OPEN INVITATION TO NLP TRAINERS NLP Leadership Summit

Here’s something fantastic to imagine—imagine NLP Leaders getting together and collaborating! As a visionary, while it is a far-off dream and wild imagination, it could happen! What if ... what if those who are leaders in the field of NLP gathered together, and using our prime model (the NLP Communication Model) to talk, we talked about creating a platform for cooperating and even collaborating? Wouldn’t that be something?

Well, a couple years ago after an experience that I and Frank Pucelik had with a young wild NLP trainer who was being seduced away by some cult, we had a brainstorm. What if we called “the elders of the tribe of NLP” together and began a series of conversations to see if we could facilitate the leaders in this field to get together in a more collaborative way? That was the idea. So we did that. We called for a NLP Leadership Summit. That became a reality the following year at the NLP Conference (Nov. 2012). We invited those who had been Leaders in this field for twenty-years to come together and so we had a gathering of 28 for a day of conversation. Actually we reduced the number to 15 years to accommodate some of the obvious leaders in the U.K.

That first conversation was mostly to get to know each other and so we spent half of our time sharing who we are and some of our experiences and then half the time working on some basic questions about vision in the field of NLP. As a result, we created a LinkedIn presence (The NLP Leadership Summit) and since then more Trainers have joined. The only requirements that we set were:

1) Having been in the field of NLP for 20 years.

2) Planning to attend the NLP Conference in London in coming year.

Why these requirements? Because we want to first call “the leaders of the tribe” together and see if we can get some basic cooperation among us and then expand it outward to the new up-and- coming leaders. And we want “leaders” because they are the ones bringing people into this field whether by training, writing, researching, etc.

What dawned on me two years ago when we dreamed this up was that those of us who are bringing people into this field and influencing them about NLP, what it is, what it involves, what you can do with it, etc., we are the leaders and we are therefore the ones responsible for the state of affairs in this field. As you probably know, I have been writing articles about the state of affairs in this field since the early 1990s. One of the first articles that Bob and I wrote we titled, “The Downside of NLP” pointing out some of the real problems and challenges before us.

Well, as you also know, we in Neuro-Semantics know that merely complaining about something is quite insufficient. If we want to change things, we have to take responsibility and step up and take the risks to make things better. So that’s the why behind The NLP Leadership Summit.

After The NLP Leadership Summit last year, I wrote a report about what happened there. Here’s a bit of that. Among the best dreams for the field of NLP that were described and discussed were the following. What is our Vision for NLP?

NLP as a Community —a community of people who cooperate and collaborate. NLP as known for what it gives, rather than received; NLP is contribution and a force for good in the world. NLP as an esteemed Profession, one with standards, one taught in Universities around the world. NLP as a resilient community built upon trust. NLP as a community that deals with conflicts, has great models for helping people work through conflicts. NLP as people who search for patterns and structures in experiences.

With those visions, the conversation went to community, to relationship, to trust and trusting. This led to asking for a show hands for those who thought “There is a NLP community” and those who thought “There is not an NLP Community.” Hands were about equally divided. Then Heidi Heron from Sydney noted, “There are many NLP communities, there is just no singular global community with a shared consensus.” That resonated with everyone. We have communities, but not a single community that combines and unites the smaller communities.

Early in the day there was an attempt to begin talking about Standards and establishing professional criteria, and I think that all of us wanted to talk about that, and yet most also realized that if we jumped into a topic like that too soon, it would be counter-productive. Standards is a conversation that we need to have, but to have it also requires lots of rapport and relationship. So we put that one off at that time.

Where to from here? With many people in the room who had been at many similar attempts like the 1997 Visionary Leadership Conference and having seen the attempts come to nothing, we knew that this had to be just the beginning, the first step of a long journey, and that there has to be continual follow-up. I first mentioned that we could meet once a year, every year at the NLP Conference, but several felt such was just not sufficient. And true enough. Yet it is a beginning. So we did agree— “Next Year in London!” And we will be working on a Linked-In presence whereby we can invite more and more of the “elders of the tribe” into the NLP Leadership Summits.

If we are a field made up of many small communities and if we are leaving a legacy which most of us really do not like then how do we change that legacy? This year (2013) we will meet for the day prior to the NLP Conference — November 15 and if you are a NLP Trainer with 15 or more years experience in this field and want to join us — please let myself, Frank Pucelik, or Teresa from Crown House Publications know [email protected] R. Frank Pucelik – [email protected] [email protected]