Pacing and Leading

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pacing and Leading is a term from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The NLP is a collection of communication techniques and methods for changing psychological processes in people. The term pacing and leading in German means something like: go along and lead.

The effectiveness of NLP has not been scientifically proven.

Explanation

The declared aim of pacing and leading is to lead one or more people. The basis of this technique is to gain trust (of the people to be led).

  • Trust is defined as the subjective conviction of the correctness, truth or honesty of persons, of actions, insights and statements of another.

Pacing

When pacing (English: Keeping up ) is like the person who wants to lead the their behavior aware of the behaviors to leading people. In doing so, she tries to gain people's trust. This could be done (according to NLP) at the following levels:

  • Body language: adjusting posture, gestures and breathing rate.
  • Facial expressions: Adjusting the facial expression.
  • Voice: Adjusting the pitch, volume and speaking speed.
  • Language: use of similar words.

So far, NLP has not been able to provide any scientific proof that trust is actually established in this way.

According to the views of NLP - after building up "trust" - one speaks of the people being in rapport . NLP understands "rapport" to mean that the body language, facial expressions and the voice of the people involved are very similar and therefore the people unconsciously trust each other.

Leading

As part of NLP, the person who has acquired by pacing the "trust" a person may, (German: Leading the lead ) pass. There is a risk that the leading person will exploit the trust in order to assert various interests.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.ipa-consulting.de/lexikon/pacing-and-leading
  2. ^ Tomasz Witkowski: Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration? In: Polish Psychological Bulletin 2010. Vol. 41 (2), pp. 58-66.
  3. ↑ http://www.compass-bc.de/docs/Pacing_Rapport_Leading.pdf (PDF file; 110 kB)