The Training Secrets of NLP 2

Revealing State Secrets To
Teachers

Art of the State Teaching

As you think back over your life, I wonder how
often youve met a teacher who is utterly inspired
by her or his work. One year when I was at high
school I had a maths teacher who considered, like
Pythagoras, that the fundamental principles of the
universe were mathematical. To him, mathematics
was a passion. And rather than just studying the
syllabus, that year my class ended up being
entranced by stories about everything from Greek
philosophy to Quantum physics. It was the only
year I ever enjoyed mathematics. The text books
were the same, but this teacher made them seem
like a door to life itself. A teacher is not a mobile
text book. A teacher is what brings information to
life. The mathematics teacher understood that
teaching is the art of changing peoples state.

In the 1950s, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was a
teacher of physics at the University of Chicago. He
had already made his name from a paper he wrote
travelling between Calcutta and London in the
1930s; the paper that explained the physics behind
black holes. But in the 1950s he was living near the
Universitys main observatory, eighty miles from
Chicago itself. There were very few physicists in
the world who were up with the state of the art
when it came to Chandrasekhars specialties. And
he wanted to change that. That winter, he set
himself the goal of teaching an advanced seminar
in astrophysics. Unfortunately, only two students
signed up for it. For Chandrasekhar, coming to
Chicago meant travelling through snow for eighty
miles on back country roads. The University
assumed he would cancel the seminar. But he did
not. He travelled there and back twice a week, all
semester.

The full results of what Chandrasekhar did as a
teacher that year were not to be known for nearly
thirty years. Even today, there are teachers who
probably changed your life forever; and yet may
not even realise it yet. How did they do that? This
chapter is about the art of changing learners states
of mind.

What is a State?

Before we think about how teachers elicit and
change states, lets get clear what we mean by a
state. The NLP term state, is defined by
OConnor and Seymour (1990, p 232) as How you
feel, your mood. The sum total of all neurological
and physical processes within an individual at any
moment in time. The state we are in affects our
capabilities and interpretation of experience.
Robert Dilts (1983, Section 1, p 60-69, Section 2, p
39-52, Section 3, p 12 and 49-51) suggests that a
persons state is a result of the interplay between
accessing and representational systems, and other
brain systems. Older theories assumed that this
interplay must occur in a particular place in the
brain; a sort of control centre for states. It was
clear by the time of Dilts writing that this was not
true. A state (such as a certain quality of happiness,
curiosity or anxiety) is generated throughout the
entire brain, and even removal of large areas of the
brain will not stop the state being able to be
regenerated.

Ian Marshall (1989) provides an update of this idea
based on the Quantum physics of what are called
Bose-Einstein condensates. The simplest way to
understand this idea is to think of an ordinary
electric light, which can light up your room, and a
laser, which with the same amount of electricity
can beam to the moon or burn through solid
objects. The difference is that the individual light
waves coming off a normal light are organised in a
laser into a coherent beam. They all move at the
same wavelength in the same direction.

It seems that states in the brain are a result of a
similar process: protein molecules all across the
brain vibrate at the same speed and in the same
way. This forms what is called a Bose-Einstein
condensate (a whole area of tissue which behaves
according to quantum principles; see Bolstad,
1966). This vibration results in a coherent state
emerging out of the thousands of different impulses
processed by the brain at any given time. Instead of
being simultaneously aware that your knee needs
scratching, the sun is a little bright, the word your
friend just said is the same one your mother used to
say, the air smells of cinnamon etc etc (like the
electric light scattering everywhere), you become
aware of a state. This state sort of summarises
everything ready for one basic decision, instead of
thousands.

Learning States

In this light, the importance of states for learning
becomes obvious. The right state will form a
coherent vibration throughout the brain, and allow
you to generate new learnings. Without this
coherence, ideas just bounce around anywhere.
What my mathematics teacher did was create a
laser-like coherence in my brain (which, to be
frank, had fired fairly randomly through most
mathematics classes before that).

A considerable amount of research suggests that
certain states are useful to learning; generally
relaxed and positively interested states. A Stanford
The Training Secrets of NLP Transformations International Consulting & Training Ltd, 2003 74
University study (Jensen, 1995, p 178) showed that
memory retention from a 3 hour training course
increases by 25% when the students do a relaxation
process before. J. OKeefe and L. Nadel found
(Jensen, 1995, p 38) that positive emotions
enhance the brains ability to make cognitive maps
of (understand and organise) new information.

Dr James McGaugh, psychobiologist at UC Irvine
notes that even injecting rats with a blend of
emotion related hormones such as enkephalin and
adrenaline means that the rats remember longer and
better (Jensen, 1995, p 33-34). He says We think
these chemicals are memory fixatives. They
signal the brain, This is important, keep this!
emotions can and do enhance retention. Another
important ingredient in the emotional mix is
uncertainty or even confusion. Al Bigge reports
that over a number of studies, the state he calls
positive dissatisfaction (the learner is puzzled but
not yet frustrated) is correlated with the highest
levels of learner involvement and learning (Jensen,
1995, p 85). On the other hand, anxiety and
competition are negatively correlated with learning
in numerous studies (Jensen, 1995, p 222-231).

Another important thing to understand about
learning and states is that learnings are linked to the
state we learn something in. Stanford University
psychologist Gordon Bower and New York City
University researcher Howard Erlichman are
amongst the many to confirm that each emotional
state binds information. Bower explains (Jensen,
1995, p 170) Its as though the two states
constitute different libraries. A given memory
record can be retrieved only by returning to that
library, or physiological state, in which the event
was first stored. If you drank a lot of coffee, or
stayed in your bedroom, or fell in love, while
learning something, re-entering that original state
will retrieve the information.

Teaching is Like

One NLP based way to study teaching as an art of
shifting states is to use analogy. Okay; lets think
about this. Who else (other than teachers) have, as
their main task, shifting people from one state to
another? Yes, I know: Allied furniture removals.
But seriously after reading so much about NLPs
study of hypnotherapists, I hope hypnotherapists
immediately leap into your mind. (This is such a
common problem for me that Im thinking of
charging them rent).

So we could study hypnotherapy in order to
identify the structure of shifting state. Of course,
that's been done before, so now, as the Monty
Python team would say, for something completely
different. Who else has, as their main task, shifting
people from one state to another? That's right!
Great idea! Comedians. In this article, I have taken
one example session from each of these analogous
situations, in order to model the process used to
lead people to different states.

Hypnosis: Milton Ericksons brief work with a
hypnotherapy trainee called George
in August, 1977 (Lankton & Lankton, 1983, p 112-
124)

Comedy: Billy Connollys 90 minute session at the
Royal Albert Hall in London, in
July 1987 (Reid, 1987)

George Considers Divorce

Lets start with the hypnotherapy, so we can lower
the tone of the chapter later. George, a psychology
teacher, had asked medical hypnotherapist Milton
Erickson for help because he was considering a
divorce after 12 years of marriage. He wanted to
make sure he was doing the right thing. George
spoke in a very timid voice.

Erickson began in a puzzling manner by referring
to a lithograph on the wall of his bedroom. This
picture, entitled The Beachcomber, apparently
showed a stick found in the mud by the artist,
Amil. Amil had been searching through Michigan
(the state that George came from, coincidentally)
for something to paint. Twelve times (the same
number as the years George had been married)
Amil found he had unconsciously driven back to a
place where this stick in the mud stood on the
edge of a marsh. Finally, he decided this was a
message from his unconscious mind, and took it
back and made the lithograph. The lithograph
showed the stick in a position that made it look like
something quite different; like a man striding down
a beach. Erickson repeated enigmatically, And it
took him twelve trips. As Erickson described all
this, George became motionless and relaxed, his
attention fixated on the speaker.

Erickson then told George that Amil had won an
international prize for one of his paintings.
Apparently by way of clarification, he then
explained how carefully Amil planned his
paintings, keeping the designs on envelopes in his
pocket. Amil also knew that a painting took him
about 70 hours to do. One day at noon, Amil
decided to begin work on a circus painting that
hed been designing. He nailed a canvas to a frame
and began eating a sandwich. He reached down to
take a second bite of his sandwich and discovered
that the sandwich was suddenly dry and hard. With
amazement he discovered that it was actually now
6pm, and the painting was finished. He had
completed it in a trance. Amil told this story to
Erickson in a state of considerable shock, saying
that he hadnt even finished planning the painting.
Erickson looked at the picture and replied, Amil,
if Im correct tell me so

As the current Erickson told this story to George,
he looked up at this point, and George nodded and
smiled. Erickson carried on, explaining how he had
checked with Amil about the colours in the
painting. Erickson described the circus in some
detail, saying that it included a clown standing
beside a girl on a horse, a merry-go-round, and a
dog. The colour blue on the clowns jacket, on the
merry-go-round and on a ribbon attached to the
horses tail were the same. Erickson then explained
that Amils first wife had treated him like the
south end of a north bound horse, had made a
clown out of him, and had kept him on a merry-go-
round never knowing what would happen. As the
current Erickson said each of these things, George
again nodded and smiled.

Erickson then explained that by painting the
picture, Amil got something out of his system.
Actually, he said, it was this circus picture that won
Amil the international award. He carried on to
explain that Amils second marriage was very
happy. When Amil had hostile and insulting letters
arrive from his first wife, Erickson said he had
solved this in a characteristically Ericksonian way.
Erickson had invited Amil to add even worse
words to the accusations, and return the letters to
his first wife. This technique, it was explained, had
worked for Erickson on other occasions. He gave a
more detailed example of his using it with angry
hospital attendants he had fired from a job,
including quoting some of the words he had added.

Finally, Erickson returned to describing the
lithograph of the stick, which (though Amil hadnt
realised it at first) looked like a man walking down
the beach.

The Structure of Ericksons Metaphors

Clearly, the telling of these stories (even the regular
rhythm of Ericksons voice) produced a state
change in George. And by identifying with Amil in
the story, he was able unconsciously to think
through his problem. In fact, Milton also had
carried on a two way discussion with George. He
had actually asked George to give him a signal to
mean What you are saying is correct. George
responded to this by nodding. As Erickson then
described the way Amils wife treated Amil,
George could confirm that this was true for
Georges relationship with his own wife, by
nodding again. Erickson was then able to offer
suggestions about how to handle that kind of
situation. The sequence that Ericksons storytelling
went through is intriguing, and familiar to most
NLP trainers. He began one story, wandered onto
another, and then returned to the original story at
the end. Diagrammed, it would look like this:

The Amil and the stick in the mud story
The He won a prize statement
The Circus painting story
The covert discussion with George
Comment that The painting got the issue out of Amils system
The Circus painting was the one that won the prize
Amils second marriage and dealing with first wife story
Dealing with angry people story
The stick in the mud story

There is another component to what Erickson has
done here. At various times, he has described a
situation in enough detail so that George can
imagine being there. As Erickson shifts from story
to story on his way in to the centre, the state he
describes for George becomes more intense. At the
initial break-off point of the Stick in the mud
story, Erickson has created a sense of mystery
perhaps, with his suggestive way of restating And
it took him twelve trips Its like saying This is
important for you! As a result, Georges attention
becomes fixated on Erickson.

The mention of the international prize creates
curiosity, because Erickson carries on talking about
Amils painting design process, as if somehow this
will explain how the prize came about. At the
break-off point of describing the painting process,
Erickson describes Amil in a state of shock, as he
reports that he has gone into a profound trance! The
sequence of these states that Erickson elicits in
George by his initial storytelling goes:

Fixation Curiosity Entranced Shock.

This sequence is actually Ericksons trance
induction (state shifting). Instead of doing a formal
induction, he has simply told a sequence of stories
in which deeper trance phenomena are gradually
described.

Erickson then takes some time to describe the
circus in the painting. He associates George back
into the feeling of being at a Circus. He then
attaches (or anchors in NLP terms) that state, that
meaning to Georges marriage. When George
thinks of his marriage after this, it will tend to feel
like a bit of a circus.

Finally, the way that Erickson shifts from story to
story is worth noting. For example, on the way
out he shifts from the story of Amils divorce to
the story of his own coping with angry employees
(who have been fired; a situation analogous to
being divorced). His words as he shifts are And
she stopped writing. She couldnt stand seeing her
writing with those additional words added. And its
like a trick I use or a manoeuvre or a manipulation
or a trait, one term for it that Ive employed. At
Elouise I had to discharge some old timers who
werent doing their work.

Chunk up to the general idea (a trick I use)

Example 1 (Amils wifes letters) Example 2 (At Elouise)

In linguistic terms, what Erickson has done to shift
from one story to another is to chunk up from one
detail in the first story to a general idea, and then
chunk down to another example of that idea (see
above).

He sometimes uses a far simpler connection, such
as a word. To connect the Elouise story with the
stick in the mud again, he just says, .So I
always improved their insults And he didnt
know how to improve on that stick.

Billy and the Shark

Erickson himself uses humour repeatedly (for
example saying that Amils first wife had treated
him like the south end of a north bound horse).
When I first saw Billy Connolly live, I was struck
by the fact that there was something very
Ericksonian about what he did. Connolly is an
irreverent Scottish comedian, and the show that I
am studying here was presented for several nights
at the Royal Albert Hall in July 1987. Connolly
begins in an unusual way, by playing a tune on a
banjo. He then discusses what its like for him as a
former welder from Glasgow to be performing at
such a prestigious hall. While discussing this, he
occassionally lowers his head and frowns, looking
upwards in a puzzled way. The audience then
bursts into laughter, to which Connolly responds
What are you laughing at? (more laughter). In
NLP terms, he has fired a pre-existing anchor for
laughter; using a facial expression which the
audience has seen him use previously after telling a
joke.

Unfortunately, in this article I can't convey to you
fully the state that Connelly builds. He jokes about
what its like to be famous, in America and in
Britain. He says repeatedly that he worries a lot,
but not about nuclear war and world affairs, which
he takes for granted are a disaster. By failing to say
what it is he actually worries about, a sense of
undisclosed anxiety is generated. Next, Connolly
moves on to discuss his own country, telling a
series of jokes about bagpipes, the county of Fife,
the Methil steel works and linoleum factories, and
the carpets you can buy in London. Each subject
has a number of smaller jokes with their own
punchlines of course. He digresses to explain that
thick pile carpets are no good with children; and we
find ourselves then hearing stories about times
when Connolly has feared for his childrens lives,
or his own life. Now we are back on the subject of
worries, and Connolly moves to his central
anecdote.

This story involves him being on holiday in
Barbadoes with his children. At first, he enjoyed
scuba diving and watching the fish there. However,
after his daughter got the video Jaws out, he
began to hear heavy cello music when he was in
the water. One day, while snorkelling, he had the
awful feeling that there was something behind him.
He turned to see a huge black fin only a few feet
behind him. In panic he fled to the shore (I went
though the water like a torpedo; as I got nearer the
shore I was throwing children behind me).
Finally, he recovered enough to look round, and
discovered that the fin had been his own flipper.

This shifts him back to concluding the previous
story about worries of having children, and then the
carpet in London. Realising what is happening with
the revisited stories, the audience laughs again.
Here is Connollys explanation: Right, so But
anyway, this carpet in Liberties [laughter] People
say, you know, Ive seen you before and you have
an extraordinary memory, extraordinary. Well,
Im going to tell you; I dont often tell audiences
this; I have no memory at all. The trick is to just
keep flannelling until you remember what you were
talking about in the first place. And people say,
What a technique. I always get found out on
television because their time has me totally
buggered, and the titles come on and Im still half
way through a story.

From Chinese carpets, we shift to a series of stories
about sex, before (curiously) we are back at the
Methil steel works in Fife. After the obligatory
British jokes about bodily functions, the show then
ends with Connelly playing a tune on a zither. He
rationalises this conclusion by calling it a crass
attempt to leave you in the same way you were
when I came in. In fact, the sequence is hardly
crass; it is precisely the design Erickson used
above. Diagramatically, Connollys sequence is:

Banjo
Being famous, in Britain and the USA
Im a very worried person
Scotland, especially Fife and the Methil steel works
Floor coverings, especially the carpet at Liberties
Life threatening situations
The Shark story
Life threatening situations
The carpet at Liberties
Sex stories
Methil steel works
Stories about body functions
Zither

Once again, the method by which Connolly moves
from story to story is by chunking up and then
down into a new story. Consider this shift (slightly
edited) from the Chinese carpet story to the stories
about sex: I said How much is it? He said
Fifteen thousand pounds. I had to get out of
the room, because the welder was coming back. I
could feel the hair coming out of my tee-shirt.
Every hormone in my body was standing on end,
dying to scream, For a fucking carpet!!! because,
you see, my first house was six hundred and fifty
pounds for Christs sake. You know; Where are we
living? The worlds gone bonkers. Have you
noticed this? The worlds changing. Theyve got
films on television urging us to wear condoms. I
dont even like them. I hate the buggars. I mean,
once, if your mother found one of those in your
pocket she would have had a coronary! Now,
theres mothers forcing them into their. Have
you got your condoms? Oh, mother, for. Im
with my girlfriend. Here, have some; here
I personally dislike them. I dont like the smell, do
you? Why are they such a horrible smell? It smells
like burning rubber doesnt it. Or maybe thats
just me. Please; no, please dont be embarrassed.
I like to talk about sex

Chunk up to the general idea (The worlds gone bonkers)

Example 1 (the 15,000 carpet) Example 2 (condoms in fashion)

Like Erickson, Connolly is skilled at associating
his listeners into a state and then anchoring it. He
particularly aims at anchoring humour, of course,
and this he does by firing an anchor while the
audience is laughing, and then simply repeating the
word or gesture again and again to build laughter
later. Anchors used this way include swear words
(which thus seem immensely more funny when
said by him), a gesture where he turns around as if
laughing to himself, and certain specific gestures
such as a demonstration of attempting to put on a
condom.

Again, the sequence leading to the Shark story has
an interesting build-up from elicited state to elicited
state. Accepting that the main state is humour,
there is a sort of undercurrent of tension from the
initial comments about whether famous people
have anxieties, to mention of nuclear war, to life
and death fears about children, to the shark story.
The stories about Scotland and about floor
coverings are an apparent respite from this build-
up.

Worry Nuclear war Risks of Death of
children/self Shark!

