In a nutshell

NLP is about your brain, language and your senses. Everything that is in your brain got there through your senses and is represented by your senses as an incomplete representation of the real world. You brain makes up for its inability to process all of the available sensory data by comparing what is really happening with what it expects to happen and then improvising to hide any differences. In order to make sensory data match with your memory of the world, your brain ignores, corrupts and simplifies sensory data.

If your senses are your brain’s input then language is one of your brain’s outputs. You were able to communicate very effectively with anyone who took notice of you, long before you learned to speak. The fact that you are alive today proves that you were able to get your own way without the need to learn a spoken language. Strangely, we are brought up to value spoken or written language above other forms of communication, so we are taught to logically exclude or ignore non-verbal language. Our brains, however, have evolved to use non-verbal communication to carry the majority of communication traffic to and from other people. Therefore, we must be aware of this and pay as much attention to non-verbal language as we do to verbal language. Of course, you don’t have to actively pay attention to it – you just have to be aware that it’s there and that it’s feeding your sense of intuition. Learn to trust it.

In other words, spend at least an equal amount of time preparing what you are going to say as how you are going to say it. If you are unprepared, unsure or even doubtful about what you are presenting, your non-verbal communication will reveal your true thoughts to your audience. Some will ignore this, some will dismiss it as intuition and some will attend to it as the primary message – totally ignoring your carefully prepared words.

In order for you to be at your best as a professional communicator, it helps for you to have a variety of ways to manage your own state. You can use a combination of physiology and anchoring to make sure that you maintain your peak state at all times – whatever that may be.

NLP has some really effective and unique communication tools that can help you in any situation, from informing all the way through to influencing. These communication tools tap into natural mental processes and can generate curiosity, motivation and the enthusiasm to go out and take action, right away. NLP isn’t something that you “do” or that you add to your existing skills. It certainly contains some tools and methods which people recognise as being part of NLP, but in itself it doesn’t really exist. NLP is just a means to refine what you already do, it isn’t something that is separate to your existing skills. Think of NLP as a performance tune up rather than a shiny new tool kit.

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In a nutshell Many people who go through the NLP Practitioner training spend some time “doing” NLP to all their friends and colleagues, which can give NLP a bad name. After they’ve had time to integrate their new skills, most return to their original state with some new enhancements. They’re the same person they were before, but they seem to be better at getting what they want from life. NLP is definitely a skill set that can and must integrate with your natural personality, otherwise you will spend so much time thinking about doing it that you’ll never get round to doing it.

If you read through this book carefully, you’ll find it threaded through with NLP in practice – and to read it means that you too are practising while learning. If you come to a Practitioner course, you’ll get the opportunity to practice with other people and refine your skills even further.

There are a number of books around that aim to teach NLP skills to trainers, but they seem to be aimed at telling you everything there is to know about NLP and not so much about what to do with it. One of the most popular ones is simply a rehashed introduction to NLP with a few examples of training applications thrown in.

This book is different in that it practices while preaching, and it’s written with the aim of helping you become a more effective trainer, using NLP as an enabler. You know that NLP is only one approach and there are many more that are equally valid. Therefore my aim isn’t to teach you NLP – if that’s what you want, go to a Practitioner course. My aim here has been to help you apply NLP in your work, become more effective and perhaps even choose to learn more about it in the future.

If you’re the sort of person who is naturally curious, never stops learning and if you have a passion for self improvement, then NLP is a set of tools that can really benefit you.

As you begin to notice more and practice more, you might find yourself dipping back into this handbook for a reminder. As you do, you might notice how the principles and concepts of NLP are woven through it. You can take this as a sign that the principles are also becoming woven through you, helping you to become the teacher, trainer, presenter, coach, facilitator or learning enabler that you have always had the potential to be.

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Appendix

23 Appendix

Here’s some additional information that didn’t really fit into the book.

You can use the training exercises freely, although if you publish them yourself e.g. in training notes, I would appreciate a mention. More importantly, I would love to hear how you’ve used them and what results you have had.

Whilst this isn’t strictly a book about NLP in itself, I thought a little background information on NLP and NLP training would be useful.

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Training Exercises