Build A Business You Can Be Proud of Using NLP: A Case Study
MD of an IT Consultancy
The MD of an IT Consultancy delivering On Line Analytical Processing, (OLAP) solutions was frustrated by slowing growth and profit falling, short of targets.
The starting point
- The typical low IT industry success rate with client projects. Despite intensive training, sophisticated Prince II project management and Prosci, change management methodologies 60% of client projects failed to either, complete on time, or on budget or deliver outcomes meeting expectations, (and this was better than industry average).
- Client management typically resisted or sabotaged the OLAP projects through ignorance of what the system was for and how the data would help them. They misunderstood the system goals thinking it was a means to check up on their performance. As a result implementations often dragged out over 12 to 18 months.
- Traditional classroom training had not worked well with the manager users – the very people most likely to realise benefits from the OLAP system.
How NLP skills came into play
- Advanced communication and influence skills that would integrate with, his change management methodology and help his team deliver a compelling change story to increase his clients’ project success rate.
- A means to motivate client management to role model project support.
- A means to ensure managers aligned the surrounding structures, systems, processes and incentives to be in tune with and reinforce the need for change.
- He wanted 100% success on projects in order to create reference clients from every engagement. And he wanted his clients to be able to motivate clients to measure the value of their OLAP projects through specific business performance improvements that had financial impacts that could be quantified.
- A means to help client management develop the skills needed to lead, successful and rapid change. And a means to reframe their natural change resistance and leverage it to have them embrace change and adopt use of the new systems. When implementing the OLAP systems, client adoption would be fast (less than three months per site) and successful – generating business performance improvement.
- An effective training approach that could address the pitfalls of traditional content based classroom instruction. One that could help managers – develop an understanding of the role of OLAP and the abstract business goals driving OLPA technologies realise how they could use OLAP for personal and career gain; leverage their tacit knowledge and intuitive business expertise to appreciate how OLAP changed the model of the business making unforeseen things possible.
Inspiritive provided the MD with those capabilities by having the MD and a, number of his consultants complete the Graduate Certificate NLP program, learning excellence in their communication to improve their, influence, consequential thinking skills to improve their change, management strategies and skills for change and choice improving their ability to lead organisational and culture change projects. They also developed skills for modelling the behaviour and capabilities of experts (replicating talent) and this had significant unexpected beneficial consequences.
The business results were immediate high value and everything he had hoped for. They included:
- The success rate on OLAP projects increased to 100%.
- The implementation time on projects dropped to between 3 and 4, months.
- His business growth rate and profit percentage doubled.
- He also started a new division of the business, providing services, to model experts.
The first models were in the sales arena and helped clients deliver some extra-ordinary sales performance improvements. Projects consistently delivered outcomes 20% or more above what clients thought was the best possible. This division continues to date having grown to be the main, revenue stream for his consultancy and having helped over 140 clients to, exceed 300% return on investment for their change projects.
The MD measured the year one return on his investment at over 3,000%, and the payback period as less than one month. The MD now insists that all of his consultants complete the NLP Graduate Certificate qualification.
* The MD referred to in this success story has completed the 10970NAT Graduate Certificate NLP
How To Leverage Personal Change in Clients Using NLP: A Case Study
Self-employed Psychologist
It was almost home time on Friday when I received a distressed call. John had been retrenched earlier in the week explaining a heartless termination meeting handled poorly and without compassion.
Asking to see me John then recounted his experience several times with, increasing anger and resentment. An employee of some years he was not provided with any explanation and was escorted from the premises. He was particularly angry with his manager who he had been good mates with describing him as a ‘turncoat’ and ‘traitor.’
John was somewhat traumatised by this event and it was apparent he was ‘stuck in replay’ – going over and over the event what they did to me, how could they etc. In replaying the event, John became angrier and angrier.
A traditional Psychology approach
Traditional approaches in psychology and counselling suggest emotions, surrounding a traumatic event will be released through encouraging a person to go-through his experience as many times as required. Yet here the opposite was happening. Other models in counselling theory suggest an interpretation via the Kubler-Ross model where one enters the grief cycle process claiming one must travel an emotional journey before moving into a final ‘acceptance phase.’ Whilst ‘grief-cycle’ thinking may have merit it is time-consuming and often requires much support.
Were there any quicker responses available to me? To get John fixed-up so he could go home feeling better. But it was Friday night what could I do?
