“AND THE AWARD GOES TO . . .”

The Award Dinner and Ceremony that has been planned for a year was conducted tonight at the ANLP Conference here in London and everything was amazing, delightful, magical, and awesome until the very end. Karen Moxom and her team did a fabulous job!! What should have been the crescendo to a marvelous evening suddenly ended in a thud. Several said that they felt as if they were having a heart-attack; others were just stunned and disappointed. What should have been a rousing round of applause ... was deafening by its silence. A few clapped out of being polite. I did not.

So to end the night on a higher note, a more inspirational note, here is “Take Two” ... And I am appointing myself to speak for two or three dozen people that I actually spoke to, as well as for the larger world-wide community of NLP that I am very familiar with. Visiting 20 to 25 countries a year in my own promotion of NLP and Neuro-Semantics— my voice about this matter is not without some authority. So here goes.

“And the Lifetime Contribution Award goes to ... [drum rolls] ... Frank Pucelik and Robert Dilts.” In terms of lifetime contribution, they absolutely deserve it! After all, of all of the nominees, they among us were the only two of whom it can be said that they have spent their entire lifetime contributing to NLP. The rest of us who were nominated have spent much less time—three decades, yes, but not the full forty-plus years since the beginning. But Frank Pucelik, as a co- developer of NLP has, and so has Robert Dilts who was the first person to write NLP books that people could read.

But there’s more. Both Frank and Robert are members of the NLP Leadership Summit —as was every other nominee except one. Both collaborate across the “party” lines in NLP and support people without their ego getting in the way, not so for the one who got the award. Both also live with integrity, not so for the one who got the award.

The award— based solely (and this was the big mistake of the NLP Conference Committee, I’m giving this feedback as straight as I can) based on votes, on popularity. Mistake! There was no criteria.

No criteria of being ethical(!), no criteria of being a collaborative contributor, no criteria of being acceptable to the NLP Leadership Summit, and I could go on and on. Oh, yes, no criteria of doing “quality” NLP, meaning, no short like five-day practitioners. Given it was all based on polling, apparently the so-called “winner” put a link on his website and promoted on his egroups so he would get the votes. So, it was political!

This is not right and so I will speak out about this. The point is that Tad James should not have

gotten the award! He does not deserve it at all. Giving it to him was a big mistake, he has a checker background ethically and morally, he does not participate in any “NLP” except his own little division. He operates from scarcity (just ask me stories of my own experience with him), he does not represent the quality of trainings or person that we want for NLP. Shall I go on? You who know me, know that I never speak ill of someone publically. I’m making an exception this one time because of the public mistake made tonight.

Yes, I hope it will be a learning for the ANLP Association and the committee members. We all make our share of mistakes. What separates those who learn from those who don’t, is that when we do— we say so and seek to set it right. This is my feeble attempt to set it right.

So, on behalf of all the offended people, and on behalf of the larger world-wide community of NLP that I know and live among ---- I grant Frank Pucelik and Robert Dilts — the lifetime contribution to NLP award.