The Magic of NLP

Another lively discussion about NLP and the benefits of academic/scientific research on the ANLP Accredited Trainers and ANLP Trainer Members Café for December 2024!

The café discussions tend to meander…the gentle, almost hesitant chatter about the weather, the various Zoom backgrounds and what life is creating for us in our ‘every day’…and then it gets deeper, almost before anyone realises…

This time, the discussion went into the research behind NLP, the value of that research and what else we can use as evidence of NLP working.  Bruce Grimley, (whose PhD thesis asked the question “What is NLP?”) described his work in writing various papers and assisting other NLP researchers in preparing, redrafting, or continuing their work. Bruce and many others in their research fields provide an important piece of our ‘verification’ for NLP when empirical evidence, double blind trials, scientific ‘proof’ and other academically accepted research is presented to the world…

…And it’s part of the story of ‘evidence’…

Much of what we know as science today started out being perceived as ‘magic’ because it was not clearly understood how something worked...and yet, it worked… 

Many (most?) NLP Professionals have real-life experience of NLP working… A reframe for a friend, a new strategy that positively changes a life-path for a client, an integration that builds a better team or provides motivation for a struggling leader… This is evidence too and it is arguably more accessible and tangible than research written specifically for an academic audience.

A multitude of research for online buying suggests that we are strongly influenced by the reviews left by other customers for the specific products that we buy.  How much academic/scientific research do those reviewers use in the product testimonials they leave?  Some do… many other just say “5 stars, great product which does/did the job I wanted it to”  (or variations of that)… Perhaps the same premise can be applied to the work we do with NLP? Food for thought…

The final few minutes of the café discussion was around the term “NLP Coach”. One of the participants was told by ANLP, 10 years ago, that she could not use the term NLP Coach to describe herself. We’re not sure who told her that and we want to set the record straight that we’re going to be promoting the terms NLP Professional Coach as a description of what our Members do. We recognise the importance of the term “Coach” to potential clients and will be actively using this term in the future…Check your member updates for more news on this in 2025!