By Martin Crump.
Martin is a Director and co-founder of Evolution. He is a certified NLP Master Trainer with a wealth of experience of working with organisations of all sizes and types across the UK.
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) has been around for some time now.
In the past, the tools and techniques of NLP have proved to be extremely effective as therapeutic tools, enabling a large number of people world wide to resolve personal issues and limitations and give them the ability to grow and realise their potential.
Until recently, NLP training was designed and delivered on a therapeutic base and has been successful in training Practitioners who often go on to become therapists.
At Evolution we recognise the huge potential for NLP tools and techniques in the business field and have worked extensively to adapt traditional NLP training into this area, culminating in business focused courses which are accredited by the NCFE.
What is NLP?
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is the Art and Science of Personal Excellence.
Art, because the way we each think and act is unique to us, and any description of feelings, attitudes and beliefs is bound to be highly subjective and personal.
Science, because it incorporates well researched methods that can be used to identify the patterns of successful behaviour and develop those patterns in yourself.
Watch a clip of my presentation from the NLP@Work conference here:
It began in the 1970’s with Richard Bandler and John Grinder who studied the methods of three leading psychotherapists who were consistently able to bring about changes in human behaviour (Milton Erickson – hypnotherapist, Virginia Satir – family therapist and Gregory Bateson – anthropologist).
The methods they developed have since been applied in the fields of sport, business, government and personal development – attracting a large and worldwide following.
Definition of NLP
Neuro The process of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling – the senses we use for inner thought processes as well as experiencing the world.
Linguistic The way we use language to communicate internally and externally to make sense of the process of experiencing the world.
Programming The way we programme our thoughts and hence our behaviour. We do this unconsciously and without control. NLP enables us to choose our programming to create the most effective behaviour in any situation.
NLP and Business
Business success relies heavily on the successful interaction of people. NLP skills can dramatically improve those interactions with a series of tools and techniques which can be used in all situations. Specifically: Sales Meetings can become much more effective with improved rapport building skills, better communication and influencing techniques. Presentations can become much more effective and understandable to a wider audience.
More effective meetings and better teamwork will also result from improved communication and understanding. Recruitment and Selection will become more effective and interviewers become more skilled at rapport building, asking ‘clean’ questions to obtain better information and understand the interviewee’s view of the world.
Workplace Stress is becoming a major issue affecting all organisations. Individuals perceive situations differently, this perception is what drives their emotional state and behaviour. This is why some people are more affected by situations than others. A reduction in stress can result from improved communication which creates a mutual understanding of how each individual perceives a specific situation.
Employees, and hence the organisation as a whole, will dramatically improve their ability to learn quickly and effectively. The management of change becomes easier through increased learning, improved communication and the ability to break out of the circle of cause and effect. All of these have a beneficial effect on the profitability of the business on both a short and long term basis.
Our Approach To NLP Training
We are all unique with our own map of the world. We all have our own way of experiencing life and our own unique way of learning.
At Evolution we recognise this and our workshops are designed to exploit all of the senses and learning styles. All workshops are interactive and mix practical exercises with underpinning theories and concepts. NLP is full of jargon and we ensure that we de-mystify all of the content to ensure that all delegates have a common understanding. We practice what we preach!
We work with clients to adapt our courses to meet their needs exactly by using real examples and issues which are current for the delegates. Our trainers are fully experienced NLP Master Practitioners and Certified NLP Trainers with a vast experience of delivering workshops in a wide variety of areas.
NLP Business Practitioner Course – the Benefits
To the Individual
- Increased Self Awareness: You will learn how you think, how you process information, how and why your behaviour changes in different situations.
¨ Enabling you to: change your response to stressful situations, learn more effectively and solve problems more effectively.
- Increased Awareness of Others: You will learn how to analyse how other people think, process information and react. You will also learn to separate behaviour from intent, and to separate the person from their behaviour.
¨ Enabling you to: be more flexible in the way you interact with others and become more effective in one-to-one and team situations.
¨ To reduce the amount of conflict and resolve conflict more effectively.
- Greater Ability to Change and Maintain Your Internal State: Your internal mental and emotional state is a response to external situations and your own internal filters. By changing your response, you change your state. You will learn various techniques for choosing and changing your state.
¨ Enabling you to manage your stress levels and choose the mental and emotional state which is most beneficial at any time.
- Establish and Maintain Rapport: Rapport is crucial to creating and maintaining effective communication. You will develop skills which enable you to build rapport with anybody you choose to.
¨ Enabling you to: influence others more effectively, sell more effectively (either products or concepts), manage conflict more effectively, give structured feedback in a non-confrontational and judgement free way and facilitate change and learning in others.
¨ Present Information in a Way Which is Understood by Everyone: You will learn techniques to enhance your flexibility in your approach to communication to groups of people, either as a presenter or as a trainer.
¨ Enabling you to: greatly improve your effectiveness as a presenter and trainer. You will be able to get your message across to all your delegates.
