I had to have a “Talk” (note the capital ‘T’) with my 16 year old daughter about a party gone out of control and knowing the intense battlegrounds of teenage communication I prepared accordingly.
Being an expert communicator 
I pulled out all the stops and dug deep into my NLP tool chest: observing the principles of great negotiation I first defined the desired outcomes and made sure they were well-formed. I carefully designed the win-win I wanted to achieve, agreed with myself on my fallback positions, practiced the agreement and relevancy frames in front of the mirror, read up on the hierarchy of ideas, recalled the pertinent points of the Milton model, rehearsed the Meta model questioning techniques with my dog, disassociated myself from the problem (to keep a cool head), fired off my clarity of mind and purposeful determination anchors and further steeled my resolve by focusing intensely on what I wanted.
Thus prepared and appropriately fortified (can you get drunk on NLP knowledge? ) I confidently strode into the meeting which my daughter graciously had agreed to fit into her busy schedule. No she doesn’t have a job yet (here’s another “Talk” we have to have, sigh) and it’s school holidays right now – it was the old “I have plans with my friends, don’t you understand!!??”.
After the event I was painfully reminded again of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s words: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. With all that preparation and aforethought I had put into our “Talk” I had expected full achievement of all my objectives, but found myself walking away from the meeting with a middling feeling.
With my NLP communication skills I know I can deal with the most obstreperous adult, and I felt equally equipped to deal with a teenager, after all they are just young adults, right!? But after our meeting all I felt was stumped: points had been made (and they were all good), common ground had been found (even if verrry reluctantly), plans had been prepared, actions had been defined and I still wasn’t sure who got their way more. Maybe that’s the true definition of a win-win outcome: You have one when you don’t feel you lost and you know you didn’t win.
The message I took away from all this? Teenagers are not like computers: you can press all the right buttons and in the end you still can’t tell if they “work” any better. And yes, they’re not like adults either!
But I do believe I got at least some of my message across: she’s at home studying right now while her friends are out playing. Goodness, did I win something after all…?
And of course: without all my NLP inspired planning the Talk would probably have turned into an argument and deteriorated from there all the way to the “Walkout” (note the capital letter again ) which would have meant a lose-lose for sure, and I guess you can always tell when you got one of those.
All the best!
Thomas