How NLP came into play
From an NLP understanding John’s experience had created a synaesthesia pattern (primarily kinaesthesia and visual); an anchoring of the event including his manager (visual) with anger and resentment (kinaesthetic). John’s eye directions were also looping a common pathway consistent with this pattern (and synesthesia) as he moved his, eyes in a direction that saw himself being retrenched leading to self-talk (those bastards) and then eyes moving to a place where he experienced strong emotion.
Perhaps I could clear this pattern using a ‘dismantling unwanted synesthesia pattern?’ Or perhaps I could use a ‘collapsing anchor technique? I decided upon the latter selecting a ‘visual collapsing anchors’ technique developed by Steve Andreas.
This technique involves accessing from one’s history 4 feel-good / capable, states before then mixing-in the non-resourceful state John had been stuck in. This should also lead to a dismantling of the synaesthesia.
The Results
What is most enjoyable about this and many NLP spin-off techniques is to watch the shift in the individual and I was not disappointed. John was momentarily confused in a processing state before emerging into sense of feeling calm and settled. John was unable to recall the experience with the attached emotion! Instead the recalled experience remained unchanged but could now be dealt with more resourcefully.
As a psychologist I often felt ‘like a doctor without a medical kit;’ possessed with understating of the behaviour but with few techniques to affect real change. NLP supplies these techniques as well as a, sophisticated epistemology through which to understand the human condition.
* The self-employed psychologist referred to in this success story has completed the 10970NAT Graduate Certificate NLP
How To Use NLP To Successfully Increase Your Revenue: A Case Study
How A Senior Manager at a Major Global Consultancy Increased Revenue By $1M In Three Months
A senior manager at one of the big four management consultancies who studied NLP mainly for herself not so much driven by a specific business need. However found her Graduate Certificate in NLP training invaluable for demonstrating success in a management consulting context. She applied NLP to identify the underlying issues and framing the solution for her last role at the consultancy.
The Starting Point
- The revenue of the Big 4 firm had slowed down. It struggles to recover the same level of revenue that it used to have pre-GFC.
- The firm also recognised that a number of its key accounts that bring a significant amount of revenue are not profitable.
- Firm recognised it is no longer enough to rely on existing relationships for business. Clients are becoming more demanding and selective in procuring services.
- There is significant ‘white-space’ or untapped market potential that is yet to be realised.
The Critical Issue
The Senior Manager was brought in to implement business development capability to address underlying issues:
- There needs to be a stronger focus on sales or business development.
- It is not enough to bring in revenue without taking into account profitability.
- People need to recognise and optimise business development opportunities more. People are ‘leaving opportunities at the door.’
- There is lack of commitment to participate and invest in business development capability building programs because of the negative mindset associated with selling.
Reasons
Senior Manager realised that reasons for underlying issues where:
- Most of the staff, partners and directors were hired and promoted due to their technical skills not their business development skills.
- There is resistance to selling or business development.
- A capability survey indicated that people are already relatively good at relationship building but not on capitalising sales opportunities. People don’t necessarily have the skills for the pointy-end of sales (i.e. closing, negotiation, etc.)
The Senior Manager recognised that the resistance is coming from a negative mindset about selling. The underlying presupposition is that Business advisors or consultants don’t sell. It is not our job to sell.
The Senior Manager redefined underlying presupposition and developed a framework to establish business development capability. i.e. Everyone already sells. As consultants and business advisors we sell ideas all the time as part of our job. The question is not about should we sell? It is about how good are we at (already) selling?
How NLP skills came into play
Drawing on her NLP skills the senior manager designed a program that would shift the mindset accept business development and selling a natural part of one’s day-to-day job.
Business development capability building programs were designed within a framework that uses NLP to re-frame prevailing attitudes and mindset about business development.
Using NLP the Senior Manager created a ‘double-bind’ in sales performance.
The heads of divisions were responsible for revenue targets. The Senior Manager proposed to help these heads achieve division targets if they commit to the participation of high-performers in the business development capability programs. These high-performers are in turn accountable for targets defined by the Heads of Divisions and will receive support through workshops and coaching (using NLP patterns) to help them achieve their targets.
The results
- The business development capability pilot programs were very, successful.
- The first cohort reported more than >$1M in increased revenue over a period of 3 months.
- A senior manager who disliked the idea of selling, looks forward to developing more business for the firm.
