Why Do So Many NLPers Struggle To Get Really Good With NLP (And What To Do About It)
I’ve lost count of how many responses I’ve read from students of NLP.
Over the past decade or so, I’ve read several thousand survey responses, emails and help requests from NLP students all over the world. And between you and me, I noticed something about the ‘average’ student of NLP that initially surprised me...
Many (perhaps most) people who study NLP fail to get anything close to the kind of outcomes that are possible with the technology. Even many students who have spent tens of thousands of dollars completing practitioner, master practitioner, trainer trainings and elective self-help courses fail to discover how to use the technology well on themselves.
I don’t have an official number but based on the thousands of responses I’ve seen (from students at all different levels and from all different schools) I estimate that maybe 1 out of ten students develop serious skills with NLP.
Where they can:
- Use the technology in a high-performance way to create the kind of outcomes they want in their life, experience more joy, less stress, more accomplishments, more flow…
- Rewire and run their brain (and influence and help others) far, far better…
- Learn new skills with ease and elegance
- Accomplish results for themselves and their clients that previously seemed impossible.
Given NLP is a meta-discipline, the specific results of what any student can do depend on where and how well they were trained, how often they practice and which domain they apply NLP to. The technology of NLP offers an exceptional toolkit to help anyone lead, influence and succeed better…
So why do so many NLPers struggle to become really good and what can we do about it?
I believe there are 3 main reasons:
1. These days high quality training from someone who truly knows NLP inside out are increasingly rare. Almost anyone can offer training in NLP. Many teach what seems to be the same core content but invariably is missing key distinctions and skills that are only known by the masters and dedicated students.
2. For the past two decades many NLP teachers have prioritized teaching NLP techniques to create ‘quick wins’ (to attract people on to courses) at the expense teaching students the less sexy but fundamental skills needed to use the technology really well.
3. Newcomers don’t know what they need to DO to excel and are overwhelmed with a dizzying array of NLP terms, concepts and skills they could learn.
Let’s talk about each briefly before sharing how to overcome these problems.
Today anyone can go online and get an NLP practitioner for as little as 10 bucks and even get a certificate too. If ALL you want is the label of ‘NLP practitioner’ or ‘NLP Master Practitioner’, go for it – that’s the quickest and by far cheapest way to get the title, for what it’s worth...
However as my friend and fellow trainer, Master Trainer Michael Breen points out:
“Having a bit of paper that says someone is a ‘practitioner’ or ‘master practitioner’ does not equate skill. For the most part, all it means is they attended a training and were exposed to a set of ideas.
The certificate does not make one skilful, that comes through application, experimentation and a deep commitment to practice, each day bringing your A-Game and insatiable curiosity to learn and go for what you want!”
He’s right.
Today with some online courses, it’s possible to click-and-collect a certificate without ever demonstrating competency with the core content or even watching all the videos.
Yet back in the late 80’s and 90’s, there was a time when to study NLP you had to invest a minimum of 29 days of your time to learn the just foundations and students of NLP were actively encouraged to do multiple practitioners so they could learn NLP from many different teachers and schools.
As the field has grown older, course lengths have become far shorter, people by and large are no longer able or willing to spend weeks away on a course to better themselves.
Fewer and fewer masters of NLP are teaching anymore. Many masters have retired (or teach far less) leaving a gap in deep NLP knowledge.
Skills that were foundational and fundamental to using the technology well and could be taught over longer trainings are (frequently) no longer taught to practitioners and master practitioner programs.
Resulting in both students and their teachers knowing (and able to do) far less than their predecessors.
So how do we overcome this problem?
Choose to study with someone who is a real master of NLP. Choose quality over quantity.
Here’s my top 15 questions that can help you figure out if you’ve found a master worth learning NLP from.
Have you found a master worth studying from? (Use this helpful checklist) 1. Do they walk the talk? 2. Have they shown real dedication and commitment to learning, applying, updating their skills and teaching NLP over the long run? 3. Have they applied the technology deeply in their own life and used it to transform themselves and others? 4. Do they use it daily to better themselves and the lives of their clients? 5. Have they a wealth of experience outside of the field of NLP, using the technology in the real world? 6. Do they demonstrate deep competency and skill with the technology? 7. Are they capable of teaching you things that you can’t find in a book or hear in an typical practitioner or master practitioner course? 8. Do they constantly come back to the foundations and fundamentals and help their students understand how the technology functions or do they regularly fall back on conventional assumptions, buzzwords and obfuscation rather than clearly teaching how the technology works? 9. Is their curriculum focused on developing real skills you can use for the rest of your life or do they mostly focus on teaching you techniques and showy demos? 10. Do they demonstrate what they are talking about as they are teaching it? 11. Are they constantly upping their game and encouraging you to do the same? 12. Are they invested in their students and committed to teaching excellence? Or are they mostly just about their ego and appearing superior to you? 13. Have they taken apart and put back together their own map of NLP multiple times? Each time making new connections, insights and better ways of doing things which they pass on to others. 14. Are they generous with their time and focused on serving to the highest standards their students? 15. Do they sincerely applaud their student’s success and encourage them to go further? You can download this checklist here. |
Now that you know what to look for in an exceptional trainer and training organization, let’s take a closer look at the second major reason so many NLPers struggle to capture more of the remarkable promise of NLP. It all comes down to the emphasis of…
Here’s the thing and I hate saying it but…
…for the past two decades many NLP schools have focused on the ‘techniques’ side of NLP at the expense of helping their students develop deep skills needed to use the technology well!
