I originally trained with The Society of NLP (Richard Bandler’s SNLP) and heard regular references from some folks putting down ANLP (The Association for NLP) . This always seemed to me to be a bit odd, as ANLP promotes professional ethics and behaviour , and especially as NLP is a field that preaches the building of rapport!  I am very grateful for all the trainings I received over the years and I recommended many others to attend these events, yet this seemed rather incongruent. I was happy from 2004 – 2009 to run certificated SNLP events at practitioner and master practitioner level and to pay the obligatory monies required for each “certification” Over time I became less pleased by the license agreement all attendees had to sign and this is one of the reasons I am far happier these days to run my own trainings and focus on presenting my own work.

I was a member of SNLP for well over a decade and was a few years ago invited to be on the advisory board of ANLP. This appealed to me as ANLP has a code of ethics, professional standards, is UK based and crucially is not aligned to any commercial business as a CIC concern. I also noticed that ANLP did not have a policy of disparaging other NLP trainings and had a range of different trainers on their board from many schools of NLP. I was for a few years (and I believe the only one ever) the only SNLP approved trainer on the ANLP board, until I received an e-mail stating that these two positions were effectively incompatible! It was an easy choice especially as my work in private practice meant I would be better served by being part of a professional body that is UK based and has a set of professional standards. Although I couldn’t see any conflict of interest, apparently some in the SNLP seemed to perceive it as one. For a few years prior to this all students who were “certified” by myself and my co trainer at Practitioner and Master Practitioner level also received ANLP membership. None of us felt there was any conflict of interest and I still co train with a number of SNLP approved trainers as well as non SNLP trainers.

After many years of running certified SNLP events to my surprise I discovered that the SNLP was not owned by Richards Bandler alone, but apparently jointly owned by Christina Hall. Who on earth is Christina Hall I wondered? A bit of research revealed her to be the joint owner of SNLP and a trainer who also issued SNLP certificated trainings and created SNLP trainers and Master Trainers.  Of course NLP has a history of legal battles over who owns what and for many this makes interesting reading - http://users.telenet.be/merlevede/nlpfaq35.htm

The tragedy in all of this is that in my opinion all the politics and bickering will actually contribute to the decline of the field and result in it not being taken seriously by other professions. Many in NLP have taken delight in bashing the medical, psychotherapy and educational professions and then are wholly surprised when the exact same professions’ don’t embrace their ideas and behaviours. In fact in recent years many NLPers have attempted to cozy up to such professions with very mixed and mostly poor results. I have never been a fan of personality style cults and gangs and can appreciate skilled football players from any team or nationality. I wonder what it would be like if all the self proclaimed Master Trainers, et al actually worked together to develop the field rather than being so concerned with who owns what and who is “licensed” (as opposed to qualified) to do what?

(Graphic from the brilliant Richard Stine, see http://richardstine.com/)

STOP PRESS - Within 24 hours of this blog post appearing, once again more examples of personality bashing appear on the net, once again based on over active imaginations and having way too much diposable time. This is what happens when there are no professional standards and accountability...

Special thanks go out to the following co trainers who have been a real inspiration at getting me to raise my own game when running trainings and to work more effectively with clients – Steve Andreas, Frank Farrelly, Andrew T Austin and Doug O Brien. Also special thanks to Mark and Ash at Sparticle who are just the best guys when it comes to web support and website design. I’m 51 tomorrow and life has never been so good!

Full schedule is here http://www.nickkemptraining.com/calendar.php

The conversation I had today was with someone who was part of a group who were sold an NLP Practitioner as “a therapeutic cure”. At least five attendees found that the training had made their “problems worse” and of course the training company now does not want to address any concerns. There is a good chance this story will hit the national press and really put a 1000 watt spotlight on this issue, which in my view is a good thing. I have also come to the conclusion that events with large numbers of attendees are actually pretty irresponsible and many places sold on these events are sold by salespeople paid mostly or exclusively on commission. Similarly many NLP trainers are encouraged to send traffic to national events and receive a financial incentive for doing so.

It’s surely only a matter of time before there is a major incident at an event and people are subsequently held to task. I for one welcome some of these irresponsible individuals getting their just desserts.

Rant over (for now)

Mindscapes is for me an exciting project and a very long way away from the stock nlp and hypnosis events I have witnessed over the years where “entertainment” tends all too often to eclipse real skill development and learning. These events are also for smaller groups and allow me to teach material that I have not taught previously and material that I use with clients in private practice. Both Doug and Andy and similarly focused so these are strategies and approaches that are extensively road tested from working with hundreds of clients. It’s a privilege to work with these guys and we are already planning a UK version of the New York event that will also appear in DVD form in the future.

