Sleight of Mouth is a persuasion skill, a vehicle for the reframing of beliefs. It is a system of 14 different patterns of response to a stated belief. A system that, once mastered, can allow you to always have a response that will effectively elucidate your position and help you to persuade rather than be persuaded. Simply put, it will help you win any argument, be verbally powerful and powerfully verbal.
Sleight of Mouth is a result of the methodology of NLP being applied to NLP, or, more properly, to Richard Bandler’s debate skills. NLP grew out of Bandler and Grinder analyzing and codifying the methods of Milton Erickson, Gregory Bateson, Virginia Satir and others. Robert Dilts applied this same methodology to Bandler’s own unique way with people. In his NLP Certification courses, Bandler would challenge participants to use their newly acquired skills to persuade him that a belief system adopted for Doug O'Brien - Sleight of Mouth the occasion (eg.”I can’t see the curve, therefore the world is flat.”) was wrong. As hard as they tried, Bandler was always able to field an army of responses to turn their “logical” arguments around. Dilts was impressed with this and then fascinated to find that he was beginning to discern the patterns Bandler used. Dilts systemized the patterns into specific categories and developed an elegant mind map of them which makes it wonderfully easy and fun to use.

As an example, If someone were to say to you,”Since I have too many responsibilities, I can’t get to the gym and work out,” you would immediately recognize this syllogism as being perfect for a Sleight of Mouth treatment. The syllogism is A=B, a “complex equivalence.” Statement A, “Too many responsibilities,””means”(=) statement B, “I can’t work out.” Now that might be true, but it’s not necessarily true. For your reply you could use the Sleight of Mouth pattern called “redefine” and say, “It’s not that you have too many responsibilities, it’s that you have disorganized activities.” (redefining the word “responsibilities” in statement A) or “It’s not that you can’t work out, you can’t work out how to put yourself and your needs first.” (redefining “work out” in statement B). Another Pattern you could use is the one called “Hierarchy of Criteria.” Using this pattern you could ask, “Isn’t it more important to take care of your self and your health than to be so micro-managing?”

Here’s a sampling of the complete Sleight of Mouth patterns:

Let’s say you’ve come into work late several times and your boss calls you in and growls,

“You’re being late shows you don’t care about the job.”

There are 14 different responses you can use:

Reality strategy: How do you know lateness and caring are the same thing?

Model of the world: Some people believe caring is shown by quality of the job done and the results obtained.

Counter example: We all know people who are always on time and yet are goof-offs once they get here.

Intent: My intention is not to be late or uncaring but to give you the best quality time and highest productivity while I’m here

Redefine: I wasn’t late, I was delayed in traffic

Chunking up: Are you saying the most important aspect of my job is showing up on time?

Chunking down: How specifically are lateness and not caring the same thing?

Metaphor or analogy: If a surgeon is late for dinner because he is saving a life, does that mean he doesn’t care about his wife’s cooking?

Another outcome: The real question isn’t whether I’m late or I’m caring. The real question is how much I’m producing for the company.

Consequence: If I wasn’t late I wouldn’t have been able to close the sale while I was at a breakfast meeting.

Higherachy of Criteria: Isn’t it more important to focus on how much the person gives while on the job rather than punctuality?

Apply to self: Gosh, I wish you’d cared enough about me to tell me this sooner.

Changing frame size: Over time, you’ll see I brought in more business in a timely fashion for the company than all of the people who showed up to work on time.

Meta frame: Lots of progressive companies are working with flex time for their high producers. I thought you were a forward thinking manager.

Now imagine the power of having ALL these patterns at your fingertips for every single objection you are likely to encounter in every single situation.