Back in the late 80’s and 90’s things were different but then the Internet came along and well… disrupted everything.
The more the Internet changed everything the more NLP became flooded with hype and sellers looking to prioritize volume (i.e. the number of students they can get) over creating high quality practitioners who they were invested in for the long term.
This resulted in a vast number of NLPers who know NLP mostly as a series of techniques (fast phobia anyone?) but lack deep understanding about how the technology works and how to use it well in real-world contexts.
As Dr. Richard Bandler, the creative genius and co-founder behind NLP aptly said:
“NLP is an attitude and a methodology, not the trail of techniques it leaves behind.”
Without the attitude and methodology, which are by far the most important aspect of NLP for everyday life, what use is it to have 101 techniques if you don’t know:
- How to choose which technique to use for a given situation?
- How to run a technique so it is far more likely to work first time?
- What NLP techniques are good for (and when not to use one)?
- When’s the right time to do a technique? (Most folks get this wrong.)
- What should you do when a technique doesn’t work? (This happens more often than people realise because they misunderstand one key thing.)
- How can you combine different techniques to create specific results?
- How do you translate the techniques of NLP for use in conversational contexts (i.e. outside training or therapy settings)? 99.9% of NLP don’t know cos they weren’t taught.
- How do you create your very own NLP techniques when required?
All this knowledge is missing for most NLP students as far as I can tell. Huge chunks of underlying skills you need to know to use NLP really well are missing.
So is it any wonder why so many students fail to really get to grips with NLP?
Think about it - If all you know are the steps of a technique and not how the technique functions, you’ll only be able to follow the procedure as written. You won’t be able to troubleshoot it when things go wrong or tailor it to your needs.
So you stay dependent on collecting techniques instead of learning how to create outcomes. While NLP techniques are great and worth studying - the technology of NLP goes way beyond the techniques.
And when students primarily learn just the techniques and a bit about the language models and think they know NLP… well there is going to be trouble and disappointment.
Focus on the foundations and fundamentals of NLP over the techniques in the early stages of your learning. The techniques are the least important part of NLP. Prioritise learning experiences and courses that help you get your foundations with NLP strong. You’ll thank me later … in time will be able to do so much more and won’t need to use techniques any more.
(If you’ve signed up to our newsletter, I’ll share with you more of what fundamentals to focus on in an upcoming e-series. Not signed up yet, you can do so here.)
This brings me to the last reason, and arguably the most important of all… YOU!
Leaning NLP is journey, one that goes every onwards.
The process of learning NLP isn’t about figuring out what is the right frame of reference according to some guru and reinforcing it so that you STOP learning.
That’s how dogma is created and a false reality aka ‘reality tunnel’ fixed in place.
Rather acquiring real skill with NLP is all about learning to challenge your own frame of reference, the notions you hold about yourself, people, the world, about how things work and your choice and action in how you behave.
It’s about developing real flexibility in thought, feelings and action so that you can change your attitude and response and be far more effective and successful in achieving the outcomes you want. It’s about creating more choice.
To do that you’ve got to be willing to unlearn and relearn what you think you know.
And this is where many students come undone.
Traditional disciplines have a clear path to learning them. NLP has many different starting points and paths depending on what you want to learn. There’s no one path to becoming really good.
The problem is compounded because so few students fail to define clear goal for what they want to be able to do first … instead they pursue an ineffective learning strategy of trying to study anything and everything in NLP at once.
The Net Result:
They lose focus, get disheartened ultimately fail to practice.
Here’s what I recommend you do instead.
Follow this handy 6 step process to Be More Focused when learning NLP:
Download the Infographic here.
There’s much more that I could say to help you apply what you learn. Here’s my 5 step strategy for making much more progress and enjoying more of what you learn.
Got a burning question you'd like me to answer in an upcoming article or video? Submit it here.
These are:
1. Choose to learn from a real master.
2. Prioritize learning foundational and fundamental skills of NLP over techniques.
3. Be very intentional about what you want to learn.
Do all 3 and you can’t help but dramatically reduce the time, energy and cost it takes to become really good.
And before long you’ll find yourself doing and accomplishing things that right now seem impossible for you.
It’s an incredible journey and NLP Times is here to help you go further.
If you found this article useful why not check out some of our many more resources here to help you develop your skills and transform what you can do…
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I'm Tom.
Everyone has something they’d like to change in their life. I’m here to help you transform the behaviours that get in your way so you can have the life you really want.
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