What is Sensory Acuity?

Well the clue is in the title, it is the capacity that we have to be acutely aware through our senses.

Through sound, vision, feeling, that sense of what is going on around you in the moment whilst noticing minute changes in people in front of you. When we apply our senses in a very acutely aware form we can notice much more.

We can do it through seeing, visually, through sound, auditarily, through touching, feeling things on the outside and noticing our inner feelings, kinesthetically.

We can notice these slight changes in the physiology of other people.  The slight changes that indicate an unconscious response in them to our communication.  So it is that unconscious response that we can pick up on which provides us with a huge amount of new information.

So if someone is sitting in front of you and you notice the involuntary blinking of an eye, the widening of a pupil, the shift in someones breathing, in your own physiology, our own body movement and you find yourself unconsciously moving with them.  What is happening on a moment to to moment basis to that person in front of you?

Why would you want to notice those things do you think?  If we are using these skills to bring about change, say in a business environment, if we are working in therapy of if we are teaching new skills to someone.  Why do you think that noticing these tiny shifts in someones physiology might be important to us?

Well, bearing in mind that we have said that the meaning of the communication is the response that you get, would it be worth while paying attention to that response to make sure that your communication is getting through do you think?  I certainly think that it would!

If you are talking with someone and they are not giving you the response that you thought that you were going to get, how is it that you know that they are not with you?   You do it through your acute awareness of these changes. What I am suggesting is to become much more sensitive to these changes, much more aware as to what we can notice on a moment to moment basis.

This skill can really make a significant difference to your ability to communicate effectively and really give you a great insight into how other people are perceiving what you are saying, their unconscious reaction to you. It is a significant first step in enabling you to build fantastic rapport with everyone that you meet. Is that something that you would be interested in doing?

Say you are working in a sales environment, how do you think that this may be useful in that arena?  If you were selling to someone, would you want to know that what you were saying to your clients was going down well with them, or not? I would say that it would definitely be an advantage wouldn’t it? If you could tell that they were not on board with what you were saying then you would be able to change track and try a different angle to see if that got better results.  That is how you are able to gain influence.

Our sensory acuity allows us to discover the progress that we are making in our discussion, are they with us or are we losing them?   Are we moving towards the agreed outcome?

Now this may possibly have been something that previously you have done intuitively, you have had a feeling that they were following you or not.   In our live NLP training courses and online in our NLP e-Learning courses we discuss techniques and a process for becoming acutely aware, this process gives you the evidence to back up your intuition and to validate it.

You can become acutely aware of peoples breathing patterns, of their lip size, of their eye movements, of their pupil dilation, of the changes to their skin colour to let you know what is going on at an unconscious level inside of them.

Sensory Acuity really is a great way to gain awareness of how effective your influence is and whether you are getting the results in your communication that you desire.