Hire a Professional or Train your Staff?

Do I bring an NLP Professional in to carry out some training or do I get some of my own staff trained in NLP?’

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Hire a Professional or Train your Staff?

When considering the best option for introducing NLP into your organisation, a common question is, ‘Do I bring an NLP professional in to carry out some training or do I get some of my own staff trained in NLP?’

In NLP, we tend to start with the outcome in mind and therefore the lists below are intended to give some food for thought and also to share what has worked well for other organisations in the past.

Advantages of Hiring an NLP Professional

Expertise

An NLP professional will have spent years and probably thousands of pounds acquiring expertise in NLP and this means you can get the results you seek even quicker. There are NLP professionals in the ANLP database right now who have specific real world experience in your sector, the required business discipline (HR, OD, sales, finance, IT, etc) and who combine this with a strategic understanding of how NLP can benefit your organisation.

Quality

NLP professionals have a vested interest in delivering great value for your organisation, as they’re likely to be self-employed and therefore want to win subsequent work – we succeed when you succeed.

Best value

NLP professionals are likely to have learned from multiple trainers and hence, will bring broader and deeper knowledge and skill than your organisation may wish to spend budget on. The parallel would be: if your strategy includes moving to a new IT platform, you are likely to consult an expert initially to design and guarantee achieving the desired outcome, rather than muddle through in the hope of succeeding.

Impartial and objective

Have you ever noticed that, occasionally, your own staff might be a little ‘too close’ to a situation or a team? Bringing in an external expert can mean that they are able to highlight workarounds or inefficiencies that your team has become accustomed to…a ‘fresh pair of eyes’. It also means it is often easier for an outsider to ‘name the elephant in the room’, leading to real breakthroughs.

Change management

Because an NLP professional will have worked with individuals and organisations in a whole range of contexts they bring experience of a plethora of solutions and processes that make change management easier and even more successful. If it has worked elsewhere; the chances are there is something to learn from.

Network

NLP professionals are likely to have developed an extensive professional network with others in NLP, such as those ANLP represents, who can be used for specialist expertise or to scale up people and organisation development projects.

Resources

An NLP professional will often be able to bring a rich range of resources, such as books, games, videos, templates, exercises etc for your organisation to use in training, teambuilding, strategic planning, organisation development and more.

Keep progressing

As more organisations leverage NLP in their strategy you could be going backwards if you don’t engage an NLP expert now. Maintain a competitive edge by using an NLP consultant to develop unique solutions designed specifically for your business.

Kudos

Although it can be overstated, it is nevertheless a fact that bringing in a specialist to provide solutions often has a great deal of impact and can therefore help to achieve an outcome more easily. The NLP professional will always be keen to collaborate with internal partners and there is still a frisson of value to be gained from bringing in the ‘visible expert’, that can add to sustained benefits.

Advantages of Training Your Own Staff in NLP

Legacy

Develop your in-house resources so they can share the knowledge from within the organisation. Many other successful organisations (both public sector and commercial) have done this with significant beneficial impact on ‘people key performance indicators’. These include higher attendance, better retention of valued staff, higher productivity.

Value

For the cost of one training (at first, at least), you can have a core of trained people, almost like an internal ‘task force’.

Engagement

Companies typically enjoy improved staff engagement, both with those trained in NLP and of those they manage, evidenced through staff survey responses.

Improve communication

Understanding how different people want different communication helps the business to be flexible in its internal communications.

Self-awareness and emotional intelligence

Whilst the skills learned in an NLP course will, of course, support the organisation, those being trained also enjoy a life-changing opportunity to become very self-aware, which has the knock-on benefit of improving emotional literacy and interpersonal impact.

Leadership and influencing skills

Most leadership experts agree that although IQ is useful in effective leaders, the competencies that truly make the difference and contribute to success, are those rooted in self-awareness, emotional intelligence and ability to adapt. These are the very skills developed in high quality NLP training and already being deployed in the majority of FTSE Top 100 businesses today.

Insider knowledge

Your staff will understand your organisational background and cultural context better than anyone and therefore are likely to be able to ‘put their finger on it’ quicker and more accurately.

Develop staff resilience

Much of the content in resilience training and positive thinking relies upon NLP foundations, so rather than limit your business to receiving merely the few techniques how much better to leverage the core principles more flexibly for a wider impact.

Great customer relationships

Whether external customers, or internal stakeholders and your supply chain business is always easier and more effective when built on a great relationship. When we really understand our clients’ needs and challenges small hiccups are smoothed away more easily and, more importantly, successes lead to the word spreading. Happy customers are great for business and rapport is a foundation NLP skill – your customers will notice the difference.

So in summary, there is no single ‘right’ answer, no ‘one size fits all’ – what will work best for you is likely to be a combination of success factors specific to your business. However, there is no better time to invest budget and resources in the results NLP can bring to your organisation and if you’re reading this you already have access to a network of ethical, high quality NLP professionals through ANLP.

Many NLP professionals will have a background in business before becoming independently employed, so will understand the need to satisfy a number of criteria, such as value for money, quality, return on investment and staff engagement. This experience, often at a senior level, will earn credibility if you hire them to consult in your organisation and will mean the solutions they suggest are those suitable for the real world and are drawn from best practice.

Most NLP professionals will be really happy to have a no obligation chat about your business requirements without any strings attached – they can offer insights and advice on what approach will provide you with the best return and will usually be happy to do this at no cost.

ANLP membership requires its professional members subscribing to a strict ethical code and also encourages transparency, so you are in the right place to access great NLP resources to support you and your business. Why not get in touch today or search our extensive database of experienced NLP professionals to find the right person to support your business to even greater success.

 

Reb Veale
Reb Veale (member article)

Inspirational and challenging NLP Master Trainer and mBIT Trainer of Trainers and Master Coaches, working in UK and internationally