Because much of Connollys humour depends on
gestures, each story has its own set of gestures and
postures, which trigger (anchor) the re-emergence
of the same state when the story is picked up again.
On the way out the ends of these same stories
demonstrate a sequence of resolution, starting with
Connollys discovery that the fin was only a part
of him, and the discovery that his fear of cancer
was a result of his loveable little child sitting on his
chest while he was asleep. The sequence (or
strategy in NLP terms) goes:

worry anxiety fear of death terror insight love

The Art of Teaching Redefined

Stand-up Comedy, Hypnosis and Teaching have
much in common. In fact, a case could be made for
including each of the two above examples in all
three categories. I am certainly not saying that the
structure I describe is the only one used in these
three fields to shift listeners' state. It is just one,
highly successful, model. This structure, which
NLP trainers call Embedded Loops, is outlined
elsewhere for use in NLP training (in OConnor
and Seymour, 1994, p 75-77). To conclude, I
would like to extract some important conclusions
about its use, from the two examples.

1. Identify the objectives for your teaching.
Erickson was clear, before he began, that his
session was to assist George in clarifying
issues about his divorce. Ericksons choice of
stories was based on this content. Metaphors
are not content-free tools. His stories have a
certain isomorphism (similar shape) with the
structure of Georges dilemma. If we consider
the content of Connollys session to be
dealing with fear, the same is true there.
2. Identify the states you intend to elicit. As
people listen to your stories, they associate into
the states you describe. Ericksons detailed
description of the circus, and Connollys
description of snorkelling are designed to elicit
a certain state. If more than one story is told,
you can pay attention to the sequence of states,
which then becomes installed as a sort of
strategy. Obviously, a useful strategy leads to a
useful result, so youll want to design stories
which have successful endings or point to
successful options. Remember that useful
states for learning include relaxation, curiosity
and motivation.
3. Sequence the stories in nested form. The
first story you start is the last to finish and so
on. This packages the central place, where
most of your content can be taught. The
sequence is:

Story 1 first
Story 2 first
Story 3 first
Main teaching content
Story 3 conclusion
Story 2 conclusion
Story 1 conclusion

4. Consider how you connect the stories. Good
connections are seam-less and can often be
achieved by chunking up to some general
principal and then down into the next story,
saying in effect: So whats been happening in
this story is an example of. And another
example of that is.
5. Anchor useful states. Just as Billy Connolly
triggers laughter with a certain gesture or
word, you can trigger intense curiosity, deep
trance, or any other useful learning state.
Metaphors are one great way to elicit states
initially. Anchors place these states in storage
for later use. By eliciting a state while standing
in a particular place, making a particular
gesture, using a certain tone of voice, or
playing certain music, you create a training
anchor.
6. Consider the effects of the state-dependency
of learning. Eliciting learning states will assist
your students to learn. On the other hand, what
they learn will be most accessible when they
re-enter those learning states. This presents a
dilemma for some NLP training, as discussed
below.

Using Anchors In Training a) Stage Anchors

There are four types of anchor which I use
methodically to store states for easy access during
my trainings. The first is stage anchors; positions
on the teaching area which have been associated
with certain states. In Chapter Four I discussed
Bernice McCarthys 4MAT model and David
Kolbs learning stages. In Chapter Ten I pointed
out that questions can be classified by this model,
into the categories of 1) Why are we learning
this? 2) What is the information about this? 3)
How do you do this? and 4) What if you apply it
in this situation?. Each of these four questions is
associated with a different learner state, and it can
be helpful to have anchored these out on the
stage area of the training room. For example, I
have a chair from which I tell metaphors and
answer the Why? question, a separate, higher
chair from which I teach the What?, an area
where I do my demonstrations (How?), and
another chair from which I answer What if?
questions. In the What? area, I do not generally
respond fully to questions from the group; I am in
presenting mode. As a result, after a short time,
students no longer tend to ask questions during that
stage. On the other hand, when I shift to the What
if? chair, questions are quick to be generated. As a
result, it is rare for me to ask Any questions? and
get no response, even in cultural settings where
students do not usually question teachers so freely.

I use the stage area to set up several other states.
There is a specific area of the room into which I
step if there are conflicts to resolve with the group.
This keeps the other anchors clean from those
states. I also use the stage to anchor the sense of
time sequence. As I stand facing the training room,
to my right is the past, and to my left is the
future. This corresponds to the most common
structure of time sense in the personal time lines
of most of our students, as they sit looking at me
(see exercise at end of this chapter). For most
trainers personal time lines, this means using a
reversed time line. This is counter-intuitive and
new trainers often take a while to rehearse
gesturing from the beginning of a sequence on their
right to the ending of that sequence on their left. If
I want to mark out each of the states I elicit from
my stories, in separate spots on the front of the
stage (as a chain of states) I use this sequence. I
tell the first story from my right hand side of the
stage, and continue on across the stage marking out
spots in steps to my left.

Using Anchors In Training b) Gestural, Tonal
and Music Anchors

Like Erickson, I use different tones of voice to
anchor different states. When I do a relaxation
exercise on the first day of a training, I slow down
my voice and deepen the tone. After having done
this once, I only need to speak a few sentences in
that lower tone and at that slower speed, and people
go into trance. Curiosity, humour and excitement
are also states which I have tonally anchored.

I also have a set of gestural anchors for useful
states such as curiosity, sacredness, go for it,
getting in rapport and so on. These are the
equivalent of Billy Connellys turning around
laughing to himself (anchored to humour), or
Ericksons looking up towards George (anchored to
this is about you) at a key point in his story.

For many of my small group exercises, I play
music in the background. This music becomes
associated with the state generated by the exercise,
just as Billy Connellys music became linked to
the same way you were when you came in.. I set
a music anchor for deep trance, and one for rapport.
I have a particular piece of music playing when we
do a breakthrough exercise like the board-break
(where participants break a 2cm thick board with
their bare hands; see later chapter), and I have
another piece playing when we do juggling in the
group. I have one piece of music set for when
participants come back from a break, to get them
back into group mode, and another ready for
waking people up at the end of the day after
various trance states. Such anchors greatly speed
up the process of training. When I want to get
participants into a state for a particular exercise, I
have a number of ways to do so quickly and easily.

Futurepacing

Another important use of anchors in training is to
futurepace material. Erickson has George get into
the circus state, and then talks about his
marriage. He is futurepacing, or anchoring the state
he has elicited to the naturally occurring anchors of
Georges marriage. As a trainer, you will want to
consider carefully, In what future situations do
you want your students to be anchored back into
the state you have elicited? The other way to ask
this question is; In what future situations or states
do you want your students to be anchored back into
remembering and using the skills they have
learned? This last question reminds us that all
learning is state dependent. Your students will
remember what you have taught them better when
they get back into the state in which they first
learned it. This is a risk for trainings which elicit
and maintain markedly unusual states.

If someone goes to a training where they only sleep
five hours a day, and spend their day shouting and
moving dynamically; then to access what they learn
on that seminar later, they may need to be able to
sleep less, move dynamically and shout. If
someone goes to a training where they spend their
day in a somnambulistic (sleep-walking) trance,
they may need to be zoned through the floor to
recall what they learned. This was no problem for
Erickson, by the way: he only intended George to
recall his learnings unconsciously. George quite
likely had very little conscious access to the
changes he made with Erickson. If you are teaching
hypnosis, you want people to learn in trance. But if
youre teaching them to do things wide awake and
analytically conscious, you want their learning state
to match that situation. This means thinking
carefully about the states you select to elicit just
before you teach any content.

The Message

In fact, thats the whole message of this chapter.
Learning is profoundly influenced by state. Think
carefully about the states you want to elicit before
you teach something and step into them. Identify
the states you want to elicit through your training,
and generate stories which elicit those states. Nest
the stories using seamless connections, so that they
package the content you teach. Anchor useful states
using stage anchors, gestures, tonality and music.
Teachers who are passionate about their content
have been doing this accidentally since the dawn of
time. In 1983 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. It was a great
moment in his career; but perhaps not the greatest.
Because by then, both of those two students, who
had studied with him through that long winter in
the 1950s, had also themselves won the Nobel
Prize for Physics. Passion is contagious. The same
textbook can be a tedious set of equations in one
state, or a door to the universe in another. Most of
what I remember of mathematics, I learned that one
year, with the teacher who lived in the
mathematical universe.

Exercise 11.1: Embedded Loops And Anchor
Chain

1) Select an area of content to teach and an
audience to teach it to.

2) Identify the state you want students in when
they learn this (eg curious, excited , amazed).

3) Identify a problem state which students might
be in and which would prevent learning fully
(eg anxious, confused, bored).

4) Identify a state which is halfway between state
2) and state 3). You now have a chain of three
states (eg anxious uncertain curious;
bored suspicious amazed)

5) Identify three stories which have some
structural or metaphorical similarity to the
material you plan to teach, which have positive
endings, and which it would be okay to tell
with this audience.

6) Find a place in each of the stories, which is
most of the way through the story, and would
be an appropriate place to break the story.
Notice what states could be elicited at that
point in the story.

7) Sequence the stories so that the state elicited at
the break point of story one is the first state in
your chain of three states; the state elicited at
the break point of story two is the second state;
and the state elicited at the break point of story
three is the third state.

8) Select a voice tonality to associate with each
story (eg low pitched, slow voice for story one;
medium pitch and speed for story two; high
pitch and speed for story three).

9) Select a gestural anchor for the state aroused at
the break point of each story (eg anxious =
biting nails, uncertain = shrugging shoulders,
curious = mouth wide open and pointing
forward with finger).

10) Rehearse so that you can teach the session, in
the following sequence:

Introduce your topic briefly.
Answer the Why? question (the stories may
do this anyway; otherwise explain why this content
is worth learning).
Chunk down into story one, tell it to the break
point, using the tonality chosen for it. Elicit the first
state in your chain, by describing what the state
feels like directly or by implication. Use the first
gestural anchor at this point. Then chunk up to a
general principle.
Chunk down into story two, tell it to the break
point, using the tonality chosen for it. Elicit the
second state in your chain, by describing what the
state feels like directly or by implication. Use the
second gestural anchor at this point. Then chunk up
to a general principle.
Chunk down into story three, tell it to the
break point, using the tonality chosen for it. Elicit
the third state in your chain, by describing what the
state feels like directly or by implication. Use the
third gestural anchor at this point. Then chunk up
to a general principle.
Chunk down into the content of your teaching.
Teach the What (content).
Complete the third story to its positive
conclusion.
Complete the second story to its positive
conclusion.
Complete the first story to its positive
conclusion.

11) Have someone assess your teaching, using the
following grid;


Skill
Level 1: Needs
Improvement
Level 2: Successful Level 3: Wow!
Rapport
Avoids eye contact.
Frowns and doesnt
smile. Seems unaware
of nonverbal responses
from group.
Makes eye contact with
most people in group.
Some smiling. Paces
gestures or comments
occasionally.
Eye contact available
for all group. Appears
fully at ease. Relaxed
smile. Evidence of
leading occurring.
Posture
Consistently
unbalanced left-right.
Remains in one or two
postures. Repeated use
of gestures unrelated to
teaching.
Some flexibility with
use of body posture.
Gestures are congruent
with verbal messages.
Appears balanced
physically.
Posture and gestures
emphasise and add to
the verbal message.
Balanced posture
generates sense of
personal power.
Motivational
No explanation of
benefits of subject or
outcome of
presentation. Voice and
body movements lack
expressiveness.
Some general
explanation of benefits
and aim of session.
Some indications of
speakers own interest.
Inspiring creation of
positive internal
representations of the
benefits to listeners.
Checked for group
enthusiasm. Outcome
clearly stated.
Metaphor
No use of metaphor
and examples. Only
digital, factual
descriptions given.
Metaphors are
incongruent with
teaching outcome.
Metaphor used and
related in some way to
the outcome (some
bridging to the content
of the teaching is
suggested).
Metaphors and
examples enhance the
presentation and invite
listeners to engage at a
deeper level with the
content taught.
Anchors
No evidence of
positive use of anchors.
Triggers negative
anchors or uses
anchors which are not
unique, precise, and are
not based on a well
accessed state.
Some elicitation of
useful states and
anchoring evidenced.
Helps audience access
and anchor positive
states in ways that add
significantly to the
effectiveness of the
teaching.
Questions
Avoids answering
questions or answers
questions in ways that
leave the person more
puzzled.
Able to answer
questions clearly.
Uses questions to build
in more powerful
internal representations
and open up the
questioners model of
the world.


Skill
Level 1: Improve! Level 2: Successful Level 3: Wow!
Respect
Insults audience,
argues without pacing
statements, and talks as
if their own model of
the world is the
territory.
Acknowledges
different models and
opinions respectfully
where appropriate.
Accepts, paces and
metaframes models in
ways that make it safe
for the audience to
open up their model of
the world.
Content Clarity
Words incorrectly
used; new jargon not
explained, contra-
dictory explanations, or
lack of sensory specific
examples (zits).
Sequencing means that
information given later
is needed to understand
prior material. Unlikely
that chosen audience
would understand.
General explanations
and some examples
given for most terms.
Logical sequencing
evident. Some
evidence of prioritising
of information. Most of
chosen audience would
follow the explanation.
Clear specific step by
step explanations with
a good sensory specific
example for each step.
Key points clearly
emphasised.
Voice Use
Voice difficult to hear.
Continuous use of
umm style space
fillers. Sentences seem
to tail off due to
uncertainty.
Voice can be heard.
Minimal use of umm
style space fillers.
Voice clear and every
word seems to add
significance to what is
said. Enjoyable
tonality.
Futurepacing
No mention of where
the subject could be of
use.
Some general mention
of where the subject
could be used.
Clear specific
examples of how we
could use the subject,
with positive internal
representations of the
benefits to us.
Language Use
Generally uses
negative internal
representations. Tells
stories which generate
distress
unintentionally.
Most internal
representations are
positive, and able to
correct negative
internal representations
made by error.
Creates significant
positive internal
representations which
elicit positive states
consistently.
Sensory System Use
Only uses predicates in
one sensory system. No
use of visual aids (eg
wall chart).
Uses examples of at
least two of visual,
auditory and
kinesthetic predicates.
Wall charts used.
Flexibility with visual,
auditory and
kinesthetic predicates
enhances the clarity
and richness of the
message. Visual aids
are congruent with and
enhance the message.

Providing Heroic
Challenges On Trainings

The Science Behind The Magic

In this article I want to reveal the secrets behind
one of the most important training techniques ever
developed: the heroic challenge. At the end of my
first training in traditional Chinese Chi Kung, my
teacher had me do a rather intriguing exercise. I
stood up in front of him, with my hands clasped
behind my own back. In front of me, he stood with
the hilt of an old Chinese sword braced against his
abdomen. He placed the sword tip against my neck,
just above the top of the sternum and pressing
against my trachea (windpipe). The tip was sharp
(he had first demonstrated this by cutting paper
with it). Then, he had me do the chi kung breathing
exercise I had practiced every day for the last
month; a form of the ancient Iron Shirt (armour)
chi kung. While I was holding my breath, I then
leaned forward so that my entire weight was resting
on the sword. The metal bent under my weight, and
I was held up on that single point. When I stood up
again, I felt my neck. The blade had not even
pierced my skin.

The teacher smiled, and in halting English
explained that if I continued to do the exercise
every day, in three months he would drive a car
over my abdomen, and I would again be totally
unscathed. I was one of two students selected to
perform this demonstration that evening. I have not
attempted the sword demonstration since, and I
have decided not to have a car driven over me.

This demonstration is one of a series of traditional
tests which concluded Chinese martial arts
trainings. Like most of these tests, the one I
endured was largely based on a physiological fact
which most students will not know. In this case,
that fact is that the cartilage surrounding the trachea
is quite hard (none-the-less, do NOT attempt this
stunt without qualified supervision!). In some
western workshops, a similar demonstration
involves having the person break an archery arrow
by pressing the point into the same place on the
neck (Burkan, 2001, p 71-76).

Several such practices occur in the world of chi
kung training. Another popular chi kung trick is
breaking bricks on the head. The graduate places
several bricks on his head and an assistant hits the
bricks with a large hammer. The bricks break, and
the head remains uninjured. Impressive except
that bricklayers repeat the same trick every day,
placing a brick on their hand and hitting it with a
cleaver to snap it in half. Once again, this trick
requires training to do safely, but it does not
require any special powers. In their book Qigong:
Chinese Medicine or Pseudoscience? Lin Zixin
(retired editor of Chinas Science and Technology
Daily) and other Chinese scientists reveal the truth
behind a number of such demonstrations (Zixin et
alia, 2000, p 73-86).

The Magic Behind The Science

The extent to which the use of body energy, or chi,
is significant in these demonstrations is debatable.
There is one almost guaranteed magical result of
these demonstrations, though, and it lies in their
effect on the minds of the graduates who first do
them. That is what this chapter is about. Lets take
firewalking, also offered by chi kung teachers such
as Master Mantak Chia, as an example.

Walking across hot coals is a ritual in almost every
ancient culture, and was first demonstrated to
modern American audiences by the Kashmiri
magician Kuda Bux in New York in 1935
(Sternfield, 1992, p 101-105). In 1978, stage
magician and personal development expert Tolly
Burkan introduced the Firewalk experience to his
workshops. Burkan had observed his friend Linda
doing the firewalk as taught to her by her Tibetan
Buddhist guru Ajari Warwick (Sternfield, 1992, p
41-51). It was at one of Tolly Burkans workshops
that NLP trainer Tony Robbins first firewalked,
and by the early 1980s his trademarked Firewalk
Experience was up and running reportedly
closely modelled on Burkans work (Sternfield,
1992, p 50-51). In 1984, Taoist Master Mantak
Chia attended Tony Robbins firewalk and soon
Chia and NLP practitioner Larry Short began
running their own Taoist firewalks (Sternfield,
1992, p 55-61). America was soon aflame with
firewalking.

At first sight, firewalking seems almost magical. A
large quantity of pine wood is burned along with
paper and some accelerant such as kerosene. After
an hour or so, the embers are raked into a relatively
flat bed of glowing red-hot wood chips, spread out
perhaps four metres long. Participants then walk
directly across this bed of hot coals in bare feet
from end to end. Most people find that their feet
remain completely unburned. How can this be?

