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Protected: NLP Practitioner: Looping Memories

admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:52:43 +0000

Becoming A Competent NLP Practitioner

Stuart — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:49:29 +0000

In recent months, the concern has been growing about people who claim to offer 3 day certifications, or $80 NLP certifications. As a Licensed Trainer of NLP with the Society Of NLP (Richard Bandler’s organization), I find it hard to believe that such trainers think they can pull off such an unethical stance.

I have been reluctant to conduct certifications for a long time simply because of the attitude propagated by such trainers, and I find the state of the field simply filled with commercially degraded versions of NLP. The main reason is that they do not focus on objective competency.

Hence, my aim for launching the NLP Practitioner competency sets is simple. They are going to be measures, empirically tested over time to reveal evidence to support NLP competencies within a specific set of applications rather than just a generic psychotherapy approach to NLP. The applications will include:

NLP Modeling competencies (master practitioner level)
NLP Intervention competencies (practitioner level)
NLP Coaching competencies (practitioner level)
NLP Leadership competencies (practitioner and master practitioner)
NLP Personal Effectiveness competencies (practitioner competencies)

Why Go Through The Trouble?

Well, simply, because I can. With the clear competencies set out, NLP practitioners and master practitioners will no longer flounder around thinking they are competent when they (really) aren’t. It will also differentiate my training from practically all other trainers because the competencies will be evidence-based and tested for the purposes of locking in credibility for the practitioner.

I’ve interviewed people who supposedly have an NLP certification but know nuts about the background and have a hard time proving their points, or choosing their course of action. The issue is not so much that they have to do it, because NLP is not an academic field of study. However, if formalization and research is not conducted, the term ‘practitioner’ is useless.

Hence, my training certifications for both levels will focus a lot more on practice. The core content will be drawn from already existing books or e-learning modules. Practical sessions are where you can actually receive clear guidance and gain competence.

What Would I Do With NLP Certification?

Certification is a mark of competence. NLP certification under my new approach will ensure that you increase in your value as a coach. Because it is practice and feedback based, your ability to maintain your NLP certification will come from your practice areas. The ability to use NLP is a better mark of a good practitioner, rather than someone who has merely completed a course of study.

Practitioners and Master Practitioners can then join our upcoming communities of practice in order to legitimize the practice of NLP in the context of coaching.

If you don’t want a certification from some ‘Mickey Mouse’ institute, please check the reputation of the trainers first and apply some common sense. A tougher training is definitely much more rigorous and therefore valuable for your own development. I can’t stop people from taking an easy way out, but I can certainly support those who have a rigorous approach to their practice process.

For information about real NLP certification training, you may leave a comment in the comments box and I will pick it up within 24-36 hours.

Protected: NLP Practitioner Training: The Art Of Persuasive Language

Stuart — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 01:25:34 +0000

Protected: NLP Practitioner Training: TOTE Modeling Schematic

Stuart — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:40:01 +0000

Protected: NLP Practitioner Training: The TOTE Model

Stuart — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:36:39 +0000

Master Practitioner Training: Criticisms, Misconceptions and The Path To Professionalism

Stuart — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:05:48 +0000

I always keep a look out for people who are in the NLP space, especially those in the region and those who are online. Much of the time, I feel a little sorry for those who have been attended NLP certifications for a few reasons.

Many NLP trainers (let alone Practitioners and Master Practitioners) are not reinventing themselves because they are too busy making money. Since the 1990s, there really hasn’t been much of a breakthrough in the applicability of NLP, let alone the transfer of NLP skills into the real world. I know a few NLP Practitioners who have attended the certification but do squat with it.

This is primarily because most NLP trainers still focus on therapy training as the foundation rather than the real roots of NLP, which is modeling. Recently, I took a look at an NLP Master Practitioner syllabus and realized that they spend about 10% of the time on teaching therapy rather than real modeling work.

How many people in the world actually use therapy in real life scenarios?? How much practice are you really going to get, even if you learn therapeutic models in NLP??

The main danger here is simple. By looking through the lens of therapy, you see every problem as a need for therapy. The truth is, if there are pathological symptoms, you will be in ethical danger of treating someone without really knowing the pathology and how to deal with it if you are simply NLP trained.

