16 Responses

1. Question …
   Kate, any reason for looking at an NLP course? Do you have something specific in mind where NLP will help?

2. NLP training for leaders

   Hi Katy,

   I know of 2 providers of NLP training (in-house though, not open courses)

   1) http://www.goldeneggtraining.com/contact.html – we have worked with Shona McFarlane from Golden Egg for many years. She is a certified trainer and master of NLP, and an excellent facilitator – both professional and engaging.

   2) http://www.synergytraining.co.uk – have a course ‘Influencing and Persuading Skills’ (2 days). Just checked the website and can’t see a copy of the outline – let me know if you’re interested I think I have a copy somewhere and can email it to you.

   Hope this helps,

   Polly
   http://www.synergizetrainingresources.com

    

    

3. ‘Pure’ NLP or not?

   My first question would be whether or not you want an accredited NLP Course (which may cover material not necessarily of face-validity to your query) or or course based on NLP approaches that delivers your outcomes (that would be a more flexible option and ‘allow’ material not traditionally associated with the NLP domain to be included – some NLP accreditors can be a bit too prescriptive about content for accredited programmes).

   How long a programme? Intensive or extensive?

   We base all sorts of manager and leader interventions around NLP with added ‘stuff’, and would be happy to chat through your needs and the possibilities.

4. In the Midlands/North

   I did my NLP Business Practioner Course with Instep. They are besed in Holmes Chapel (sor of half-way between Manchater and Birmingham). It was an open course, and I think they run one or two programmes a year. See http://www.instepuk.com

5. Double check

   Hi Katy

   Double check the aleged credentials of NLP

    

   Now, not many NLPers are going to admit this to you, but neurolinguistic programing has been identified as a top ten most discredited interventions:

    

   http://knol.google.com/k/joe-greenfield/neurolinguistic-programming/2j6nlcky7q5vo/2#

   I’ll admit that article is not so well written, but its the best collection of solid evidence on NLP around.  I would suggest using NLP as an example of something to avoid.  Go the other direction!  Totally!

    

   Carl

    

    

6. NLP Training

   I did my NLP Practitioner training with The Academy of High Achievers – Tony Burgess and Julie French

   http://www.aha-success.com

   They are absolutely fantastic, are real experts in the subject as well as smashing people. They run workshops from their home near Stafford which really works as you just feel welcomed into their home together with a great bunch of other NLP’ers.

   Sharon

   Sharon Gaskin

   The Trainers Training Company

   Helping Trainers Create Successful Businesses

   http://www.thetrainerstrainingcompany.co.uk

7. NLP – Useful or Not
   Hi Katie,

   Some very interesting comments from lots of people! Let me tell you my position – I am a Certified Trainer of NLP (although I’m not actually delivering any training and charging for it…) so I feel I may have a different viewpoint to some of the other people that have posted comments to your original question.

   There are a number of people out there who claim that NLP is the solution to all of life’s problems – it may be for them but that is merely their opinion. It certainly isn’t the answer to all of my problems….

   The first question that I would like to raise is what exactly is NLP? For me, it is an eclectic mix of tools and techniques that can make a difference in a number of areas, specifically communication skills which very much fits in with your original theme of influencing and negotiating skills. At the heart of NLP is a process called ‘modelling’ – this involves finding someone who is very good at a certain activity and then replicating what they do across a number of different levels to achieve the same sort of results for you. All of the NLP tools have originated from this modelling activity.

   Could NLP tools therefore help your senior managers? Yes.

   Who should you go to? Do your research and find someone (preferably a certified trainer but a practitioner or master practitioner would be sufficient if they’ve trained at a reputable company) who will deliver the skills that you want. To expect your senior managers to undertake a full practitioner course would be inappropriate.

   There is a lot of hype about NLP, often it’s from those people who have little knowledge of the subject or those who have had a bad experience through a poorly facilitated session; that is their perception and I totally respect their position. However, please don’t brand all people who use NLP as lunatics or con artists – there are a number of experienced and highly talented people out there who use NLP in an ethical and appropriate manner to gain the best for their clients.

   Please do keep an open mind and do a little bit of research and choose your potential trainers carefully…

   If you need any more advice, please post a reply…

   Regards,

8. Are you sure you want to do NLP?

   As you are aware from this website NLP gets a mixed reception. 

   I suggest you consider some questioning and listening skills to develop the influencing skills of your managers. There are also some straightforward models for dealing with difficult people and your managers may need some negotiation skills to achieve win-win outcomes.

   Feel free to contact me if you would like any more information on any of these areas.