There is plenty of research demonstrating that the
response of a burn is psychologically controlled.
Paul Thorsen, for example, conducted experiments
in which he touched the arm of a person under
hypnosis with a tip of a pen and told him that the
pen was a hot skewer. Soon, a blister (as would
have been produced by a second degree burn)
formed in the region where the tip of the pen
touched (Thorsen, 1960, p 52-53). Studies of Kuda
Bux, the Indian who reintroduced firewalking to
America and Britain in 1935 showed that he was
walking through 9 inches of embers with a surface
temperature of 806 degrees F., placing his feet deep
in the embers each step, and showing no evidence
of burning at all. Every researcher who attempted
to replicate his feat received severe burns
(Sternfield, 1992, p 101-105). Nonetheless, five
years later, a Scientific American study into Bux
and other firewalkers by Albert Ingalls concluded
that anyone could do firewalking, without any
special trance state, because the embers had such
low conductivity (Ingalls, 1939).

Disagreement has flared up ever since between
advocates of belief, and skeptics who claim that
belief is not a factor in the results of firewalking
(and who thus generate a powerful belief in the
minds of their skeptical participants). Medical
doctor Andrew Weil contrasts three firewalks
undertaken by him in quite different states of mind.
The firewalk with embers at a lower temperature
none-the-less resulted in severe burns while the
longest walk resulted in no burning at all because,
in Weils words, I felt strong, healthy and
incredibly high. I had consciously controlled my
attention and my thoughts (Burkan, 2001, p xv-
xxi). I have run just two firewalks, but it was my
impression that the only person to get dramatic
burns was a person who did the walk in a very
unresourceful state and had previous traumatic
experiences with fire. From this kind of anecdotal
evidence, I strongly suspect that firewalking results
are very much influenced by state of mind.

For those who attend firewalking experiences,
though, whether belief affects the results in terms
of burning usually seems irrelevant. The result that
matters to them is that they faced and overcame
their fear. Tony Robbins advert said This is an
opportunity to join the over 150,000 people who
have walked across a bed of hot coals as a
demonstration that even the seemingly impossible
becomes possible when we overcome limiting
belief systems. (Robbins Research International,
1991). Tolly Burkan adds In essence, this is what
firewalking is all about. The fire is a metaphor for
all the challenges we usually shrink from. In
learning how to walk unharmed across a bed of
glowing coals at a firewalk, People are really
learning how to overcome fear. We learn that fear
is a belief, in this case, an obstacle between where
we are and where we want to go. (Bukan, 2001, p
11). The true magic of firewalking is the magic of
taking charge of ones life in a dramatic situation.

Why Use Heroic Challenges?

Why do people seek such challenges? One model
for understanding this comes from the notion of the
heroic quest. Our protected lives do not usually
offer us the life-and-death struggles that previous
generations often faced (thank goodness!). Our
society does not give us the challenging initiation
ceremonies that many pre-industrial societies
provided for their young people. Firewalking and
other such ceremonies offer participants an
opportunity to face the fear of serious physical
danger and know that they can manage, just as
people did in earlier times. In a previous article I
discussed the use of real-life quests as a model of
psychotherapy (Bolstad, 1997). I noted that Joseph
Campbell describes the quest as humanitys
monomyth (one myth which encompasses all
other myths), explaining The standard path of the
mythological adventure of the hero is a
magnification of the formula represented in the
rites of passage: separation-initiation-return:
which might be named the nuclear unit of the
monomyth. A hero ventures forth from the world of
common day into a region of supernatural wonder:
fabulous forces are there encountered and a
decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from
this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow
boons on his fellow man. (Campbell, 1968, p30)

Similarly, Jay Haley suggests that many of the
tasks given by Milton Erickson to his
psychotherapy clients were ordeals. Haley says
With the ordeal technique, the therapists task is
easily defined: It is to impose an ordeal appropriate
to the problem of the person who wants to change,
an ordeal more severe than the problem. The main
requirement of an ordeal is that it cause distress
equal to or greater than that caused by the
symptom, just as a punishment should fit the crime.
Usually, if an ordeal isnt severe enough to
extinguish the symptom, it can be increased in
magnitude until it is. It is also best if the ordeal is
good for the person.... The ordeal must have
another characteristic: It must be something the
person can do and something the person cannot
legitimately object to. That is, it must be of such a
nature that the therapist can easily say This wont
violate any of your moral standards and is
something you can do..... An example of a
standard ordeal is to exercise in the middle of the
night whenever the symptom has occurred that
day. (Haley, 1984, p6-7)

Catherine Walters and Ronald Havens say
Erickson was aware that challenge, change, and
self-efficacy, the ingredients of psychological
hardiness, also contribute to well-being and
happiness.... Metaphorical anecdotes, so-called
paradoxical prescriptions, and ordeals no longer
look like mystical koans or clever manipulations of
symptoms from the wellness perspective. Rather
they appear to be straightforward requests for
normal, healthy behaviours. (Walters & Havens,
in Zeig, 1994, p181)

Teachers such as Tony Robbins, Tolly Burkan and
Mantak Chia also know that their firewalk
experience has many spin-off benefits for
participants and for the training they are running.
Andrew Weil says that firstly, the person learns
that they can survive dangers, including physical
dangers in other places. He says Well, if you dont
have to experience pain, redness, and blisters on
exposure to red-hot coals, then you dont have to
get infections on exposure to germs, allergies on
exposure to allergens, cancer on exposure to
carcinogens. (Burkan, 2001, p xxi). Secondly,
Weil claims that the experience produces a
profound alteration in self-perception. Done with
the right attitude and expectations, it strips away
your self-imposed limits. It brings you to a clarity
where you see the difference between your ego
your worry-based, me-centered self and your
divine nature. (Burkan, 2001, p xv), Thirdly, it
bonds the people experiencing this challenge
together as a group. Weil says of his most
successful firewalk I got caught up in the group
excitement, which made me feel I was a member of
a revival meeting or a celebrant of some tribal
ritual. An ensemble of African drummers provided
a rousing background tempo. Those huge beds of
coals glowed incredibly in the night. People
shouted and crowded toward them. (Burkan, 2001,
p xix).

Choosing Heroic Challenges For NLP Trainings

There is an art to producing these beneficial effects
in a training situation. Firstly, the art involves
deciding which quest is appropriate for your group.
I have already mentioned the firewalk and the
broken arrow as choices. There are many others.
Fire-eating is another which I have used in training.
In this event, participants have a dowel stick with
2cm cotton bandaging wrapped around the end and
dipped in cigarette lighter fluid. When lit, this
produces a 4-6 cm flame. This flame is then placed
in the mouth (after a full in-breath, to ensure than
the person does not inhale the fire) and with a
sudden outbreath the person extinguishes the flame.
Tolly Burkan has also used walking barefoot over
shards of broken glass, as demonstrated on TV by
Marshall Sylver. Burkan uses a crate filled with 50
pounds of carefully raked and crushed glass from
broken bottles, jars and glasses. He says Of the
thousand people I have led over six foot beds of
broken glass, not one has cut their feet. The way to
walk across shards of broken glass is exactly the
opposite way one walks across hot coals. The glass
demands slow, conscious moments of extreme
attentiveness, just like the boy with the bowl of
water on his head. (Burkan, 2001, p 90).

All these experiences have been used in the past by
pactitioners of yoga, by sufi dervishes and by
others in meditative states. Pushing a five inch
needle through ones hand (without bleeding or
pain) is another feat used by Tolly Burkan. While
anyone can do this, it would be hard to argue that
attitude has nothing to do with it, as the sceptics
claim in relation to firewalking. Burkan says of his
first successful experience of piercing To my
amazement the needle slid through my hand like a
warm knife through butter. No pain whatsoever.
There was no blood. None! The skin all over my
body began to tingle, and the hair on the back of
my neck stood up. I could barely catch my breath.
The experience was not unlike an orgasm. I was in
bliss! (Burkan, 2001, p 33-34). Breaking a board
with ones hand, karate style, is another (simpler)
choice, which I will discuss in more depth later.

Other quests have been developed by western
sports practitioners. Skydiving and tightrope
walking are examples discussed by Tolly Burkan.
John Grinder set his students the assignment of
walking in trance across the Golden Gate Bridge in
San Francisco, first with a guide and then solo
(DeLozier and Grinder, 1987, p 89). One challenge
we have used at a training is abseiling and climbing
high structures with a rope. YMCAs, military
academies and gyms often have climbing courses
which can provide significant challenges. Many of
these challenges must be surmounted by a group or
pair working together; an added bonus for the
training experience.

How do you choose which is right for you?
Availability of equipment (eg in ropes courses),
land (eg in firewalking) and permits to use your
building in certain ways (eg in fire-eating) will be
issues. The level of potential danger will be another
issue to consider. Out of 500 people doing the
firewalk, Even Tony Robbins will have perhaps ten
people getting serious blistering (Sternfield, 1992,
p 37). When the local branch of the Skeptics
Society do their firewalks at the University of
Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, they
have St Johns emergency paramedical team
standing by. Out of a thousand people who have
done the board break with me, two have fractured a
bone by hitting a concrete block accidentally. With
the firewalk, I have people sign a disclaimer saying
that they understand that the event is not a
requirement of the training, and that they are
choosing to complete it as their own personal
decision, releasing our institute and staff from any
responsibility for that decision, for their actions and
for any consequences of those actions. In some
countries it is obviously appropriate to have
insurance against any such complaints.

Another issue is to consider what rationale you will
offer to people for the experience. This has several
levels. For example, in doing the board break, I
have had people write their goals on one side of the
board and their previous limitations on the other
side. This makes the breakthrough a metaphor.
Then I have incorporated the board break into the
training process by having the participants learn
NLP material while they elicit from me the strategy
for the board break. On other occasions, I have
used the board break to explain the notion of chi
(energy) or to demonstrate both anchoring and
hypnosis.

Perhaps the most important issue to consider in
choosing to guide people through these experiences
is your own level of confidence, comfort and
familiarity with the technique. I do know of at least
one NLP trainer who has run the board break
without ever having broken a board: I do not
recommend this choice.

The Board Break

The best way to explain the thinking behind
designing heroic quests is to use an example. Let
me explain how I run the board break. I first
experienced a version of this technique as run at an
Advanced Neuro-Dynamics NLP Master
Practitioner course offered in Hawaii by Tad
James, John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn. The
technique is taught on the Advanced Neuro-
Dynamics Master Practitioner audiocassette series.
I will explain the applied physics and physiology of
the boardbreak first, and then explain how I run it
to produce a powerful breakthrough experience.
Let me emphasise once again, the key prerequisite
for successfully running a boardbreak is having had
the experience of breaking a board oneself. The
following information is for those who have
actually done this and already know what they are
doing in practical terms. It also provides an
example of the design of a breakthrough
experience. In no sense does it claim to teach you
how to break a board. For that, attend a training.

The breaking of a board by hand (called
tamashiwara in Japanese) is usually done as an
advanced level test in martial arts. In general, for
this purpose, a single board of pinus radiata or
similar (medium soft) wood is used. The board is
what used to be called one inch dressed pine
(dressed meaning that the sides have been
smoothed leaving it about 18mm thick). We use the
widest planks they make, and cut them into square
pieces (called 30cm wide; actually about 28cm).
Each piece of wood is thus 1.8cm x 28cm x 28cm
(a foot by a foot by inch). The wider the board
the better. A 10inch wide board is 20% harder to
break than a 12 inch wide board (Hewko, 2002).
The two concrete blocks between which the wood
will be placed are standard concrete blocks (called
cinder blocks in the USA) with flat sides and ends.
The board is placed, with the minimum possible
overlap, between the blocks (about 2mm of board
overlaps each block). The grain of the board as
seen from above should run lengthwise parallel to
the sides of the blocks on which it rests. The board
will break slightly easier if hit from the side which
used to be the core of the log it was cut from (the
grain curving upwards like a bowl as viewed from
the end of the board.

The board is hit by a downward stroke of the arm,
making contact with the soft spongy muscles of
the thenar and hypothenar eminences (the lower
palm). This open hand hit is called shuto in Japan.
The force delivered by the hit on the board is a
result of the mass of the hand multiplied by the
speed it moves at. The average hand must move at
between 14.8 and 29.6 kilometres per hour to break
a single board. That means that the swing must take
0.3 seconds to happen (Hewko, 2002). The hand
must move at twice this speed to break two boards
and at 3-4 times this speed to break three boards
(which several people have done on my trainings).
A longer swing by the arm increases the chances
that this speed will be reached, as does pulling up
the other arm as the arm swings down to the board.
However, swinging over this distance increases the
need for an accurate aim towards the centre of the
board. People can break the Ulna or Radius bones
in their forearm if they swerve to the side and hit
the concrete block with full force. Early on in our
trainings two people did this, and I have since
learned that it can help for the board to be marked
with an X at the centre, and even for the trainer
to place her/his hand over the concrete block.

Participants can injure the tendons in the wrist or
the muscles in their hand if they repeatedly hit the
board with insufficient force to break it. If they hit
with sufficient speed, the energy from the swing
will be transferred into the board and the board will
snap. The board bends about a centimetre (1/2
inch) before breaking. If the force of the swing is
insufficient (eg if the hand slows down just below
the former level of the board), this energy in the
board is transferred back to the hand as the board
bounces upward. To ensure the hit occurs at
sufficient speed, the person needs to hit directly
from above (not at an angle glancing off the board)
and needs to aim below the surface of the board.
The arm reaches its maximum speed when it is
80% extended (Rist, 2000), so aiming to have the
arm fully stretched out a few centimetres below the
board also maximises the speed it is travelling
when it hits the board. I get each participant to
practise this before they put the board in place, by
hitting my hand held palm up between the blocks
and about 10cm below the level the board will be.
After feeling 1000 people hit my hand, I can now
be certain whether the force is sufficient to break
the board. I do not let a person continue with the
actual board until their swing is fast enough. Speed
of muscle movement also requires oxygenation of
the muscles, and taking several deep breaths before
the action ensures a more powerful swing. All this
is extremely important. Ive seen NLP practitioners
try to run the boardbreak without personal
experience of all this, and then have all their
students break or injure their arms. With correct
technique, children and elderly people can safely
do this exercise. The oldest person Ive had do it on
my training was a 79 year old woman. The
youngest was a 14 year old girl. (Men have also
succeeded).

Making The Challenge Both Heroic And
Successful

To provide the board break experience I need to
create a balance between reassuring people that it
can be done, on the one hand, and showing them
that it is a serious challenge on the other. If I make
it seem too easy, they will be at risk of injury (by
not giving their swing full commitment) and the
event will seem a bit of an anticlimax if they do
succeed. On the other hand, if I terrify them, they
may not be willing to try it, or may pull back their
hand as they swing, thus reducing their speed and
again injuring themselves.

I demonstrate the risk by hitting the board flat
against the side of one of the concrete blocks,
making a loud bang. I tell them that if done
incorrectly this action can lead to serious injury.
Next, to demonstrate that it is possible, I tell them
that 14 year old girls and 79 year old women can
do it easily once they know how.

Before anyone does the board break, I take them
through a series of preparatory exercises. The first
preparatory exercise is deep breathing, which they
will again perform immediately before their swing.
The second preparatory exercise is setting a
resource anchor using the hand that will break the
board. The third preparatory exercise involves
practicing holding out their arm as for muscle
testing in applied kinesiology. While a partner
carefully pushes down on the arm, they imagine
first that their arm is weak, and next that their arm
is connected to a fire hydrant and is pouring a vast
amount of energy out their palm. The latter
condition produces dramatically stronger muscle
response. I point out that during the board break,
they need to pay attention to the imagined
sensation of energy pouring out their arm. They
should block any less helpful internal dialogue by
repeating to themselves Im already through the
board! Im already through the board!. We also
play music in the background to assist this blocking
of self-talk.

In the fourth preparatory exercise, we have the
person picture what it looks like to look down and
see their hand through a board as each half falls to
the sides. To do this, I take a board Ive broken in
my demonstration and hold the two pieces in the
position they would be in as the hand goes through
the board (the position the board is seen in, in the
photo of me breaking the board above). Each
person in turn comes and stands in the same
position they will break the board in, and places
their hand between the two broken pieces of board.
They look at this and store that image in their
memory, to be re-evoked when they next stand
above that place with their board.

Now, each person is ready to do a board break. I
and a woman assistant trainer each demonstrate the
process. Each person then comes up in turn, does
some deep breathing, and stands in position. For
right handed people, the right foot is stretched back
behind them pointing to their right, and the left foot
is placed in front of the concrete block on their left,
with that foot pointing forward. This means that for
shorter people they are virtually sitting on that left
block. Their arm, when hanging down relaxed,
should hang down directly into the space between
the blocks. I have each person practice the swing,
pulling up their left hand (for right handed people)
while their right hand swings down full force from
shoulder height into my hand. Once I know that
they are swinging correctly, I place the board in
position, and begin repeating Youre already
through the board! while they make the break.

Taught in this way, most people will break the
board on their first swing. For those who dont I re-
teach the process briefly and have them practice
with my hand again, pointing out when they are
doing an adequate swing. I emphasise that they
need to be totally committed to breaking the board,
and reassure them that the discomfort they felt
when they slapped the board will disappear when
they break through the board. Some people
continue to slow down their swing, out of fear of
injury or other doubts. After about three attempts, I
have them rest and refer them to an assistant to use
an NLP process such as collapsing anchors, or to
develop reframes ensuring that it is OK to breaking
a board with their hand. At times, due to
performance anxiety, we may need to have the
person do the board break with no-one watching.
Finally, we can offer the person who is not yet
succeeding the chance to break the board with their
bare foot. To do this they lie the concrete blocks on
their side with the board between them, and they
stand with their foot raised above the board. They
then swing the foot down in one swift blow. I
emphasise that this still requires absolute
commitment (although in truth the force applied by
the thigh muscles is far in excess of that applied by
the arm muscles).

I expect, with this sequence, that every person will
have a positive experience of breaking their board.
Once each person is complete I invite them to hug
someone else and to set a gestural anchor that will
enable them to re-access the sense of exhilaration
they get from this moment of breakthrough. I
remind them that their success is evidence that they
can "do anything they decide to do". The board
break is an event which I timetable for the last
afternoon of a training block. In that way, we have
a flexible amount of time to get everyone through
the event, and we leave people with a sense of
exhilaration at the end of their training.

Karate grand master Sihak Henry Cho (who
introduced Bruce Lee to co-star Chuck Norris) says
Being good at karate is a lot like being good at
telling a joke. Its not what you break; its how
you break it. (Rist, 2000). Everything I do in
setting up and running the board break is designed
to create a great punch-line. One that takes peoples
breath away. The air feels electric after our board
break. Virtually everyone in the room is on a high.
The group feels closer, after facing and
surmounting this challenge together. And people
are already beginning to reframe all their other
experiences on the training, as they realise that they
have just run through a real life test of their
resourcefulness.