* The Senior Manager referred to in this success story has completed the 10250NAT Graduate Certificate NLP
An Interview With Daniel Smith, NLP Trainer
Daniel Smith is a passionate advocate of NLP having trained with major figures in the NLP world including Dr John Grinder, Richard Bandler, Robert Dilts and Anthony Robbins.
Currently based in China and the Chairman of The China NLP Society, Daniel is highly qualified as a multi-Certified Trainer of NLP, a Certified Trainer of New Code NLP and is an experienced NLP coach. He is also the leading trainer of New Code NLP in Asia. Daniel has also gained his Graduate Certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming through Inspiritive. Few trainers, world-wide, have his level of qualification, pedigree and experience.
As you might imagine, Daniel is in demand, spending over 100 days a year delivering training programmes throughout the world in NLP Practitioner, NLP Master Practitioner and New Code NLP.
Having studied and practised NLP for almost 20 years Daniel is a firm believer in everything it has to offer.
For Daniel NLP isn’t a tool or a technique to be applied but at its best is a way of being that makes everything work better.
“One of the best things about NLP is that as you practise the simple patterns and strategies, not only do they get easier, faster and more effortless, but you find that you can handle increasingly challenging issues. It’s not that stress doesn’t exist I live in the real world and work mostly in one of the sharpest markets on earth but you can find the resources to handle those situations, and use ‘stressors’ to propel you forward”.
Having worked with such a variety of trainers throughout his career, Daniel firmly believes Australia’s leading training provider, Inspiritive, stands among the leading trainers world-wide due to the professional standards they have set for all of their training programmes.
“Before I first met Chris and Jules I was already using NLP, however, I wanted to take it to the next level. I asked a friend who had trained in NLP and related fields all over the world where he would train if he was to start over from the beginning. Without hesitation, he told me to call Inspiritive. I’m grateful he did and agree with his recommendation. I saw a fresh graduate from Inspiritive blow an experienced NLP Trainer out of the water so far he wouldn’t even train NLP until he retrained himself with Chris and Jules. Inspiritive’s 10250NAT Graduate Certificate in NLP raises the bar to a far higher standard of excellence in NLP training”.
Looking to the future, Daniel is excited for where he sees NLP heading and believes it has much to offer in the years ahead.
Daniel has been certified as a Trainer of NLP by both Dr John Grinder and Richard Bandler among others. Beyond NLP Daniel has completed five university degrees including psychology, law and an MBA, is an Adjunct Lecturer at Shanghai Jiaotong University (top-5 in China) and holds Black Belts in Karate and Aikido. He lives with his wife and two sons in Shanghai.
*Dan Smith, has completed the Graduate Certificate NLP at Inspiritive. To learn more about this qualification and how you too can obtain it click on the Learn More button below.
An Interview With Jarett Lefers, An NLP Entrepreneur
In many respects Melbourne-based business entrepreneur Jarett Lefers first became interested in NLP at a very young age.
During his school years he was deeply passionate about sport and music and sought to emulate his favourite sportsmen and pianists by watching hours of video footage of them in action, observing their every move, mannerism and inflection. He’d then apply what he had observed to his own his sporting and musical endeavours and the results were phenomenal!
It was in his university days that he first came across the term ‘NLP’ in a book penned by a leading NLP trainer and recognising the parallels with his earlier passion for ‘behaviour modelling’ he went in search of training programmes that would equip him with NLP’s tools and techniques. He has never looked back.
Fast forward some years and these days Jarett owns successful gymnasium businesses in Melbourne and he also owns and manages his own business Clue X which runs business coaching and training programmes to help individuals and teams achieve excellence.
“I put my business success down to my appreciation, understanding and application of NLP, says Jarett. NLP is the science of how the brain codes learning and experience and that coding affects all communication and behavior such as how you learn and how you experience the world around you. It is a key to reaching goals and achieving excellence. It is an accelerated learning strategy for detecting and utilizing patterns in the world and turning them into ‘models’ that can be replicated by others for success”.
Without a doubt the ramifications of applying NLP have enabled Jarett to make powerful shifts in his personal and business worlds.
He particularly appreciates the focus NLP places on the study of human excellence, on focusing on how we know what we know and how we do what we do. By observing how individuals and organisations achieve outstanding results we can then teach these patterns to others so that they can generate the same class of results.
