NLP is a set of tools for personal change and development.
It formally began in California in the 1970s, though, like all schools of thought, its roots stretch further back than that – notably to the philosopher and anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1910 – 1980) and the linguist Noam Chomsky (born 1928).
It started as an investigation into therapy. NLP co-founder Richard Bandler was fascinated why some therapists were more effective than others, and transcribed sessions conducted by two top therapists, Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls. John Grinder helped Bandler analyse these transcripts, using his expertise in linguistics: between them, they spotted patterns of ‘intervention’ which they codified into the first NLP tool, which they called the Meta Model.
The next modelling exercise was with Milton Erickson, the famous hypnotherapist. The learning from this both confirmed the power of the Meta Model and gave rise to the second NLP tool, the Milton Model.
From its therapeutic beginnings, NLP developed in many different directions, modelling excellence in other fields such as business, politics and sports. It has allowed itself to be influenced by many bodies of knowledge, from cybernetics to person-centred therapy. Thinkers such as Robert Dilts, Judith de Lozier, Stephen Gilligan and Steve and Connie Rae Andreas have created a remarkable range of powerful models and techniques.
NLP has not been without critics. It has been associated with exploitative stage hypnosis shows and dodgy selling techniques. However, the vast majority of NLP has always been, and continues to be, used in a caring, positive way by individuals keen to improve their own lives and the lives of others around them. Our training is firmly in this latter tradition
NLP for Coaching
Many coach-training programmes borrow from NLP or use it as a base, and our NLP courses have attracted many coaches seeking to deepen their understanding of their profession. Our principal trainer, Robbie Steinhouse, is an ICF-accredited coach, and is author of How to Coach With NLP, published by Pearson in 2010. If NLP provides the core of our psychological modelling, our values come from the world of coaching.
Coaches have told us that they’ve found NLP very useful in many ways, such as:
- Understanding and communicating non-verbally
- Noticing and utilising language patterns
- Developing rapport and creating an atmosphere of possibility
- Creating change rapidly and elegantly
Coaching skills are also increasing valued within organisations and many managers are expected to play a coaching role as part of their job. Our NLP Practitioner and coaching courses provide a supportive environment in which to learn core coaching competencies which can then be used in such a context.
NLP for Management and Leadership
Robbie Steinhouse is a successful businessman and has also coached many similar individuals. From this experience, he has developed his own models of leadership such as the Seven Parallels and the Leadership Matrix. These combine insights from his work and models from NLP and Transactional Analysis.
These will help you to:
- Get on the same wavelength as staff
- Understand people’s communication styles and adapt to them
- Set clear, reachable targets
- Build, maintain and motivate teams
- Understand your own values and priorities, in and beyond the workplace
- Understand the different roles required by leadership, and when to assume which one.
NLP for Personal Development
At NLP School we use NLP in conjunction with other bodies of knowledge to create special, powerful tools for personal development. We are great admirers of Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis – a hugely powerful set of psychological observations about patterns of human behaviour. We are great believers in the power of Mindfulness, which features in all our courses. With all these tools, you will increase your ability to:
- Resolve anxiety and negative feelings or habits
- Create healthy relationships
- Have more influence over change in your life
- Communicate in a variety of contexts with diverse people
- Bring out the qualities of the individuals around you
- Develop realizable plans
NLP for HR and Training
More and more organisations today are recognising the added value that NLP brings to a variety of business activities. Whether it’s increased sales, improved customer or staff relationships or better communication (internal and external), NLP can help you bring these about, using practical, tested tools. NLP will help you to:
- Add depth to your training by working on beliefs as well as behaviours
- Making learning sustainable
- Access powerful techniques for bringing about change
- Provide practical ways for your people to achieve peak performance
- Enable your people to communicate more effectively and persuasively
- Learn coaching skills.
