NLP is the practice of understanding how people organise their thinking, feelings, language and behaviour to produce the results they do. A key element of NLP is that we form our unique internal mental maps of the world as a product of the way we filter and perceive information absorbed through our five senses from the world around us.

Linguistic: We then assign personal meaning to the information being received from the world outside. We form our second mental map by assigning language to the internal images, sounds and feelings, tastes and smells, thus forming everyday conscious awareness. The second mental map is called the Linguistic Map (sometimes known as Linguistic Representation)

Programming: The behavioural response that occurs as a result of neurological filtering processes and the subsequent linguistic map. These are the strategies we run to live our lives.

NLP Origins

Neuro Linguistic Programming began in the 1970s when John Grinder teamed up with Richard Bandler. Both men had a fascination with human excellence which charted a path for them to model behavioural patterns of selected geniuses.

Modelling is the core activity in NLP, and is the process of extricating and replicating the language structure and behavioural patterns of an individual who is excellent at a given activity.

Grinder and Bandler began their NLP quest by modelling three people, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. These geniuses were outstanding as professional agents of change, working in the domain of therapy. All three geniuses, Perls, Satir and Erickson performed their magic from a perspective of unconscious excellence. The geniuses did not present Grinder and Bandler with a conscious description of their behaviour. The modellers (Grinder and Bandler) unconsciously absorbed the patterning inherent in the geniuses and then provided a description.

With little direct knowledge of each of the geniuses speciality and little knowledge of the field of psychotherapy as a whole, Grinder and Bandler over a two year period set out with enthusiasm bordering on fervour, to explicate selected portions of the geniuses’ behaviour. They coded the results of their work in language-based models using the patterns of transformational grammar as the descriptive vocabulary. Through NLP Modelling Grinder and Bandler made explicit the tacit skills of the geniuses and NLP was born.

In 1975 Grinder and Bandler presented the first two NLP models to the world in the volumes “Structure of Magic I and II.” The volumes published by the respected publishing house “Science and Behaviour Books inc” put NLP on the map and interest in the new field of NLP spread quickly. People in fields related to communication, behaviour and change sought to learn how they too could get amazing results when doing change work. Grinder and Bandler willingly offered training courses in the application of their models. The training courses Bandler and Grinder conducted proved that the NLP models were transferable to others, meaning that learners could use the NLP models successfully in their own work.

NLP Modelling, NLP Training, NLP Application

So where NLP began its life as a means of modelling excellence, training courses soon became a very active part of the NLP adventure, followed by NLP application where NLP-trained practitioners apply their NLP tools for commercial and personal benefit.

NLP Modelling

NLP modelling is the art of making explicit the set of differences present in someone who is excellent at a given activity compared with someone who is mediocre at the same activity. NLP modelling is by far the highest skill level in NLP. NLP modelling can be used to capture patterns of excellence present in anyone in any context.

NLP Training

When the NLP developers began to share their knowledge, NLP Certification became available with other trainers. Thirty years after the inception of NLP, modern day NLP training comes in all shapes and sizes, some excellent, some good, a lot of average and some decidedly poor.

NLP Application

An NLP Practitioner can employ his/her skills as an agent of change working with individuals, groups, or companies, or even global organisations and governments. As a technology, NLP has an amazing track record for instigating fast and efficient change in individuals and groups.

Many people study NLP to help them become more effective in their chosen field. The patterns can be employed across a wide area of applications ranging from fields as diverse as education, team building, sales, marketing, personal development, leadership and coaching. Wherever there is human interaction and growth potential, NLP can be used to develop and enhance performance. NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming – is a process of discovering the structure of the thinking and abilities that others and we have (especially those of excellence) in order to reproduce the results that we want with consistency.

Which of these things have you done well today?

• Woken up on time?
• Left someone you work with in a good frame of mind having spoken to you?
• Explained something to someone else in a way that they understood?
• Moved a bit further forwards in achieving your goals or even totally achieved some?
• Successfully handled a telephone call?
• Inspired someone to do something they have not done before?
• Given feedback in a way that was received positively?
• Learned something unexpectedly?
• Successfully negotiated a potential conflict either at work or at home?
• Made a new acquaintance with which you look forward to having future contact?

All of them? Some of them? None of them? Whatever your answer you have a strategy for achieving whatever it was that you did achieve. If, for example, you succeeded in inspiring someone to do something they have not done before, you have a strategy for how you do this. The chances are that you do know some of the elements of your strategies but chances are that there are some crucial bits of which you have no conscious knowledge. Most of us take for granted the everyday things we do well.

Now answer the same question for these things – which of these have you done ‘well’ today?

• Become upset or stressed?
• Given up on a goal?
• Missed a deadline?
• Left someone feeling frustrated with you?
• Felt frustrated with yourself?
• Got into an argument?
• Damaged a friendship?
• Attempted to influence someone but succeeded in getting them more resistant to change?
• Said something that you didn’t mean to say and now regret it?
• Slammed the phone down?

It may seem strange to ask whether you did any of these things ‘well’ but whatever you did, behind your behaviour lay a strategy for how you achieved exactly the result that you did.

(Sue Knight)