As Jarett sees it NLP enables you to leave behind your adult-learnt preconceptions and judgements and instead to revert back to a child’s world where being open, curious and full of wonder becomes second nature again. He believes this ‘childlike state’ enables you to be open to and aware of all types of patterns of attitude and behaviour and to easily recognise the models that emerge. From here you are able to teach these models to others so they can replicate them for success.
“As you develop your practice you become far more intuitive at picking up on patterns and models. NLP helps fine-tune your cognitive awareness and your perceptual intelligence to the point that as you become skilled applying the techniques you develop your own models of excellence and patterns of genius that you can apply to your own businesses”.
When it comes to the various training organisations about, both here and overseas Jarett strongly believes that it is important to train with recognized trainers who have a reputation for their skill and understanding in the field.
“I started training in NLP in my early twenties and know for a fact there are some rogues out there who train people using a very limited, prescriptive approach. It’s a cookie cutter approach that doesn’t begin to open up your world to what NLP can do and what it can offer you”.
Jarett particularly endorses Inspiritive as leading trainers as he feels the founders Chris and Jules are highly rigorous and passionate about NLP and its applications.
Jarett is a great example of the type of student Inspiritive produces having graduated from its 10970NAT Graduate Certificate in NLP in 2006. Without a doubt he has gone on to achieve considerable success in the business world using NLP as a basis for building his businesses.
*Jarett, has completed the Graduate Certificate NLP at Inspiritive. To learn more about this qualification and how you too can obtain it click on the Learn More button below.
An Interview With Peter Knight, NLP Golf Coaching Expert
Peter Knight is a Master Professional with the PGA of Australia as well as the National Coach for Australia and Chinese Taipei. He also coaches all levels from beginner to professional at the Yarra Bend Golf Course in Melbourne.
Instrumental to his phenomenal coaching success is his understanding and use of NLP in all of his coaching work.
“I have always been interested in the importance of developing razor sharp, positive mental and emotional agility when it comes to fine-tuning your sporting prowess to achieve a competitive edge”, explains Peter.
From the skills and knowledge he has attained Peter has used NLP to help many of his athletes compete to the best of their abilities, improving their scores and rankings in impressively short amounts of time.
“The value NLP has to offer in the sporting setting is incredible and has helped my athletes achieve phenomenal results. One extremely talented golfer I was coaching firmly believed that her golf ability was limited., Through conversation and using classic NLP techniques I showed how she was living according to her ‘truth’ but that her ‘truth’ was incorrect. I used an anchoring technique with her and she had a brilliant finish to the tournament that very day. Subsequently, she has used that same anchoring technique to enhance her performance both on and off the golf course with exceptional results”,explains Peter.
“As another example, in a phone conversation I had recently with a professional golfer who is living and competing in the US, I used a variation of the Circle of Excellence exercise which enabled him to achieve two top 10 finishes in his following two tournaments and these have been the best two performances he’s had for the year. NLP makes a real difference to my athletes, it’s incredibly powerful and adaptable to all manner of settings”.
Peter refers to his particular approach and methodology as ‘coaching by stealth’ as he tracks language and behaviours in the coaching setting. Most of the work he does focuses on conversational techniques that are incorporated into standard golf coaching contexts.
Peter’s use and appreciation of NLP’s tools and techniques is not limited to the golf world. He strongly believes they have immense relevance in all walks of life and have helped him improve his communication and relationships with peers, friends and family, making him a far more aware athlete, coach, friend and father.
Like many top performing practitioners Peter has studied with a range of providers including John Grinder, Carmen Bostic, Steve Andreas and Inspiritive’s Chris and Jules Collingwood. He has graduated from Inspiritive’s 10970NAT Graduate Certificate programme the only postgraduate NLP programme offered in Australia and rates that course highly.
“Inspiritive training is experiential in nature, there is nothing prescriptive about it which makes it appealing as we are all so different, explains Peter. There are multiple exercises which are done each day to practice and reinforce your skills. As the training is largely content-free it means that as a student you learn to apply the skills however you wish while not being forced to follow a predictive series of steps. It ensures your application is organic and able to be adaptive to any number of settings, scenarios or situations. Chris and Jules encourage follow-up contact to ensure their graduates gain a complete understanding of what they are learning and experiencing when working with NLP. Their courses are comprehensive and extremely knowledgeable, meaning their graduates are of the highest quality with immense ability and emotional intelligence”.
