skillsets & models that are more suited in the domain of the complicated. As a result, participants find it difficult to apply and get sustainable results in real-life situations in this VUCA environment.

Due to the disruptive nature of this fast-changing landscape, a developmental, agile and a multi-dimensional approach is vital for sustainable growth. Training and coaching programmes need to work in synergy with student’s unique pace, learning styles, nuances and abilities of individuals to get people to focus, be committed, be motivated and to follow through in this highly distracting environment.

To boost your professional portfolio, presence and increase value-add in your career, here are six areas of Multi-Intelligence NLP training & coaching that practitioners gain in the field of communication, self-mastery and professional coaching.

The ability for practitioners to deliver transformational results in others and in their career start with themselves – their self-mastery. There will be a range of NLP processes that enable practitioners to raise their emotional & physical intelligence plus mindset alignment & attitude development to boost their efficacy in the use of the skills as listed below.

Most NLP training and coaching programmes focus on teaching techniques and skills that students can apply to others. Still, they lack the integration of their self-development to deliver effective impact. As such, professionals often find themselves not able to influence their people in their sessions beyond the surface engagements. Thus, they face issues such as team members not able to perform to the demands in the workplace.

Practitioners get to customise their development with a Competency Building Framework Journal to track their NLP, people & coaching skills development, measure their progress and follow through even after the programme.

The measurable skills from the Competency Building Framework supplement the respective competency framework of one’s organisation to raise their effectiveness, efficiency and impact in performance.

Our Competency Building Framework can also be adapted to establish a detailed set of criteria and consistent measurable for developing soft and people’s skills when it comes to performance appraisal, hiring and talent management.

On the organisational level, companies can bridge the gap between employees’ skills proficiency and their level of performance.

On a personal level, professionals can increase their credibility + agility + confidence and mastery to position themselves with an unfair advantage in this competitive & dynamic market.

Practitioners learn how to tap the multiple domains of capabilities in oneself and others with mental, emotional, physical intelligence and intentions when coaching or working with people to create an alignment between their outcomes, their habits and behaviours.

They gain a wide repertoire of practical and powerful tools for creating sustainable & impactful results by working with our subconscious mind and patterns. These are backed by research and over 20 years of real-life results & applications.

They learn how to structure their sessions, meetings, performance appraisal, talent management and hiring process using mental, emotional and body intelligence exercises or processes as a whole person system. A lot of executives and leaders focus on the cognitive or mental aspect, relying on conversational methods and questioning techniques that limit how much a person can perform.

From there, practitioners can better support people in designing conducive daily routines to support their desired change with ease, growth and minimal resistance.

Practitioners get to develop a comprehensive repertoire of non-verbal NLP communication skills such as reading people’s subtle cues with the eyes, gestures, expression, pace and their inner processing styles that are connected to their mind and body senses.

Practitioners’s self-mastery tightly influences their abilities as a communicator (referring to point 1) by equipping them with strong credibility, confidence and influential presence that differentiate them from others in the industry.

As a result, practitioners can tailor their communication to get buy-in, increase influence and trust with people naturally without compromising on integrity and quality.

Our coaching-centric tools and methodology enable clients & people to create a culture of ownership in the workplace. This process is vital in accounting for short-term deliverables while developing long-term growth. As such, people and teams can better derive their solutions, answers and design their path towards fulfilling their outcomes to thrive in the domain of complex and chaotic.

We have seen more and more transformational & life-changing impact on people when they take charge of their development. They demonstrate credibility and leadership in their performance by adapting & integrating new capabilities in this VUCA environment rather than merely accepting the solutions or advice given by others.

In short, they create their version of success to bring in high-quality results.

Practitioners can practice their skills in a safe and trusting environment backed by a diverse community of practitioners, coaches & facilitators together with the trainer.

In the process, the practitioner will be given practical feedback from the community to raise their performance.

We have Skills Enhancement Training in between the classroom modules to help practitioners hone their NLP, people development and coaching skills. After the programme, we will follow up with practitioners on their progress and outcomes. Practitioners can also join future intakes for a refresher practice, attend online NLP & coaching-related webinars and connect with a virtual network of practitioners to further build their capabilities.

Many of our practitioners find this support system and the diverse community valuable in taking their career goals to the next level.

Together with our complete ecosystem, practitioners get specific feedback on how they can tweak and customise their NLP & coaching skills to work well with different people in the community.