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NLP Practitioners - The difference that makes the difference

By Chris Harrison - Posted June 2005


One of my major concerns over the years has been the various ways in which NLP is taught, and therefore the quality of practitioners.

I was at an NLP practice group a while ago and after a simple exercise, I heard someone ask "So what other NLP techniques can I use with this?"

It was clear that the trainee was treating each part of his training as separate items, to be used individually, only when required.

During the exercise, a good practitioner as well as leading the client through the process, could apply various other NLP learning's to improve the technique, such as Milton Model, Meta-Model, Anchoring, Future Pacing, Pacing-Leading, Submodalities, etc.

Anyone can talk a client though a technique but to create a really good effect I would expect at least some of the following:

  1. Automatically drop into the state we want the client in, thus increasing the likelihood of the client reaching the correct state.
  2. Pace where necessary to keep objections down.
  3. Glue techniques together on the fly. Do we need to anchor on this? No, but do it anyway. It may be useful later.
  4. Elegantly use multiple anchors to enhance state changes by using space, tonality, rate of speech etc.
  5. Use Sensory acuity to tell when the Client is not where the Practitioner wants them to be.
  6. Future Pace, to take the changes into the future.
  7. Perform the exercise in a free form method, responding to the client, rather than following a fixed plan. This could be called flexibility!

Imagine learning to drive a car by spending the first lesson steering, then the second lesson looking in the mirror, another lesson shifting gear, etc.

No one learns to drive like that, and no one should learn NLP in that way either.

Some people want to make NLP more complicated and more procedural than it is.

It shouldn't be a case of, 'Right, first I pace him, then I get into state, then when he's in state, I anchor it'.

A good NLP practitioner training with a reputable trainer should resolve this problem.

NLP was designed to be much more natural than that. When done well, NLP is more like a dance.
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