Summary

Physically challenging tasks offer an opportunity
for training participants to experience the kind of
heroic quest that Milton Erickson often set his
clients upon. They alter the persons sense of who
they are, what they can achieve, and how they feel
about the others who are with them. The true magic
of these challenges lies not in the performance of a
supernatural feat, but in these breakthrough
personal changes which occur as participants
accept and go through the challenge. These
physical challenges, it seems likely, all require
participants to make a change in consciousness, or
in attitude, in order to succeed. Examples include
fire-walking, fire-eating, walking across broken
glass, walking across a high bridge, doing a
climbing or abseiling course, skydiving, body
piercing, breaking an arrow on the neck, and
breaking a board with the hand. Designing the
challenge to use in your training requires some
knowledge of the physics and physiology behind
the feat, so that you can present it in a way that is
both challenging and relatively safe. A number of
levels of training can be built into the exercise,
including teaching specific processes using the
event as an example. The timing of the event, the
preparation for the event, and the utilization of the
event (eg by anchoring the state attained) can all
add to the value of it for participants.

Exercise 12.1

Select a heroic challenge you could use on your
training.
1) What equipment do you need?
2) What potential accidents could occur?
3) What arrangements for participant safety and for
trainer legal protection do you need?
4) What rationale will you offer for this
experience?
5) Do you have experience of this process
yourself? If not, where will you get it?
6) How will you prove this is challenging?
7) How will you reassure people that the challenge
can be overcome?
8) What physiological preparation and practice will
people need to do before the activity?

Learning Games

Just For Fun?

In this chapter I want to introduce a number of
NLP-friendly games for playing in a training
group. The English word game comes from an old
Anglo Saxon word gamen, meaning joy or
pleasure. It is truly hard for me to justify not
categorising all useful learning experiences as
games. There are many other reasons for using
games in learning, but the fact that they create fun
is not incidental. When I am training, I spend most
of the day playing games of one sort or another. As
participants go to do an exercise, I tend to ask them
Is there anything else you need to know to have
fun playing this game?

As mentioned in the chapter on state, a
considerable amount of research suggests that
strong emotional states such as joy are important
for learning. J. OKeefe and L. Nadel found
(Jensen, 1995, p 38) that emotions enhance the
brains ability to make cognitive maps of
(understand and organise) new information. Dr
James McGaugh, psychobiologist at UC Irvine
notes that even injecting rats with a blend of
emotion related hormones such as enkephalin and
adrenaline means that the rats remember longer and
better (Jensen, 1995, p 33-34). He says We think
these chemicals are memory fixatives. They
signal the brain, This is important, keep this!
emotions can and do enhance retention.

Games frequently provide a number of other
characteristics important to learning. They often
involve repetition of new material, which is crucial
to laying down memories and skills in the brain
(Buzan, 1991, p 82-84). They tend to engage all the
senses, also an essential way to activate the brain
for learning (Jensen, 1995, p 55-69). Games also
give metaphorical or simulated real-life
experiences demonstrating concepts which could
otherwise be mere theories. They thus often
persuade learners that what you are claiming is
actually true, providing the motivation for them to
learn it. Of course, you have already had many
experiences using games to learn, because almost
all your basic social skills were first explored in
childhood games, often developed without adult
input. Researcher Catherine Garvey suggests that
playing social roles is the primary source of a
childs very sense of identity (Garvey, 1990).

Using Games Effectively

Using games in training requires a number of
trainer skills. Because games are interactive, they
demand a greater level of skill with motivating
participation, with detecting and responding to
emotional responses, with respecting cultural and
individual differences in behaviour, and with
conflict resolution. For example, the game knot
(described below) often requires participants to
step over each others arms and bodies. In
traditional New Zealand Maori culture, this action
indicates disrespect and diminishes the spiritual
power (mana) of the person stepped over. In such
circumstances I consider it important for me to
allow people to choose how they participate and
respect their need to modify the game.
Commenting respectfully on such issues actually
provides another learning experience for
participants, rather than merely smoothing over a
problem.

I aim to only use games that fit with my own values
for training itself. That means excluding games in
which persons are humiliated, laughed at, tricked,
or isolated. Generally, I aim for the significance of
not winning to be played down, or for the game to
deliver a win for all participants. I consider the
metaphorical meaning of games, and choose games
which seem isomorphic with my values and
training content.

In setting up a game, the significance of every
word of instruction is often enormous (see the
chapter on preframing). Often surprise endings
must be kept un-announced but carefully set up.
Instructions need to be given one step at a time, and
I check that each person has understood before
giving the next set of directions. I do not usually
call games games. The reason is that many
people have negative associations with the use of
games at school or elsewhere. I call these games
activities (a rather neutral word which has much
less associated with it usually). Post-framing is also
important. This involves helping participants to
notice what the most useful implications of a game
are. Bear in mind that events (and games) in
themselves do not mean anything; they have
whatever meaning we ascribe to them. The
meaning of the game of Poker could be that we are
at the mercy of the hand life gives us or it could
be that confidence creates our results far more than
whatever cards we are dealt.

To make sure your games create useful learning
experiences, I recommend you practice them with
friends before introducing them in a group. This is
the simplest way to refine both your introduction
and your summarizing of learnings. It also gives
you an idea which social-emotional issues are most
likely to emerge and need dealing with.

Kinds of Games

There are many ways to categorise games. You
could categorise them by the amount of time
required. In my NLP Master Practitioner training,
we learn to three ball juggle. This is a game which
takes about four hours altogether over the three
weeks of training. On the other hand, the Pointing
Exercise (described below) takes about one minute.
You could categorise games by the number of
people required to play them. Nano Tech and SET
(described below) can be played by one person,
whereas Knot (also described below) requires at
least ten people to work well. You could categorise
games by their outcomes or by the training
outcomes they support. For example, John
Newstrom and Edward Scannells first book
(Games Trainers Play) lists the following
categories:
Conference Leadership
Climate Setting and Icebreakers
Presentation
Methods
Motivation
Self-concept
Learning
Communication
Listening
Perception
Problem Solving and Creativity
Evaluation
Transfer of Training

The following categorization uses the overt
structure of the games to categorise them. This
system is as irrational as any other; it just gives me
a smaller list of categories.
1) Co-operative New Games. These are
kinesthetically active group games where all group
members win by co-operating together, or where
the role of winner is inevitably rotated around the
group. The notion of co-operation rather than
competition is the crucial preframe required to get
these to work. After completing a new game, I
frequently get the group to congratulate themselves
on winning, by clapping.
2) Card and Board Games. Most of these games
have been specifically designed to teach specific
NLP skills or life skills. They have equipment
(cards, boards, dice etc) which is purchased from
the developer. The needed preframing for the game
is usually provided with this equipment.
3) Demonstration Discussion Games. These are
games which create a metaphorical experience
demonstrating some learning point. They require
the most careful preframing and postframing. The
result is often a surprise to participants.

This list of games merely gives a small sampling of
the possibilities in each category. Readers are
referred to the reference books mentioned below
for a wider range of examples.

Co-operative New Games

1) Knot. This is a kinesthetic metaphor about
resolving conflicts and tangles. It requires about
ten or more people and at least ten minutes of time.
Form a circle and have each person grab hold of the
hands of the person beside them. Each person
needs to remember who is holding their left hand
and who is holding their right hand. Next tell the
people to let go of those hands and to walk
randomly around the space inside the circle (for
about ten seconds the longer the walk the less
easy the resulting knot is to untangle). Once people
have walked around, have them link up the same
hands with those same two people, with the
minimum of movement. The result is a human
knot. Explain that the next task is to untangle this
knot while keeping the hands connected. Hands can
be swiveled, but not let go of. Care also needs to be
taken because on the ends of your hands are other
human beings. After some time, either the knot will
untangle, or you will need to make a decision to
break the knot at one place only, and untangle as a
human string, before reconnecting.

2) Flight Path. A simple kinesthetic sensory
overload game that teaches focusing of attention in
a group of ten or more people. You need at least six
soft objects to throw (eg small cushions or koosh
balls or even juggling balls). The group stands in a
circle, and you start with one ball. Begin by
throwing the ball to someone across the group from
you, calling out their name before you do (this
helps learn names too, and in that case, give people
permission to ask the name of the person they are
throwing to, and then throw). The person who
catches the ball needs to remember who threw it to
them, and then who they threw it on to. They throw
it on to someone across the group who has not yet
had the ball, calling out that persons name. After
each person has thrown the ball, they place their
hands behind their back, so the next thrower can
see who is left to throw the ball to (each person
gets the ball only once). Keep reminding people to
remember who threw the ball to them, and who
they threw it on to. Once the ball has been around
every person, the last person throws it back to you.
Everyone takes their hands out again, and you
check that they know who they threw it to and who
threw it to them. Explain that the game will use this
same flight path from now on. Throw the ball
again to the person you first threw it to, and check
that it goes all the way around the group from
person to person along the same flight path. Once
that has happened throw the ball on again. Now the
fun really starts. After a few seconds, throw the
second ball along the same route. And after a few
seconds more, the third ball and so on until there
are several balls flying through the air.

3) Everyone Who. This is a kind of co-operative
musical chairs encouraging self disclosure. Seat
everyone on chairs in a circle (facing inward), and
remove one chair, so that one person is standing in
the centre. This person then makes a statement
beginning, Everyone who, and describing
some quality that at least some group members will
have in common (for example, Everyone who is
wearing something blue., or Everyone who had
toast for breakfast this morning.). The statement
must be true for the person who is standing in the
centre too (ie it is a self disclosure). All the people
that this statement is true for must then stand up
and quickly try and sit down in a different chair to
the one they have just been in. The person in the
centre is also aiming to sit in a chair at this time. If
they succeed, a new person is in the centre ready to
think up the next Everyone who statement.

4) Trust Circle. This exercise can be done in
groups of between six and twelve people, and is
easiest done by having the group leader
demonstrate it first. I strongly recommend making
participation in the centre an optional experience;
some people have extreme fears about this sort of
closeness and trust. Have the other members of the
group form a fairly close circle round a central
person. The central person stands up with arms
folded or held by their sides, keeping their legs
straight, and standing in the same spot throughout
the activity. Those around the circle raise their
hands, palms facing the central person, ready to
catch them as they fall. This will be easier if the
people in the circle brace themselves by putting
one foot back a little. The central person closes
their eyes and, keeping their body straight, falls
backward to be caught by those in the circle. The
circle then passes them gently around or across to
be caught by others. It is most important not to
drop the central person, and to be in close enough
to ensure they feel safe (you may start right up
close and move back a little as they indicate). The
sense of trust and rapport which this exercise
generates is related to the sense of caring with
which people are handled.

5) Rapport Leader. This game for ten or more
people teaches the skills for identifying rapport
leaders in a group. Group members sit in a circle
with one person standing in the centre. That person
closes their eyes while the others in the group
silently choose who is the rapport leader. The
rapport leader starts making a repetitive motion that
everyone can do (like tapping the top of her/his
head or rocking back and forward). The person in
the centre is told to open their eyes and while they
watch the group, the rapport leader changes their
action and all the others in the group aim to copy
the new action as soon as it begins. The seated
people aim to keep in rapport, and the standing
person aims to detect where the (ideally frequent)
changes are initiated. Once the standing person
catches the rapport leader (or after two minutes) the
standing person and the rapport leader change
places and the game begins again.

6) Last Detail. This is a visual sensory acuity
game. This is played in pairs. Start by having the
people facing each other in pairs for two minutes
without moving at all. Next, the partners turn their
backs on each other and select four details to
change about the way they look (details need to be
things that can be seen without kinesthetic
searches; things like postural changes, facial
expressions and unbuttoning buttons). The aim is
then to spot all the changed details in the partners
appearance. Once this has happened, change
partners and begin again.

Card and Board Games

1) Zebu. Robert Anues Zebu cards are a set of
normal playing cards, each of which has an NLP-
Ericksonian language pattern and an explanation
written on it. The patterns are formats for making
indirect suggestions (embedded commands). For
example, the pattern on the Jack of Spades says
You can ______, can you not? and the
explanation is Can you not is such a great way to
end a statement. It turns it into a question which is
less threatening, and its so confusing to try to
disagree with. You can appreciate my point, can
you not? You can relax into that chair, can you
not? You can allow new answers to come to you,
can you not? The cards can be used to play any
normal card game, and as each card is played, the
participant creates and says a sentence consistent
with the pattern on their card. I use these cards on
NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner trainings,
in groups of 6-8, and allowing 30 minutes for a
game. The cards can be used by an individual,
simply shuffling them and constructing a trance
induction by using one pattern after another. Of
course, theres more to Ericksonian language than
embedded suggestions, but then you can already
allow for that, can you not?

2) Nano Tech. Jaap Hollanders Nano Tech card
deck relates to Tarot cards the way that Zebu
relates to playing cards. As with other card oracles,
the element of chance (there are 2,142,720
different possible combinations of cards which
could occur in Nano Tech) creates the element of
uncertainty that is added by having other players in
a multi-player game. The deck has four sets of
cards (Entrance, Life Process Oracle, Nano
Technique, and Futurepace cards), each shuffled
and chosen from in turn. Entrance cards help you
choose a life issue to work on, Oracle cards give
life approaches which you could do more or less of,
Nano Technique cards give you mini-NLP-
techniques to use, and Futurepace cards suggest
ways of imagining the future changes which will
result. For example, The Three Mentors is an
example of a Nano Technique card: in it you think
of three people you admire and imagine what they
would tell you to do, finding the commonalities in
their advice. Allow an hour if you are playing this
game in pairs in a group.

3) Creative Whack Pack. Roger von Oechs
Whack Pack (the name comes from his book A
Whack on the Side of the Head) is a collection of
mini techniques like the Nano Technique cards (in
fact you could incorporate this pack into the Nano
Tech game). For example, Look To Nature is a card
that suggests Imagine that you are an animal
(beaver), a plant (dandelion), or perhaps an insect
(bee). How would you go about solving your
problem? Like the Nano Tech game, the Whack
Pack has suggestions for laying out the cards so
that each card suggests an approach to a different
aspect of transforming your problem. A simplified
version of the game could be played in pairs in
about 15 minutes.

4) Trimurti. Charles Faulkners Trimurti board
game can be played individually or in a small
group. In most versions of the game, players use a
gameboad with nine squares coded by time frame
and perceptual position (see below). The random
input in Trimurti is provided by seven sets of dice
each dealing with NLP-based variables. By rolling
the dice, a specific way of thinking about a specific
type of situation is chosen randomly.
a) Time Frames: Present/Past/Future
b) Perceptual Positions: Self/Other/Observer
c) Emotional States:
Joyful/Happy/Angry/Worried/Sad/Neutral
d) Representational Systems:
Visual/Auditory/Auditory Digital/Kinesthetic
Emotional/Olfactory Gustatory/Sensations
e) Neurologial Levels: Spirit/Identity/Values &
Beliefs/Capabilities/Behaviour/Environment
f) Content:
Activities/People/Information/Things/Place/Time
g) Number: 1/2/3/4/5/6 This dice is used in a
variety of ways in the game
Trimurti suggests several ways to play with these
elements. They can be used, to explore and resolve
an issue (like Nano Tech), to play at eliciting a
specific experience in another player, to tell a story
and so on. Like many of these board games, allow
about an hour to get through this game.

5) SET. Marsha Falcos game SET is a game
involving visual perception. The 81 cards each
have some simple symbols on them. The symbols
are either ovals, squiggles or diamonds. They are
coloured red, green or blue. They are shaded by
being either filled in with their colour, outlined in it
or striped with it. Each card has either one, two or
three symbols on it. To begin a game, you lay out
twelve cards. You make sets of three cards. To be a
set, each of the cards features (symbol, number,
colour, shading), looked at one-by-one, are the
same on every card in the set, or are different on
every card in the set. If only two of the three cards
are the same in any of the four features, then you
do not have a set. For example, this would be a set:
one striped green squiggle + two striped blue ovals
+ three striped red diamonds. In this set, the colours
are all different, the symbols are all different, the
numbers are all different and the shadings are all
the same. Players race to see who can recognize the
most sets, or co-operate to see how quickly they
can use almost all the cards in sets. SET teaches
players to match and mismatch visually. One
cannot successfully play by only doing one of these
tasks (matching or mismatching; sorting for
similarity or differences). I keep several SET
games and play it in groups of four on my Master
Practitioner course, for about 15 minutes.

6) Scruples. Henry Makows Scruples is an
innovative way of exploring values and sensory
acuity, which can be played in a group of up to
twenty players for about 30 minutes at a time.
There are three types of cards. Firstly, there is a
voting card which has an I believe you and an I
dont believe you side. Secondly, there are reply
cards (either saying yes, no or depends).
Thirdly, there are 252 dilemma cards. Each
dilemma card describes a situation and asks
whether you would behave in a certain way. For
example, one says A former lover sends you a
charming gift. You are involved with someone else.
Do you accept the gift? Imagine it is my turn to
play, and I have been dealt a no reply card for
this round. I look around the group for someone
who I am sure would say no to this question. I
ask the person the question, without showing them
which reply (no) Im hoping they will answer. If
they say no, I get rid of my card (the aim of the
game being to get rid of all cards. But if the person
says yes or depends, then I may have to pick
up another card. I have a chance to win still, by
explaining why I think the person would not accept
this gift under any circumstances, and then (after
they explain their contradictory answer) by opening
it up to a vote by all group members. We vote on
whether each of us believes the person (here is the
sensory acuity bit), and the result of the vote
decides whether that person or I get to drop a card.

7) Magic Land. This NLP board game was
developed by Franoise Dorn, John Klein and Yves
Besson and is presented in French, so I havent
used it. It sounds great though: Players choose a
limiting belief which they then step by step get the
tools to change (each represnted as a jigsaw puzzle
piece building up a picture of a magic land).
Players move through places on the game board
where they choose an alternative belief, set a well
formed outcome, reframe the old belief, assist each
other to change using NLP techniques, and finally
do an NLP ecology check and futurepace.

8) The Transformation Game. Joy Drake and
Kathy Tylers Transformation board game is a
complex and involving game played by 2-4
players. Too long for most trainings but great for
longer private sessions, it has several hundred cards
and tokens of various kinds. Players choose a
personal issue to focus on in the game. They have a
Personal Unconscious envelope in which they
accumulate and from which they release life angel
cards, life insight cards and life setback cards,
climbing through levels of understanding (physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual) until they are free
from pain and their issue is resolved.

