NLP Pacing and leading with 2 examples

NLP Pacing and leading is the most important NLP technique to be mastered by any NLP practitioner.

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NLP Pacing and Leading is the technique for building a rapport with the subject.

In this short blog on NLP Pacing and Leading, we will learn some NLP pacing and leading examples, I will also share the NLP pacing and leading exercises PDF at the end of this blog.

NLP pacing and leading are one of the keys to influencing people, they simply refer to meeting your subject at their map of the world (pacing) and taking them to where you want them to go (Leading).

What is NLP Pacing and Leading?

Now let’s understand what is NLP Pacing and Leading in more detail.

Pacing and Leading is the NLP technique to build rapport with anyone with the use of NLP Mirroring and Matching techniques.

Have you observed when people communicate with one another at a comfort level they tend to imitate each other?

You can observe yourself for a few days, and think of the person with whom you are really comfortable interacting, you may tend to have gestures, postures, and even common words like that person. This is the Pacing.

Pacing is the process of using Verbal and non-verbal cues from other people, in order to match other person’s map of the world.

When you are pacing you are trying to be another person’s shoe, you try to understand their model of the world.

Reading NLP techniques is fun and practicing them is even more fun, but we need NLP scripts while applying these NLP techniques.
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Leading involves the get another person to change, by feeding new experiences, behavior, and pattern changes. Leading happens very subtly.

After pacing the other person and building a good rapport with them, you can use leading to introduce changes by changing your behavior and patterns.

In NLP pacing you take feedback from another person to build rapport while in leading you provide feedback to another person to change.

The basic concept of NLP Pacing and leading is, when you want to introduce something new to a person, you start with familiar concepts and later on build to introduce new things to them.

Pacing and Leading uses the same concept to build rapport with others, you observe their postures, gestures, breathing, sub-modalities, and much more to build rapport.

NLP pacing and leading examples

Here are some of the NLP pacing and leading examples, I have come across while studying NLP Pacing and leading, as well as practicing it.

Example 1

We had a very difficult client who were working as a president of a large MNC, to get an order from him we just need to have his time, however, this client would not give us time to interact.

I observed his written, verbal, and other non-verbal communication and found the gap.

He was a person who like to take time to think, sense, and observe things slowly, which can be evident from the way he was talking, or writing.

Next time when we called him for a meeting we talked very slowly with pauses and allowed him to take time to respond. However, with this change in behavior, we could at least manage to have a virtual discussion with him.

Example 2

Here is another short NLP Pacing and Leading example and one of my favorites.

I once had a very angry client visiting my office over some genuine error on our part that may lead to the termination of our services.

He was so angry that he was not ready to even listen to anyone, I took him to the meeting room and listened to him very carefully while adjusting my postures just as him subtly.

I surprisingly found out that though this person was very angry his breathing was slow, I paced with his breathing and talked in sync with it. I was at least able to make him calm.