The Benefits Of NLP In Business More and more businesses are realising the benefits that NLP can bring the business world. Over the years many people from many varied businesses have attended our NLP programmes. Below is a short list to give you examples of the different companies and industries that have benefited from members of their staff attending the courses. Companies: Argos, Marks & Spencer, Metropolitan Police Service, Mothercare, BP, Hilton Hotels, 3com, Royal Mail, Carlisle Housing Association, British Airways, Microfocus, Civil Service, Pret A Manger. Industries: Training, sales, HR, healthcare, complementary medicine, banking, teaching, music, telesales, counselling, dentistry, recruitment, small business owners, airline, telecomms, IT, chiropractic, equine, advertising, project management, art, higher education, engineering, podiatry, photography, accountancy, supply chain, logistics, nursing, fitness, plumbing, finance, estate agency. If you are looking to attend a course yourself, send members of staff or are thinking about organising an in-house training, we suggest you take a look below to help you get a flavour of what NLP can do for your business. Then please give us a call to ask any questions you have. You can reach us on 01494 790890. A Business Course Or Full NLP Programme? An important question to consider when choosing your NLP training is whether to attend a 'business' course or not. Several companies market their courses as 'business only' trainings. We choose not to do this even though a large proportion of our delegates come from business and the major percentage of our revenue comes from business. These are the major reasons: 1. All reputable and recognised NLP programmes cover the same core syllabus whether business focussed or not. 2. We feel that more benefit is achieved when the delegates get to interact with people from different backgrounds and different environments. NLP is all about people and businesses are made up of people, not 'business people'. 3. Creativity happens when other stimuli are added from different people or environments. 4. The delegates naturally bring up what they wish to discuss. Business people will want to discuss business issues when appropriate. The Certain Change Practitioner Programme gives plenty of time for everyone to ask what they want to ask and our interest and experience in business means that business is a frequent topic of conversation throughout the programme. And most importantly 5. Putting a label of 'business only' can actually restrict learning because it closes down subjects of discussion. NLP is about human behaviour and we are all humans first. If you attend the Practitioner programme you will understand why it is damaging to divide the 'personal' persona and the 'business' persona. One of the maxims of NLP is to create wholeness within the person. This is not a touchy feely statement. The simple fact is that whole integrated people perform to higher and more consistent standards. What Is NLP? * NLP is a method of examining and changing human behaviour. It is a system
that comprises tools, techniques and concepts for gathering information on
why people do what they do, what motivates or de-motivates them and how
they produce the results they achieve. * NLP is a very broad based tool; it can literally be applied to any situation or
topic because it concerns itself with the causes of behaviour or, in other words,
how people think and what emotions they experience. From understanding the
causes behind a behaviour, changing that behaviour becomes much easier. * NLP is concerned with outcomes. All NLP techniques are designed to take an
individual or business through the process of creating a well formed outcome,
taking action and then testing the results. By using the models and techniques
of NLP far better results are produced because outcomes are better defined.
Savings in time, cost and resources are considerable. * NLP was born as a study of excellence * NLP was originally created to find an answer to this question: "How are they so
good at that?" The creators wanted to know how one person could achieve one
result whilst someone else failed to achieve the same result with similar
resources. * NLP is quite unusual because it only concerns itself with understanding enough
of a person's or business's 'story' to help them make changes in their beliefs,
values, attitudes and decisions so they get a better result. * NLP is firmly focussed on changing behaviour and achieving better results. Why Train Your People In NLP? An obvious, but much overlooked, benefit of training people in NLP is that they have the tools available to them all the time. Once they are trained they are always trained. The one off time and cost investment will not just be paid back in the first couple of weeks after the training. The skills and changes will be with the practitioner for life. One of greatest strengths of NLP is that it does not tell you who to be or how to act. It has a completely open frame of thinking that allows it to be used by individuals in a way that suits their personality. The aim of the Certain Change Practitioner Training is not only to produce very highly skilled and confident practitioners but also to produce practitioners whose knowledge of the principles of NLP is so deep that they feel comfortable adapting the material to deal with any situation that faces them. In other words we value depth of understanding over number of techniques taught. The application of NLP tools delivers direct and tangible results in any area or size of business greatly enhancing performance, communication and sales. The benefits extend to all members of staff, from managers to human resources personnel, from receptionists to salespeople, from consultants to trainers and everyone in between. The techniques and concepts found in NLP will impact any professional or company. Core NLP Topics For Business 1) Understanding People NLP is really about understanding why and how people do what they do. It teaches people how to gather the information needed to do this using the principle techniques of: * Increasing observational skills
* Increasing listening skills
* Training people to calibrate on differences in physiology, language tonality
and language