Demonstration Discussion Games

1) Pointing Exercise. I first read this in Tony
Robbins book Unlimited Power, and use it now in
every training I do, and with all individual clients.
Its a demonstration of the power of internal
representations, of the importance of goalsetting
and of the body-mind link (ie most of the core
ideas of NLP). Have the group spread out across
the room and stand with feet slightly apart. Each
person brings their left arm straight up in front so
it's parallel with the floor. Emphasise the
importance of keeping feet in the same place
throughout the exercise. Now, keeping your feet
still, turn your body to the left, pointing with the
finger as far as you can turn, until it gets tight.
Notice, by the point on the wall, how far round you
are pointing. Ask everyone to turn back to the
front, and have everyone close their eyes and make
a picture of themselves turning again, but this time
going much further. What would they be looking at
if they went 30 centimetres further? Tell them to
sense what it would feel like to be that much more
supple, and turn that far easily. Also, what would
they say to themselves if they could do that easily.
Would they be surprised? Now have them open
their eyes, and physically turn again to the left.
Demonstrate first, going further yourself and
saying See how far you go, using that same arm,
now. Smile!

Check how much further each person has turned.
Explain the difference as due to programming the
brain to achievethe same process we call 'goal
setting'. When people don't achieve in life, it's not
'laziness'. It's just a lack of adequate, compelling
goals. When people turned the second time, they
had given their unconscious mind (the part of their
mind which runs their body) a set of instructions;
by making pictures of their goal, feeling what that
goal would feel like, and listening to you and their
own internal voice talking about the goal. These
internal representations (internal pictures, sounds
and feelings) are treated by the unconscious mind
as if they are real. If someone doesnt get the
experience, reframe as follows Thats right, it
didnt work; because you didnt do the process the
way I told you. I said to imagine what it looked,
felt and sounded like to go further, and you talked
to yourself inside about how this probably wouldnt
work for you....Right? And thats probably the way
youve been doing a lot of other things too. Youre
already good at talking sceptically to yourself. If
you want to get a different result in your life, then
its worth using these exercises the way we
describe them, and only do what we describe. You
just did more work than you needed to. Now lets do
that one more time, the new way.

2) Equilateral Triangles. Since learning this game
from NLP trainer Joseph OConnor, Ive used it
with groups ranging in size from 10 to 130. It takes
about ten minutes to do and process. It
demonstrates a number of important things about
working in groups, and about the nature of systems.
First, have the group stand in a circle and invite
each person to silently choose any two other people
at random from the circle, not including you.
Explain that there are two key rules to this game.
Firstly there is to be no talking at all. Secondly, the
aim is for each person to be standing in an
equilateral triangle with the two people they have
chosen. They will be the same distance from each
of those people that those two people are from each
other. Demonstrate this with two people from the
group. Then point out that as they go to do that, the
two people may of course also start moving. In that
case, they should continue adjusting until they are
able to stay in the equilateral triangle. Once you
have set up the game, step back and time the result.
Chaotic waves of movement will rise and fall for
between 3 and 6 minutes. Eventually, providing
people do not talk, the situation will resolve.

Once the movement has stopped, ask how many
people were convinced that it would never stop.
Point out that you set up a system, like any
organization or group. Each person in a system acts
to meet their own individual needs (in this case
represented by the need to be in a triangle).
Unfortunately, as they try to meet their needs inside
the system, every other person is also trying to
meet their individual needs. It is easy for people to
become convinced that If only so-and-so would
stop moving around wed be able to sort this out.
People become quite frustrated with individuals,
not realizing that they are only acting to meet their
needs, and that the changes that prompt them to
keep moving in this annoying way may even be
linked to the movements that you yourself have
made recently. Actually, the adjustments are
systemic, and not caused merely by individual
needs; they result from an interaction of individual
needs and system rules. Amusingly, the temptation
in an organization is for the person in charge to
think that they can sort things out better. They take
over and start telling each other person where to
go. But in a large system this will take far longer
than allowing the system to self-organise. In fact,
in a large enough system, it is quite impossible.
This game demonstrates how challenging it is to
trust the system, and yet how effective the group
itself can be. It also demonstrates the importance of
basic expectations in a system. If this game was
played on an open playing field, it would be almost
insoluble because people would be tempted to
move further and further out to meet their needs.
The room in which the game is played acts like the
ground rules or culture of a system in real life.

3) Colours In The Room. This is another great
demonstration which is used by Tony Robbins. It
can be used with any number of people, and it takes
about 5 minutes. It shows very clearly the power of
expectations, or of metaprograms, or of values, or
of the core questions we ask ourselves. Have the
group look around the room while asking
themselves the question What in this room is
red? Wait for a minute. Now have everyone close
their eyes. Once you are sure everyone has their
eyes closed, ask them to check How many red
things can you remember from this room?. Wait
15 seconds. Now emphasise that they need to keep
their eyes closed because you have a couple of
other questions for them. Ask How many blue
things can you remember from this room? and
then How many brown things can you remember
from this room?. After 15 seconds, have them
open their eyes.

Point out that the core question they ask as they
experience life, the way they filter their sensory
experiences, or the things they expect from life are
powerfully determining which things they will find,
and which things they will learn.

4) Mind Reading. Get people into pairs. In each
pair, the participants take turns making statements
to each other beginning with the words, It's
obvious to me that, and describing something
they have actually seen or heard of their partner
(eg. It's obvious to me that you are wearing a red
jersey.). Next, participants take turns making
statements that begin, I guess that, and describe
something they could guess about the other person
based on what they've seen or heard (eg. I guess
you're feeling tired.). Then participants make
statements beginning, I guess you can tell, and
describe things they think the other person knows
about them (eg. I guess you can tell that I'm aged
about twenty.). Finally, participants make
statements beginning, I hope you can tell, and
describe what they would like the other person to
know about them (eg. I hope you can tell that I'm
interested in getting to know you.)

Discuss, in the pairs, what this exercise was like.
Come back to the main group and discuss the
following:
were people's guesses always correct?
if not, in what ways did their guesses vary
from reality?
how might this affect our meeting people?
what effect did making these statements now,
in your pairs, have on your feeling of
closeness to the other person in your pair?

Go Forth And Play

I mentioned before that the above 18 games are
merely examples of a vast range of choices
available. If you want to get more new games, I
recommend either The New Games Book or New
Games For The Whole Family. If you want more
demonstration games, Id suggest getting one of
John Newstrom and Edward Scannells books. For
card and board games, check out local Games
shops. Most of all, games dont just help your
participants. They help you. Heres one that gives
you that experience metaphorically. Use it next
time youre in a training experience and feeling less
relaxed, and notice how useful it can be:

Circle shoulder massage. Stand in a circle. Have
everyone turn to the right and take a step in to the
centre with their left foot. Have them give the
person in front of them a shoulder massage (if
they're not sure how, tell them to check what the
person behind them is doing).
Transforming Conflict In
Training

As a trainer, I know that training brings me many
of the most moving, inspiring experiences I will
ever have. Experiences where I feel that I have
touched the hearts of course participants and
changed their lives. To get those experiences, I
invest enormous energy, and I take risks with my
own heart. At times I reveal some of my most
precious experiences, I unfurl the newly formed
wings of my most sacred dreams, I teach all that I
know and allow people to see the edges of what I
am. And in that state of vulnerability, conflict and
criticism can seem unbelievably brutal; can leave
me wondering if I want to face another training
ever again.

As a student, I know that training has the potential
to open the world for me. Some of the greatest
changes in my life have been born in the
marvellous nest that training provides. Training
can be like accelerated living; a year of planning,
dreaming, discovering, and connecting, packed
into a single week. To get those experiences, I
commit myself to time and energy, and I take risks
with my heart. I reveal my hopes, my uncertainties,
my growing edges. Criticism, coercion and
teaching that doesnt meet my anticipation can
seem to have discarded or even crushed that
trust.

Robert Dilts summarises this more succinctly,
saying The basic problem space of presenting
relates to managing the interaction between the
presenter and the audience in order to achieve the
desired goals of the presentation. (Dilts, 1994, p
17) This chapter shares my experience as a trainer
in finding a path which creates co-operation in the
training room. To me, there is nothing more
important for a trainer to learn. Everything else is
footnotes, and this is the main text of any training
manual. Interestingly, though, almost everything in
this chapter I learned by not doing at some time
by making mistakes. Very little of what now
seems to me crucial common sense, was written
in any book on training. So in this article Ill share
with you not only some of my best performances,
but also some of the mis-takes I learned most
from. And before we begin, I will comment on why
so little is written about co-operative classrooms
and training settings. This is an intriguing question.
Why, when training is such a powerful
interpersonal experience, is there so little written
about how to deal with this aspect of the job?

Turning The Problem Inside Out

In traditional teacher training, the skills I discuss
here would be referenced, if at all, under
discipline problems or classroom management.
Alfie Kohn, himself a trainer of school teachers,
describes his attempt to model extra-ordinary
school teachers. In each city he visited, he tracked
down teachers rumoured to have remarkable
success. "I was particularly keen to see how they
dealt with discipline problems. As it turned out, I
rarely got the chance to see these teachers work
their magic with misbehaving children because it
seemed as though the children in their classes
almost never misbehaved. After a while,
however, it dawned on me that this pattern couldnt
be explained just by my timing. These classrooms
were characterised by a chronic absence of
problems. Kohn discovered that these teachers
simply werent interested in discipline, or in
classroom management, or in behaviour
modification. They had more important things
they wanted to do in their time together with their
students. Their question was not How do I manage
these students? or How do I discipline these
students?. It was How can we meet these
students needs? " (Kohn, 1996, p xi, xv).

Kohns studies showed him that great teachers
didnt even need to pay attention to discipline or
conflict management anymore. They took their
success for granted, and regarded it as natural and
expected. They did not identify it under any
recognised teacher training labels. In many ways,
they behaved in the training room just as co-
operative human beings behave anywhere, and so
there was nothing special to say about it. But for
those used to other ways of teaching, their success
is revolutionary, and applies at least as fully to
adult education as to childrens classrooms.
Accelerated learning author and corporate trainer
Eric Jensen says Discipline problems are not only
NOT the real problem, but they are a gift to you.
What you call problems are the results of gaps in
your teaching and give you important information
that you can use to be a better teacher. (Jensen,
1988, p 176). In describing how these and other
successful teachers create co-operative learning
environments, there are six major themes I would
like to emphasise:

1. Advertising the Contract
2. Negotiating the Contract
3. Warm-up and Preframing for the Content
4. Eliciting Useful States
5. Dealing with the Power Differential
Respectfully
6. Resolving Conflicts with a Win-Win
Approach

While some of these themes have been discussed in
previous chapters I believe collecting them here in
this framework will add to a teachers ability to use
them in a co-ordinated way.

1. Advertising The Contract

Co-operation in the training room begins with your
first contact with potential students or course
participants (usually your advertising or course
information). A few words said or written carefully
at this time equate to hours of conflict resolution
time spent untangling mismatched expectations
later. Your advertising can be fairly flamboyant in
presenting the benefits you believe people will get
from your training. However it needs to be
considerably more specific and economical in
describing your course requirements and the
materials to be provided.

For example, if people need to attend 100% of the
time to be certified, this is best advised from the
start. I have had people complain half way through
a Practitioner training that they cant possibly come
to every session; they have a life to live. Ive had
people who work an 8 hour job after the seminar, in
the evenings, complain that the course is too tiring.
Ive learned to state uncompromisingly that full
attendance is required (but not in itself sufficient)
for certification. I know now to warn people that
our trainings will be a total commitment of their
time. I have learned to be clear that the first day
starts at the usual time, and the last day ends at the
usual time. Some people have a belief that these
days dont matter so much. If I plan an additional
evening session, Ive learned the details need to be
given with the course timetable. If I plan to video-
tape the course, Ive learned to tell people before
they enrol.

In terms of materials, I have provided manuals that
are 98 pages and advertised them as 100 page
manual provided. People complained most
indignantly. The secret with all these things is to
make a contract that allows you as a trainer to be
generous later. If I advertise a 100 page manual,
and provide 102 pages, people feel like they got a
bargain. This is not a trick. People actually buy into
the 100 page deal. I actually exceed my
arrangements with them. People do not measure
my generosity based on what seems to me to be
fair. They measure it based on the deal they
entered into.

My advertising proposes a contract with our
participants. The people who come to my trainings
do not always have any other realistic knowledge
of what to expect from me. They are not trainers.
People sometimes phone and ask me to send details
of all the NLP Practitioner trainings we are running
in their city over the next month, so they can
choose the timings that suit them best. In reality,
since I cannot be everywhere at once, I may not
have a training in that city for the next year! The
point is that other people dont know that. They
also dont know whether to expect creche facilities,
four course meals, a billeting service, free private
tuition to enable them to prepare for the course, or
any of the other things Ive had people ask for.
Their asking need not cause me to get indignant or
resentful. Its simply an opportunity to clarify my
policies and update my information and
advertising.

Partially, my own decisions about the facilities and
training structures I offer are also motivated by the
search for co-operation. In my experience,
organising billeting has proved a source of conflict
rather than a solution, so I myself dont do it.
Providing meals has proved useful (so long as I
carefully preframe peoples expectations so they
dont anticipate a five star restaurant). Providing
floor cushions for people to recline on during the
training has worked for me. In each case, I am
deciding which things to add and which to remove,
based not on whether I can do so, but on whether
is supports co-operation to do so.

2. NegotiatingThe Contract

When seminar participants enter the training room,
they still do not know what the training will be like.
They have a number of (possibly unconscious)
questions about who will be there, how I as a
trainer will behave, and what behaviour will be
expected of them as participants. These questions
are finally answered when participants have some
sense of rapport with trainers and group members,
and a clearer sense of contract and commitment to
the structure of the training.

If I do not provide explicit methods for answering
these questions early on in the seminar (see chapter
seven), participants will take time and energy away
from the learning task to find their own answers to
the questions. They will also sometimes assume
they can use answers which applied in their last
school or training environment, or in their idealised
fantasy training. I take time to enable people to
introduce themselves to each other. I also create a
written set of guidelines for how the group will run.
Youll recall from Chapter Seven that this involves
presenting my own preferred guidelines such as
starting and finishing on time. It also involves
collecting in ideas from the participants. Finally, it
involves us reaching a consensus about which ones
to adopt.

I now ask people to check whose job it will be to
ensure that these guidelines are kept to. For most
items on the list it becomes clear that these are a
collective responsibility. In a written form handed
out to all participants, I ask that people who have a
concern about these or other matters (at any stage
of the training) let a trainer or assistant know as
soon as possible, so we can help them resolve it. I
undertake to do the same if I have any concerns
about a person in relation to these agreements or in
relation to their achieving course outcomes. I
explain that independent mediation would be
available if they were not satisfied.

I have learned to emphasise that I do not undertake
to act on behalf of participants to fix their
concerns about another participant, assistant or
trainer in secrecy from that other person! In the
past participants sometimes came us to me
demanding that I stop someone behaving in ways
that upset them (but keep the origin of their
complaint confidential). This simply isnt
possible. It would involve me trying to meet the
complainants outcomes, without being able to get
feedback about how well what we are doing works,
and without being able to explain my reasons to the
person they are concerned about. I am much more
interested in supporting the complainant to take
charge of their own concern and discuss it with the
person whose behaviour they want to change.

Finally, I either write the list of agreed-on-
guidelines on a wall chart that stays up in the room,
or have it typed and handed out to all participants.
If conflicts arise later in the seminar, these can now
be easily raised in the group by framing them with
I just want to check how were going with our
agreed on guidelines. We have preframed our
seminar as a win-win process. I have stated my
needs or outcomes, and invited the participants to
do likewise. I have modelled the process of
brainstorming solutions and checking for
agreement. We have redefined our roles so that I as
a trainer am not responsible for keeping
participants happy. The responsibility is shared.

1. Preframing The Content

A preframe is a statement by you which creates the
presuppositions that are needed to understand what
you are about to teach (Chapter Six). For example,
the first paragraphs in this chapter suggest that
training is an emotionally significant experience
which could be positive or negative. This is a
preframe. It is necessary to presuppose this idea in
order to understand the rest of the article. If I
started the article at the section headed
Advertising the Contract, it would still contain
all the instructions to use this model. And if you
already shared my presupposition about training
and about class management, then starting there
would be fine. If you didnt share my
presupposition though, Id have to add further
justifications of that frame later (reframes).

Preframing the content, as described in Chapter
Six, allows your course participants to enjoy either
agreeing or disagreeing. Some people like to agree,
and others like to clarify their own separate
opinions. Thats fine. Note that this is not a trick.
Each of my statements is congruently true for me. I
have simply arranged them in a certain order to
protect the validity of my core ideas. These core
ideas are necessary if the reader or listener is to get
any benefit from my following statements. Getting
them those benefits is my contract with them.
Preframes meet my needs while respecting the
varying learning needs of course participants.

2. Eliciting Useful States

Course participants come to your trainings to learn,
and learning requires that they be in a certain state
of mind. States such as hostility or resentment are
often less effective learning states, as you may
remember from your own early school experiences.
NLP provides us with many valuable ways to assist
people to enter useful learning states, and to let go
of conflict invoking states which may originate in
situations completely irrelevant to the training they
are now attending. Amongst these are metaphor,
anchoring, pacing and leading and reframing
(Chapter Eleven).

The following example demonstrates a
combination of these choices. On one NLP
certification training I ran, I had a man (lets call
him Sam) who began the course extremely angry.
In small groups he was assigned to, he argued with
the other participants, forcibly advocating views
which always seemed to differ from whatever was
said first. In the main group, he took up
considerable time questioning the validity of each
main concept taught by the trainers. I identified that
Sams learning state was not useful for him or
others.

On the third day, I told a particular story in the
training. As Sam listened to the story, he went into
a catatonic, trance-like state, his normal
questioning completely absent. After this, his anger
seemed to reduce dramatically. Interestingly, while
Sam showed no conscious awareness of what had
happened, another course participant came up to
me after the story to thank me. You did something
when you told that story this morning. He fed
back. I felt a whole pile of anger just leave me. I
thought, I dont need that anymore!, and it just
went. Thanks! Following is the story. At set
places in the story I set an anchor (making a
specific hand gesture), to anchor the state created. I
was then able to run through this chain of anchors
again, installing the strategy of shifting from the
first state of anger to the last state of co-operative
power and self esteem.

