Jon wrote:

I am not saying the therapists are wrong for learning, I am saying they are wrnog for learning at the clients expense both in money, time and opportunity cost from seeing one inexperienced therapist for more time than seeing an experienced therapist.

ATB,

Jon

So whats' your solution, Jon? People need to develop their skills. I don't see that money, time and opportunity are necessarily lost. It may be that they would get a better result from a more experienced practitioner, and it may not (though one would certainly hope so).

When I learned to drive, there came a point when I passed my driving test - then I went out on the roads (at risk to other road users and pedestrians) and I really learned to drive. And I had some knocks in the process. And this is how everybody learns.

NLP Connections is a great resource for 'new drivers' (driving their own buses) to help them avoid some of the knocks through having access to peer support and mentors.

All the very best

James

Resource Ecologies: Hertfordshire Based NLP Specialists

BTW I have just been watching Bandler in Creating Therapeutic Change Vol 3 - he was saying that you owe it to your clients to treat every experience as a potential learning experience.

Nigel Adams wrote:

Gonna tell you anyway.... exactly the same as you're thinking now! (Only with more aches and pains... lol )

LOL - I was hoping that it would keep me young and spritely!

J

Gabriel,

I look out for your name up in lights alongside Anthony Robbins & Paul Mckenna, and for you to be a successful as them, I anticipate however a long, very long wait but have some faith you can do it. By the way, they are not 'my heroes' as you termed them, just making the point if they are not pretentious in the fields they are in , who is a Mr Nobody to be so? Enough of this nonsense anyway, you're great a fountain of knowledge on NLP , Mckenna, etc should really be your sidekicks, okay we get the point no need to go on.

[quote=jamesrolph;39363]So whats' your solution, Jon? People need to develop their skills. I don't see that money, time and opportunity are necessarily lost. It may be that they would get a better result from a more experienced practitioner, and it may not (though one would certainly hope so).

When I learned to drive, there came a point when I passed my driving test - then I went out on the roads (at risk to other road users and pedestrians) and I really learned to drive. And I had some knocks in the process. And this is how everybody learns.

NLP Connections is a great resource for 'new drivers' (driving their own buses) to help them avoid some of the knocks through having access to peer support and mentors.

All the very best

James

Resource Ecologies: Hertfordshire Based NLP Specialists


Learning new simple techniques for simple problems is one thing, I reffered to "complex issues".


I'm sure Bandler means well in that you can experiment and by doing so learn new things via serendipity. but that doesnt serve the client well when he or she is spending resources potentially getting nowhere. If you don't know your clients 'complex' problem, you shouldnt be seeing them as at that point you are no longer a therapist.

Sorry not interested in being along the crowd you suggest. I have other goals in mind which I am already achieving like having a steady marriage or a good family life among other things.

Success can and is meassured in many different ways not necessarily by how many infomertials and tv shows can you appear on.

And sorry calling NAC what is obviously NLP to sell an "exclusive" product is what exactly? I mean you are judging us for calling a program something else and... what is exactly what Robbins is doing?

Maybe if you work hard enough some day you may use yourself as the comparison of "success" instead of using other people.

Mr Daniels says:

"Anthony Robbins [is] very intelligent … and could be incredibly pretentious if [he] so wished, filling [his] … books full of countless technical jargon you [would] need to look up, and language far more sophisticated than is necessary to make the point, or [with] views [which are in]comprehensible to most people. [He] could do the same in public talks and on TV but [HE DOESN'T …. he has] nothing to prove … to others."

Hmm. Nothing to prove. Well, let's see ….

1. One of Tony Robbins's first jobs, at the age of 19, was to go out as an advance man for a motivational speaker called Jim Rohn, who traveled around the US, doing tent shows. One of Rohn's big things was to make his entrance by running dynamically down the aisle and leaping energetically up on to the stage while his staff led the clapping and the whooping and the hollering. Rohn did this to show that he was, well, dynamic.

When Tony Robbins started doing his shows in 1983-84, he not only copied the business model of sending out a bunch of advance men six weeks ahead - to fill the show or else (or else they didn't eat, 'cos they were working 100 per cent on commission) - he also made his entrance by running dynamically down the aisle to leap up on stage while his staff led the clapping and the whooping and the hollering - to show that he, too, was … dynamic.

2. The year Tony Robbins did his Practitioner track - which was 1983, with Grinder, DeLozier, and Associates - he also went along to a seminar called "Spiritual Reality Training" given by an ex-stage magician turned new age speaker called Tolly Burkan. The big component of the seminar was that you wrote out your most limiting beliefs on a piece of paper, and then you went outside and threw it on a blazing log fire.

