Speaking the language of another is the ultimate approach in achievingsubliminal communication, persuasion and the building of close rapport. You will want to challenge the thinking in the audience. You might want to provoke debate or simply create the atmosphere of inspiration and verve. You definitely want to impact and influence their experience. You will achieve all of these and more when you have mastered the ability to recognise and utilise representational systems.

We have five senses and in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) these are called representational systems or responsive channels. They indicate how we receive, process, store and retrieve information and they are the manner in which we 'code' our experience. They drive our internal experience and expressed language patterns. This information is dynamite to anyone wishing to influence a situation from a buying decision to engaging with aggressive questioning at the end of a presentation.

• Visual (see)

Utilising the visual system means you can see what is going on around you, or become aware of internal mental images.

• Auditory (hear)

Accessing the auditory system allows you to hear sounds outside of yourself, and at the same time to have an awareness of your internal chatter or self-talk.

• Kinaesthetic (sense)

With the kinaesthetic system attention can be external, such as the feeling of the wind on your face, and the internal sensations of hunger or fullness.

• Olfactory (smell)

Using the olfactory system the awareness is mainly external but the effect internally can be remarkable. Smell is one of the strongest representational systems as it accesses the subconscious with immediate impact.

• Gustatory (taste)

Employing the gustatory system will stimulate externally and internally, often so closely connected it appears synthesised.

You will achieve this through listening to clue words and phrases called predicates and by watching the directions in which a person's eyes move when they are thinking, the term to describe this eye flicker is - 'eye accessing cues'.