THE FAILURE TO QUOTE

In the last four weeks I have had the privilege of sitting in numerous audiences at trainings and conferences and listen to many speakers. Some have been really good, others mediocre, others pitifully inadequate. One of the things I noticed in almost every speaker who was an NLP speaker was that there was an abysmal failure to give credit to sources when a person was quoting from someone else. In fact, in listening to them and imagining myself an uninformed listener in the audience, I would not even have known the person was quoting. I did know and did realize that they were quoting from someone else simply because of my own history and experience in NLP.

For example, I heard speakers talk about —

• “The map is not the territory” without mentioning Alfred Korzybski.
• “The meaning of your communication is the response you get” without mentioning Bander and Grinder.
• “There’s always a positive intention behind every behavior” without mentioning Milton Erickson.
• “Lose your mind and come back to your senses” without mentioning Fritz Perls.
• “Leadership is doing the right thing; management is doing things right” without mentioning Warren Bennis.