Due to the organic nature of NLP and its scope there is no end point to the training graduates can undertake in this field and Peter agrees wholeheartedly, saying he’ll continue to practice, self-review and train in this fascinating field as there is always something new to learn or to experiment with to achieve greater results.
Without a doubt NLP has much to offer all aspects of life from personal all the way through to professional application.
*Peter Knight, has completed the Graduate Certificate NLP at Inspiritive. To learn more about this qualification and how you too can obtain it click on the Learn More button below.
An Interview With Penny Bannister, NLP And Management
Penny Bannister is the Principal/Owner of Self Determine, a business transformation consultancy that has expertise in delivering large-scale strategic programs that include and require cultural and organisational shifts to deliver sustainable long-term outcomes. Self Determine works with corporate clients across a number of sectors including Financial Services, Information Technology and Public Sector
While Penny utilises a range of different tools and techniques, depending on the situation at hand she sees NLP as being a rock solid foundation approach that underpins the work Self Determine does on a daily basis, helping clients to transform their businesses, systems and cultures.
“I see NLP as one of the core, extremely powerful tools I use in any business transformation process as it enables my colleagues and I to truly understand patterns of behaviour, thinking and communicating, at all levels, organisation wide, within teams and with individuals”.
“By observing patterns we can identify the various shifts that need to occur for an organisation to embrace change. It is possible to identify the priority functions, projects and teams to work with to move quickly towards desired outcomes and goals”.
Penny says a key differentiator of this technique over others is that it enables people to identify ways to achieve shifts in their attitudes and behaviour without needing to go down a traditional therapy path, delving into the past to try and understand why they may have acted or thought in a particular manner.
“NLP focuses you on the here and now in the present, not on what may have occurred in the past. Sometimes it isn’t particularly helpful to keep returning to past actions and events, it’s better to focus on the present situation and address what could be changed to achieve desired future outcomes and goals”.
As Penny explains NLP encourages organisations and the people in them to be far more mindful about their thoughts and actions and to be more aware of how these thoughts and actions affect their day-to-day life, both personally and professionally. Being more mindful and present enables people to conduct their daily rituals with a far more heightened awareness, which ultimately delivers a change in culture at the organisational level.
“You become far more cognisant of yourself and of others. You see things in a much clearer light and you feel things you wouldn’t normally feel as you are far more perceptive and aware”.
Penny is particularly impressed with the versatility of NLP as a business change tool. Self Determine works with a wide range of clients in the public and private sector and most of the assignments it manages are complex transformation initiatives. In Penny’s view NLP is entirely adaptable and applicable to all sorts of scenarios, settings and environments.
“NLP is extremely practical and accessible on so many levels. Once you learn its tools and techniques you can use them in a myriad of environments and settings. It, doesn’t need to be complicated or overly academic. Its brilliance is in its practicality and in the results it can render”.
Penny completed the 10970NAT Graduate Certificate in NLP with Inspiritive, as they are the only organisation in Australia that offers a comprehensive, practical and rigorous program in learning NLP’s New Code tools and techniques. Penny believes Inspiritive’s Directors Chris and Jules Collingwood are impressive trainers who are endorsed by John Grinder, one of the co-founders of NLP. Chris has also worked with Penny on some of the experiential workshops she has managed as part of her wider transformation programs.
When it comes down to it Penny believes NLP is a business necessity for companies embarking on business transformation initiatives, a tool that will help ensure the outcomes of these initiatives are sustainable and measurable.
*Penny, has completed the Graduate Certificate NLP at Inspiritive. To learn more about this qualification and how you too can obtain it click on the Learn More button below.
An Interview with Geoff Wade, NLP In Business
Geoff Wade, CEO of Onirik wholeheartedly believes that NLP has transformed the way he approaches life. Indeed he claims that his exploration of NLP has taken him on a personal revolution where he has transformed his attitude to life. He feels far more aware of and connected to his own self and others with whom he interacts on a personal and professional level.
Currently Geoff heads up Onirik; a highly successful change management consultancy that works with companies and their employees to improve their margins.
Using NLP modelling as a core business competency Onirik’s change consultants replicate the capabilities (states of mind, communications and behaviour / process patterns) of top performers in their clients’ companies and transfer these capabilities to others who need them in order to achieve similar performance. This makes a marked difference to clients’ results.
