Nick Kemp Blog

For close to a decade I was extensively involved in either assisting on or running certificated NLP trainings in the UK. This allowed me to get a unique insight into knowing how to run events, the nature of trainers when they were not on stage and how people respond to “the NLP brand” Between 2004 and 2009 I regularly ran Society of NLP practitioner and Master Practitioner trainings and literally co signed off hundreds of SNLP certificates during this time. On average one in three weekends were spent teaching NLP to the public. This was useful experience and I am also grateful for the opportunity to help out on many large London events which helped form my own thoughts on the value of the NLP skill set.

In the world of NLP there is often a belief among some that attending courses is a bit like collecting scouts badges and you have to get the full set of practitioner, master practitioner and trainer to achieve a certain perceived status among colleagues. This belief creates a pyramid style operation where each year literally hundreds of people attend trainer trainings with many believing that becoming an NLP trainer will allow departure from a regular 9 – 5pm job to then experience the perceived glamour that goes along with such a role! The reality is of course in most instances very different…

 Between 2000 and 2005 the market for NLP was quite different to today. Paul McKenna was regularly in the news and essentially brought NLP to the masses almost a decade earlier, running substantial NLP events in London.  Many attending were very aware of “the man on the telly” but hadn’t often heard of his other co presenters. They neither knew nor in many instances cared what NLP was, they just wanted to feel good for no reason and if they could change their lives in a few short days, then at a few hundred pounds it looked like a deal worth taking. Of course these were BIG events, with sometimes up to 600 delegates, which limited the pace of teaching the material but created a wonderful sense of entertainment and people mostly had a good time.

As far as my own NLP trainings, I feel that 30 is the best number for such teaching and during these years on my own events I would expect to see around 20 – 30 attendees for a basic practitioner event and 15 – 20 for a master practitioner event. Other weekend courses on public speaking, hypnosis and other subjects produced wildly different levels of interest, but I am pleased to date including this NLP era I have still never cancelled any kind of event. During this time I met some fantastic people, some of whom have become firm friends. I have also seen people who attend courses really use the training to great effect in improving their own lives. All events were run in a four star hotel, all manuals issued were in colour (this took some sorting as the standard manuals were black and white!) and each training was supported by experienced assistants who had good NLP experience. In fact identifying good assistants was not that easy and despite seeing thousands of people learn NLP, I have found only a few really exceptional skilled individuals. When I ran trainings I would sign off on around £10,000 of hotels each year, and had no sales team to assist with any marketing of these courses. Many who enquired about events were surprised to speak to me in person on the phone!

Regardless of how skilled a trainer you are, the training won’t proceed without a suitable number of attendees. Pricing trainings requires really paying proper attention as there are a lot of hidden costs in running such workshops.  There are advertising costs, certificate costs (this can be up to 10% of the gross for each delegate) hotel costs, materials costs, stage costs (although some companies prefer no PA, no lighting, plastic chairs in a university style room to maximize profits) and many other factors that many people wouldn’t appreciate need to be factored into the business plan.  It always amused me when people attending events believed that running trainings produced enough income to maintain a good standard of living. The reality is that with very few exceptions even before the recession, few trainers made a good living from running events. I remember attending an established USA trainer’s London event (he had been running NLP trainings since the 1980s) and there only being four delegates. In later years I was horrified to hear of an NLP practitioner that had the trainer’s wife and sister as the whole audience.  Worse still the husband couldn’t see that this was a bit odd. Just as there are no agreed standards for NLP, there is no agreed pricing and the same NLP certificate could cost a delegate anything from a few hundred pounds to literally ten times that amount.

 By 2007 I felt very uncomfortable about what I consider to be the lack of quality control in providing training services and the emphasis which became more about entertainment than creating a learning experience. I stopped running NLP certificated trainings due to changes in the market as well as becoming tired of teaching a curriculum which contained some great techniques but also included a lot of material that is in my view well past it’s sell by date. The advent of more NLP online discussion groups seemed to bring out a real cult like and almost evangelical attitude among some folks which I continue to find quite disturbing. Adverts for events would be framed almost like 18 – 20 holidays with heading like “Come on holiday with trainer X”. It’s almost as if people suspend critical thinking and instead try to live in a bubble of “feeling good” which usually means thinking of all actions, thinking and behaviours purely in terms of “NLP”. This behaviour usually also results in a major sense of humour failure and many folks engrossed in this activity don’t do that well in terms of personal happiness, health and financial well being. This “feel good bubble” has burst for many individuals and even some longstanding training companies are now in real financial trouble, but continue to promote the idea of “success” even though there is all too often a great deal of evidence to the contrary on many levels. Any criticism of such behaviour is met with the immortal cry “Why are you bashing NLP?” missing the key point that the comments refer to the behaviours of some individuals, NOT the actual skill set. (Andrew T Austin made this exact same observation recently on his blog) Some people have adapted and created their own approaches rather than join the queue of “karaoke trainers” trying to emulate their original teachers. I congratulate such individuals and even if I don’t always agree with their views, they are exploring creating something of their own.  In recent years I agreed to join ANLP as they are a UK based CIC company which has a professional code of conduct, advocates CDP and have members from different schools of NLP. There is a genuine interest for a duty of care in teaching rather than purely commercial gain.

 The creators of NLP took inspiration from some of the best therapists in the 1970s. In 2010 I personally don’t see a great number of individuals generating their own approaches and when I considered who I would host through my own company, I was surprised to find I had a very short list of people worthy of consideration. Hosting other trainers can be expensive and always a risk and the only real advantage is getting the training for free on your own door step. Those on the short list include Steve Andreas, Doug O Brien, Andrew T Austin, Frank Farrelly (obviously non NLP) among others. Social networking groups are full of would be NLP trainers lamenting their financial lot while at the same time spending a large amount of the year volunteering to assist on feel good NLP events!

These days I am not surprised to see some attempts by trainers to repackage old material in new ways by adding “essential” and “advanced” to workshop titles. In the past NLP has been portrayed as a 3 step process, practitioner, master practitioner and trainer event. In some cases some trainers had only previously had 20 days or less training themselves, before trying to run their own events! The public have increasingly voted with their feet and it’s generally accepted that workshop numbers worldwide are a fraction of what they used to be and although Youtube is littered with NLP attendee testimonials, there is in my view little chance of this happening in this economic climate. Behind all the hype and nonsense online, NLP does still have a lot to offer when taught in a professional and skills focused manner. There is also a current debate about the value of regulation for the field, but this also raises a number of issues, especially when the two people who created the field can’t agree on so many issues.  

The idea of changing your life in a few short days tends in my view to create unrealistic expectations and promote a poor image of the field to those interested in exploration. I still teach some specific skills based events using insights from NLP such as “The Art of Good Fortune in Business” that is being hosted this weekend. In all my trainings I advocate common sense, warn against fan style worship and promote the idea that any kind of learning requires application and “fly time” It’s said that one in four restaurants fail in the first year, I suspect that it’s a higher percentage among those trying to launch NLP companies. The best ones will stand the test of time, but interestingly I am hard pushed to recommend a good UK based training in 2010 and sod’s law is that having stopped running these myself, now I get regular requests for these events!