How to by-pass resistance before it occurs

You may be thinking right now…. Inoculations?
Isn’t that what I got when I was at school or when I visited a foreign country?

Its okay you did read correctly!

In the field of medicine to inoculate is the act of introducing a reduced, weakened version of a virus to the body in order to produce immunity for that specific virus.

While it is vital to inoculate people in this way to protect them from disease it is also important to use inoculations in your communication.

When we are delivering our message to people, from time to time, they will have objections that get in the way of what we are communicating.

If you have an idea of what these objections are, ahead of time, then you can introduce a weakened version of the objection, before they do, and then resolve it.

To inoculate objections like this before they arise is a tremendously powerful form of influence as it has the effect of bypassing any resistance before it emerges.

For example, I am constantly telling people about all the benefits that NLP has to offer them both in their personal and professional lives. Through time I have noticed certain objections come up that get in the way of people believing me.

One of the main objections that I am met with is that NLP is some form of wacky new age positive thinking.

Now I know, of course, that this is not true so I inoculate against it by saying the following:

“You know some people believe that NLP is some form of wacky new age positive thinking when it’s not. Positive thinking is a little bit like walking out to the garden and saying ‘There’s no weeds, there’s no weeds’ when the garden looks like the Amazon rainforest!

What NLP provides you with is specific tools, techniques and a technology that allow you to cut down the weeds of your life and plant more useful things in their place”

The process of inoculation is simple:

First of all, you have to recognise that a particular objection may come up during the communication.
Secondly, think of a way to bring up a weakened down version of the objection and then resolve it.

Another way to inoculate is through the tone of your voice. I remember a few years ago I was purchasing some clothes from a popular high street retailer and the sales assistant asked me if I wanted to apply for a store card. He said to me that if I took a card out now I would receive a 10% discount in my purchase. Now to put you in the picture, if you don’t already know, store cards generally charge interest at about 15% APR so I was getting myself ready to decline his offer. Just as I was about to speak, he turned round and said to me:

“You know a lot of people say:

‘Yeh but what about the interest’ (This line was said in a silly irritating tone of voice)

But really all you need to do is take it out today, get your discount and then clear the balance before the end of the month and you won’t be charged a penny."

Now whether he meant it or not, what the sales assistant did was very clever. When he said the line ‘Yeh, but what about the interest’ he used a very silly, irritating tone of voice.

Now any time I try to think about the interest I can’t help but think about it with this silly, irritating voice and it has nowhere near the same impact.

Just with one simple change in the tone of his voice he managed to change the feelings I associated with the interest on the card.

This is how powerful inoculations can be when executed elegantly and skilfully.

To review, here are the main points on inoculations:

Start by first writing down your influencing outcome.
Ask yourself: “What are some of the objections that I get on a regular basis or, if it is a new situation, what could be some of the objections I might encounter?

While you are brainstorming your objections, put yourself in the other person’s position.

Once you have a list of possible objections, generate ways that you can skilfully introduce and resolve them before the other person brings them up.
There are many ways to inoculate. Some of these are: Using an analogy a personal story, A newspaper or TV report or altering the tone of your voice.

Irrespective of what career or job we are in, we are constantly met with objections to the ideas that we pitch to people. If you know what some of these objections are in advanced then you can overcome them before they arise by using a process called inoculation.

The author of this article is Steven Burns from NLP Training Scotland. Visit his website if you would you would like to know more about NLP Training.

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