Bertrand Russell

In the world of Changework and NLP one of the most useful skills is exploring how to change and create beliefs. However in many instances this can lead to a highly unrealistic mind set where people actually believe that they have a capability which doesn’t translate in real life. Of course the seminar generation business is to a great extent responsible for fostering this idea as it helps sell courses! It’s in my view a shame that this focus has in some instances eclipsed a focus on generating real skills. Of course believing you have skills doesn’t make it so…

I read a thread online recently about a bunch of people reading a new book called “I can make you rich” and following the exercises in the belief that they will become rich! Time will tell if this manifests in real life, but in my experience hard work requires application and also an ability to identify opportunities and create opportunities. It’s said in show business that it takes ten years to become an overnight success and in my experience perseverance  is a key ingredient in creating any form of wealth whether this e financial or otherwise. Again believing its possible is useful, but don’t make it so…

I have previously blogged about how especially how the commercialization of some training companies has led to issuing certificates for almost anything in an attempt to create “ownership”. As I have said before we now have NLP certificates regarded by some as “qualifications” and NLP has attempted to make inroads into being seen as credible in the worlds of medicine and education while at the same time attaching itself to some quite wacky ideas including Shamanism! Amazingly people still believe that these are “qualifications” and there is a lot of whooping online as people obtain “new certificates” believing that these will create work opportunities when in reality it will make no real difference from a work opportunity perspective.

Perhaps the co creators would have benefited from some brand advice as the “NLP brand” has become so diluted it’s almost impossible to determine what NLP is with many holding the belief that NLP is “a cure all for all ills!” If only the co creators had been able to read Donna Heckler and Brian D Till’s “The Truth about Brands” it could all have been very different, especially chapter 50…

Great to meet up here with some stella musicians, writers and presenters for The Mindscapes weekend. We have a great group interested in learning and developing skills. Really pleased to be co presenting with Doug O Brien and Andrew T Austin, two very talented trainers so rare these days. Can't wait until Friday night, but plenty to do until then!

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"

The 36 provocative icons allow the therapist to adopt different perceptual positions when working with clients. The key to this approach is to work only “in the here and now” and to make suggestions and observations to the client by “running them up the flagpole and seeing if they salute them.” This produces a wonderfully improvised way of working that is in many ways the total opposite of standard talking therapy, hypnosis and NLP style approaches. The therapist can literally move in any direction at any speed to provoke new and more useful ways of thinking and feeling, from a new and greater perspective, without offering solutions, so that  the response appropriate for the client is literally” called forth” from them .

 Shifting from Disassociated and Associated Positions

Here are some of the phrases that can be used in moving a client’s way of thinking from an associated to disassociated perspective and vice versa

 Disassociated Phrases

• Some people say…
• I heard that…
• Studies have shown…

 Associated Phrases

• Do you consider yourself to be…
• Are you A, B or C?
• How long have you...?

 By using the Provocative Icon System™ in conjunction with these shifts, the client is moved from “a stuck state” when they are often extremely associated, into a new more useful state. Often the conversations that take place can appear to be quite surreal from an external viewpoint, but make perfect sense for the therapist and client.

Also take a look at articles on www.afpt.co.uk

Now I notice some people have discovered the term “provocative” and there is a serious danger of an outbreak of clumsy attempts to borrow the reputation of provocative therapy with little or no training in Farrelly’s work. We already have “provocative hypnosis” and goodness knows what will appear next. For anyone wanting to properly study how to use provocative skills-ie the ability to literally “call forth” the desired change from the client- as created by Frank Farrelly there are AFPT memberships, and, of course a code of conduct and standards that is all too often absent from so many fields.

AFPT code of ethics:

1.     Respect each person's right to self-determination in deciding upon therapeutic treatments

2.     Act at all times with integrity, professionalism and impartiality

3.     Represent themselves, their qualifications, experience and membership of professional bodies honestly, and also (to the best of their knowledge) the skills, qualifications and experience of any third party to whom they refer any of their clients.

4.     Only practise Provocative Therapy within the limits of their competency and to update skills and knowledge on an ongoing basis.