Time and again Onirik has helped clients achieve outstanding results, results such as 280% improvement in sales in one company, 117% in another, 415% in another; exponential improvements as a staff of people replicate the capabilities of top performers.
Geoff firmly believes the use NLP as a core change management competency is key to Onirik’s success in the market.
Like Geoff all of his senior change consultants have graduated from Inspiritive; Australia’s leading NLP training provider and like Geoff most of his consultants are graduates of Inspiritive’s 10970NAT Graduate Certificate programme the only post graduate NLP programme offered in Australia.
“Their integrity and teaching of how to model and see patterns in people’s communication, states of mind and behaviours is far superior, rigorous and comprehensive than any other provider I have trained with. Their graduates are competent in seeing and understanding people’s patterns and in their ability to model and replicate to achieve success. That is also why my senior consultants are all Inspiritive graduates – it ensures I have quality, skilled NLP specialists working with me“.
And Geoff knows all about quality and integrity when it comes to NLP. Over the years he has trained with a range of providers as he has developed and evolved his own practice and he feels that Inspiritive stands apart from all others.
Indeed he rates the company so highly that he has brought the Collingwood’s on board with him to consultant on numerous client projects when he has needed specific expertise that they offer.
Does he feel his training and learning is complete? An emphatic no is the answer.
From Geoff’s experiences and learning thus far he believes there is always more to develop and evolve when it comes to NLP. Over the years he has worked at continually fine-tuning his own practice and intends to continue to do so as he learns from his day to day modelling as well as by observing how his team members identify patterns and create models.
When asked to summarise what NLP has to offer users Geoff offers the following personal experiences and insights;
- It has helped him improve his relationships and communication on all levels, both personally and professionally.
- It has helped him cultivate razor-sharp thinking and learning, he feels far more connected and aware on conscious and unconscious levels.
- It has improved his critical, creative and lateral thinking and has enabled him to take his problem solving to a whole new level.
- He has more choice and options available on a daily basis, personally and professionally as he communicates in a far more emotionally intelligent, connected, aware manner.
- He has developed a real ability to identify and learn from all sorts of patterns presented through relationships and communication with others in daily life allowing him to identify, learn and duplicate models.
- His thinking strategies and cognitive understanding have evolved to ensure accelerated learning in his chosen field.
As Geoff puts it, NLP has the ability to revolutionise your life, as has been his experience. He looks forward to how that transformation continues to evolve.
*Geoff, has completed the Graduate Certificate NLP at Inspiritive. To learn more about this qualification and how you too can obtain it click on the Learn More button below.
An Interview With Chris And Jules Collingwood 2002
1. Who is the Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming training for?
Master Practitioner is for anyone who has done NLP Practitioner training and wants to take their NLP further. Master Practitioner is an advanced training for practitioners of NLP who want to enrich, refine, deepen and generalise their NLP skills. It will give them a thorough experience and understanding of the underlying patterning of NLP and develop their ability to model anything of interest to them. (Modelling is the heart of the field of NLP.) Master Practitioners can create and develop specific applications of NLP to any area of personal or business interest and have sufficient skills in NLP change work to enter private practice if they wish.
We have had business people, educators, engineers, information technology specialists, doctors, nurses, film-makers, solicitors, bankers, marketers, sales people, psychologists, yoga teachers, personal trainers, sports and life coaches participate in our Master Practitioner trainings.
2. What are the personal and professional benefits of doing Master Practitioner training with Chris and Jules?
As you discovered on completing a comprehensive NLP Practitioner training, NLP made a significant change to all areas of your life. Our Master practitioner training will support your continued development and extend and deepen the process begun on Practitioner. You will be able to apply the advanced patterns of NLP learned in this training to your ongoing personal development, your profession or business. You will also be able to develop interventions for any context from first principles.
Specifically, you will learn patterns that can be applied to enhancing your relationships with family, friends and the people you work with, improved communication skills, negotiation skills, cognitive ability and organisational skills.
More importantly, you will learn to detect patterns and build models of human behaviour for yourself. As a result you will be able to evolve your skills in an ongoing way after the training period has finished. Being able to model means you can learn anything under your own direction. Think of some of the people you have met who have wonderful skills and thinking patterns. Would you like to be able to model these for yourself or to transfer them to other people? The ability to model your own and other people’s skills and patterns opens up the doorway to a wide range of human excellence suited to any area of life where you want to enhance or develop your performance.
