Did Richard Bandler Steal From Hollywood?
According to several sources, the average attention span is around 8 seconds and decreasing with the rise of social media.
Which raises a good question I’ve been asked many times:
“Tom, what’s the secret to keeping the attention of an audience for hours at a time and leaving them wanting for more?
I want to do mind bending storytelling stuff like Bandler and Breen.”
The short answer is:
Watch the Mandalorian. (More on that in a moment)
Now for the slightly longer answer:
Over the years, I’ve been asked to deconstruct the patterns of exceptional communicators many times. People want to know the communication secrets of people like Tony Robbins, Richard Bandler, Michael Breen and, more recently, Jordan Peterson.
With the exception of the latter, many students think the thing that makes them all great is the way they use nested loops.
It isn’t.
It’s not even in the list of the top 3 things they do - that make the difference.
One of the lesser known facts about many of the best NLPers who use storytelling as a tool for persuasion and influence is they use a lot of the tricks from Hollywood but adapted for person-to-person and speaker-to-group communication (as opposed to TV). They also are usually pursuing a very different outcome.
Unlike TV which is primarily looking to entertain, NLPers who are telling multiple stories are frequently seeking to do one of 3 things.
1.Create a change (such as a change in state, thought, attitude etc.)
2.Teach new skills
3.Modify long-term behaviour(s)
A comedian will tell stories with one goal in mind; to get a laugh.
An NLPer intentionally uses stories to perform specific FUNCTIONS. The story is just a means to the achievement of a larger outcome they are pursuing.
This is why so many people who try to unpack what Richard Bandler etc. are doing completely miss the boat. You need to know more than just the words they are saying, but the outcome they are seeking AND the structures they are using.
Top storytellers are a crafty bunch. They know your conscious mind can only hold so much information, so they are very deliberate about where and how they place ‘process instructions’ within their communication.
There is so much more than I could say about these things, but let’s look at it in action.
Watch Richard Bandler in this short video do what he does best, tell stories that change minds.
Next watch the first 3 minutes of this video that VISUALLY demonstrates one of the first and most important elements used by top storytellers.
Then go back and watch Richard deliver his stories again.
Notice anything different this time?
If not, don’t worry, I’ll break this down in an upcoming email.
Great storytellers are like great magicians - they have your brain looking one direction while the real change is happening somewhere else.
And that’s why, when you combine NLP and conversational storytelling, you
get something that’s infinitely more powerful. It’s more powerful than
covert language patterns, overt change procedures, or storytelling
change scripts that you can find in a book.
So next time you tell a story, instead of spelling things out and what
they mean, make your audience put things together for themselves. Let
THEM come to their own conclusions.
But how do you ensure they are the conclusions you want them to create?
That’s a topic for a future article. But first, take a closer look at how wizards of influence create rapid changes through stories.
To your success,
Tom
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