NLP Techniques vs Principles

Most students of NLP come to learn their art by practicing various techniques. Many of these NLP techniques have been around a long time now and others are newly introduced.

This can be a good way for beginning students to develop an understanding of the scope and range of potential NLP applications. However, as a learning tool for real skill development it is very lacking. See The Art of Being an NLP Practitioner.

What often happens is the budding NLP student is conditioned more to think in terms of pre-set procedural interventions determined by the nature of the problem rather than the internal organization of the client.

The reality is that no NLP Practitioner should know what they are going to do until they have assessed the presenting situation through the myriad indicators that NLP addresses. Even this should be subject to ongoing calibration and adaptation - in the moment.

It is a misapplication of the art to use the same, or similar, pre-scribed NLP technique on everyone who presents with a similar type of situation.

As soon as our interventions become predictive, the chances are we have ceased to truly calibrate our client and adapt accordingly. In fact every NLP intervention should be designed and redesigned in the moment as circumstances present, emerge and unfold.

This takes a far higher order of skill with NLP than can be developed by practicing preset procedures. With that approach more attention tends to be put on reading the handout within an NLP Training than calibrating the person before them.

It can be a challenging situation for the newly developing NLPer to find themselves in - without the safety net of the formal technique. I would encourage them to explore this though as the skills are well worth developing.

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