* Giving a frame work for highly effective questioning People broadcast far more about themselves than they realise so, by knowing what to look and listen for, a skilled NLP Practitioner will be able to observe changes in mood, thinking and behaviour extremely easily. Using NLP questioning techniques the causes of these changes can easily be identified. 2) Understanding Yourself Not only does the NLP Practitioner Programme teach people how to gather information on others but at the same time it teaches them all about themselves. What motivates or de-motivates them, their learning and speaking preferences, the strategies they use and why they act or re-act to certain situations. A person who understands themselves, knows how to solve their own problems and who can set their own goals, tends to be more consistent in their behaviour and emotions in the work place. 3) Understanding The Process Of Change Change is one of the most unnerving topics for many people. Most people view change as unwanted unless they are the creator of it and even then it can be uncomfortable. Change directly affects the major causes of confidence and happiness and, as businesses have to respond to market forces, the understanding gained through NLP around this subject alone is enough to justify participation in the programme. The NLP Practitioner programme looks deeply at why people resist change, how to establish well formed goals and how to motivate different types of people through the process of change. 4) Rapport Building And Improved Communication Skills From understanding how people process information and from understanding personal communication preferences, NLP Practitioners are better able to build rapport, communicate their message more effectively and judge the response they get. Rapport is the most important ingredient in any successful business relationship, whether internal or external. Without it people tend not to listen to the content of the message let alone give it due consideration or act upon it. NLP uses simple techniques such as matching the speed and tone of voice, language structure and body language to quickly build and easily maintain rapport with anyone. The result is the development of trusting, ongoing, win/win relationships. 5) Negotiation Skills Influencing requires effective communication, so enhanced communication skills can improve negotiation outcomes. The 5 step sales process and the negotiation model taught within the programme build confidence through understanding the principles of influencing. This is done by giving useful techniques and simple step by step systems to follow. 6) Peak Performance Powerful techniques for managing the emotional and physical state at will, allow someone to be in the most effective state possible for any given situation. NLP uses techniques to easily identify and access the most resourceful states so the process becomes automatic. This minimises, and often eliminates, stress and replaces it with optimum efficiency and peak performance. The obvious benefits are reduced abnormal and damaging behaviour within the workplace and a reduction in sickness absence. By understanding the processes of stress the NLP practitioner can spot it early, reduce its impact or avoid it all together. This applies for themselves and when working with others. 7) Positive Performance NLP offers opportunities for eliminating self-sabotage and discovering the values and goals a person has related to their work, business, job or career. Whichever word they choose to describe their role will affect the values they have. As people discover the patterns that have created internal conflict and held them back, they learn how to change them to positive, self-propelling patterns that allow easy achievement of goals and results. 8) Solution Thinking Flexibility in our thinking allows us to 'reframe' our thoughts and discover the myriad of new possibilities not usually within our awareness. By stepping into another person's shoes we can gain insights into their motivations, behaviours and communication and use that information to adapt our own approach, behaviour or communication. We can also reframe ourselves by moving, for example, from 'problem' thinking to 'solution' thinking. The examples below are particularly powerful and effective in meetings: Problem Frame -> Solution Frame
What is my problem? -> What do I want?
Whose fault is it? -> What resources do we have that can help? 9) Modelling and Replicating Success At the heart of NLP is modelling: the process of breaking down an excellent result into a series of steps and replicating them. NLP offers simple tools to elicit the beliefs, values, thinking and behaviour of successful business people and high performance companies, that can be adopted to fuel the success of the individual, team, department or company. This is mainly taught in Master Practitioner but can be introduced into Practitioner depending on the needs of the client and time frame available. 10) Strategy Elicitation and Change A strategy is the step by step process people or companies use to gain a specific result. NLP teaches how to elicit an existing strategy, analyse its effectiveness and how to design and change the strategy if needed. Most strategies people use are predominantly unconsciously done so, by using the techniques above, understanding of how someone does something is greatly enhanced and from that position of understanding change is easier to implement. Knowledge of this topic is enormously useful for both individuals and businesses alike. 11) Understanding Values and Motivation All strategies start because of a specific motivation. Motivation occurs because of the beliefs we have about what we value. In other words all actions have an emotional trigger. Often businesses are wary of entering into the subject of emotions because it can be seen to be too 'touchy feely' or simply because it is too scary. Avoiding the subject of emotions is in effect avoiding the reasons why we do everything. A clear understanding of what emotions are, the purpose they play and how to use them properly will have massive impact in any area of a business. To put it simply human behaviour starts with an emotion, is monitored by emotion and is judged effective or not by an emotional response (and believe it or not this is still true in process driven areas such as accountancy and on a production line). By understanding emotions we can understand the process of motivation more easily and how to apply it to individuals within a group. Not everyone is motivated by the same thing and it might surprise you to know that most salespeople are not positively motivated by money. All the more surprising considering the high number who are on target driven sales commissions. Knowing how to elicit at motivation strategy is enormously beneficial both in managing and selling. Styles and preferences at interview and to help understanding. 12) Staff Recruitment and Retention As we all know the cost of recruiting and retaining staff is huge in time, money and lost productivity. By using the techniques above much can be done as early as the recruitment stage to help select the best applicant for the role and to ensure those recruited remain stimulated and motivated in their work. 13) Happier, More Confident People Last, but by no means least, is the simple fact that people who have completed the NLP programme leave the course happier and more confident than when they started. In Summary These are just some of the many techniques and concepts in NLP that greatly enhance the performance and results of any business. The study of NLP gives people the power to run their own brain and the resources to discover how they and others think, communicate and get the results that they do. It also enables people to change, eliminate or adopt behaviours, beliefs and strategies to improve results and achieve goals. We invite you to sign up for the fornightly
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