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Will the real NLP come forward ......

Did I have a right to be horrified? One of my clients was talking with an 'NLP Practitioner'. He (the client) happened to mention that he had a headache. The 'NLP trainer' seized the moment and said 'this is what NLP is for' and proceeded to tell my client to imagine the headache moving down to his little finger and then shaking it away. 'Now that is NLP'. Really? - that to me is one of the worst kinds of interpretations of 'what is NLP'. And later that week there was more. I had a meeting with a potential new client whose partner had invited me in to their business to discuss the possibility of doing some coaching training. Unbeknownst to me the partner I was meeting had previously said - 'If she (me) comes in spouting NLP then she is out the door! Fortunately I didn't - we got on very well - and he revealed to me his previous threat and even asked me if I did do NLP and if so how did I define what it was. He looked relieved when I offered my explanation. He told me that he had had somone selling NLP to him in that very same office only a few days earlier. This salesperson had said 'Imagine you are on a golf course with a colleague and you want to win the match. You are near a lake so you say to your colleague 'Watch out for the water!' That is NLP!' I guess that Richard Bandler and John Grinder would turn in their graves if they were in them. I certainly turned in my stomach.

NLP is the study of the structure of subjective experience. It may sound obscure but it sums up perfectly what NLP is all about.

It is a study - it is a process; a method of discovering what makes a difference. It is not quick fix or cure all. It is not a gimmick for winning golf matches. It might certainly help you to discover what makes the difference in each of these contexts for you and for others but it is the means to do this, not the end result.

It is the study of the structure of subjective experience. It presupposes that there is a structure to our experience. The consequence of this presupposition is that whatever we experience comprises a code in the way that we experience it. And if there is a code then there is a way of unpacking that code and reproducing that code to achieve the same results or whatever results we choose.

It is the study of the structure of subjective experience. This means that we each have our own unique experience that we can explore to find out how we do what we do and how we can do what we want to be able to do. It is not a fixed recipe cure designed to disperse all known maladies. (It might be that we need to understand the structure of our own maladies to learn what we do and what we don't do).

So make a choice:-

Is NLP one of these....?

A gimmicky way of curing everyone's ailments.

A clever trick to win one over our competitors in any game in which we happen to be engaged

And let me add a few more that I have encountered:-

A 'knowing' analysis of others behaviour

An irritating way of interrogating others without their permission

A way of bamboozling a captive listener with jargon

Another form of positive thinking

An outdated topic that has surrendered in the face of new approaches such as emotional intelligence

A super form of mind control

It is something to be DONE to others but least of all oneself

A branch of Eastern (or Western) mysticism or spiritualism

 

How do I know all these - well I have been there and done that and I hope that by and large I don't do them too much any more.

And the answer is - (just in case you were in any doubt about whether NLP is any of the above) - NO.

It is a way of understanding and reproducing our own and others abilities particularly those of excellence. As such it is empowering, respectful of the individual, unique and generative. It is culture changing and liberating. If the feedback that you are getting is that it is less than any of these then we are getting it wrong and it is time to put the record straight.

Start now.