[NOTE: NLP is not therapy; if you are a therapist, it can help you to catalyze and improve your skills. NLP is a modeling methodology, linguistically bound. Many people do not even have the appropriate linguistic background to claim they can maximize the use of linguistics in so-called conversational hypnosis].

NLP was meant to be modeling oriented. Conversational. Linguistic. Since the beginning of time, NLP has always focused on meta models – models for creating models. At the moment, there are only two linguistic models in NLP, but the plethora of linguistic models in the real world are much broader in purpose, depth of application to access individual mental models, and supported by a growing body of research.

There are key disadvantages to this. Firstly, you are learning models that are not enriched. Many people who are teaching therapy aren’t in therapy, let alone having had the rigor of studying and understanding and applying therapeutic models. They simply have an NLP certificate (which doesn’t really amount to much). If you really want to learn therapeutic models, please learn them from an experienced therapist, and be prepared to study them in great detail. Secondly, you are detracting from the modeling process by taking things and expecting people to be learners of a fixed model. This causes people to go about what I call “toolboxing” – where individuals say “let’s use A to achieve B”, resulting in fixedness instead of progression. Thirdly, a Master Practitioner should be Mastery driven rather than goal driven. A mastery orientation is different from a performance orientation because performance orientation reduces motivation to learn and is often associated with lower quality of learning (Dweck, 1986). In order for a Master Practitioner to be mastery driven, one needs to consider the fact that one has to be effective in modeling mental maps of others. This will include pre-requisite knowledge about:

listening to beliefs, values and attitudes through language
pattern recognition
understanding and differentiating cognitive structures through the use of linguistic frameworks
expert orientation – seeking out best practices and building the appropriate methodology to extract expert knowledge (multiple tools are in existence, including Cognitive Task Analysis, Applied Cognitive Task Analysis and Competency Mapping frameworks; Discourse analysis methods such as Speech Act Theory, Conventional Implicature & Conversational Implicature, the Cooperative Principle in comparison with Relevance Theory and the Politeness Principle ). Why? Simply because some methods help generate expert knowledge models far faster and comprehensively than other methods.

As the fields of psychology, linguistics and NLP begin to converge, it becomes more and more imperative for practitioners and master practitioners alike to be mindful of being able to expand the field not just for commercialization, but for professionalism.

NLP Practitioner Training: Submodality Protocols

Stuart — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:05:40 +0000

I’ve just started to develop a set of submodality protocols in order to enable trainees to go through processes that will yield more consistent results. In most NLP Practitioner trainings, I find that the quality control of the trainings themselves is poor, and an attempt needs to be made in order to develop trainings in a way that yields consistency not just of the trainer, but of the results generated by the processes espoused by NLP.

Preparation.

In NLP, preparation work about submodalities needs to be made for a variety of reasons. I find that if I jump into submodality interventions, I may not have much of a response because I’m dealing with an individual who has certain limitations explaining their model of the world verbally. A certain level of preparation needs to be done to talk an individual through the unconscious processes that are happening in the mind of the audience. I would encourage a series of three simple demonstrations.

The first demonstration should be a “natural submodality disposition” test, just to show that submodalities are a natural thing to them, not something the practitioner put in their head. Tell the participant to think of two distinct items. I prefer to ask about something they like to do versus something they dislike doing. By asking them about the characteristics of the mental image, they can understand the submodalities a little better.
The second demonstration is the “mind-body connection” test. Individuals who are experiencing NLP the first time may not be convinced about the shift. In the picture of dislike, I ask them to rate how bad they feel about it. If they are at level 5, I then test one or two driver submodalities to intensify the sense of dislike (e.g. “what happens when you remove the color from the picture, and make the movie go slower?”). This is to show the relationship between the mental image and emotional state. Do remember that some individuals do not respond very easily to the mental image.
The third demonstration is the linkage of the submodality through triggers. This will show that submodalities are not a static element, but a dynamic element. I will ask them for a situation where they habitually did something, such as laze around instead of going to exercise. On one or two occasions they may have been able to exercise, and I want to know why they managed to do that. Often, it is because of the situation that triggered them. They may have seen someone running. They may have been told by their doctor to exercise or suffer consequences. Whatever the trigger, that is just ONE trigger. I’ll explain to a participant that a stable behavior is created through developing a series of triggers to lead to the same outcome.

