Is energy psychology an alternative to endless people skills training?

Most agree that people skills and emotional awareness contribute to good leadership. A good boss is one of the highest factors contributing to employee wellbeing. Yet when 360 feedback and performance appraisals identify room for improvement, leaders are usually sent off to another people skills course most of which they struggle to implement on top of everything else they have to do in their day-to-day work.

So there lies the question... Is knowledge and training really the answer? We all know something that is bad for us to eat - we have that knowledge - yet we still eat it, so more knowledge is not necessarily going to change someone's behaviour. The concept of "people skills" implies that dealing with people is a skill that can be taught like any other on the job skill. And maybe this is true to a point.

However, what about personal development, character, and the emotions that underlie our behaviour? Are these innate things that can't be changed and have to be identified at hiring time or else it's too late to do anything about them?

Our behaviour is often driven by emotions and patterns instilled in us from family, authority figures and life experiences. We can consciously attempt to change these behaviours but we may not even be aware of what is driving them.

Energy psychology is a new approach to emotional change that is offering surprising results in a much shorter time than conventional therapy or counselling. While its methods may appear unusual, energy psychology has now been used by millions around the world to permanently shift emotions and behaviours such as stress, anxiety, fears, depression, trauma, grief, abuse, PTSD, addictions, weight loss and more. This may seem like a "cure all snake oil" claim, but when you recognise the common emotional component to these issues, techniques that deal with this common component could offer great promise.

While rigorous research is being done to support the thousands of anecdotal case studies, many people trust their own experiences and are highly recommending energy psychology for personal and business change. Practical and results oriented companies are already benefiting from these techniques.

An example case study is a marketing professional who was dealing with a difficult client. Something the client said triggered the marketer and they responded angrily rather than professionally. The marketer was annoyed at themselves and was unsure about what had triggered their response and why they had responded the way they did.

In an energy psychology session I held with the marketer, we explored the client interaction and found the event to be related to criticism received from a parent. Using a popular energy psychology technique called the Emotional Freedom Techniques or "tapping", the marketer was able to clear the emotions around the parental criticism and their behaviour was changed permanently.

The session was not about the marketer learning a new skill or being coached on how they should have behaved. The marketer didn't require conscious thought and effort to implement and maintain the new behaviour as the underlying core emotions related to the behaviour had been cleared. This took one session rather than a week of people skills training and 12 months of monitoring 360 feedback.

This case study is one example where emotional patterns affected our behaviour. Energy psychology could also be applied to help a manager lead a sales team better; a sales person increase their sales by overcoming their fear of rejection; a senior employee deal with late career redundancy; a boss that everyone has difficulty dealing with shift their attitude; the list is endless.

Businesses can save money and time from endless skills training when we recognise that its emotions that drive the behaviour of our staff, and these emotions can be shifted and healed in a few sessions of energy psychology.

About the author

Rod Sherwin is an Energy Therapist with Tap4Health. Visit www.tap4health.com for further information

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