Nick Kemp Blog

In talk therapy a certain amount of analysis can be useful but excessive analysis can be counterproductive and actually create all manner of problems.

Prior to agreeing to see any client, all clients are required to complete a full set of client notes so I have an insight into how they perceive the problem and a history of any previous treatment. Many individuals have already seen other therapists without success and in some cases the emphasis has been on analyzing past events. In recent times my views is that for some clients this has greatly exagerated the problem creating a belief in the client that “the solution” requires “understanding and getting to the root of the problem”. In cases where a client has severe anxiety, this analysis can be like throwing petrol on a fire creating more problems than it solves!

Focusing primarily on the past can tend to direct the client away from thinking about the future and paying attention to the here and now. Over 90% of all clients I see are for anxiety related conditions and of course anxiety requires the ability to anticipate which usually occurs by the client picturing what could be problematic ,or thinking unhelpful thoughts about what could be problematic, in the future. In some therapeutic modalities, where there is excessive analysis, there can also be the danger of the therapist “leading the client” into imagining all manner of unhelpful scenarios. One of the reasons I favour indirect hypnosis is that the therapist is working extensively with the client’s representations ,rather than introducing their own ideas which them biases the information fed back. I recently had a client told by a counsellor that they would never be able to fly again because in their sessions that had not managed to “get to the root of the problem.” They had spent countless hours analyzing what the problem could be and the many reasons why the client had the fear, rather than paying attention to what needed to be different to effect a new way of responding.

In Provocative Change Works™ the emphasis is on assisting the client in changing the way in which the client thinks, which in turn changes the way in which the client feels, which creates an opportunity to behave differently. This work is done conversationally and with humour, which produces really excellent results without the client having to delve into their past behaviours and relive “the problem” time and time again…

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!

I was thinking today about some of the smartest people in music and realized that many of the greats have been around for decades. Some of my favorite CDs are from the 1970s including Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Springsteen’s Born to Run, The Stones Sticky Fingers, Neil Young’s On the Beach amongst others. In each instance these artists have produced some great work and although there have been many imitators, these are mostly pale imitations. It’s not that the imitators are poor musicians or songwriters it’s just that they don’t have a great deal of creativity. In contrast those musicians who have developed their craft, written their own songs and toured extensively tend to be those who are apparently most financially secure, even in these tougher economic times.

In the same way in the world of Changework, there are some excellent minds and original thinkers. Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, Frank Farrelly, Gregory Bateson and others are said to have inspired the creation of NLP. In NLP and Changework there have been some great writings, seminars and products, but also some very patchy material. I remember watching a series of DVDs from one NLP creator thinking that it all looked “very familiar” and it was a bit like seeing a rock band attempting to recreate an album from days gone by and not quite getting there.  Many people are unaware that having a book published does not equate to great earnings and I know one NLP trainer who had an internationally successful series of books and made just a few thousand pounds in sterling for each writing!

So do NLPers make a good living out of NLP? If you believe what you read online, you would think so, but my observations are that in most cases this is not true. Many realize that running certificated events only really generates income for the certificating company that receives fees for each delegate. I lost track of the number of NLP trainers, who lamented their financial situation and in many cases individuals “retired” from NLP. I have previously blogged about the fact that the public don’t always know that many events that are advertised are in fact cancelled with some delegates  still chasing refunds months later. Also many “NLP training businesses” are in financial trouble and in some cases either in voluntary arrangements with Inland Revenue or struck off as limited companies by Companies House. I recently had a conversation with a colleague about this issue and we made a mental note of the number of people who had stopped running NLP specific events due to finding them not financially viable. Of course there will be exceptions but my guess is that the market has changed just as the economic times have done.

The most successful musicians and change workers continue to create and innovate, presenting new ideas.  The most successful musicians employ good financial advisers to ensure they run their businesses in an effective manner. This doesn’t always work out and we are told that Leonard Cohen among others lost millions in disputes over money. In the world of NLP some trainers have suffered financial difficulties sometimes through costly legal actions and/or having inflated expectations from the marketplace. Both musicians and trainers in changework come in all shapes and sizes. Those who stand the test of time realize that developing any brand requires dedication persistence, although a person can change their lives in seven days, developing a longstanding business concern or creating a great album in most instances takes a great deal longer. Belief in capability does not always translate into having capability. Anyone watching American Idol or X Factor will realize this!

This is a good example that demonstrates many of the tools I use in the Provocative Change Works approach that I will be teaching in th UK, USA and Europe this year

Prior to learning about NLP, I ran a number of very successful private business concerns and inevitably on occasion members of staff would fall down ill. Sometimes staff would struggle in full of cold proclaiming “I’m feeling really rough, but I’ll struggle on” (cue for sneeze and cough). They would in all instances be asked to go home and to take their germs with them! In an office of around a dozen staff it’s very easy for one person to spread a cold and of course spread of disease has been very much in the news in recent times.

When I helped run some large NLP trainings between 2000 and 2003 there were often up to 600 attendees in a very large room with air conditioning. Often attendees have travelled from far and wide. There were many instances of people adopting the “I’ll struggle through” philosophy  among some attendees keen to see a celebrity trainer sometimes believing that a few days training would make them the next Derren Brown!

I noticed that many who regularly assisted on these large events were often ill and one individual I ran some events with in the past was so full of cold on so many occasions that delegates would actually bring cough sweets at the start of each event in anticipation of impending coughs and sneezing. I stopped recording events as it seemed somewhat incongruent to talk about sensory acuity and the effects of voice when a trainer sounds like they should be laid up in bed with some lemsip.

My wife is a GP and regularly comments at how basic hygiene commonsense prevents illness. Another reason for keeping trainings to small group sizes is to ensure that the duty of care to individuals extends to health and to ensure that any training venue has good restaurants close by. It’s also important to drink plenty during the event whether you are a trainer or attendee and to ensure that the room is properly ventilated and that there are suitable breaks throughout the trainings. Finally f you choose to run an event in a location where people only have one choice of food such as on a resort, it’s probably unwise to then publicly post comments similar to these if you want anyone in future times to attend your events.

“Trainer X was sick and so was X and this morning the main trainer had it... there was something weird in the food or in the air.”

Is this what is called “an anchor” in NLP?