The Grumpy Christmas Party - by Tilly Whim

So, there I was sitting in the pub with my bloke the other day, having a little old glass of Chrimbo bubbly and thinking back over exactly what was so great about the old year, when in plods an unlikely couple. He's the strong silent type, and she is (looking at the lack of attention to her hair and the glum look on her face) one of those women who actually puts up with it. They had come out - I judged by the Reserved sign and the crackers on the table - for a Christmas dinner.  

 

Happy days, I said to my man with something of an ironic tone, and couldn't help but watch with - yes I admit it - complete fascination. I felt like my dad must have felt when he used to watch Formula 1 crashes on the box on rainy Sunday afternoons when I was a gal. A disaster, all in slow motion.

 

The pair sat there in silence for five minutes, and despite the kicks under the table from my fellah, I just couldn't stop looking. He was in a foul mood, that's for sure, and she wasn't that much better, sitting there with her half a lager, a downturned mouth, and dearie me, a real miz on her fiz.  

 

Things will brighten now, I thought, when another gal turned up to give sisterly support. He was certainly not so pleased with her arrival, I judged from the way that he clamped his mouth tight and shot his eyes to the ceiling. (I wouldn't like to be accused of mind-reading, though. Maybe he was so excited at seeing the other woman that he was struck even dumber than he already was, as he shot up a prayer of thanksgiving to whoever it was that lived on the ceiling.)

 

Then the new arrival opened her mouth. And though the first woman certainly smiled for a little while and looked like she brightened, the brightening didn't last for long. Completely unaware of the mood of the first two, the new arrival launched into a whirlwind of little stories, observations and general pointed comments about herself. Not a hint of rapport building in any of what she did, just this whiny high pitched voice that didn't stop, going on and on about herself. Now, I know that gals are more wordy then guys on the whole - but I could see the woman she was talking to glazing over. Hmm, novel, I thought. It's a brand new style of hypnotic induction. The power hose induction, in which you wash away your subject's brain with a high pressure stream of consciousness.

 

She was so fast talking.  She gabbled on and on without waiting for a breath before plunging into the next thing that she talked about.  Then, when she started, she didn't leave any room for the other woman to add anything.  To be frank, she was the worst conversationalist I had ever seen or heard. Which just goes to show that it's not always having nothing to say that gets in the way of a good natter. After her brief respite from her uncommunicative partner, the first woman was now struggling under too much communication.

 

On a motorway, you sometimes get a pile-up, and at that Christmas meal, things just went from bad to worse. All in slow-mo, as I said before.

 

More people turned up.  A tall, bespectacled slow-speaking man walked in with his French girlfriend. Immediately, the Fast Talker fired a string of words at him, oblivious to the effect that she was having on him. I watched him as he seemed to rock back on his heels.  After a few breaths to gather his scattered wits, he replied, in a slow monotone: Oh, still speaking too fast for anyone to understand, then.

 

It didn't sound like a question, judging by the tonality. It was delivered as a statement of fact. He walked away to the bar to get a drink, leaving his French girlfriend to find a seat at the table. She didn't speak English too well, and maybe got hold of the wrong end of the words that her guy had just said to the gabbler. So, she sat next to her, and pretty soon, her eyes were glazing over, too.

 

Next came a big bulky beefcake, with very closed body language. The table the group was sitting at was running out of room - and running out of seats. By now, after another pointed look from my man, I was getting ready to leave.  I had pulled on my pretty little red coat, and was pulling on my woolly red hat as I tried to look the new arrival levelly in the eyes, with a smile on my face. I was giving him what I have been told is a friendly and disarming smile. That was the plan anyway. I mean, I'm only small, so I don't think I am very threatening or anything.

 

I hoped he would respond to it, and that with that look I would communicate that:

 

1) I was friendly enough, and 

 

2) I was just leaving.  

 

Someone paying attention might have worked out my possible departure and decided that it might be worth pulling the table we were just leaving together with theirs - and taking the seats my man and I had just vacated.

 

But nope, folks, this is not what he did.  I stood there, watching his body language. He quite studiously ignored making eye contact with anyone outside the group he had joined, instead looking glumly around the room like a big dumb ox for a chair (if oxes or oxen ever look for chairs), and completely discounted the one I was standing by, as I, at that very moment pulled on my soft red woolly gloves. He also ignored the vacant chair my partner had just left. Instead, he looked around the room and walked to the other side of the bar, negotiating tables and bends, to get another chair that was empty and not standing at a table with a reserved sign on it.

 

When he came back, I stood there again, this time not bothering to smile, since he clearly was not going to look in my direction.  Sure enough, he didn't look anywhere near me or my partner's now vacated chair, but wandered off, slack-jawed, and made a rigmarole of getting another chair from the far end of the bar.  I suppose I could have offered him the chair and drawn his attention to it. I mean he might have been shy, or he might genuinely have not noticed me. But I was in that interesting position of being an observer of the whole scene, and I suppose at that moment it just didn't strike me as something to do.

 

Before I left, I watched the group out of the corner of my eye, huddled together rather awkwardly around their one table.  The men were all sat on one side, looking at each other, and hardly saying a thing.  The women were on the other side of the table, being dominated by the fast talker, who was completely unaware that she was wearing out everyone's ears with her gabble.

 

As we stepped outside, I said to my guy: Well, that was fascinating! It was a masterclass in how not to communicate.  My guy laughed, commenting: They were a funny old bunch, weren't they?

 

We played a game of guessing who they might be as we walked home.  In the end, we thought that, because they all seemed so awkward with each other, they were probably all members of an evening class who had nothing at all in common with each other apart from the class they attended.

 

Whoever they were, they were a great lesson in why NLP is so useful in social situations. A little mixture of sensory acuity to notice that people have different communication styles; a little bit of listening to the feedback that the slow speaking man so clearly offered when commenting on the fast speaker's speed; a little bit of adjustment to engage the people in the group - and the whole evening could have gone far differently. And as for the unhappy man and his partner at the beginning, well a bit of NLP to work on emotional state would not have gone amiss.  All these are skills that you learn at an NLP course.  

 

I could give this story a happy ending and say that the group's Christmas Dinner improved.  Maybe it did. You know, maybe after a few beers everyone lightened up and the evening turned into a regular love-in. But I doubt it.

 

What I can do is invite you to make your party, dinner, Christmas meal - or any social event that you go to in future - work that little bit better by paying attention to those around you - and getting the best out of them, by being aware of who they are, and what they are like - and adjusting your communication to suit.

 

That, after all, is what NLP is about.  When we use our NLP skills, integrate them into our behaviour so that they become unconscious responses to the things around us, we can all be sure to have far more satisfactory meals out. Better parties and better social lives generally. Now there's a thought for the holiday season!

 

Make it a Merry Christmas - or a Merry Whatever You're Doing At This Time Of The Year.

 

Oh, and make sure you have a fantastic New Year, too!

 

Cheers!

 

Copyright ©2009 Matthew Wingett, all rights reserved in all media.