Nick Kemp Blog

“There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.”
Josh Billings

I was looking online today at a number of online postings on the internet while doing some research for a legal issue and discovered some of the most ludicrous and funny comments I have seen to date. It seems that especially in the field of NLP and other changework, practitioners and trainers feel the need to embellish and amplify comments to a farcical level. For a field that claims linguistic skills and precision, this seems to me to suggest a massive incongruity. Amazingly we now have some individuals claiming to cure whole groups of 50 phobics at a time with (100% success rate of course)  and others desperately trying to sell books claim to have “cured” thousands of phobics!  It reminds me of the wonderful Monty Python four Yorkshire sketch.

The culture of newsgroups and associated behaviours has in my view created some of the most dreadful behaviour that only damages the perception of the field. I have blogged previously about individuals who talk about “being qualified” in NLP, when in reality they have only attended a few brief days’s training. Others talk about getting “their Masters…” which actually in many cases means they sat in a workshop for a few days and “became” a “Master Practitioner” Some trainers actually fabricate having qualifications and add logos to their sites until they are outed by the professional body that runs the trainings who are understandably unimpressed by such misleading behaviour.

Of course without any regulation and in many cases professional standards, individuals can literally run riot and the internet is full of such examples of behaviour.

This gross exaggeration extends beyond inventing “qualifications” with many individuals regularly talking about billing thousands for corporate work while always seeming financially broke and having “huge success” with clients while lamenting a lack of regular client income. Some practitioners attempt to charge thousands of pounds for their services often referring to themselves as “success coaches” and “performance coaches” without any obvious factual evidence for any such “success” Other ludicrous sets of claims usually start with “The world’s greatest” (insert whatever you want after this initial proclamation…Often individuals will proclaim "I've got a client" online or "I've got a new training opportunity" which suggests to me a certain level their own surprise...

The tragedy of this kind of behaviour is that some people can (having seen such comments) then totally dismiss the entire field of NLP and changework as “kooky” and without any substance. Considering how useful some of these skills can be when used in the right hands this is a real shame. I have become pretty embarrassed (but not surprised) by such behaviour and am pleased that some groups such as ANLP and a few others advocate a set of ethics and standards and promote professionalism and accountability.  

PS a colleague just e-mailed me this which appeared online

"The best hypnosis 6 day certification training in the World"