Neuro-Linguistic Programming

NLP is a field originally developed by Richard Bandler, John Grinder, and others in the United States, beginning in the mid-70's. They created the original models of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (or NLP) by examining and understanding the processes used by highly successful communicators.

The field of NLP has been expanding exponentially since then, and is now the subject of hundreds of books written around the world. This approach is being taught in several dozen countries on all five continents. For those of you unfamiliar with Neuro-Linguistic Programming, here is a brief definition of what it is.

Let's start with programming. Each person, through genetic makeup, environmental influences, individual biochemistry, and conscious or unconscious decision-making has managed to program herself or himself to be excellent at a certain number of things, mediocre at different things and just awful in other areas.

If we observe and listen carefully to how a person behaves and communicates linguistically, we can glean an understanding of how, neurologically, a person puts his or her experience together to be excellent, mediocre or awful at the things he or she does. Hence, this field is called Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

The applications are enormous. It means if someone is highly skilled at something, a person trained in certain NLP protocols can model her. Modelling is finding out how it is possible for that person to do what she does. The modeller searches for the answers to questions such as: "What are the absolute essentials?" or "What is that person paying attention to or ignoring, sequentially and/or simultaneously, to be able to do it?". When the answers to these and other questions are found, then it becomes possible to teach that skill to other people, and even learn it oneself.

For a very complete introduction to NLP, refer to Introducing NLP, by Joseph O’Connor and John Seymour, (London: Harper Collins, 1993).