Hundreds of years ago the Mongol hordes swept
across Asia, setting up kingdoms in their wake. In
India, the Mongols were known as Moguls, and for
some centuries their empires held most of north
India in sway. At this time there were, as now,
many holy teachers or sages in India, to whom
local people came for blessing. One day a young
man came to a teacher out in the desert. Angry
after his long walk, the young man marched into
the centre of the holy mans ashram, and demanded
a blessing on his daily work. Prove to me that
theres something in all this nonsense! the young
man insisted. [set anchor for anger: hands on
hips]

Who are you, and what do you work at? asked
the teacher calmly.

I dont see what business it is of yours, the man
growled, but my name is Shivaji, and I am a thief.
I rob travellers of their possessions.. The
teachers disciples were shocked, but the holy man
blessed Shivaji and wished him well.

The next week, Shivaji came back to the teacher,
well pleased. This has been my best week ever!,
he announced. Who would have thought that such
a foolish old man could be of use to me. I really did
well! Theres something in this for me, after all
[set anchor for self-interest: one fist held out in
front]

But the teacher was unimpressed. I would like to
bless you more. he replied. I suggest that you
find another one or two thieves and link up with
them. Then, your fortunes will be even greater.
The next week, Shivaji returned to confirm that he
was the most successful highway robber in the
area. Wow, he announced, Joining up with
someone else has made me even more powerful.
[set anchor for co-operative self-interest: two fists
held out in front]

But the holy man was still unimpressed. What
could you do if you had twenty such men! he
challenged. And so Shivaji expanded his operation
further. This week was the most amazing yet.

When he came back to thank the teacher for this
next blessing, the teacher merely said, Well, it
seems to me that you have not done much yet. If
you had a couple of hundred men, now, you could
easily throw the local Mogul out of his city and you
would be king. And so it was. Shivaji led a
movement which created a new state in India. The
whole area was thus freed of the Mogul oppression.
He was a king, and you can imagine the feeling,
not just of power, but of delight in the new
community that his vision had created. The sense of
collective success. The sense that together we can
do anything! [set anchor for the urge for collective
success and esteem: hands raised in front of body]

But theres more to the story. The disciples of the
holy man were very angry indeed. How dare that
old fake help a thief?, they demanded of each
other. [hands on hips] We dont have to put up with
this; we can do something about it! one insisted
We have our rights. After all, weve been studying
here much longer than that thief. [one fist held
out in front] Together, we can demand more
respect. Lets go and confront the teacher. Stand
together with me, and well ask him whats
happening. [two fists held out in front] So the
disciples asked the teacher why he had helped such
an evil man. He nodded. You would be absolutely
right to criticise such action. He agreed, But you
see, I have never helped a thief. I only helped a
king. I saw that he was a king the very first time we
met. That is what you are learning to do here. That
is what you are learning to do here! [hands raised
in front of body]

5. Dealing with the Power Differential
Respectfully

With such powerful NLP techniques at our
disposal, it is all the more important to bear in mind
some ethical issues about the situation of teaching.
Teaching is potentially a one-up one-down
contract. In any relationship, each person has some
ability to reward or punish the other person (to help
them meet their needs and objectives or to prevent
that). We could call this ability Power (realising
that this word has other potential meanings. See
Bolstad & Hamblett, 1998, B). Even a baby has the
ability to reward its caregivers with smiles and co-
operation, or to signal its displeasure by crying and
struggling. But clearly, in many relationships one
person has more ability to reward or punish than
the other; more power. A parent has many more
choices in meeting or not meeting the babys needs
than the baby has in meeting the parents needs. A
spouse who is in paid employment may have more
power than one who is not.

The existence of power in relationships is not in
itself a problem. Caring for a baby, or being in a
marriage can still be a mutually beneficial process.
The problems begin when one person uses their
power to get the other person to do things they
dont want to do. Even in a potentially equal
relationship, this is a high risk activity (imagine a
husband witholding housekeeping money from a
woman who is at home caring for children, until
she co-operates, for example). In a relationship
such as teaching, such actions are potential
dynamite.

Teachers have more power than their students. This
fact is recognised in legal and professional codes in
many countries. As a result, for example, sexual
relationships between teachers and students are
often considered unacceptable. The risk of the
teacher using their power (either to initiate or to
control the relationship) is considered too high.

Course participants are aware of their lesser power
in the training situation. They will, for example,
make decisions about what feedback they give
during a training based on their assessment of the
greater risk to them. They may attempt to hide their
lack of knowledge for fear of losing certification or
other benefits. Such actions actually limit the
success of your training. You need genuine
feedback. You need to know how your students are
doing with their learning. For this reason, it makes
sense to work to reduce the power differential
between you and your students. Here are some
possible ways to do this:

a. Get anonymous written feedback half way
through a training, or by use of a suggestion
box. Keep this feedback anonymous.
b. Have explicit money-back guarantees for the
eventuality that any student was seriously
dissatisfied. This doesnt totally solve
participants feelings of resentment, but it does
limit any grievance.
c. Have a clear feedback not failure policy on
certification, explaining how students will be
supported to reach course objectives if they
dont succeed at initial attempts.
d. Ask students permission before revealing
personal information about their experiences,
or making personal comments about them in a
group setting.
e. Do not resolve conflicts with students using
the forcefulness that you would usually
apply to equal relationships. Your comments
have far more impact than usual.

This last point deserves elaboration. The open
expression of anger by a trainer towards a group
may at times seem perfectly justified by the
normal rules of healthy social exchange. In
reality, we have never seen this done without
creating some degree of fear and resentment. These
feelings in the participants are then extremely
difficult to bring out and resolve. The benefits of
such expressions of anger (in terms of honesty etc)
are generally far outweighed by the problems
resulting. This caution is the training equivalent of
the principle that the customer is always right.
Therefore, while you need to make sure that your
needs as a trainer are met, resolving conflicts with
minimal expression of anger is a crucial skill for
successful training.

6. Resolving Conflicts with a Win-Win
Approach

Your every response to students during a training
can establish and deepen the climate of co-
operation. My model of conflict resolution,
explained more fully in the book Transforming
Communication (Bolstad and Hamblett, 1988),
rests on four core concepts; Problem Ownership,
The Two Step, The Win-Win Process, and Values
Influencing. While these concepts have their
primary origins in the work of Thomas Gordon
(1974), my application of them bears in mind the
insights of NLP and other solution-focused
approaches (Bolstad and Hamblett, 1999 A).

Problem Ownership

My aim as a trainer is to have myself in a state
where teaching is possible, and my students in a
state where learning is possible. When both of us
are in these desired states, a wide range of
communication skills can be utilised. Advice and
information can be given by the trainer, and
students can be directly challenged to consider new
perspectives and adopt new behaviours. However,
when either of us is in an undesired state (called
owning a problem in Thomas Gordons conflict
resolution model) the purpose of our being together
is obstructed.

Students who are upset, worried, resentful,
frustrated, angry, fearful, or otherwise unhappy
with either the training situation or some personal
issue are said in these terms to own a problem.
The appropriate skills for the teacher to use in this
situation include skills which maintain rapport
(matching the students behaviour, acknowledging
their concerns, and listening). They also include
verbal skills which help the student clarify their
outcome and safely create their own solutions.
Advice giving, criticism, lecturing, interrogating
and other teaching skills, which may be quite safe
in the no-problem situation, are not appropriate
first responses when the student gives signals that
they own a problem. The two most effective
verbal skills for this situation are reflective
listening (eg So the problem youre experiencing
is, You want to) and open, solution-
focused questions (eg What would it take for you
to have solved this?, Can I just check, what needs
to be different here?).

On the other hand, when I as a trainer am upset,
worried, resentful, frustrated, angry, fearful, or
otherwise unhappy with either the training situation
or some personal issue, I could also be said, in
these terms, to own a problem. This doesnt
mean its my fault simply that I am the one who
needs to get something changed. When my
problem is with some issue unrelated to the training
situation, I use my own solution generating skills to
solve it. But when my problem is related to some
behaviour of a students, I will of course choose to
communicate to them in some way. Advice giving,
blameful criticism, lecturing, interrogating and
similar skills are again not very effective. The most
useful verbal skill for the situation where I own a
problem is to describe my problem clearly. In
doing this, I will give the student information about
the sensory specific behaviour that has generated
the problem, rather than my theory about their
internal intentions or my judgement of that
behaviour. Instead of saying You were careless
about our agreements, Id say something more
specific such as You arrived ten minutes after the
arranged start time.. I can also tell them about any
concrete effects the behaviour has on me, and about
the nature of the undesired state Im in. My
communication will thus be an I message, using
a format such as: I have a problem Id like some
help with. When The effect on me is and I
feel (For example; I have a problem Id like
some help with. When participants arrive late to the
session, I find I need to re-explain things, and we
lose time. It gets quite frustrating.).

The Two Step

In real life, problem ownership is constantly
changing. In the middle of assisting a student to
solve her problem studying, I may discover that she
has values and attitudes which I deeply resent. I
need to monitor the situation, to identify when it
becomes appropriate to shift from reflective
listening to I message. Certainly, if I send an I
message, my student may well feel uncomfortable
about that; they may even feel angry,
humiliated or insulted. Therefore, before re-
sending or re-explaining my I message, I now need
to respond to this new student problem with
reflective listening. I do this until the student
indicates that they feel understood (usually by
nodding). We are then back in rapport enough for
me to send a revised I message. The result is a kind
of dance which we term the two step. Here is
an example:

Teacher: Theres something I wanted to mention
before we start. There were several cups
left on the floor here over lunch time.
When coffee spills on this carpet, it
actually takes quite a lot of work for us to
clear it up. I know we mentioned it earlier,
and its a bit frustrating to have it still
happening. [Teacher describes her
problem in an I message]
Student: I didnt actually hear anything said
about that earlier. I think some of us were
out of the room. [Student indicates he
now owns a problem, having heard the I
message]
Teacher: You didnt know about it [reflective
listening]
Student: nods [feels understood and so is back in
rapport]
Teacher: Well Id really appreciate your help
with this from now on. [re-sending a
modified I message]
Student: Sure. Sorry. [problem solved]

In this case, the result of the Two Step is that the
student agrees to change. Usually, trainers
problems with students can be solved this simply.
However there are two other possible outcomes.
One is that the student may have some prior
problem of their own which leads them to produce
the behaviour the teacher wanted changed. This
produces a Conflict of needs, which requires a
search for mutually satisfactory solutions; for
example:

Student: Well, you know its pretty hot in here.
We need to be able to drink something.
[Student indicates he also had a problem,
which led to his behaviour. This is a
conflict of needs.]
Teacher: You want some arrangement so that you
can get a drink during the training
[reflective listening]
rapport]
Teacher: Well, I do have a concern about coffee
and tea staining the carpet. Id like to find
a way that we can solve that problem and
also ensure we all are able to get the
drinks we need. [re-sending a modified I
message]
Student: Sure. Maybe we can. [moving into
the search for a win-win solution]

The third possible result of the Two Step is that the
student does not believe that their behaviour
concretely affects the trainer. In this case, the
student will perceive the trainer as attempting to
coerce them into line with the trainers values or
personality traits. This is a conflict of values; for
example:

Student: I dont actually think we need to worry
about this. Were all adults. Surely we can
take care of our own spills. [Student
indicates he doesnt believe that his
behaviour needs to affect the trainer. This
is a conflict of values.]
Teacher: Youd rather it was left up to each
individual to deal with. [reflective
listening]
rapport]
Teacher: Well I have a different opinion about
whats likely to happen here. Is it okay for
us to discuss this? [re-sending a modified
I message and asking permission to
influence the students value]
Student: I guess so. I mean, Ive had coffee each
session, and I just make sure it doesnt
spill. [student and trainer are in a
values influencing process]

The Win-Win Process

Where a teacher and students have conflicting
needs, the use of I messages and reflective listening
helps to set these out non-blamefully. The teacher
can then guide problem-solving to find a solution
which meets both sets of needs. This can be
thought of as a seven step process:
1. Preframe the situation as a problem to be co-
operatively solved.
2. Define each persons basic need or basic
outcome (what prompted their actions).
3. Brainstorm solutions which meet both sets of
basic outcomes.
4. Evaluate these solutions to check how well
they meet both sets of needs.
5. Agree on the best solutions.
6. Plan and act on the agreed solutions.
7. Check how the solutions are working.

For example; in a recent NLP Certification held
during the summer holidays, our venue was a
school set in beautiful New Zealand native bush,
and overlooking a bay. There was a swimming pool
available for participants use, and there were many
far-flung and quiet places for students to do small
group activities. Unfortunately, it became
increasingly difficult to get students back into the
training room at the time set for the next activity.
Those who arrived early were frustrated, and as a
trainer, I was anxious about our timing.

After one lunch break, once everyone was back, I
explained that I had a problem I needed help with
(Step 1). I pointed out, in I message form, the two
concerns I had. Participants explained that they
liked to find shaded outside places to work. Others
explained that when they finished an exercise early,
they liked to take a quick dip in the pool.
Unfortunately, the pool was too far away to hear
the bell which called people back, and they didnt
have their watches on. I reflectively listened to
these difficulties, and restated my own problem
(Step 2).

I then invited suggestions as to how we could solve
all these concerns. Many suggestions were made.
Some were definitely not likely to work for me as a
trainer (for example sending an assistant over to the
pool to advise people five minutes before return
time seemed to me to be putting in more than our
share of work. However, I accepted these ideas in
the brainstorming (Step 3), and then shared my
views as we evaluated each idea (Step 4). Our final
decision involved setting defined areas of shaded
lawn to work in, and people arranging their own
time monitoring at the pool (Step 5). The
swimmers planned the details of their own
monitoring (Step 6). Together, these solutions
worked (Step 7). The 15 minutes we took to
discuss it was well worth investing, to avoid the
extra ten minutes per exercise, and the extra stress,
that I had been coping with. But, more important,
the process itself evoked a more co-operative
atmosphere. It increased peoples respect for my
needs as a trainer, and their sense of us working
together.

Values Influencing

A conflict of values exists in any disagreement
when a student does not believe their behaviour
concretely affects the trainer (eg if the trainer asked
the student to use more respectful language), or
where a trainer does not believe their behaviour
concretely affects the student (eg if a student
wanted the trainer not to display their products in
the training room). Such conflicts operate on what
NLP would call a deeper neurological level. As a
trainer, in such situations I may want to influence
not just the students behaviour, but also their more
basic values or beliefs.

The use of coercive power is no more effective
here than in conflicts of needs. And yet there are
some situations where I would decide that my
value is so important that I will not negotiate. For
example, I have NLP trainees who believe that they
should be certified without attending a training,
because theyve read all my books. As far as they
are concerned, its no skin off my nose to give
them a certificate. For me, though, my value of
integrity in assessment and certification takes
priority. I have had students who think that rapport
skills are nonsense, and dont see why they should
have to use them in the exercises. I do.

The important thing to realise is that when I insist
on these behaviours, I have not actually influenced
the participants values. They may attend the
training, but still feel aggrieved that I didnt certify
them without attending. They may use rapport
skills in the training, but never again. So in a
conflict of values my interest is to actually
influence the other persons value, rather than
merely control their behaviour. There are three
skills which maximise my chances of doing this.
They are:
1. Identifying values which the
participant shares with me, and building on
these. The student who disagrees with rapport
skills may value flexibility, for example, and
may be able to accept a reframe of their use of
rapport skills (some of the time) as an
indication of flexibility.
2. Demonstrating the effectiveness of
my own skills (modelling them, to use this
term the way it is used in Psychology). If I
consistently use rapport skills, the student who
disagrees with them has an opportunity to see
their successfulness. They will, at least, get a
sense of my congruent valuing of the skill.
3. Consulting. This is the core skill for
influencing anothers values. It involves
carefully sharing my own opinions, identifying
them as such. It then involves reflectively
listening to the other persons opinions, and
respectfully leaving them to decide to change.
This seems so simplistic that its power is easily
underestimated. But in fact, many of the values
which you hold today will have been
established as a result of someones effective
consulting. Consulting does not need to result
in an immediate conversion experience
where the other person changes their opinion
in front of you. It more often results in them
going away, feeling good about how you
respected their right to decide, and reviewing
in a calmer mood the pros and cons of your
advice.

The Power of Co-operation

Research on teachers who are less controlling and
more supportive of students autonomy, finds that
their students are more self confident, and more
interested in learning (Kohn, 1996, p 85). The more
that students experience their class as a co-
operative community, then the more they see
learning as intrinsically valuable, the more skilled
they are at resolving conflict, and the more
supportive of others they become (Kohn, 1996, p
103). Using these processes for creating co-
operative win-win educational experiences pays off
in terms of the most basic goals of learning. But it
also pays off in terms of teacher satisfaction. I have
experience training hundreds of teachers, at all
levels of the education system. In every training, I
find that authoritarian teachers do not want to
create coercive or conflict-ridden classrooms or
groups. They simply do not know the skills to do
otherwise.

Those skills include initiating clear contracts from
our first contact with students, negotiating basic
agreements that set a co-operative tone, preframing
so that students who enjoy disagreeing can do so
successfully, eliciting co-operative states in
students, and reducing the power differential
between students and teacher. All these processes
create a climate in which win-win conflict
resolution is expected and effective. Conflict
resolution itself involves identifying who owns
each problem, using reflective listening and I
messages in alternating sequence to identify the
type of conflict, and then either working towards
solutions which meet all basic outcomes, or
influencing values respectfully.

When these skills are applied fully, they become
almost invisible to both students and observers
(Kohn, 1996, p xv). The focus of your training or
teaching returns to its rightful place. But the feeling
of co-operation you create remains with your
students long after their training (Kohn, 1996, p
85). One of my students said to me in her feedback,
I cant work out whether you were using love to
teach us about NLP, or using NLP to teach us about
love. To me, thats success and I dont know
which is true either.

Exercise 14.1: Problem Ownership

Read each of the following situations. If you think
that in the situation as described so far, the other
person/s own the problem (are upset, unhappy,
not getting their outcome or needs met etc) note it
as O. If you feel the behaviour described causes
you to own a problem, note as I. If neither has a
problem note it as N.

1.The trainer who shares your office planning
space plays a radio at a high volume, making it
difficult for you to concentrate.
2.A student tells you she is worried about failing an
important test.
3.Your training colleagues often have political
debates, such as discussing whether Bill Clinton
was a good or bad economist.

