This is just how I look at it. The very simple way of looking at it is, recognize
that at some level, as sophisticated as we’ve become, we are still mammals,
and we share the same trait as mammals. Mammals have a hierarchy. You’ve
heard about the alpha dog in the pack, the alpha wolf, or the alpha male I
think is the classic version of this, right?
There are signs, in terms of every mammalian group, that will be a hierarchy
that emerges, one will be at the top, some will be at the bottom, and
everyone else will shuffle somewhere in between and it’ll be very clear levels
in terms of. For example,
wolves and dog packs, there’ll be a pecking order of who gets to
eat first and who has to wait until last and so on.
Without going into this in too much detail, this is a useful thing. First, it will
always happen. Every group that you’re in, no matter how let’s hug the world
they are, how open and flat their structure is, a natural leader will always
emerge, someone the other people will look toward for leadership, for
direction, for approval; even if it’s not acknowledged consciously. Does that
make sense? It will always
happen. You will always see the same kind of signals occurring.
The second thing to realize is, it’s not always important to be at the top of
the pack. There are advantages to being at the bottom, or somewhere in the
middle too. It’s a question of understanding where you need to be given the
level of interaction you’re in. Does that make sense to you all?
What are some of the advantages? We can clearly see the advantage of being
in the top, people do what you say, you’re the alpha male, or female in this
sense. What’s the disadvantage of being at the top?
There are more expectations. Igor: A lot of attention, there’s always
expectations, pressure and responsibility, so that kind of goes with authority as well.
The flip side, when you’re at the bottom of the pack part of the reason
people choose that position is there’s less pressure, there’s less challenge,
but they’re still included in the pack so there’s more safety than being on their own.
Some people would rather be on their own than at the bottom of the pack,
other people will quite happily go to the bottom of the pack because it’s less
responsibility, less effort involved and so on.
The other advantage is that knowing the difference in terms of behaviors and
so on, if you’re not challenging someone’s authority you can borrow it. This is
what for example the – let’s use the word captain I guess – in a particular
group, whether it’s monkeys or dogs or human beings – there will be a
second and third in command.
Again, it can be totally unacknowledged consciously but that person will draw
their authority from the main leader, and not have to have the same
pressures as that person. Does that make sense? Do you see how that works?
How do we recognize it in the animal kingdom? What kind of traits would you
see? A pecking order, so when something gets done one person gets to go
first, one person has to wait until the end – it’s usually the
pleasant things, right?
What else will you tend to sense? The way they behave, so specifically what
kind of things would you see? Posture and tone.
Right. Shall we talk about the person who is at the lowest end of the pecking
order in a pack? Will he stand in the middle of the pack and shout out loud
and make crazy movements? No; as a rule space will define, space and
volume will define what level someone is at, as a rule. In human society
we’ve evolved to other things as well.
For example, if I’m sitting here now I can talk to you very confidently right
now. There’s nothing changed in terms of my voice, has it? No? What am I
doing? What is my body language trying to do? It’s trying to avoid
using up space.
It might be that I’m just cold. This is the position that some people try to
conserve use as well, but the message that’s coming across is this person is
not in his territory, or he’s not confident, he feels somehow threatened;
versus if I’m a little bit more relaxed.
This is, by the way, you’ll see this happen a lot more in the teenage circles,
and that’s because when people go through their teenage years they become
very, very sensitive to ideas of status, they don’t necessarily think about it,
it’s more of an instinctual thing. You’ll see a lot of teenagers do something
like this, have you seen that happen?
This is an overcompensation of status signals, isn’t it? When they’re not
feeling it internally they’re trying to show to the world oh, I’m kind of in
charge of this whole thing, and they’re overcompensating.
We need to be aware of all these
things. Why? It lets us read a person. It doesn’t necessarily let us read a room very
easily, but we can get a sense of what are the dynamics at play? If
you don’t know the dynamics it’s very difficult to join them or reshuffle them.
If you don’t know that someone is – let’s say you’re doing street hypnosis,
there’s a very simple concept, right? You’re doing some stuff, you’re doing
inductions and whatever, and a person walks up and says do that with me.
He might seem very friendly. Do you have the person in the right place? No,
because he’s saying I am going to run this interaction. You can’t do that as a
hypnotist, you can’t lead their attention somewhere unless they’re following.
Does that make sense? Do you see why it’s important to
understand these things?
At the same time, let’s say you have the same group and the person is saying
like – hypnosis is cool. Do you want to try it? Okay...who do you hypnotize?
The second person. You just got authority from the group’s leader.
I could come in, standing there and say hypnosis is a cool thing, you’d really
enjoy it, let me show you something here. Do you see the change in my
mannerisms? Over here I’m showing I’m not going to challenge authority,
why would I? All I need to do is get my work done.
As I move across I’ll change slightly. It’s only a slight opening, but you notice
how now the signals are going across? Am I going to be challenged over
here? No, because by challenging me he’s challenging the acknowledgment
of this person, right? Do you see how that works?
It’s a relatively sophisticated idea but I’ve seen the word authority being
bandied about a lot in the hypnosis circles, and it’s usually a very primitive
thing which is, basically, point your finger and say sleep. I’m hamming it up a
little bit of course you realize.
The principle is very important but I’d like you all to start thinking about it in
a slightly more three dimensional way with more depth, because you don’t
have to be at the top of that pecking order in order to get the job you need
done, done. Does that make sense to you all?
Sometimes it’s actually more useful to have lower status than a higher status.
When might that be, any ideas? You’re not seen as threatening.
Igor: You’re not seen as threatening, right? Let’s think about this in terms of sales.
We have the chief honcho, the CEO or something
like that; are you going to threaten or vie that person for
leadership? No. You’re going to have to join that person because otherwise, you may win the
argument and not get anywhere.
Having said that, with certain individuals they won’t respect you unless you
win the argument; do you see how it starts getting
more complex? The point is now you can start looking for these things,
you can start judging them and if one approach hasn’t quite worked out,
you turn to the other approach and see how that one works out.
You have things to test