Many who know me find me a very outspoken critic of 7-day (or shorter) NLP Practitioner courses, especially those which train more than twenty people at a time. I find such courses to be a dark pollutant in the field.  From what I've observed, these courses consistently produce very poorly trained Practitioners.  (I won't even include "home study courses" that promise Practitioner certification.)

Many other trainers have had the same experience, observing these "7-day Practitioners" showing up at Master Practitioner or even short courses, consistently showing a notable absence of the level of skill and knowledge... that any good practitioner ought to have.

I'd like to briefly explore the fundamental difference between two completely different learning paradigms (slightly oversimplified down to 2 styles, for illustration purposes.)

• Learning to KNOW... in order to DO.
• Learning to DO... in order to KNOW.

The 1st paradigm (1st "knowing" and then "doing.") -- is what I see as having been done with most "7-day Practitioner" students. I don't even recognize this as training. I recognize it as presenting, with behavioral integration as an afterthought.

The 2nd paradigm is what I always aim to use, and what I know some other trainers use. With this method, behavioral integration is built into every exercise. Groups don't even move on from one topic to another until they've behaviorally integrated each piece. Granted, they'll likely be clunky after only doing something a few times, but they can DO it -- and then the knowing and integrating comes during & afterwards. This method can be frustrating to those who feel they need outline academic style presentations first... who can't jump into exercises until they think they "fully understand" what it is they're doing. But the experimental nature of this experiential method is what makes it succeed at transferring skills FAR more quickly and deeply than the first method.

This is, I believe, one of the key differences that makes the difference. And "7-day Practitioners" will probably never see it as important, because they "covered all the material." It was in the syllabus. It was covered. And unfortunately, just because it was in the material, and covered, and presented onstage, doesn't mean students behaviorally learned it in an integrated way.

Personally I believe the prevalence of "7-day Practitioner trainings" is evidence of a trainer "selling out."  Because literally anyone can describe all the NLP skills in 7 days or less.  But few if any can train deep skills in that time.

So regardless of the duration of the course you take, I strongly recommend that IF deep skills are what you're after... I encourage you to ask -- no, demand -- that your trainer effectively demonstrate any and every skill he or she describes, creatively, on the fly.  Without "cheat sheets" or notes.  I propose to you that many trainers who run 7-day or shorter certification courses... will not be able to do this well.

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

Date Published:  Feb 3 2010

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about the value NLP'ers can gain from doing a bit of study of Improvisation (Improv / Comedy).

Whether it be in social settings (flirting, out with students at night), or in coaching, or during a training, a lot of my repeat students have commented that one of the things they keep coming back to model on an ongoing basis is a combination of my banter skills and also my ability to jump rapidly to widely variant perspectives that still have usefulness or relevance to the current situation -- sometimes therapeutic value, sometimes social value.

I've made an informal study of Improv for years, and one of the core tenets of Improv is to "accept fully the truth of what's presented to you, no matter how bizarre." And yet I find so many NLP'ers, while pacing someone else, often fall shy of this depth of pacing required either for rapport or for Improv purposes.

I'll often hear some NLPers respond to others opinions with comments like "I can understand that perspective, and I'm wondering if you've considered this other perspective?"

Now oddly, that's also similar to another good technique arising from NLP which my good friend Doug O'Brien calls the "Agreement frame," where people learn behaviorally to replace "but" with "and." I.e. "I agree with you that X, AND have you considered Y?" *But*.... the "Agreement frame" is an influence process, not a total agreement process.

For the purposes of banter, flirting, or of stepping inside someone else's reality and making it more desireable (or even undesireable, as in some therapeutic scenarios) from the inside out... you really have to step inside it, and speak & act as if you truly are inside it.

Improv... is just that -- it's the art of total acceptance (and rapid use) of every new piece of information emerging. But then to really excel at what we're doing, to take the lead, we then also have to blow our next contribution out of proportion, too... and add something else newer back into the mix that uses the previously emerging new piece of information.

I've even gone to the point of modifying & customizing some traditional Improv exercises for NLP purposes in a couple of courses I run; I think it's that valuable a skillset to include in our study.