NLP Podcast Extract : Richard Sanders on the Benefits of NLP

"I had a fairly odd introduction to NLP and a fairly rapid one"
"I had been working as a consultant for three or four years and was looking for a way to channel my development, my influencing skills, listening skills, and came across NLP there, really from scratch. So I did the practitioner course as quickly as I could. "

"Having done the first session I realised that I had a number of the skills I needed, in part, already - and then built on that with the practitioner course, and then started to use that directly in my consulting career, and since then in my corporate career as well."

"I think it’s across the whole spectrum of NLP, certainly in language and the observation part that goes with that. I'm definitely aware of the reference system and the language that people use with me and mirroring back. Body language is another area that I'm very aware of, and again using very basic techniques to mirror"

"Some other techniques that come in there are actually around the written use of NLP. Writing reports, writing emails certainly. There's as much of an application there to get people to do what you need them to do, as anywhere else. On some levels you call that common sense for language, but actually a lot of it is picked up from the framework of NLP"

"I certainly don't see it as manipulation. I think in the workplace there are so many barriers in terms of making logical decisions - history and politics, and personal preconceptions about a situation - Maybe you've tried a project before that's failed"

"The way I see NLP is unlocking some of that baggage, or at least understanding it - which can then help people get to the right answers - the logical answers"

"Definitely. I was just thinking about the pictures that I have in my head. I definitely consider myself to be breaking down this big granite block, and the answer's in there somewhere, it's always been there - it's not that you have to create it from fresh, it’s that you’re chipping away at what other people or history has put in place that prevents the solution from being obvious"
"There are lots of examples. Depending on which time period we talk about, you have different projects. So again I'd go into my consulting proofs for some more obvious, less sensitive answers. There are some recently, but they're a bit more sensitive"

"In my history, those projects where you're dealing with highly sensitive issues, where the organisation structure changes, changing of ownership of business's - what NLP has allowed me to do is to get past these individuals who have these big preconceptions about a situation, to help me understand where they're coming from and also the reference system that would work particularly well to articulate to them a different view of the future - or at least to make sense of what they're articulating to me, and kind of play that back"

"So it’s given me the framework to break down some of the less tangible issues, as some people would see them - I actually see them as pretty tangible - and put them into an approach, and work with that approach to get a decision made"

Read or listen to the full Richard Sanders transcript and podcast on NLP Benefits.

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Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training