THE COLLABORATIVE VISION

For us in Neuro-Semantics, the vision of collaboration means first and foremost being inclusive of others rather than exclusive. We do not think that everyone has to fully and completely agree with everything to be a part of the association. Nor do we require or demand a consensus on all of the possible differences of opinion. That’s not what we are about and not what we want. What we want is for people to bring their individuality, differences, and unique perspectives and contribute them in the community. In this, we truly do not want a bunch of clones. We do not have a creed that a person has to sign. All we ask is a commitment to the vision and values.

The vision and the values are the unifying factors which pull us together. We have a vision of applying NLP to ourselves and that highlights our value of personal congruency in those who we hold up as leaders. We also have a vision of collaboration, operating from abundance, and being a good team player. We have a vision about quality training and high standards—rigorous standards, in fact, some of the most rigorous anywhere. These are the things that pull us together. Another vision that we have is that NLP is a model— a Communication Model and therefore a way that we can describe human experience or functioning. This we agree on.

We hold commonly the premises of NLP such as “The map is not the territory,” and “People do the best with what they have,” and “People operate on the world with their maps.” These and the other presuppositions of NLP motivate us and from them we expect differences of opinion and style. The premises also invite us to care about and to create a collaboration at the higher level of vision and values of NLP. That’s why the collaboration is inclusive rather than exclusive. And that’s what has been keeping the level of creativity very high within the Neuro-Semantic community.

Next, collaboration means being respectful of others, acknowledging their contributions, giving credit where credit belongs, and quoting sources. To not do that is to not be professional. Anyone who has written a Master thesis or a Doctoral dissertation or for that matter, almost any University paper, knows that you give credit, and you acknowledge others. A professional person does not plagiarize. You do not take the materials of others and “steal” it and present it as if it is your own.

This is one of the disrespectful and actually shameful things that has and continues to plague the NLP communities. There is a lot of plagiarism, “stealing” of intellectual property, narrow claims of “ownership” of ideas, refusal to acknowledge others, etc. An evidence of this is seen in how so many NLP books are published with no bibliography! There is not a single reference! It’s as if the author is so stingy with his or her information, or so fearful and insecure to mention the work of another person. And oftentimes the materials of earlier authors are used and quoted (sometimes verbatim) without any credit or acknowledgment.

That non-collaborative way of operating typically comes from scarcity rather than abundance and a low sense of self rather than a strong self-confidence. Those authors act as if they would be less or lose something if they gave credit to others. The truth is that it takes a solid sense of self to be able to recognize and celebrate the brilliance and intelligence of others. In fact, all of the “fighting” in the field of NLP over “intellectual property” and the refusing to acknowledge the shoulders of the giants that we stand on ... shows an immaturity and poverty-mentality.

In Neuro-Semantics collaboration also means that we can accomplish more together than alone or apart. We recognize the value of people coming together and working in unison for a project that’s bigger than one single person. And so we are accomplishing a lot because of it. The Self-Leadership School Project is a good example. It took 40 Meta-Coaches working for 2 years to turn basic NLP (Introduction to NLP, Coaching Essentials) and the basic introduction to Meta-States (APG, Accessing Personal Genius) into a course of study that could be taught at school. We turned it into 40 lesson plans, one lesson to be taught for 1 hour at school for each grade. So we created 40 grade- appropriate lessons for each of the 12 grades of school. That is now available in English and it is currently being translated into Spanish, Portuguese, China, Norwegian, and other languages and we are giving that to any school who wants it.

Our vision and value of collaboration also has allowed us to do something that is unique in the field of NLP—we have created and maintained for two decades a world-wide community. This is actually the only international “community” in the field of NLP. I wrote about this in the book, Innovations of NLP (2011). There are other “communities” in NLP—some are virtual, some are very small in-groups around a specific person (a little fiefdom), or around a business, and other cooperative adventures are those of a National Association which, while not a real community, at least an attempt at cooperating in holding a conference from time to time. If a community is a collaborative community uniting to do more together than alone or apart, then there is very few in NLP. So in this, we in Neuro-Semantics are leading the way and pioneering how to collaborate as a community.

Neuro-Semantics, like NLP, began as a collaboration. For many years I worked with Bob to construct the foundations of Neuro-Semantics and we led out by writing 9 books together. And along the way we brought in various other people and that continued until we created our first leadership team, and then as we trained Trainers who then came on board as part of leading this movement. And as things grew, we began encouraging and acknowledging Developers—people inventing new patterns and processes, people contributing to the over-all community.

In all of this, collaboration lies at the very heart of Neuro-Semantics. That’s why we have put collaboration (and the benchmarks of collaboration) at the core of leadership in Neuro-Semantics and encourage collaboration in the Institutes in 19 countries and the over 60 MCF chapters in many more countries. Why? If we are going to break out of the small niche that NLP holds all around the world and if we are to break out in a way that presents a positive brand — one of quality, abundance, collaboration, professionalism, respect, etc.—then we have to be working together. Together we can do much more than we can do apart or alone!