It's all in the eyes

Eye patterning and representational systems is a core NLP pattern that derives from the original work of John Grinder and Richard Bandler in the 1970's.


Eye movements

As we go about communicating in our day to day lives, speaking with people, asking them questions and attaining responses, you may notice that the movement of a persons eyes in that 'communication loop' differs depending on the type of question you ask that person.

For most people, (there are exceptions to the rule such as left handers) the way that they process information can be seen via the movements of their eyes. Let me give you an example.

Ask yourself the following questions :

"What colour was the front door of your house as a child?"
"What colour will the next coat you buy be?"

Where did your eyes move as you processed that information?


For most, their eyes will have pointed up and left (for Q1) and up and right (for Q2). Why? In Grinder and Bandlers work they noted that eye movements can depict what 'sort' of information a person is processing - Visual, Auditory or Kinesthetic. In the above example we took two questions of a visual nature and you will have responded to those questions by looking up and left or right to access the colours/pictures to answer the questions.


What's the point?

Why is this important? If a person during communication is considerate of what representational system the other person is using they can match that system with their language. Let's use the visual system as an example.

Person 1 - "That looks good to me" (The word looks is a visual 'predicate')
Person 2 - "Yes it does, I see what you're saying by that" (The word see denotes visual 'predicate')


By matching the system in use, the persons communicating are operating on a shared system which solidifies the communication loop between those persons further towards a strong bond of rapport and if you can increase rapport, you build stronger relationships that get better results.