5.     Present PT as a professional and effective approach

6.     Respect legitimate needs and requirements for confidentiality at all times

7.     Ensure that clients' expectations, and the basis on which they will be met, are understood by both parties

8.     Act within the law and not encourage, assist, or collude with others engaged in unlawful conduct.

9.     Represent PT as an option rather than 'a certain solution' for any given problem.

                                        www.afpt.co.uk

In the world of change work and NLP there is a definite “pyramid selling” aspect to some trainings and those “assisting” mostly do so on a voluntary basis. In the world of NLP I chose to assist on a number of events for a few years between 2000 and 2003. I am glad that  I did so as it allowed me to see up close how to run an event and also to really see how skilled some celebrity trainers were, having witnessed these individuals many times over teaching the same material. I noticed that for some assisting on NLP events was a very big deal and in some cases such assistants planned their year’s activities around other trainer’s workshop schedules.  Of course for some aspiring trainers assisting and essentially promoting other people’s events can on the surface appear quite glamorous, but can actually be commercially disadvantageous. Often aspiring trainers who are spending time as volunteers on other people’s events are very limited time wise in what they can run themselves as there are key times of year to consider when hosting events. Typically school holidays, summer breaks, Jan and Dec are not great times for running events. There is also a limited number of people who will attend any kind of event and in recent times assisting staff have been given financial rewards for promoting their chosen trainer’s events. Nothing wrong with that except of course sometimes their own events then suffer and there can be all manner of conflicts of interests that occur.

I have blogged a lot about the balance between entertainment and learning and some of the courses I attended in 2002 and 2003 were great fun, but perhaps not the greatest learning experiences. However my original NLP training was just £499 for 7 days, now the same event can be 300% more expensive. I no longer bother for stock NLP events as they IMO are a bit limited and much of what’s taught is not especially of interest to me.  However I am pleased to be running more and more trainings on my own work in the UK, Europe and USA as well as India as well as releasing some really great products.  I recommend any aspiring trainer to assist on other people’s events for a time, but extensive assisting IMO really can dull skill levels and I have seen many examples of this over the years. One of the reasons is that assistants become very polarized in just one way of working, often not exploring other approaches.

Many training companies that seek volunteers or assistants to help out on courses can be notoriously political in their behaviour and it’s not uncommon to regularly hear the word “persona non grata” as people are considered “in and out of favour” in a similar manner to many corporate business concerns! One NLP colleague was bemused to find that she was skilled enough to run her own NLP courses (and be charged for certification fees by the parent franchise) but curiously not skilled enough to “assist” on courses teaching the same material by those who proclaimed her skills as a trainer.  So yes assisting can be useful for a time in developing skills, for a time…

Unfortunately most NLP forums are simply a giant advert to promote the forum owners favorite trainings. On one NLP forum, posters are not even allowed to add to their posts the kind of trainer they are as this is considered to be “an advert” while the site points all posters to just one style of NLP training. The quality of discussion is lamentably poor and it’s little wonder why NLP has such a dreadful reputation in some quarters…

So much for freedom of choice! It seems that in these tougher economic times some forum owners are desperate enough to try to set up clone forum sites and Andrew Austin outed a forum owner who set up a clone version on alt.psychology.nlp to try and drive traffic to his own site. He registered the exact same domain with the single difference of adding hyphens so an unsuspecting online surfer wouldn’t know the difference. On landing on the fraudulent site browsers see this

http://www.alt-psychology-nlp.com/nlp/1398-nlp-ad-nlp-hypnosis-practice-group-bath-somerset-uk.html

This kind of desperation also suggests that the social networking sites are really taking over as people increasingly find forums full of unemployed rather unpleasant characters who spend a great deal of time trying to attack each other online!

Facebook in particular is far less secular than online forums and there tends to be less evangelism in the discussions. I remember in 2005 when I was working from home I was working on one laptop and had another one on my desk as an experiment noted how long some people remained online on a particular forum. To my amazement some individuals literally spent 10 – 12 hours a day online posting! With the advent of mobile communication it’s very easy to post to Twitter and Facebook and Twitter in particular has become a popular mechanism for dispensing information. Online video resources have become a major players in this new era of global communication and most marketers have realized the benefits of linking these mechanisms with their websites and blogs.

In the world of NLP with the economic downturn there is increasingly an almost desperate attempt to use old style NLP forums alongside social media outlets to promote courses. Youtube has become flooded with clips which are essentially content free clips advertising forthcoming events! Many companies have realized that employees are spending increasing amounts of time online socially networking and often employers have blocked this capability during working hours. With the launch of the new ipad, it remains to be seen if the accent of this new medium is going to change how we read magazines and newspapers and my guess is that this will also contribute to the demise of old style forums.  I was talking to a co author of a major marketing book recently and he made the exact same comments about the rise of social networking mediums and it will be interesting to see how this develops in future years.