"Everyday, I can only see my husband's dark face and I dare not look at him...He never observes my goodness and I can't see any future for our family," said a frustrated woman in a domestic dispute case. "I see you really wish your husband could observe your goodness and highlight your efforts", the beat PC replied in a similar tone as he sat beside the woman. "Look at the family picture on your shelf, can't you remember the beautiful days with your husband?" After this brief conversation, the woman felt enlightened and relieved and the PC gained her co-operation and could look into what had just happened.

Look at the bold-type words. Can you see the commonality among them? You will see how the beat PC applied Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) skills in handling this domestic dispute case.

What is NLP?

NLP was created in 1975 by its founders, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who began modelling and duplicating the behaviours of a few great communicators and psychologists. After many years of development, a range of practical techniques was developed and became what now commonly known as NLP.

NLP has a set of techniques related to communication, emotion control and positive thinking. It does not aim to change people, but to generate more choices to reach a desired outcome by enriching our dimensions of thinking. We can say NLP is the simplified extracts of behavioural studies. Nevertheless, unlike traditional psychology studies, which contain a huge collection of removed scientific theorem, NLP is simply a set of guiding principles and practical techniques about real-life behaviour.

An important concept of NLP is Ecology Check (we may interpret this as Balance Check). Whenever we decide to accept a new option or to change, we have to ask ourselves: "Is this really doing good in all other aspects of our work or life?"; "Would it cause destructive side-effects?" and "Does it serve both myself and other people well?" Ecology Check can ensure we are acting in the most modest and reasonable manner.

NLP in Police Work

Indeed, we are already practising NLP in our daily work, but we just may not be aware of it. The beat PC in the above scenario demonstrated how to comfort the frustrated woman with NLP skills. Every person has a preferred set of "vocabularies" that they like to use to express themselves. As you may be aware, the woman had used a lot of "visually related" words such as "look", "see" and "observe" in expressing her feelings. In order to let the woman understand more easily, the PC used the same category of words such as "see", "look" and "picture" with the same tonality in his replies. Moreover, by acknowledging the woman's underlying meaning, i.e. she wants her husband see the good things in her, a sense of trust and understanding can easily be established. This is what we call "rapport". You may find it simplistic, but sometimes it is these little things that make a great difference.

Apart from verbal and non-verbal communications, NLP can be applied in various aspects, particularly in positive thinking, stress management, mediation, training and enhancement of police and public relationship. Through vivid real-life examples, beginners can pick up the techniques and apply them easily in communication and emotional control, while advanced practitioners can apply them in counselling and coaching. Through proper NLP training, we can use these techniques to reach a win-win situation.

As a police officer, we need to deal with different people and challenges from time to time. Yet, different people perceive matters differently and feedback might sometimes be misinterpreted as failure. Through other advanced NLP techniques such as "Reframing", "Calibration", "Anchoring", "Pace & Lead", "Association/Disassociation" and "Positive Intention", etc, we would also be able to decode body language, understand others' perception, enhance our flexibility and even eliminate undesirable beliefs.

Senior Inspector Alex Lam Yu-ching from the Divisional Investigation Team of Sheung Shui Division contributed this article. A certified trainer and master practitioner of NLP, an Accredited Mediator, a licensed corporate trainer and a certified hypnotherapist, Alex has been giving talks on NLP to the staff of Tai Po District.

SIP Lam has given talks on NLP to many officers during their training days