   Regards

   Trevor

   trevor@forcefieldtraining.com

    

9. R&A Consultancy

    

   Hi 

   I have trained with a leadership consultancy, R&A, both attending their open NLP and Advanced NLP programmes that I found invaluable both for business and my personal life. Also I have used them in house with my current organisation where they worked with my senior NE team on leadership development and coaching. The areas you mention were ones that we were also experiencing, so speaking from my experience, I know they can deliver expertly in these areas. All their consultants are Master Practitioners and qualified NLP trainers, having trained at the NLP University in Santa Cruz. They use some NLP in their work, to great effect, but don’t use the terminology and it most definitely has a business focus. They worked closely with my NE VP and I to design a really powerful programme that identified our current issues and helped us to measure the effect of the work they undertook. Since the programme we have seen many improvements including improved collaboration within the management team, mature directness when giving feedback and an appreciation of different personality types and styles.

    

   This is their website : http://www.raconsultancy.com/ A good contact there is Karen Stone.  Her number is 07970868920.

    

   Best regards 

   Donna Chilvers

    

10. Specify what you need – it may be more than just NLP

    As a joint owner of a company providing NLP training, a Master Practitioner and married to an INLPTA Trainer, I feel that I need to write to agree with the points made in bob pearson’s post. NLP, at one level, is a set of tools and techniques that are trainable and do improve communication and influencing skills. Indeed, we often deliver programmes so titled without the participants needing to know that an alternative ‘label’ for the content is NLP – after all, a label is just a label.

    What’s important is to identiufy the specific skills that need upgrading in your target population and to seek trainers to delver those – some will offer explicit NLP and others will offer possibly the same ocntent with a different name; whatever the label, the ‘quality’ trainer (NLP’ers please don’t metamodel me 🙂 !)will package stuff from a range of disciplines to meet your specified need.

    VERY happy to talk this through if you wish – you can get my phone number from our site.

11. Keep double checking

    Well, no disrespect to the people here

    But NLP is often identified as a cult or a sort of cult

    http://knol.google.com/k/joe-greenfield/neurolinguistic-programming/2j6nlcky7q5vo/2#Cult_characteristics

    So if you are interested in looking into that concern, then you need to look at promotional NLP material as either from people who are misled, or from people who are trying to make a buck and recruit others to the cult.

    This is all down to making an intelligent informed decision

    So look for the most independent reviews on neurolinguistic programing (independent peer reviewed journals from psychology, neuroscience, human resources etc, rather than NLP practitioner opinion) and then make up your own mind.

     

     

     

     

12. Partnership approach to development

    Hi Katy

    I am a principle consultant with Brilliant Minds Training and Development.  We have trained senior people in lots of organisations, both on open courses and as in-house programmes.  The most recent example was the Board of a company with bases in the West Midlands and South Wales.  That is now a regional finalist for a training award as a parnership approach.

    If you would like to know more, you can check out the Brilliant Minds website : http://www.brilliantminds.net or contact Dianne Lowther via email: dianne@brilliantminds.co.uk or tel: 07973562606

    Hope that helps

    Neil Harris

13. NLP Training

    I Have just searched NLP for some reading materials and seen you email…I am not sure if you have resolved you need but we are a  training firm, we are all NLP practioners and use NLP in one to one coaching and have used NLP techniques when delivering training for South Yorkshire Fire and rescue ( how to communicate effectively and deal with difficult people).  Our website is http://www.newhabits.co.uk or give us a call on 01142214876, we would be happy to talk you through things further.

    Kindest Regards

    Joanna

14. NLP I use all the time

    The book that I used many times and always refer back to is Ahead of the Game. The author is a Chartered Accountant who c hanged careers after discovering NLP. He also does some very good courses – although the book is mainly about sport he focuses on business on his courses. Don’t have his details to hand right now but google the book title and you will see his name and website.

    ………………………………………….

    Accountants for Contractors

15. NLP for leaders

    Good evening

    My name is Tim & I am a qualified & experienced NLP tutor

    I offer the above training that can be geared to senior managers covering influencing, dealing with difficult people to achieve win-win results, negotiation techniques and much more.

    This training can be studied by distance learning or classrom based to suit the client/s.

    If you are interested please do not hasitate to contact me here or at webpronlp@gmail.com

    Thank you.

    Tim

    Dip.NLP MSFTR MOC C.P.H

     

16. Good NLP trainers

    Hi Katy, I just found this thread so you may have already located a training proivider. One contributor urged you to: "look for the most independent reviews on neurolinguistic programing (independent peer reviewed journals from psychology, neuroscience, human resources etc, rather than NLP practitioner opinion) and then make up your own mind".

    I quite agree and do this myself. There have been some very interesting debates about NLP on the forum and I am left with the perception that there are some people who have an extreme liking for it and others who have an extreme disliking for it and wish it would just go away. To this ongoing debate I contribute my own journey with NLP which is a part of what I do and how I work rather than how I represent myself and within this piece there are some excllent NLP Trainers.  

