This week I swapped Saigon for Bangkok, spending several days with the CARE Myanmar team working on their strategy. Having the whole team in the same room, while logistically an effort, produced tremendous energy. There simply is no way to replicate that dynamic online.
Being face-to-face with your colleagues is super important, and always reminds me of a few things I learnt on a training course back in 2002 about Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Without looking up a fresh definition of NLP to back me up, my main memory of what I learned that week is this: no matter how well someone might try to disguise it, we all have “tells”. We make giveaway signs that reveal how we’re feeling or what we’re thinking. Half the time we don’t realise we’re doing it. And, half the time, no one around us is picking up on it, either.
For those who’ve not heard of NLP, it was developed in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California. Their idea was simply to study people exceptionally good at communicating and influencing and work out what they were doing differently.
In the spirit of self-awareness, I don’t think of NLP as a hard science, but more of a toolkit.
During that week, almost 25 years ago now, I was shown some ways to notice things about communication that I’d otherwise miss.
Building rapport was a cornerstone part of that week. We were taught about the art of “matching” and how to start that off by matching someone’s energy. In conversation you subtly copy someone’s pace, volume, and the level of detail they like.
And, just as subtly as matching, you can also then begin to read people’s “tells”. We all have a normal pace of speech, tone, and a natural level of physical fidgeting when we’re conversing. It’s then, quite simply, about noticing when any of these things shift.
There are plenty of signs to spot that can give people’s mood away but it’s also important not to take these in isolation. For example, you might have heard people say that someone crossing their arms is a sign of “someone being defensive”. This can be true, but not always – sometimes the room is just cold.
So, for me, rapport and matching is a lot to do with understanding someone’s normal and then noticing the change from a person’s normal.
And then there are the words people use.
NLP suggests we each lean towards certain senses in the way we process and describe things. “I see what you mean” or “that looks right” are both visual phrases; “that sounds good” or “it rings a bell” are auditory; and “I’ve got a feel for it” or “that sits well with me” are more about feeling. Tuning into this language and echoing it back is a neat way to make someone feel understood.
The art of “positioning” is also an NLP staple. Before a difficult conversation, look at it from three seats: your own; the other person’s (genuinely – what do they want, fear, need?); and a neutral observer’s, watching you both from the side. If you do this enough you’ll notice how often the third seat reveals the obvious solution, and how much the second softens your approach.
When I sat in that training room in 2002, almost all communication at work happened face to face or on the phone. Today, a huge share of it happens through a screen – video calls, emails, Teams messages, shared documents.
And increasingly, some of it happens with AI tools rather than people. You might expect that to make “soft skills” less relevant, but I’d argue the opposite.
We’re drowning in data, dashboards and AI-generated summaries. What’s scarce is the ability to get to the heart of what someone actually means. As technology takes on more of the technical and analytical work, the skills that remain distinctly human – empathy, judgement, reading a room, making people feel heard – become more valuable, not less.
Which brings me back to Bangkok. Myanmar is a sensitive place, and the detail of the week belongs to the team. But strategy in a country living through protracted conflict depends on honest conversations, and those depend on people feeling heard. Being together meant we could pick up all the things a screen would have missed.
Since 2002, the techniques have blurred a little at the edges, but the core lesson hasn’t. We’re all giving ourselves away, all the time – and we’re all more alike than we think. The leaders who do best are the ones who notice, who ask the better question, and who take a moment to see things from the other person’s seat.
That’s exactly what we work on at Coracle. Not tricks or scripts, but the practical, human skills that help people listen better, communicate more clearly and lead with more self-awareness – whether they’re in the same room or three time zones apart.
So what’s the “tell” you’ve learned to read in your team? Drop me a line at timbishop@coracleconsulting.net, or find me back in Saigon next week.
Have a great weekend!
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