Comments on: Can NLP be what it has become?

By: Jacquie Nagy

Jacquie Nagy — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:23:29 +0000

Well written article Chris,
Looking back over several years, it was a desire to know the core principles of NLP that drew me to England to take my training directly with John Grinder, Carmen Bostic St Clair and Michael Carroll at the NLP Academy. Now as an ITANLP Certifying Institute and Trainer, I did not start offering NLP Practitioner Certification training to others without first knowing that I knew how to replicate to the best of /my/ abilities each time, the core of NLP … modeling.

With this intention I set up several modeling exercises of my own and when I was able to easily activate the right state for modeling, capture the (genius) skill of what I wished to model in the other person, do that with a highly satisfactory (to me) level of precision, then unpack it (be explicit), and had the tacit ability to activate it in the future, I knew I was ready to train others. This to me is just right.

This could be a model that people offering ‘train the trainer’ programs have as a criteria for receiving their Trainer’s Certification and quite possibly one of many ways of keeping the core of NLP alive – modeling.

Keep up the great posts!
Jacquie

By: Wolfgang Eigner

Wolfgang Eigner — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:56:52 +0000

Excellent article, Chris. And a very interesting discussion following it (as was to be expected). Thank you.
There is only one point I beg to differ. As someone who was lucky enough to enjoy training with both John Grinder and Richard Bandler in the last couple of years, I would disagree that they need to be told. They both gave me a clear impression that they were aware of the trouble with the brand NLP and the way the field is developing. They seem to have each answered this in their own ways, without too much success on the public image side.
But maybe Laura Spicer is right: what really counts are the results in millions of people’s lives, not the nominalisation…

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:01:46 +0000

Daily I am bombarded with spam adverts for mobile phones. Inundated by vendors explaining why there mobile phone is better than another. Swamping me with features that make their product the best on the market. All offering the same sort of things but with the twist of a bespoke name exclusive to that phone, words that have been invented to make them sound more important than they really are, HI-TECH to appease a market hungry for high falutin scientific names. But at the end of the day, a tool for telecommunication that is small enough to be transported on your person and used anywhere is a mobile phone. A way of communicating, that will be constantly developed, with improvements, elements that will be superseded, technologies becoming redundant as newer and better technologies are developed. Companies may fall as the market competes those brands that are household names may fall by the wayside and brands combine to fight for the lions share. In the end there may be one or two survivors, the big brands as it were, however they will dealing in devices that communicate. Even with the telephone itself, there is argument to who invented it Elisha Gray or Alexander Graham Bell, which was followed by a legal battle. Whoever or whatever has been lost in the annuls of history. Who develops it and takes it forward poses a bigger question. Where it goes from here is what intrigues me most. How far this model of communication can be taken is a question I ask myself daily, what can I do to develop it, what possibilities can I explore. For eventually when the market leaders go to the big communication hall of fame in the sky what will we be left with. Something or nothing? Personally I can’t wait for that long to see if there is nothing, so intend to something about it.

This is the iPhone developer forum isn’t it??????

By: Kami

Kami — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:42:48 +0000

I still belive there are a lot of people out there that have a good knowledge of NLP and it’s use. I salute all of them and their endavour to maintain the legacy of NLP.
On the other hand why are we surprised… every science, religion, and concept which had perspectives was twisted and turned to man’s intrests… I am pretty sure Jesus or … Read MoreMohamed never ment for people to get killed in the name of their teaching… yet here we are facing people who belive there are virgins waiting for them in heaven if they kill “non-belivers”.
Hopefully we will learn from this too and move on to a higher understanding.

By: Matt Wingett

Matt Wingett — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:46:58 +0000

Hi Chris,

It strikes me that the confusion at the heart of NLP stems from the very way that it is presented, especially by the people who started it all.

Richard Bandler, during his practitioner and master prac courses fills his teaching time with stories and anecdotes about how NLP started. It all seems very clear. Bandler had spare time at Uni and started to read psychology books. He then asked which therapies worked. The answer was very few. He then went along to watch Satir and Perls doing their things. He found elements that they were doing which seemed to have the same structure. He went to Grinder. Grinder intoduced transformational grammar to the equation. The Meta Model was born and The Structure of Magic written.

Having read Magic 1 and 2, it is clear that this book is really devised as a manual for therapists. NLP is not mentioned – but the whole idea is that what Bandler and Grinder are doing is finding effective therapy.

Then comes Patterns 1 and 2. Once again, Bandler and Grinder try to work out how a therapist – Erickson – is doing what he is doing. Now the Milton Model is defined, which is the inverse Meta Model. Somewhere in Patterns 2, the term NLP is used. The whole book is once again dedicated to uncovering how therapy is done – and that seems to be the primary objective of the work of the two men at this time.

It’s as if the two men stumble upon a process they later call “NLP modelling” while trying to work out why Satir, Perls and Erickson are doing their things. So, the first books and the subsequent volumes: Frogs into Princes, Trance-formations, Using Your Brain for A Change, Magic in Action, Reframing etc – are all books which are focussed on therapy.

The idea of modelling non-therapists appears, to the outside observer, to be something which is grafted on later. Indeed, modelling itself appears to be a later addition to the discourse. The two men’s initial desire to uncover and make explicit specific techniques that are used in therapy appears to be the initial driver for the field that they later called NLP.

This, I think is at the heart of the confusion. That NLP really did start off as a therapy-based discipline, and then started to expand to different areas. In this reading of the history of NLP, it is the therapy based NLP which is the “true” or “original” form of NLP, and later additions are an extension of the processes the two men used in order to work out what Satir, Perls and Erickson were up to. Whether this is empirically true is not really important – it is most certainly the impression that Bandler gives.

It is interesting to note, at Bandler seminars, that his repeated use of stories from the therapeutic world are often challenged by bewildered business-people, who see no use for the stories they are being told. The DVDs of Persuasion Engineering also show this “therapy bias” in the way information is presented.

With one very strong strand of NLP essentially presenting NLP as a means of therapy, while the other, Grinder, is on record as stating that the primary function of NLP is modelling excellent behaviours at the conscious and unconscious levels, it is no surprising that NLP has something of an identity crisis.

My own view is that you learn from as many people as you can, and you piece together a NLP that works for you. Perhaps its strength is that it is ultimately malleable and adaptable – and that learning the NLP ethos teaches you to just be more open to new ideas than you ever were before. That in itself is something that a lot of people could do with learning in this world!