What’s NLP got to do with Poise and Impact?

I confess,I have had training in NLP. In fact,I have a Master Practitioner certificate…somewhere! However. I am not part of the NLP bandwagon. What do I mean by that? I mean that to me NLP is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It is one of many possible approaches to being,doing and having,not the only approach. That said,it is extremely powerful both for personal mastery and for coaching others in personal mastery. And of course optimal impact and perfect poise are important elements of personal mastery.

So what is NLP? If you want the formal definition,go look it up on Wikipedia. My layman’s (that word strikes fear into the heart of many a banker!) take on it is that it is the modelling of human excellence. It is a methodology for understanding how (excellent) people do what they do and a toolkit for replicating this excellence in others. It can be applied to any field –excellent salespeople,excellent presenters/speakers,excellent (ice) hockey players,excellent alternative healers,excellent baby sitters,people who have conquered tinnitus,understanding and treating autism,excellent wedding planners,self-improvement gurus,dating superstars, successful entrepreneurs,famous green people(!),master persuaders,excellent internet marketeers etc etc. Most famously it was used in the 1980s to model the best therapists and clinical hypnotists,and this is the (combined) field that most people think is synonymous with NLP –but it is only one application.

To model peoples’behaviours requires tools to be able to elicit and change a persons attitude,values (e.g. freedom,health) beliefs (e.g. exercise is good for you),internal filters (e.g. thinker vs feeler,facts vs gut feel),memories,strategies (e.g. decision making,buying,eating,motivation etc),habits,states (e.g. procrastination,frustration,anticipation,motivation),memories and language. This is what makes NLP so powerful (and so dangerous if misused).

Now what about Impact and Poise? If we apply our NLP methodology to people who have grace and poise, and to people who consistently make a great impression on us and others,we then have the know-how to replicate their expertise in YOU!

I’ll be continuing to share some of these secrets in forthcoming blogs.

www.martin-wright.com

Photo 1 credit

Photo 2 credit