3. What is the purpose of this training?
The purpose of our Master Practitioner training is to create a context for you to deepen your appreciation of NLP as an epistemology with all the practical benefits that entails. In addition, you will have the opportunity to enhance your skill development in any areas of your life through learning to model and generalise NLP patterning into how you are in the world, how you do in the world and how you think.
4. How specifically is Master Practitioner training with Chris and Jules Collingwood different from other Master Practitioner trainings within the NLP community?
This is a non-trivial question and can be broken up into the following; an emergent learning approach to learning NLP, developing a practical, flexible and generalised application of NLP, an emphasis on learning how to model yourself and others and an exploration of the epistemology of NLP.
Emergent learning
All our certification courses are structured around the core competency of NLP modelling. We model what we teach and create contexts for discovery of patterns in action. Participants experience the patterns through live exposure or ‘first access’ (Grinder & Bostic St Clair, 2001) in all senses through exercises, games and tasks.
It is our intention that participants experience the patterns of NLP before acquiring conscious understanding and labelling for them. Our emphasis is always on replicating the skill or pattern in question, not talking about it and not reproducing a scripted format. Participants experience emergence of NLP patterning in their daily life, from which appropriate emergent understandings then follow. We call this approach ’emergent learning’.
We have a friend who models languages and cultures using an emergent modelling process. He is a socio-linguist who now speaks a number of Asian languages. When he enters a culture to learn a language he puts aside his first language, (in his case English), opens his peripheral vision and turns off his internal dialogue. He adjusts his physiology to match the people around him and enters into a rich sensory experience (First Access) of the context. He is able to experience the gestalt without conscious evaluation and without his usual linguistic filters (English). Within three months, he has first fluency in the target language (the ability to hold basic conversations with members of that culture). At this stage, he is unable to translate to and from the new language. He is very comfortable with delayed conscious understanding as his outcome is fluency in that language with appropriate gestures, accent and cultural presuppositions. His learning of the language is through First Access, not linguistic translation, (secondary representation), as commonly experienced in language labs. His accent is of the place where he modelled the language.
Practical ability and flexibility in doing NLP
The emergent approach to learning NLP enables the user to communicate spontaneously and naturally, with their own style and vocabulary. A practitioner can respond flexibly to the patterns they observe in other people’s communication instead of relying on scripted formats (NLP techniques). When applying NLP to themselves, the practitioner is able to self-model, (track and transform their own patterns and/or code) and to demonstrate new patterns of behaviour.
Emphasis on learning how to model
The emphasis in our Master Practitioner training is on learning to model yourself and others, and on developing an experiential (first) and conceptual (second) understanding of the epistemology of NLP.
The epistemology of NLP
Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Accordingly, the epistemology of NLP is how we know what we know in the field of NLP. Having a rich, explicit understanding of the epistemological foundations of NLP is of fundamental importance for Master Practitioners of NLP. This supports Master Practitioners in modelling human excellence and developing new applications of NLP. It facilitates Master Practitioners and NLP trainers in contributing new models and applications of NLP to the field of NLP. If you are going to teach NLP, you have a responsibility to know and demonstrate your material. The foundation for developing a rigorous conceptual understanding of the epistemology of NLP is to have NLP patterning integrated unconsciously in your thinking before conscious understanding occurs, and to have learned pattern-modelling skills as an unconscious competence. While it is possible for people to work their way back to experiential skill from conceptual understanding, the process takes longer and carries a serious risk of distorting NLP as an epistemology and methodology for modelling human excellence.
Trying to understand NLP consciously, without prior comprehensive experiential immersion in the patterning, usually leads to poor skills and misunderstanding of NLP. This is evident in parts of the NLP community today where epistemologically shoddy models, content descriptions, and trainers’ personal philosophies are being passed off as NLP. This leads to poor outcomes for trainees and misrepresentation of the field itself! If trainers wish to teach NLP, they have a duty of care to the field and to their students to teach the epistemology of NLP as part of their certification trainings. If they are unwilling or unable to do so then they have a responsibility to state that their offering is a particular application of NLP and not a course in formal NLP.
One part of Self-modelling is significant personal development through exploring and changing your self-concept
Part of the training is a section on formal self-modelling by exploring, transforming and developing your self-concept. The function of this element of the Master Practitioner training is personal development. Participants have an opportunity to explore experientially, model, then make explicit significant patterns, perceptual filters and intentions (values) that have been incorporated into their maps of self, their self concept. Participants then have the opportunity to work with each other to transform any limiting patterns. We will be drawing on methods developed by Steve Andreas to incorporate and generalise new qualities, behaviours and skills into one’s self-concept.