1) Choose a situation you have recently
experienced where you would have liked to
confront the other person about the problem
you experienced with their behaviour.
Describe the other's BEHAVIOUR without
using blaming language (e.g., avoid "when you
are so inconsiderate..." or "when you never...."
or "when you selfishly..."). Be sensory specific
(ie describe what you could see, hear or touch).
4. Your friend expresses disapproval of your taking
an NLP Trainer training course.
5. A repair shop has failed to meet three
consecutive promises to have your overhead
projector ready.

2) Then list the actual concrete EFFECTS that
this behaviour has for you (if there aren't any;
if you feel unaccepting of the behaviour but
can't see how it concretely affects you, this is
possibly a conflict of values. Keep that
situation in mind, but choose another for this
exercise).
6.A trainer in your organisation complains that her
responsibility level isn't challenging enough.
7. Your boss looks increasingly worried and tense
and tells you that money is tight.
8. One of the trainers in your team is increasingly
late with reports that are important in getting your
job done. 3) Thirdly write down how you FEEL about the
behaviour and the effects it has for you. 9. A student fails to turn up on time for a meeting
that you have arranged.

4) After listing the three parts, write out a
complete I Message combining all three.
Avoid adding a solution or you message.
10. A lot of your work time is spent willingly
giving advice to less experienced training staff.

Exercise 14.2: Reflective Listening

Read each statement. Write down a word for the
feeling state you think the other might be
experiencing and expressing. Then write a sentence
which you could say back to the person which
acknowledges their experience (reflective
listening).

1. Why did my parents have to be splitting
up this year? It's such a mess.

2. I don't want to show my face in his session
tomorrow. Im presenting my modelling
assignment, and I just cant see how Ill
manage it.

3. Can you just go over this with me for a
minute. I'm really in a stew.

4. I wish you would tell me how I'm doing
more often. I always wonder if I'm making a
major mistake, and everyones so quiet
about it.

5. Do you think it's fair the way people
arrive late for the training session like this?

6. Well, wouldn't you do the same thing if
you stood in my shoes? What else could I do?

7. Im really sick of all the noise around
here. I cant hear myself think with everyone
crashing around all through the exercise!

Exercise 14.3: I Message

5) Identify how the person would probably
respond if you sent this message (assume they
stay in the room). Write a reflective listening
response you could use to reply to this.

For Example:
Behaviour: Hands in assignments late
Effects: I end up marking them at a time when
Im trying to plan other things, and have extra work
keeping track of results.
Feelings: Resentful and frustrated
I Message: When you hand in your
assignment late, I need to do extra work keeping
track of who has done it, and I end up marking it at
times when Ive got other work to do. I resent
making all those changes. OR When you hand in
your assignment late, I resent the extra work I end
up doing keeping track of who has done it, and
marking it at unexpected times.
Persons probable response: Lighten up. Its
only one assignment. I usually get them in on time.
Reflective listening: You think Im being too
heavy about this one slip.

Metaprogram Flexibility

When Every Day Is Christmas Day

I lived together with my partner Margot Hamblett
for twenty years before her death in 2001. I still
remember those first months, where we were
discovering the many differences between our
cognitive styles. Soon after moving in, I asked
Margot what she thought we should do on
Christmas day. Whos place would we go to for
lunch, where would we be for dinner, and so on.

What do you mean? Margot replied. At
Christmas my family always gets together
somewhere; but it just happens. We dont plan it.
We just end up meeting up somewhere.

I could hardly believe this. But that wont work!
I complained. It requires a lot of co-ordination;
and even more now that we have both your family
and mine to plan for. My family will be wanting to
know what Im doing, soon. Its not so long away,
and we usually have it planned out by now.

Well, Margot concluded, Lets talk about it
nearer the day.

What! I added in disbelief. Its the start of
September already, you know!

Non-Judgement Day

In terms of the Myers Briggs Type indicator, and in
the context of planning holidays, I was acting as a
Judger. I like to get things planned and
completed. I like to make decisions. In this context,
Margot was further along towards the Perceiver
end of this continuum. She preferred arrangements
to be more open and flexible. To some extent, this
applied to our response as students in the training
context too. I like to know where the training is
going, and I like to be able to check off each topic
as its covered. Margot was more inclined to go
with the flow. Judger-Perceiver is, in NLP terms, a
metaprogram difference; a difference in the
programs (strategies) which sort our experience at
the meta (beyond the usual) level.

Its customary in the NLP literature to make some
cautionary comments before discussing
metaprograms (Charvet, 1997; Bodenhamer and
Hall, 1997) Amongst these are that:
Metaprograms are things people do, not things
they are.
Metaprograms are generalisations. A
Perceiver does make decisions some times! A
Judger does go with the experience
occasionally.
Metaprograms may be context specific. People
may behave differently at home than they do in
their job, for example.
Metaprograms may change over time, and can
be changed using NLP change techniques.
My opinion about my metaprograms may be
different to my friends opinion about my
metaprograms.
As styles of processing information,
metaprograms are not intrinsically good or
bad.
While each metaprogram is useful in some
contexts, they do deliver different results. Some
may be more useful for particular goals.

How Would You Use Metaprograms In
Training?

NLP developers have categorised over 50 different
metaprograms distinctions (Bodenhamer and Hall,
1997). In this book already, we have discussed a
number of metaprograms. These include:

The Kolb Learning Styles (Used in the 4MAT:
Why?, What?, How? And What if?)
Business style (Discussed in Chapter Two:
Entrepreneur, Technician, Manager)
Relationship sorting styles (Discussed in
Chapter Five: Matcher, Mismatcher)

As a trainer, you will attend to your own
metaprograms, to your course participants
metaprograms, and to the interaction between
these. There are many ways to use the information
you gather. Consider the business style
metaprogram as an example of paying attention to
your own styles. Imagine that you tend to work as
an entrepreneur. Its useful for you to:

Know which business style you have a
preference for, so you know what you do best. If
you are mainly focused on the entrepreneur style,
then you are a visionary. Thats a strength.
Have the flexibility to shift to using the other
two styles as appropriate for your goals. If you
use an entrepreneur style, youll want to
remember to actually do the work, and monitor
the business as well.
Notice whether your style matches or is
complementary to (ie different from) the styles of
those you are working with. If it matches, you
will find co-operating easier, and you may also
share the same blind spots. If you are an
entrepreneur, you may decide to hire someone
else to be the business manager.

How would you use information about your
students metaprograms? Lets take the Kolb
Learning Styles as an example. Imagine you have a
student whos main learning question is What
if?. A knowledge of your students preferred
learning style enables you to:

Match that learning style, in order to build
rapport (by answering the students What if?
question).
Utilise their learning style, by framing learning
processes so they are more fully involved in
learning (reframing the task you set them, as a
way of their answering their question). With the
What if? oriented student, you could begin
teaching a new process by saying What if you
were in a situation where.
Identify when their learning style is
inappropriately matched to the task they are
attempting, and lead them to another style. When
the learner focused on What if? is in a group
exercise, it may be important for them to be able
to suspend speculation until after they have
practised the basic process youve taught them.
You may want to check that they are doing the
exercise the way you taught it.

My intention in this chapter is not to teach all the
information about metaprograms covered in the
NLP Master Practitioner syllabus. Instead, I would
like to consider, as examples, your use of two of
the many categorisations of metaprogram. One is a
categorisation which relates to your teaching
style. This is the Satir categories or
communication stances, first described in NLP
terms in the book Changing With Families
(Bandler, Grinder and Satir, 1976). The other
metaprogram Ill review is Convincer strategies,
and relates to learning style.

Satir Categories

In her work with families and other groups,
Virginia Satir noticed that under stress, people
tended to adopt one of five key communication
styles or stances. The stances can be described in
terms of the ability to experience the realationship
from first, second and third perceptual position (as
described in the chapter Teaching To The Right
Sense).

The Blamer stance is adopted by a person who
is only able to take first position. Their belief that
they are not appreciated and not succeeding
leads them to blame others, disagree and put
others down. They gesture with forward leaning,
finger pointing, and speak loudly and angrily.
The Placator stance is adopted by a person
who is only able to take second position. Their
belief that they are worthless leads them to
agree with others ideas even where their own
needs are harmed by this. They gesture with their
palms up in an apologetic manner, and speak in a
quiet, pleading voice.
The Computer stance is adopted by a person
who is only able to take third position. Their
belief that stepping into the experience would
make them vulnerable leads them to analyse
and talk ultra-reasonably. They move very little,
and use auditory digital gestures such as placing
the hand on the chin. Their voice is flat in tone.
The Distracter stance is adopted by a person
who is unable to effectively take first, second or
third position. Their belief that nobody cares
anyway leads them to act and talk irrelevantly,
making off the wall comments and jokes. Their
movements are uncoordinated, and their voice
varies constantly in tone and volume.
The Leveller is able to step into first, second or
third position. Their belief that they and other
human beings are intrinsically worthwhile leads
them to respond directly by sharing their own
feelings and listening to others. They stand
balanced and make symmetrical body gestures,
including gesturing with their hands down flat and
to the sides in front, as if placing their hands on a
table.

The Satir stances are literally stances which you
can take as a trainer. When you want to
congruently share something of real importance, it
is most powerful to do this from a leveller stance.
However, at other times you will want to respond
in one of the other styles. The stances are anchors
which have been set culturally. When you point
and lean forward, speaking in a louder voice
(Blamer), it anchors people into the sense of your
telling them off. This is a gesture which you may
make occasionally to insist on some behaviour.
You could soften it by shifting then to Placator
gestures which apologise, and ask for
forgiveness, or suggest that you were just doing
your job. At times you will want to convey a
dissociated expertise, by using the Computer
stance, and at other times you will want to fool
around by joking and entertaining people in the
Distractor mode.

If you have access to video feedback on your
teaching, one of the most useful things you can
attend to is your use of Satir categories. What are
your most preferred stances? What is this
nonverbally telling people about you? How might
they react to that non-verbal message? Having the
flexibility to choose a style which is congruent with
your intention gives your teaching far more
precision.

Convincer Strategies In Learning

Weve all had the experience of losing a sheet of
paper somewhere in our (less than perfect) filing
systems. You can remember a time when you
looked through a pile of papers looking for one in
particular, and it wasnt there. So you go and look
somewhere else. And then, perhaps you stop and
think Well; Im sure it must be in that original
pile. Ill look through there again. Whats
interesting is that some people dont do that. If they
looked through that pile of papers once, theyre
convinced that the missing paper is not there. Some
people will look though the pile three times before
they are convinced. And some people could look
through it all day and still not be sure. Others know
that if they just go away and have a cup of tea first,
maybe when they come back itll be there. If its
still not there after that time, theyre convinced.

In NLP, this difference in the way we get ourselves
convinced is called the convincer mode. In the
context of learning, this can become important.
Some students hear something explained once and
are convinced they know it. Some students need to
have it explained two or three times before they are
sure they got it right. Some need to come back to it
a few days later and check. And some students will
just keep asking you each time they see you Am I
getting this right? Shelle Rose Charvet (1997, p
129-138) says that in her research in the context of
work, 8% of people are convinced straight off
(called an automatic convincer), 52% need to go
through it a certain number of times, 25% need to
take a set period of time before being sure, and
15% are never quite sure (called a consistent
convincer mode).

There is another distinction about convincer
systems, though. Thats the sensory channel that a
person finds most convincing. For 55% of people,
seeing is believing. Whether they need to see it
once twice or after a time delay, its seeing it that
works. For 30% of people, hearing about it makes
it click into place. For 3%, reading the facts is most
effective, and gives them the sense that It is
written! For 12%, actually physically doing
something is necessary before they are convinced.
If a person has a kinesthetic convincer (doing) then
they can watch as many demonstrations of
anchoring as I like, but they wont be sure it works
until they actually do it themselves. A person may
also need to get information from two channels to
be convinced. They may, for example, need to see
it and hear about it.

So how do I use this knowledge as a trainer
teaching people something like how to set an NLP
resource anchor? Firstly, I convey the technique in
all four channels. I have a page explaining it in the
manual, I tell them how it works, I demonstrate and
show them it working, and I get them to do it. I
structure the training so that core concepts like
anchoring are run through several times (for most
people who have a number of times convincer,
their number is two or three), and I make sure the
concepts are revisited after a period of time. For
most of the people, most of the time, this will meet
their convincer strategy.

The real power of my knowing about convincer
systems, though comes when I come across
someone who is having trouble with being
convinced. If someone says to me, I dont think I
got that last language pattern. I listened to your
example, but Im just not sure I see the pattern
yet. I may identify this as a problem with
convincer strategies. I would then ask the person
What would you need to see to be convinced that
you understood it? (using the visual channel
which they asked for by saying they needed to see
the pattern). If they say theyd need to see some
more examples, I match that (number of times)
style. If they say theyre not sure yet what it would
take (period of time), I will ask them to step out
into the future, in their imagination, and see what it
will be like to look back on their learning with that
hindsight.

Of course, the most challenging convincer mode to
match seems at first to be the consistent mode.
One choice is to tell the person to Continue
checking that you know this, every time you
do/see/hear/read it. Another is to suggest that In a
way, you know youll never be completely
convinced about this, so you might as well just
carry on using it anyway. This second comment is
a pace and lead, and so requires good rapport to
succeed. It almost says I know you have a
consistent convincer. Since that doesnt work here,
experiment by using another mode.

Summary

The presuppositions of NLP remind us that
matching another persons cognitive and
communication style (their personality) enables
us to more adequately lead them to new learnings.
A trainer is an expert at detecting such
metaprograms, and has the flexibility to match and
utilise them. For example, a trainer can use their
flexibility with the five Satir stances (Blamer,
Placator, Computer, Distractor and Leveler). As
another example, a trainer can assist students to get
the sense of knowing what they know, by matching
their convincer channel (seeing, hearing, reading or
doing) and their convincer mode (automatic,
number of times, period of time or consistent).

Exercise 15.1: Satir category Use

Practise reading aloud the last paragraph of this
chapter, while using the gestures, voice tonality and
body position of:

a) Blamer
b) Placator
c) Computer
d) Distractor
e) Leveler

Exercise 15.2: Matching and Utilising Learner
Metaprograms

Using the book Figuring Out People
(Bodenhamer and Hall, 1997) or Words That
Change Minds (Charvet, 1997), select another
metaprogram set and check that you know, in a
training context, how to:

1) Pace each metaprogram
2) Utilise each metaprogram

For each of these metaprograms, imagine you were
talking with someone who operates with that
metaprogram. Imagine they asked you to convince
them that your training could be of use to them.
How would you do that, in each case, if they had:

a) An automatic visual convincer
b) A three times auditory convincer
c) A one week kinesthetic convincer
d) A consistent visual convincer

Evaluating the Evaluator

Is There An Objective In The House?

Many trainers have in the past shown a remarkable
lack of interest in checking whether their trainings
actually reach or even have any measurable
objectives. Often their training plans have tended to
simply list content areas and specify times to be
spent studying them. In redressing that, my aims
here are rather modest. I will equip you with the
core definitions used in standard assessment and
evaluation theory, and make sense of them with
examples from NLP training.

Standards, Performance Criteria and Range

My organisation has had its NLP Practitioner and
Master Practitioner level trainings registered as
Certificates with the New Zealand Qualifications
Authority. To do so I first needed to translate our
content areas into what are called Unit Standards
and Performance Criteria (Walklin, 1991, p 1-7).
These are the educational equivalent of well
formed outcomes. The idea of standards based
training, which I generally agree with, is to focus
not on what happens in training itself (how many
hours the learner sat in a classroom, or how many
pages of notes they were given etc) but on what
they can do after they have completed the training.
What they can do includes:

The desired knowledge. This is the what in
the 4MAT model. (eg being able to explain
what Rapport is)
The desired skills. This is the How and the
What if? in the 4MAT. (eg being able to
establish rapport with a person)
The desired attitudes. This is the 4MATs
Why?. (eg being willing to use rapport skills,
and considering them useful).

Luckily, these three areas are linked together.
Using rapport skills effectively requires knowing
what rapport is. In general, Social Psychology
research shows that the more someone uses a
certain skill, the more they come to value it (Myers,
1983, p 44-69). This is reassuring because I cannot
require trainees to value my content. I can only
know that they can, if they choose, act as if they
value that content.

The notions of standards and performance criteria
are part of an approach to assessment that is called
criterion referenced assessment (Stock et alia,
1987, p 23-25). In criterion referenced assessment,
you are checking that trainees meet your criteria
(eg that theyre good enough to be called an NLP
Practitioner). The other, more traditional approach
to assessment was norm referenced assessment. In
norm referenced assessment, the teachers aim was
to check who was best. If you are having brain
surgery, you dont want a norm referenced
surgeon; trust me! You dont want to know that
your surgeon was the best in their class (after all, it
could have been a bad year or a hopeless medical
school). You want to know that they can do the
stuff theyre planning to; that they met the criteria.

The idea of setting standards is that if someone
really learns something, then they will be able to
show you that they can use that learning
consistently and reliably in future situations. What
counts is not how much written or spoken
information they were given or how much time
they spent practising some skill. What counts is if
they can demonstrate the desired skills, knowledge
and attitudes reliably afterwards when asked to.
Their behaviour will meet a standard. For
example, one standard in NLP Practitioner training
might be:
Trainees are able to establish rapport.
Now, youll probably ask Well, how do we know
whether theyve met the standard? We need to be
a little more sensory specific. Performance Criteria
are sensory specific ways to measure a standard.
For example, to build rapport, we might say that
the trainee needs to calibrate the behaviours of the
other person (such as their breathing rate), pace
those behaviours, lead those behaviours, and re-
calibrate to check if leading is occurring. If we
were watching the trainee after they learned
rapport, we could ask ourselves:
Was the persons behaviour calibrated?
Was the calibrated behaviour paced?
Was the trainees behaviour then adjusted
(leading)?
Was the persons behaviour re-calibrated to
check that leading is occurring?
These are performance criteria. To get even more
precise, we might define the words we use by
referring to some standard definition, eg
For definitions of rapport, pacing, leading and
calibration, see Bolstad/Hamblett, 1998
Also we could define the range of the word
behaviour (which behaviours we want them to be
able to calibrate, pace and lead, at a minimum) eg:
Range of behaviour is: physical posture,
gestures, breathing rate, voice tone, speed of
speech, key words, sensory predicates.

You cannot effectively assess peoples behaviour
unless you know what your objective was first! Its
fairly obvious, in NLP terms, that having such
objectives for my training will deliver better results
than simply having a list of what I cover that says
5. Rapport skills. Its also clear that my trainees
will benefit by knowing the standards they are
being assessed with. After all, one of the things I
teach is that it helps to know what your goals are.