NLP for Sales
Sales is a business area where NLP is often used. NLP will help you to:
- Listen effectively and create ‘rapport’ and empathy
- Understand customers’ listening styles and adapt to them
- Use persuasion techniques ethically
- Spot these techniques if they are being used unethically by others
- Embed confidence when facing challenging sales situations such as a ‘big pitch’
NLP for Teaching
If you are in the teaching profession you already value and have developed the ability to impart information so that people learn. NLP will help you build these skills even further. Outside the profession, many of us are involved in helping others learn. Assisting a colleague or employee to take on a new task, raising children and making presentations are all forms of teaching, and NLP will develop your skills in them. NLP will help you to:
- Identify people’s natural learning styles
- Develop your flexibility in presentation
- Lead learners to the best state of mind to absorb and assimilate information
- Overcome blocks to learning
- Make learning easier and faster via presuppositions and language patterns
NLP for Entrepreneurship
Robbie Steinhouse is a successful business owner and entrepreneurship is a subject dear to his heart. NLP School will provide valuable tools to help face the challenges of starting, running, and perhaps eventually selling a business. Our training will help you to:
- Overcome unhelpful beliefs about risk and luck
- Examine fears about leaving conventional employment and going it alone
- Build and readily access your capacity to generate new ideas
- Create and use a full entrepreneurial ‘skill-set’
- Ensure that your priorities and those of your business do not trip each other up
- Clarify and stick to your long-term strategy
- Create and stick to tactical plans
- Finish the job; too many start-ups start well but fade away
NLP for Health
Mainstream medicine is becoming increasingly positive about the link between thought, behaviour and health. Numerous studies show that behaviours like eating patterns, emotional reactions such as anger and thinking patterns like pessimism all have an effect on health.
You can use the tools that we provide to change inner patterns and the behaviours that they initiate to improve the health of yourself and others.
Whether you are a health professional or simply want to improve your own health, we will help you to:
- Lower general levels of stress
- Plan for a healthier life and stick to that plan
- Manage your mental state: learn to enter relaxed mental states that aid recovery and to react differently to stressful situations
- Change unhelpful beliefs about body shape and other inherited conditions
- Change habits and behaviours that damage your health into ones that sustain it
NLP for the Charity Sector
NLP School values the work of not-for profit organisations and offers a 20% discount to registered charities. We are the leading NLP provider to this sector and have significant experience of presenting relevant content to organisations ranging from the British Red Cross, Cancer Research and WaterAid through to Youth Net and Girlguiding UK. Use NLP for:
- Psychological techniques to encourage active fundraising
- Management and leadership tools utilising a shared ‘vision’
- Rapid stress releasing techniques that are used widely for distressed clients
- Conflict resolution
- Powerful coaching and therapy models
NLP for Consulting
Consulting is about communication, and so is NLP. Our courses will teach you how to establish good rapport with clients, how to present information effectively and how to lead change in organisations. The psychological understanding that underpins all our teaching will help you understand the human side of clients’ problems – often the thorniest ones. You will be able to:
- Deepen your connection with clients and colleagues
- Communicate more effectively and persuasively
- Build rapport and help people solve problems
- Improve your own and clients’ strategy and creativity
- Understand leadership issues more clearly
- Generate business from existing clients and referrals
NLP for Marketing
The psychological insight gained on our courses will help you understand consumers and their decision-making. Conversely, if you’d like to avoid getting your own buttons ‘pushed’ without your consent, you need to know where they are. NLP can help you with:
- The language of influence – learn language patterns that reach out
- Maintaining integrity
- Find and use your own communication style
- Manage your state during important meeting, presentations and pitches
- Understand how marketing materials can persuade, sometimes ethically, sometimes not
- Present with skill and elegance
NLP for Sports
NLP is now part of many professional coaching regimes. Whether you are a professional athlete, an occasional amateur, a team coach or just a coach to your kids, NLP can help you improve performance and also get greater enjoyment from sport. You can use NLP to:
- Manage mental states and access ‘the zone’
- Set and meet performance goals
- Change self-limiting beliefs about performance
- Model and learn from leaders in the field
- Rehearse skills and performances mentally
- Believe that every bad scenario can be overturned; the difference between fighting on and throwing in the towel