Elicitation. This process requires the practitioner to know what kinds of questions to ask, but ultimately they need to know the Meta Model.

Start off by eliciting a problem state. For instance, a problem state could be procrastination (one of the top favorites). Most practitioners will start by asking details about the submodalities right away. Don’t do that. You need to know a bit about the context. They procrastinate for various reasons (i.e. find out the root causes/context), and the procrastination may be caused by elements in the environment and therefore ecological. One such example would be where an individual is procrastinating because the reward structure encourages last minute bursts of sales. I know some companies have incentives in the last quarter that unconsciously encourage sales people to wait until that quarter before actually taking action.
Once you know what the problem state is, you need to decide what the solution state is, and test it with your client. For instance, it is a common mistake for a practitioner to immediately assume that “motivation” is the answer to procrastination. Often, the solution state presents itself when you find out the root context or root cause. Sometimes, fear might be a better resource state to tap into. Sometimes, anger. Relaxation. Or humor. In the above case, it may appear that self-serving “fear” may be a better motivator than the others. I typically ask the client to test it out first before entering into the intervention stage.

Intervention/Installation

During the time of the intervention, you, as a practitioner, need to make a decision about the end outcome of the intervention. Do you want this habit that needs to be propagated? Or is it merely a way to disconnect an old behavior/habit?
Examples of situations requiring propagation of new behavior: overly anxious people, suicidal thoughts, depressives, negative thinking, peak performance preparation.
Examples of situations requiring disconnect an old habit: compulsions, phobias and fears, overeating/snacking, smoking.
In the first case, you will need to utilize the submodality Swish Pattern to reinforce habitual patterns.
In the second case, you will need to utilize other possible patterns such as the Compulsion Blowout Pattern or the Mapping Across process
In certain occasions, where the individual does not appear to be resourceful enough to develop changes, there could be issues associated with the belief (a blocking belief) or other associated ecological issues.

Finally, as a practitioner, test your interventions. There are ways to test if the intervention will work and transfer in the long term. It is about enhancing motivation, developing a higher level of clarity of how to use the change in different moments of the future. This is commonly known as future pacing. One process you can use to integrate future pacing into your interventions is the Comparative Future Pacing technique.

NLP Definitions: Mapping Across

Stuart — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:02:45 +0000

Mapping Across is a process or procedure that utilizes submodalities. It is often mistaken as a technique by poorly trained NLP Trainers.

There are several uses for mapping.

#1 – To compare submodalities across similar situations with different states.

#2 – As part of a 3-step, ecological structuring process for obsessions (see Obsession Elimination Process)

#3 – To identify and apply specific solution states to situations so as to disconnect original habitual experience as in the Compulsion Blowout Pattern

#4 – A means to set up comparative images in order to habitually intensify specific experiences through the Swish Pattern

NLP Training: Comparative Future Pacing

Stuart — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:48:20 +0000

This is a protocol to assist in measuring and understanding shifts that take place after any intervention, with the main goal of seeing how effective the intervention has been, and to what extent the client is able to experience a shift.

It is recommended that follow-up be done, as a change in representation can result in a series of other changes, which requires personal reflection and assessment as to whether additional changes are required and appropriate

Comparative Future Pacing

Step 1: Before the intervention, go into the future with the limiting belief or state. Experience what this future is like, name the experience that is felt (e.g. fear, anxiety, sadness) and rate the level of discomfort on a scale of 0 to 10. Anchor this future representation.

Step 2: Continue with the intervention. Remember to anchor the resourceful state after this intervention.

Step 3: Fire off the anchor and revisit the future situation. Experience what this future is and compare it with Step 1 on a scale of 0-10. The emotional state should have changed to an extent where the future state holds no experience ( level 0), or the nature of the state has changed (i.e. mapping has automatically taken place). If the change has not taken place, continue with the intervention until the representation of experience changes.

NLP Definitions: Future Pacing

Stuart — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:44:07 +0000

Future pacing is the process of representing a future moment and placing the end result of an intervention there. When you experience a change of state and visit the future in your mind, you can note if you are more resourceful in that moment or not. In most cases, a future pace paves the way for checking of ecology and possibly to refine the intervention.

See also: comparative future pacing