When it comes to communicating with others, there are many times that a person may hear what we say on a conscious level, but subconsciously it just doesn’t stick. The words we speak metaphorically go “in one ear and out the other”, as the saying goes.
But what if I told you there is a way to make the things that we say stick in the recipient’s mind, and actually mean something to their unconscious mind?
This NLP technique is called Embedded Commands, and it’s much more simple and user friendly than you’d think.
All you have to do before saying the words that are important is change your tone and perform a gesture as you’re saying it. An example would be slowing your words and lowering your tone, while simultaneously touching your hands together.
The noticeable change in how you’re speaking draws attention to what you’re actually saying, while the hand gesture punctuates it, making it stick.
The Mehrabian Theory suggests that your words equal 7% of communication, your tone of voice equals 38%, and your body language 55%.
This theory is credible due to several studies performed by Mehrabian and Ferris, which came to the conclusion that “the combined effect of simultaneous verbal, vocal and facial attitude communications is a weighted sum of their independent effects – with the coefficients of .07, .38 and .55, respectively,” according to an article titled “Albert Mehrabian’s studies in nonverbal communication” published by Speaking About Presenting.
This means that when you combine these three forms of communicating, you can effectively influence the recipient in the conversation to subconsciously hold on to that information, which is fantastic if that piece of knowledge or command, is particularly important.