A few hours later, when the logs had settled down to glowing embers, and after you'd been given some exercises and words of preparation, you would go out again and walk across the hot coals, to prove that, if you could do that, you could do anything.

Within weeks, Tony Robbins was offering "Fear Into Power: the Firewalk Experience", where on a Friday night, and to the accompaniment of much loud music, dancing in their seats, and rah-rah, people wrote out a list of their biggest fears, and then went outside to throw it on the fire.

A few hours later, after (1) anchoring a memory of success to a clenched fist punched into the air, (2) being told to keep your eyes looking up (to notionally stay in visual and out of kinesthetic), and (3) chanting "cool moss, cool moss" (to jam up any scary, "I can't" internal dialog), participants went outside - to walk across the hot coals and prove that, if they could do that, why, "I can do anything!"

(Throughout the event there was also very heavy selling for the two-day class beginning the next morning, which class taught basic nlp and rapport, but was entitled "the Mind Revolution".)

3. When Tony Robbins decided he wanted a book out with his name on it, he gave US $5,000 to each of five leading nlp trainers of the mid-80s so that they would each write two or three chapters. Amongst those contributing were Wyatt Woodsmall, Tad James, and Cathy Modrial.

The resulting manuscript was then edited into unified shape, with the jargon smoothed out and the writing improved not by Tony Robbins, but by two desk editors - Peter Applebome and Henry Golden - with further editing by Jan Miller and Bob Asahina at Simon and Schuster. The title of the book is Unlimited Power (1986).

4. In 1987, Tony Robbins told Bruce Rowe, a writer working for the winter issue of the US magazine, Rapporter, of how he'd used nlp modeling to improve US Army training in pistol shooting, and how he, Robbins, "was able to qualify 100 per cent of the shooters in one day, and triple those qualifying at expert level."

In fact, as posted elsewhere on this forum, the people who did the bulk of the modeling of pistol shooting were LTC Robert Klaus, Wyatt Woodsmall, Richard Graves, Paul Tyler, John Alexander, and Dave Wilson. Tony Robbins was very much the junior, the intern.

It was Wyatt Woodsmall, who has made it a habit over the years to encourage young talent and to be generous to those in whom he sees promise - including both Marvin Oka and myself - who invited Robbins along, and he did so because he, Wyatt, admired Tony's chutzpah, or self-confidence. But on the day, Tony was not the one running the show, or making the key distinctions. What he was useful for was confidently instructing trainees, once he was given the pattern.

And as for those "in one day" statistics, the actual figures are that:

"The basic qualification at that time was ‘Marksman’, with ‘Sharpshooter’ and then 'Expert’ coming above that - a Marksman being able to get 30 hits on target out of 45 rounds fired. Two groups of soldiers were taught side by side - one group getting the nlp-based training, the other group - the ‘control group’- getting the standard army training.

"The control group took 27 hours to get 73 per cent of the soldiers to Marksman level, with only 10 per cent of the group making Expert. The nlp-based group took 12 hours to get 100 per cent of the soldiers to Marksman level, with 25 per cent making Expert."

which means the figures given to Bruce Rowe were glossed up a bit, ad-man style, as well as the impression given that the project was all done by Tony.

5. As far as I know, Tony Robbins has never attended a Master Practitioner track as a student, nor has he ever done a formal Trainer Training. He did, however, send 15 of his people to take the Master track that I had the privilege of co-teaching with Richard Bandler, in August, 1989 - with the clear intention that they'd "bring back the latest".

(In those days, staff from the Robbins organization were sent round to other trainings - not to sit in the class and take the training, but just to pay a "courtesy" visit - and then ask if they could have a copy of all the hand-outs. On this occasion, however, those 15 were paid for, and took the whole course.)

Most of what I taught as part of that 12-day training - about language, about the effect of presuppositions, about solving the "problem of criteria" by separating them into both rules and values - appeared in the book, Awake the Giant Within, but without any crediting, while the five-stage chain I offered from values through rules and complex equivalents to reference experiences became "a Date with Destiny" - also without any crediting.

And it wasn't just my stuff which got purloined. Material by Leslie Cameron-Bandler and David Gordon on "the virtual question" and material by Charles Faulkner on metaphor also appeared in AtGW without any crediting. As did the whole bit about "associate massive pain with where you are, and associate massive pleasure with where you're going" which was a hardly-bothering-to-disguise-it steal of Richard Bandler's propulsion systems.