5. Your Master Practitioner training has an emphasis on modelling? How can learning to Model be of benefit my life?
If you have the ability to create practical models of human excellence, then you have the leverage to learn any desirable skill that you want. The task then becomes one of finding suitable models of excellence, with expertise in the skills that you want.
You will learn to identify models of excellence, arrange a modelling project, take an unconscious uptake of the skill, replicate and create an appropriate description of the skill in a code that supports transfer of that skill to others. We will also explore how to carve up the skill into exercises and formats (appropriately chunk the model) once you have the model for teaching that skill to other people.
If you want to develop one or more applications of NLP and to do so successfully, it is necessary to have a well-elaborated ability to model. Being able to model gives you the means to create your own applications rather than depend solely on existing NLP applications developed by other people. Some of our Master Practitioner graduates have extended their modelling projects into comprehensive applications of NLP. One of our graduates, Geoff Wade, modelled three superb sales people. After completing the training he extended the project and created a new application of NLP to sales. He has written a book on selling, which is about to be published. It is the most wonderful book I have read on applying NLP to high value added sales.
If you decide to attend our Master Practitioner training, choose your models for your modelling project with care and it could result in a very valuable application of NLP. You have an opportunity to make both a significant contribution to yourself and to the NLP community at the same time.
6. How are student’s skills evaluated?
For Master Practitioner certification, there are 3 forms of evaluation
The first is experiential evaluation over the last 2 days of training. During this period, we assess the skills that have been taught experientially. The two days include practical exercises, a full piece of work to a client’s specification and a short presentation on an aspect of NLP to be determined at the time.
The second assessment piece is the completion of a modelling project within 3 months of the end of the training. The third assessment piece is a conceptual evaluation in the form of written answers to a set of questions based on the required texts and the Practitioner and Master Practitioner training materials.
We recommend that students wait until the end of the course before doing the set reading and completing the conceptual evaluation. We emphasise the importance of experiential learning as the foundation for conceptual understandings. You may have met people who can talk a lot about NLP yet do it poorly if at all. Our intention with all our certification trainings is the development of students’ skills in NLP.
7. Are there any special benefits for graduates of the Master Practitioner training?
Repeating the training
We want the people who participate in our certification trainings to become excellent in doing NLP. Repeated exposure to NLP patterning and practising formal NLP training drills develops skill in NLP, so we encourage and support Master Practitioner graduates to repeat the course. Apart from charging a small fee ($5.00 per day approx) to cover expenses such as tea and coffee, repeating the course is free and includes extra tuition in coaching skills and sensory acuity for those who function as trainers’ assistants.
The opportunity to become a Life Coach
For Master Practitioner and Practitioner of Ericksonian Hypnosis graduates who demonstrate a high level of skill with their NLP we may offer the opportunity to be an Inspiritive Life Coach and have the benefits of being marketed through our NLP resource website.
8. I have seen trainings of 10 days advertised as Master Practitioner Certification. Your training is 20 days. What is the value in having 20 days for the Master Practitioner training?
In the interest of a high level of skill development in modelling self and others during this training, we will be creating a rich multi-description of the NLP patterning through a broad range of presentations, metaphors, exercises and discovery games. With advanced language patterns, advanced processes, process design, construction and deconstruction as well as modelling, self-concept work and personality mapping, we would prefer 24 days but contain it in a nominal 20. Most years, we offer free extra evening sessions between course sessions to complete the personality mapping component.
© 2002 Chris and Jules Collingwood
Please note that Master Practitioner of NLP training has been replaced by the new post-graduate qualification – 1-250NAT Graduate Certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Authors:
Christopher Collingwood Dip Training and Assessment Systems, BA, Grad Cert NLP., MAppSci Social Ecology, NLP Trainer Assessor
Jules Collingwood Dip Training and Assessment Systems,Cert TEFL, RN, BSc, Grad Cert NLP., Postgrad Dip Conflict Resolution, NLP Trainer Assessor
Training Programmes:
10250NAT Graduate Certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming information for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane
Further reading:
The NLP Field Guide; Part 1. A reference manual of practitioner level patterns, by Chris and Jules Collingwood