- Understand and Utilise The Unconscious: You will learn that the unconscious mind controls everything we do and everything we are. You will learn ways of communicating directly with the unconscious, bypassing the conscious filters.
¨ Enabling you to: facilitate change and development with yourself and others in both group and one-to-one situations.
- Use Language Effectively: You will learn how to challenge non-specific language to uncover the true meaning of the communication. You will also learn how to use non-specific language to enable others to find their own meaning.
¨ Enabling you to: communicate more effectively and ensure common understanding.
¨ Become truly ‘client centred’ by enabling them to find their own solutions.
To the Organisation
- More Effective Communication: Poor communication is often cited as being the main cause of problems in organisations. Much time and money will be saved with everyone communicating more effectively.
- Better Stress Management: Individuals managing their internal state more effectively leads to lower stress related problems on an organisational level.
- Less Conflict and Better Conflict Resolution: Less conflict because people are able to communicate more effectively and have a better understanding of the difference between behaviour and personality. Better conflict resolution because people are better able to maintain rapport and give feedback in a structured, non judgmental way.
- More Effective Training and Presentations: Trainers will become more flexible in their approach as they understand delegates’ ‘maps of the world’ more easily. They will be able to create a better environment for training and will have the ability to create appropriate states in the delegates. They will, through the use of non-specific language and carefully crafted metaphors, enable learners to get what they need from the course, as well as meeting the course objectives effectively. This ensures that learning is deep rooted and the transfer of learning becomes more likely.
- Effective Management of Change: Understanding individuals’ thought processes and how their internal state is affected by external situations enables managers and individuals to help each other through major changes. More effective and flexible communication ensures that everyone gets the right message in a way which is right for them. Rapport building, questioning, influencing and empathy help managers to facilitate change in a way which is much less threatening and stressful.
The NLP Business Practitioner Course
This course is accredited as an NVQ level 4 equivalent
Duration 6 days ( 1 per month over 6 months)
Aim: To give delegates a range of skills and knowledge to enable them to be effective in all areas of business.
Objectives: At the end of the course delegates will be able to:
- Utilise a range of NLP skills to improve performance in specific business situations.
- Explain how communication is affected by individual’s perceptions
- Use NLP tools for personal change
Contents
Note: Although all these topics are general NLP techniques, the course has a strong business focus.
It is important to realise, however, that the personal mental, emotional and physical state of the manager will affect the quality of performance, so I see personal change as an important part of this course.
NLP – an introduction
- Definitions
- History
- Possibilities
- Presuppositions
Outcomes
- Effective goal setting for your self and others
- The importance of ecology and the affect of goals on others
Representation Systems
- The difference between perception and reality
- How we think and represent the world around us
- How to discover the way others think and represent the world
Rapport
- Building and maintaining rapport
- Building rapport with groups
Calibrating
- Calibrating Body Language of others
Pace-lead
- Using rapport to lead others
Anchoring and collapsing anchors
- Choosing and maintaining a chosen mental, physical and emotional state
- Changing and removing negative states
Perceptual positions
- Understanding the world from another’s point of view
- Using this to help make decisions and change behaviour
Submodalities
- The ‘building blocks’ of perception, beliefs and behaviour
- Using and changing submodalities to attain your goal
Meta model
- Understanding and removing the deletions, distortions and generalisations common to language
- Challenging to obtain the ‘deep structure’ of language and ideas
Milton Model
- Hypnotic language patterns
- Metaphors and nested metaphors
Chunking
- Discovering whether people need ‘the big picture’ or the detail
- Using this to get your message across successfully
Strategies
- How people do what they do
- How to elicit people’s strategies and use them
Reframing
- Changing how people feel about a situation
- NLP Core Skills Workshop
Aim:
To give delegates an introduction to the tools and techniques of NLP.
On this workshop, delegates will learn how to:
- Understand how others are thinking through the effective use of language
- See the world from other people’s viewpoints
- Learn and demonstrate new behaviours effectively
- Overcome negative feelings and habits
- Be resourceful and generate states of excellence such as confidence, calmness or enthusiasm
- Relate to other people better
- Create outcomes they really want and make them achievable
For those of you already familiar with NLP terms you will be learning:
Verbal and non-verbal rapport skills, the Meta-Model, perceptual positions, representational systems, anchoring and setting outcomes.
Other NLP Workshops
- Advanced Presentation Skills
- Communication Excellence
- Advanced Sales Skills
- Team Building
- Accelerated Learning
- Strategies for Personal and Organisational Change
Consultancy
Evolution’s Master Practitioners can work with you and your organisation on a consultancy basis to help you to:
- Improve your own performance through individual coaching and change by utilising NLP tools and techniques.
- Improve your organisation’s ability to learn through the development of individuals and teams at all levels within the organisation.
- Help to facilitate cultural change through the development of shared beliefs and values throughout the organisation
For more information about the NLP @ Work Conference on 30th March click here conference