As to writing style and clarity, again, most of that is down to the desk editors, Jan Miller, Dick Snyder, Bob Asahina, and Sarah Bayliss at Simon and Schuster.

I could go on, Mr Daniels, with more facts and detail, but maybe you're getting it by now.

It's not that Mr Robbins could be more pretentious, and yet he isn't, it's that he already is pretending - pretending that he originated most of the ideas in those first two books, as well as pretending that their easy style is his, and not that of his ghost writers and editors.

ER.

Thank you for that Eric. It is interesting to contrast the facts with what he says in"personal power II". Robbins talks about how he wrote his book in a month by working through the night after his shows.He also talks at another point about how someone had stolen some of his seminar material and passed it off as his own. I guess he is the Barnum of NLP.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive..."
- Sir Walter Scott
(...who as far as I know never attended any NLP certificated training and probably didn't like popcorn...)

:cool:

Jon wrote:

Learning new simple techniques for simple problems is one thing, I reffered to "complex issues".

Hi Jon

I made no reference to learning new simple techniques. If that is your inference from the driving analogy, I would ask you: Is learning to read the road a simple technique? Is developing judgement in previously unencountered traffic situations a simple technique? What about previously unencountered weather conditions such as driving in fog or snow?

As a driver gains experience through really driving in the real world, he/she develops judgement, insight and skill. Techniques? Is driving a car really about techniques? (I might be nervous about being your passenger!) Sure we learn technique as beginners, but I personally know of no experienced drivers who drive textbook by the techniques required for passing a UK driving test (not crossing hands, formal 3 point turn etc.)

Jon wrote:

...but that doesnt serve the client well when he or she is spending resources potentially getting nowhere. If you don't know your clients 'complex' problem, you shouldnt be seeing them as at that point you are no longer a therapist.

I hope I don't need to call you on the lost performative and model operator here. It's that old map/terratory thing again, darn it!

Did you read my post (above somewhere) contrasting 'complex problems' with 'complex people'? Here the relevant bit again:

"I will see clients with 'complex problems I have never encountered nor have had any training on'.

This is no problem for me because from my set of filters I don't treat 'problems', I help people.

And every single new client I see is a complex person who I have never encountered before nor have had any training on."

So should I not accept 'complex' John Smith as a client until I have had training on 'complex' John Smith?

Now switching back to your frame, Im curious: How much training do you need to have on any given 'complex problem' before it becomes alright to 'treat' (is that the right word from a 'therapy' standpoint) that problem?

Is it a quick pep talk from an 'expert'?, A half day workshop? A correspondance course? A 7 day diploma? Batchelors degree? masters degree? Doctorate?

How do you quantify such a thing?

Anyhows, this post might never end if I don't end it now.

To summerise: I believe that real learning takes place in the real world, and everybody has to start somewhere.

Learning and doing are like the chicken and the egg, one does not come before the other - the chicken/egg system evolved through adaptation in the context of life/universe and everything. Paper mache eggs do not produce chickens, however many layers of newspaper you put on them first.

All the very best

James

Resource Ecologies: Hertfordshire Based NLP Specialists

Hi James, reference to simple techniques was only from me, not in reference to anything else on the list and felt the issue appropriate to the thread given certifications were discussed and at the point someone tries to deal with a complex problem they are unfamiliar with they are no longer a certified therapist but potentially a dangerous quack. It's not unknown the founders and heavy promoters of NLP are always publicising how NLP can massively help people far better than current traditional psychology techniques for some issues and thus make public criticism of them and they are right to do so.

"Learning and doing are like the chicken and the egg, one does not come before the other - the chicken/egg system evolved through adaptation in the context of life/universe and everything. Paper mache eggs do not produce chickens, however many layers of newspaper you put on them first."

The point I had however was that a therapist claiming to be a professional should be doing the brunt of the learning with a 'professional trainer' who can teach the problem solution before you see the client. When you go for a drive in a car, you don't do it before the instructor says important info like "mirror signal and then maneuver" - you don't want to be learning to drive in the snow and ice either before learning that on dry road.

Anyway steering off topic, the government wants to introduce yet more legislation on the quality of driving lessons before they are allowed on the road, before long learning to drive will cost a fortune! So in that situation over-tuition is not good at all.


