I first started learning NLP in 1991 because I wanted to improve my influencing skills in my corporate Training Manager role. I quickly found lots of applications for what I learned and completed both Practitioner and Master Practitioner by 1994. I consolidated this learning by attending both programmes again as a trainer’s assistant.
By 1996 I was ready to take the NLP Trainers’ Training. I did this mostly to improve my skills as a trainer and to find out how to apply NLP to group learning. At that stage I wasn’t thinking of teaching Practitioner programmes and thought that if I passed the certification process it would be a bonus.
It was a big programme and I met lots of people who had only started learning NLP in the previous 12 months, many of them had no training experience and most no experience of running a business. The feedback to me throughout the three-week programme was consistently positive and I discovered that my purposeful and thorough style as a trainer lent itself well to teaching NLP. Other people seemed surprised that I wasn’t planning to set up in business straight away.
At that time the trend in NLP training was very much towards cutting down the number of contact days spent in gaining a Practitioner qualification and most people seemed to regard it as a step towards becoming a coach or therapist. I realised that no-one was offering a thorough, in-depth training in how to practice NLP in a corporate environment in order to achieve bottom-line results.
I spent the next 10 years teaching NLP to business people and I kept to a comprehensive 20-day programme. I ran a slightly shorter version in-house for West Midlands Police (read the case study) and also for Schaeffler (UK) Ltd, a manufacturing company in the automotive sector. Both delivered spectacular results and the programme at Schaeffler won a National Training Award in 2009 because of the concrete difference it made to the profitability of the business. (read the case study)
The recession led to a quiet period in the training market in 2009. I found myself with more time than usual in my office. I had time to think and talk with my clients. I realised that there were a lot of directors and senior managers who wanted to learn what I had to offer but who couldn’t take too much time out of the office. So I set about creating an NLP programme that would deliver everything you need to use NLP for business results. I took out all the therapeutic applications and focused on the bits that I knew people had used to good effect. I took out anything that I knew wasn’t strictly relevant and concentrated on practical skills that appeal to common sense and commercial sense.
The result is ‘Business Class NLP’.