    I use many solutions and techniques which are widely accepted. Such as:  MBTI – Myers Briggs / Carl Jung.    SDI – Elias Porter, Learning styles – Kolb, Honey and Mumford, Solomon and Felder et al.  In addition to specific learning “products” I have also maintained a programme of ongoing action based research since 1998 via a Masters Degree and Doctoral studies into many aspects of learning such as: Experiential learning, baby sign language, visual learning, Academic teaching (which I did for a year as part of my research)  Trainer development and evaluation.

     

    My first introduction to NLP was in 2000 when I had the privilege of learning with an excellent teacher, Nick Owen. This was followed in 2002 when I became a master practitioner with Kathy Strong, a wonderful coach. I completed my NLP trainer training in 2007 with John Seymour, the best trainer I have ever seen and had the pleasure of working with since. John has the highest level of ethical practice, honesty, generosity and integrity.     

     

    Form my studies I have found a wide range of sources which they would refer to as my foundations or roots of my NLP. These contributors are all established academic experts in their field of research. For anyone interested here are a few of them who are mostly form the field of psychology and neuroscience as recommended: 

     

    Sigmund Freud was a Jewish–Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.  

     

    Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology (also known as Jungian psychology).   

     

    Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform, and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. He came up with the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings. He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement. In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

     

    Bernard Weiner is a cognitive psychologist who is known for developing a form of attribution theory that explains the emotional and motivational entailments of academic success and failure. He has published 15 books and many articles on the psychology of motivation and emotion, and has been a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles for many years. His contributions including linking attribution theory, the psychology of motivation, and emotion.   

     

    Anthony Stafford Beer was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics. 

     

    Carl Rogers was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and philosopher, well known for his pedagogical studies. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "Genetic Epistemology.

     

    Friedrich Salomon better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist of Jewish descent.Perls coined the term ‘Gestalt Therapy‘ to identify the form of psychotherapy that he developed with his wife Laura Perls in the 1940s and 1950s. Perls became associated with the Esalen Institute in 1964, and he lived there until 1969. His approach to psychotherapy is related but not identical to Gestalt psychology, and it is different from Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy. 

     

    George Armitage Miller is the author of one of the most highly cited papers in psychology, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two"[1] published in 1956 in Psychological Review. This paper suggests that seven (plus or minus two) is the magic number that characterizes people’s memory performance on random lists of letters, words, numbers, or almost any kind of meaningful familiar item. 

     

    Paul Watzlawick was an Austrian-American psychologist and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he has commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy.

     

    Stephen G. Gilligan, Ph.D., (born 1954) is an American author, registered psychologist and psychotherapist. Gilligan was selected as one of the first students and developers of the work of Milton H. Erickson, considered the founder of modern hypnotherapy. Gilligan is most well-known for his work in the area of hypnosis and psychotherapy. He is also known as one of the contributors in the early development of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Gilligan has had a private practice in psychotherapy and has taught his approach to hypnosis and psychotherapy for the past 20 years.  

     

    Virginia Satir was a noted American author and psychotherapist, known especially for her approach to family therapy and her work with Systemic Constellations. Her most well-known books are Conjoint Family Therapy, 1964, Peoplemaking, 1972, and The New Peoplemaking, 1988.  

     

    Gregory Bateson was a British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. Some of his most noted writings are to be found in his books, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979).   

     

    Milton Hyland Erickson, was an American psychiatrist specializing in medical hypnosis and family therapy. He was founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis and a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychopathological Association. He is noted for his approach to the unconscious mind as creative and solution-generating. He is also noted for influencing brief therapy, strategic family therapy, family systems therapy, solution focused brief therapy, and neuro-linguistic programming.

     

    Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is most remembered for developing the theory of general semantics.  

     

    Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual. Chomsky is often viewed as a notable figure in contemporary philosophy.   

     

    Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Russian, and later Soviet, physiologist, psychologist, and physician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for research pertaining to the digestive system. Pavlov is widely known for first describing the phenomenon of classical conditioning.  

     

    David Kolb published his learning styles model in 1984. The model gave rise to related terms such as Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT), and Kolb’s learning styles inventory (LSI). Publications – notably his 1984 book ‘Experiential Learning. 

     

    I have learned much and continue to learn from my ongoing journey through the many works of giants like these, past and present. I have been able to apply much of this learning successfully for myself and those I work with.   I see NLP as a set of options for me to use as a trainer and coach and the more options I have the more choices I have and the greater my ability to serve my clients well.        

     

    Good luck with your own studies. There is an NLP for trainers group where you are very welcome if you wish to join us?

    Cheers, Nick