Regards,
Jon

Eric Robbie,

Everybody takes from somebody in all fields , everyone is influenced by their predecessors to some degree. The 'TWADDLE' you wrote is of no consequence true or not, even if true all Robbins has done is steal other peoples ideas well, he's done it better than anyone and is far more successful than anyone he stole from, and if the people he stole from are so great, how come they're not as successful as him?

Is much in Paul Mckenna's best selling books truly 'his', or ideas from others? Does it matter one way or the other?

Does Peter Daniels = Nick Kemp?

Wow, yet another brilliantly thought out & well reasoned argument Peter.
Would you like any more rope, or are you done?

sorcerer wrote:

Does Peter Daniels = Nick Kemp?

Why do you say this?

I think even Kempy has more class than this guy!

Dragon05 wrote:

Eric Robbie,

Everybody takes from somebody in all fields , ...but having the honesty to make fair acknowledgment rather than dishonestly claiming knowledge to be one's own invention is the important distinction in Robbins' case... everyone is influenced by their predecessors to some degree. The 'TWADDLE' ...opinion rather than fact, yet another important distinction you're missing... you wrote is of no consequence true or not, ...erm, map, territory, distinction, yadda yadda... even if true all Robbins has done is steal other peoples ideas well, ...the stealing part, yes, but the acheiving permanent ongoing results? The feedback I've heard has always been not... he's done it better than anyone ...see previous comment... and is far more successful than anyone he stole from, ...depends on your definition of success. Success in NLP change work is acheiving permanent, generative change - in which case Robbins is an abject failure (in my opinion of course!)... and if the people he stole from are so great, how come they're not as successful as him? (see previous comment)

Is much in Paul Mckenna's best selling books truly 'his', or ideas from others? Does it matter one way or the other?

subtitles added for easier comprehension

ericrobbie wrote:

Hmm. Nothing to prove. Well, let's see ….
1. One of Tony Robbins's first jobs...
2. The year Tony Robbins did his Practitioner track....
3. When Tony Robbins decided he wanted a book...
4. In 1987, Tony Robbins told Bruce Rowe...
5. As far as I know, Tony Robbins has never ...
ER.

Thank you Eric. That's probably one of the best and most accurate posts I've read on the subject of Tony's history. There ought to be a category here on NLP Connections called "Best of NLPC", and if there were, I'd certainly nominate this post. I've heard perhaps half of the details in Eric's post as bits & pieces from countless other trainers over the past decade. This confirms many of those details I'd learned but hadn't confirmed, offers many more, and does all of that in a highly cohesive single summary. Beautiful. And I think it's something a lot more people should know about.

Jon wrote:

The point I had however was that a therapist claiming to be a professional should be doing the brunt of the learning with a 'professional trainer' who can teach the problem solution before you see the client. When you go for a drive in a car, you don't do it before the instructor says important info like "mirror signal and then maneuver" - you don't want to be learning to drive in the snow and ice either before learning that on dry road.

Hi Jon

I think that we probably agree that it is highly useful to have a framework for evaluating client 'problems' before going into practice as a either a therapist or changeworker. I will not go as far as to say 'should' because that is a whole other can of chickens.

I think that it is also probably not ideal that there are NLP trainers who teach changework techniques but have little or no experience of the practicalities of implimenting them.

Good training is always going to be of great value, and I am great believer in CPD.

Now, what I percieve that you believe that I don't is that people who wish to work as changeworkers (as you have not acknowledged any difference between therapists and changeworkers, I am assuming that you see them as the same) should have training is specific 'complex problems' before working with clients who present with such problems.

Are you operating here from a diagnostic model? ie "Joe has bi-polar" therefore I need to know about bi-polar in order to treat him"? Is this the kind of thing you mean by 'complex problem'?

Are you suggesting that NLPers shouldn't do changework unless they subscribe to a problem focussed diagnostic model?

This is what I do not agree with. The diagnostic model is a map, why should people not be free to practise from different maps? Who decides who's map is 'right'?

So my map is different:

I am a changeworker, not a therapist. I evaluate rather than diagnose. I work with individual human beings rather than generalised problems.


Anyhows, must go.

All the very best

James

Hmmm. Therapy? The Rap, Y??

Therapist? The Rapist

No thanks.
Think I'll stick with NLP if it's all right with you...

:cool:

PS Psychotherapist? Psycho the Rapist!!

Nigel Adams wrote:

Hmmm. Therapy? The Rap, Y??

Therapist? The Rapist

No thanks.
Think I'll stick with NLP if it's all right with you...

:cool:

PS Psychotherapist? Psycho the Rapist!!

I used to be Hypno the Rapist, but now I am a reformed character!