Validity and Reliability

Validity and Reliability are two ways of checking
on your assessments (Walklin, 1991, p 10). When I
go to check that trainees have met these
performance criteria, I want to make sure that the
method I use to check with (the assessment)
actually checks for the thing I meant it to. This is
called Validity. For example, if I decided to
assess the ability to establish rapport by asking if
someone could write a definition of rapport, or by
noticing if the person they sit down with smiles at
them, these would probably not be valid
assessments. What is called in some courses a
written integration may in fact not test for or
encourage integration at all, but merely test the
ability to copy isolated answers from a manual. If I
really wanted my Practitioners to integrate their
learning, I could set performance criteria for this,
and design a valid method of checking that
integration is occurring.

I also want to make sure that the method I use will
work reliably, meaning that the assessment gets the
same result each time it is used. For example, lets
say I ask our Training Assistants to sit in on pairs
doing an exercise at the training and check that
people are able to establish rapport. I may find that
one Assistant sits closer in than the others, frowns a
lot, and creates a climate where the trainees get
more anxious, and stop using their rapport skills.
Another Assistant may sit further away, smile, and
demonstrate the use of rapport skills herself as she
checks. The two Assistants may thus get quite
different results when they assess the same trainee,
meaning that the assessment is not reliable.
Much of the assessment on my trainings is done by
Assistants in this format, so I pay attention to
ensuring that Assistants use a reliable format, and
that trainees are assessed by more than one
Assistant..

Assessment and Evaluation

In traditional educational theory (Stock et alia,
1987, p 17, and p 31-32), Assessment refers to
checking each performance criterion in the way
Ive been discussing it. Evaluation refers to the
judgements I make based on that assessment.
Checking that someone can breathe in time with
someone is an assessment. Deciding whether
someone qualifies as an NLP Practitioner is an
Evaluation.

Assessment itself can be either formative
(happening as the training is going on) or
summative (happening at the end of a training).
The idea of summative assessment is to be able to
check that the trainee can do everything you
wanted them to, at the same time if need be. Its an
impressive aim to check this, but in practice its
pretty much an impossible dream (despite the fact
that schools keep trying to do it!). Summative
assessment leaves you with some difficult choices
in evaluation. Can you really test the whole
Practitioner course, and if not, how do you choose
which samples to include in the test? Do you fail
someone if they miss pieces, or do you tell them to
re-view set pieces? Formative assessments enable
you to make changes to the training as you go
along, in order to re-teach individuals any sections
that the assessment shows were not learned.

Assessment Tools

One of the most common ways of categorising tests
is to call them Objective or Subjective (Stock
et alia, 1987, p 85-100).

Objective tests are those where the correct
response is precisely determined. Obviously, if the
answer is either correct or not, the test is more
likely to be reliable (meaning it will work the same
way with every trainee; see above). However, the
test may not be valid! (It may not be testing what
you intended) There are a lot of very sophisticated
ways to find out if a test, or an item in a test, is
valid (Stock et alia, 1987, p 91-120). Often these
involve analysing the results of using the tests. One
important way of checking the validity of an
objective assessment is to use a taxonomy
(classification) of educational tests, which will be
described below. For now, note that examples of
objective tests include:

Multiple choice or multiple response items.
For example:

The establishment of rapport is a result of
a) calibration
b) matching behaviour
c) leading
d) both a and b
e) all of a, b and c

Newcomers to assessment sometimes generate
objective items which are not so valid. One
example with multiple choice is to make the correct
answer obvious by its precision, as in the following
case:

A strategy, in NLP terminology, is:
a) a sensory system
b) a positive anchor
c) the order and sequence of internal
representations leading to an outcome
d) a submodality change
e) a change process

Sequencing or matching exercises. For
example:

Link the following predicate words to their sensory
system using a line.(Visual and perspective are
already linked as an example for you)
Visual consider
Auditory perspective
Kinesthetic stink
Olfactory resonate
Gustatory bitter
Auditory digital grasp

True/False and Yes/No items. For example:

True/False: The presence of leading demonstrates
the establishment of rapport.

Recall/completion exercises. For example:

On the following diagram show the position of
Visual Recall in a normally organised right handed
person.

Persons Right Persons Left

Subjective tests require the assessor to make more
judgements about the quality of the trainees
response, and are thus more subject to biases such
as the halo effect (the sense that if most of it is
correct, probably it all is). Following are some
Subjective testing methods.

Essays and essay questions. For example:

1) A client tells you she suffers from panic attacks
before school tests.
A) Describe the process of collapsing anchors.
B) Discuss the pros and cons of using collapsing
anchors with test anxiety.

Such questions can be made more objective by
the establishment of clear criteria by the trainer.
For example, in A) above, the criteria might be:

-refers to the creation of two anchors (present state
and desired state, but this terminology is not
required).
-describes the simultaneous firing of the two
anchors.

Diaries and logs of work completed. For
example:

Keep a record (100 words per entry) of the results
of work with your next ten clients.

Case studies. For example:

Complete a one hour NLP change session with a
client and write a 1000 word report on it using the
RESOLVE model for NLP therapy.

Interviews. Asking questions such as:

How would you help someone with a phobia of
movie theatres?

Appraisal forms. A checklist or rating scale
such as the one an assessor uses when assessing the
competence of an applicant for a drivers licence.
For example:

Required Skill
In resourceful state smiles, fluent speech
Establishes rapport breathing at same rate
Sets outcome positive, sensory specific,
initiated by person, check for ecological
consequences made
Completes successful intervention client
reports positive change in feeling state
Futurepaces change

Checklists are often applied when observing or in a
simulation (see below). The more sensory specific
they are, the more reliable they become.

Simulations. The trainer sets up conditions as
close to reality as possible, but able to be assessed.
For example, Practitioner trainees could be asked
to set a wellformed outcome with an actor trained
to violate conditions of wellformedness in a
reliable way (saying what they dont want instead
of stating the outcome positively and so on). The
trainer would observe each trainees response.

Observation of a skill. A task is set and either
the results are assessed (eg, in the case of observing
someone establishing rapport, one might check if
leading occurred) or the process is assessed (eg in
the case of establishing rapport, one might check if
the person paced behaviour and tested for leading).
Most NLP trainers would agree that they want the
process to be correct, rather than the result,
provided that the trainee has a game plan for
what to do when the results are not as expected.
Observation is the most popular form of assessment
on NLP trainings. The most important point to re-
emphasise about its use is that for observation to be
reliable and valid, it needs to be done in a set
format and with an awareness of the performance
criteria being observed for.

Taxonomies of Learning

Finally in this overview of assessment, I want to
describe some important ways to classify
assessment processes. In 1956, Benjamin Bloom
(De Landsheere, 1990, p 179-181) developed a
taxonomy (classification) of Cognitive Educational
Objectives. Bloom pointed out that when we say
we want trainees to learn something, we may mean
one of six things:

1) Sometimes we just want to check that a trainee
has remembered a fact or theoretical statement
(Bloom calls this Knowledge). Eg List seven
types of behaviour which can be matched to
achieve rapport?
2) Sometimes we want to check that a trainee can
see the relationship between facts or theories,
describe a fact or theory in a new way, or
realise what is implied by a fact or theory
(Bloom calls this Comprehension). Eg When
working with a client, what implications does
the concept of rapport have for our choice of
sensory representational systems?
apply a fact or theory in a particular situation
(Bloom calls this Application). Eg You
notice that your new client disagrees with each
of the first five sentences you say to him. He
seems to enjoy disagreeing. How would you
build rapport with him?
chunk down on a fact or theory (Bloom calls
this Analysis). Eg What differences and what
similarities are there in the use of direct and
cross-over matching to achieve rapport?
chunk up on a fact or theory (Bloom calls this
Synthesis). Eg How does rapport help to
build human relationships?
evaluate a fact or theory based either on its
own internal consistency or based on external
standards (Bloom calls this Evaluation). Eg
When is rapport desirable and when is it not?
Explain in each case why you reach this
conclusion.

Blooms model is only a model. However it does
reveal certain interesting anomalies in much
training. Often written assessments are Knowledge
heavy. Certain subjects are often assessed only
with one classification of question.

There are many other taxonomies of learning. One
covered by me earlier in this book is the 4MAT, in
which learning is thought of in terms of answering
the four questions Why?, What?, How?, and What
if?

V Gerlach and A. Sullivan developed a taxonomy
for use with the learning of active skills,
discriminating between being able to Construct
(producing a product meeting specifications given
to them), and Demonstrate (performing a set of
behaviours without the specifications, and meeting
preset standards). After all, knowing that your
trainees can run the NLP phobia process by
following their notes is different to them being able
to do it without notes, and different again from
being able to modify the process in midstream to
cope with unexpected or additional factors.

D. R. Krathwohl (De Landsheere, 1990, p 185)
developed a taxonomy for assessing attitudes. At
the lower level it lists willingness to receive an
experience (eg being willing to experience rapport),
followed by being willing to respond (eg being
willing to create rapport), then valuing (eg
considering rapport as useful), organisation of the
new value into ones value system (installing the
value of rapport in ones hierarchy of values for
relationships), and characteristization, where the
value is integrated into ones sense of identity (eg
experiencing oneself as a person who is good at
rapport).

Levels of Learning and Assessment

Another taxonomy is Gregory Batesons levels of
learning (Dilts, 1996, p 226-241). Bateson
described four levels of learning. Blooms entire
taxonomy fits into his first two levels:
Learning I (Stimulus-Response style learning,
such as a rat learning by reinforcement to approach
a red object and avoid a blue one).
Learning II (Learning about the stimulus-
response process. Learning to recognise the wider
context in which the stimulus-response learning has
meaning, such as a rat learning that its valuable to
check out strange objects because they may be
positively reinforcing)
Learning III (Learning how to learn. This is
something that a rat doesnt do so well. But you
can, and thats what this article is about).
Learning IV (Learning about who it is that is
learning. Spiritual learning).

Bateson describes the difference between Learning
I and Learning II thus: you can reinforce a rat
(positively or negatively) when he investigates a
particular strange object, and he will appropriately
learn to approach it or avoid it. But the very
purpose of exploration is to get information about
which objects should be approached or avoided.
The discovery that a given object is dangerous is
therefore a success in the business of getting
information. The success will not discourage the rat
from future exploration of other strange objects.

Discussing Batesons work, Robert Dilts
emphasises the importance of considering the
meta-messages our teaching gives students. If I
only assess certain lower levels of learning, my
students will meta-learn that they only need to rote-
learn. There are other meta-messages
communicated by assessment. In their book
Dynamic Learning, Dilts and Epstein discuss the
notion of dynamic assessment (1995, p 325-344).
They say that if I find that a trainee cannot
remember the name of the patterns I am teaching, I
have only assessed the specific content of her
memory. If I at the same time investigate how she
does not remember the patterns, I will enable her to
learn how to learn them. Dilts and Epstein (1995, p
332) say With Dynamic Assessment the way we
assess whether somebody is having trouble spelling
automatically tells us what to do to improve the
spelling. The whole point is, the way that I tell
that the child has a problem and the way that I treat
the problem need to be related. The assessment and
the intervention have to go together. So that if I
assess that the child is having a problem spelling
because his or her eyes are going down and to her
left, I can tell the child, Put your eyes up and to
the left and you will spell better and she will.

Taking Charge Of Learning

John Stock and colleagues (Stock et alia, 1987, p
201-205) refer to the same dilemma which is
mentioned by Dilts and Epstein. They say that the
combination of assessment and adjustment of
learning is evaluation (which we defined earlier as
the judgements we make as a result of assessment).
They say Evaluation is the process of gathering
information about what is presently happening and
comparing the results of that information-gathering
with a view to what should be happening.

They emphasise that another important
metamessage about assessment is given by our
decision about who is doing the assessing. They
suggest that if the trainer takes charge of all
evaluation, they are limiting the logical level of
learning, by preventing the trainees from learning
how to learn! Trainees who are assessed only from
outside become increasingly passive and accepting
of outside evaluation. They are like rats being
taught a metamessage that it is not useful to explore
new objects, but only to use the ones the trainers
provide. In NLP terms, trainer controlled
assessment inhibits the trainee from being at
cause in their learning.

There are many ways in which assessment can be
delivered into the hands of learners. Learners can
be given the specific performance criteria for a task
before commencing it, and asked to assess how
well they met those criteria and what they need to
do to adjust afterwards. Learners can be invited to
mark each others written tests based on objective
answers or on performance criteria. Trainees can be
placed in groups where each person takes turns
being an observer and assessor of the skills taught,
and then delivers assessment to another person
(thus going meta to the level of learning the skill
itself). These methods also lead to an integration of
the evaluation of learning and the evaluation of the
training. John Stock and his colleagues (1987, p
204) say Self evaluation means that information
will be gathered about: The achievement of the
trainees; not just knowledge and skills but also
attitudes or qualities. The process of the training;
the methods, resources and style of the trainer as
well as the context of the training namely the
training organisation and that the information will
be gathered by the individuals to whom the
information refers.

Finally, it is important to notice that learning to use
rapport skills in a training is not the same as
learning to use rapport skills in ones relationship
with clients. NLP trainers Joseph OConnor and
John Seymour (1994, p 202-203) describe four
stages of evaluation of organisational training:

1) Live evaluation of the learning as it is
happening, in order to adjust course. This is what
we previously termed formative assessment.
2) End of training evaluation of the learning and
the training itself. This is summative assessment.
3) Transfer evaluation of how well the trainees
have taken the skills back to their workplace.
4) Organisational evaluation of whether the
training has actually helped the organisational
goals it was set up to meet.

These last two types of evaluation broaden the
notion of training again, suggesting that training is
only a means to an end. The real question is
whether that end has been achieved, and how to
achieve it.

The Risk Of Escalating Standards

As trainers learn about and apply these distinctions
in evaluation, the standard of evaluation, I believe,
will improve. This is different to escalating the
requirements for certification.

When trainers first begin actually evaluating their
trainees carefully, they frequently discover, with a
shock, how little of what they assumed was taught
is actually being learned! They then often start
thinking about how they could make sure that,
before these people are released, they learn more.
This is a well recognised phenomenon in
professional training. In training both teachers and
nurses, for example, I have explored with new
trainers the shock they face when they realise just
how little new graduates in the field actually know!
Then, there is the shock they experience when they
realise, on thinking back, just how little they
themselves actually knew when they first graduated
from their own basic course.

In fact, most of what I know about NLP, I learned
after my original NLP Practitioner training.
Practitioners do not need to have my level of
knowledge, based as it is on the deepening of
understanding I got from the Master Practitioner
course, from ongoing use of the techniques, from
ongoing reading, and from actually working out
how to teach it to someone else. Yes; new
Practitioners will be raw; they will have major
misunderstandings in some areas; they will have
oversimplified views of what NLP is. This is
normal. But the effects of NLP Practitioner training
do not end at the moment my graduates leave the
training room on the last day. They continue as
Practitioners review in their minds and make sense
of what has happened. For my course to succeed,
your graduates only need to be Practitioners, not
Master Practitioners, and not Trainers.

The attempt by new trainers (in any professional
field) to escalate standards results in the gradual
lengthening of trainings, or in their becoming
overburdened by theory and requirements. Let me
give you an example from the field of
hypnotherapy. From 1955 to 1961 a group of
highly respected authorities including Leslie Le
Cron, William Kroger MD and Milton Erickson
MD organised a travelling teaching group called
Hypnosis Seminars, teaching a three day course
in hypnosis for dentists, doctors and psychologists.
Their opinion was that basic hypnosis is easy to
learn, though it may take years of practise to
become expert. They did not believe it essential
that its students have intensive background study in
basic psychology, psychopathology, or
psychodynamics. They held that the average
physician, psychologist or dentist could, with this
minimal three day training, be trusted to use
hypnotic techniques in his practice or research in a
primarily beneficial way. (John Watkins, 1965, p
56).

These experts understood that basic trainings are
basic trainings. Escalating the level of theory
taught in a training, or even the amount of practice,
does not necessarily improve results. Consider the
field of counselling and psychotherapy. Katherine
Mair (1992, p 150) reports that Hattie et al (1984)
reviewed forty-three studies in which
professionals defined as those who had
undergone a formal clinical training in
psychology, psychiatry, social work or nursing,
were compared with paraprofessionals, educated
people with no clinical training, for effectiveness in
carrying out a variety of psychotherapeutic
treatments. They came to the unpalatable
conclusion that the paraprofessionals were, on
average, rather more effective.

Summary

I have covered a large selection of distinctions
about the process of assessment and evaluation in
training. I discussed the usefulness of setting
standards and sensory specific performance criteria
to check them by. I pointed out that assessment
needs to be valid (related to the criteria being
assessed) and reliable (repeatable). Assessment,
combined with judgements about how to change
course in order to meet the desired criteria, is called
evaluation. There are a vast number of ways to
assess. Those that have one specific correct
response (such as multiple choice, true false,
matching, and diagram completion items) are
called objective. Those that are open to
interpretation (like essay questions, diaries, case
studies, simulations and observed exercises) are
called subjective.

Whichever type of assessment is being used, it is
important to clarify the logical level of learning
which is desired, because what is assessed tends to
influence what you get. In terms of cognitive
learning, for example, learning can be considered at
the level of knowledge, comprehension,
application, analysis and synthesis, or Evaluation.
Learning can be thought of as rote learning
(Learning I), meta-learning (Learning II), learning
how to learn (Learning III) and spiritual learning
(Learning IV) using Batesons logical levels.
Assessment can also be designed so that learners
themselves participate in it, and so that the very
process of assessment gives the directions for
increasing success. Finally, learning can be
assessed as you go (formative assessment), at the
end of training (summative assessment), in transfer
to settings outside the training, or in terms of the
wider goals that the training was designed to reach.
The aim of learning about assessment is not to
escalate the standards of training; it is to ensure
those standards are being met.

The aim of this chapter is not to set down rules
about how you should assess. It is to allow you to
step a logical level above your assessment and
evaluation: to evaluate the evaluator, so that both
your teaching and your trainees learning is
enhanced.


Exercise 16.1: Using Blooms Taxonomy

For a topic you are familiar with:

1) Design a written assessment to check
someones Knowledge of this area. Use an
objective method such as multiple choice,
matching items, true/false or item completion.
2) Expand this written assessment to include
some element of Comprehension.
3) Design an appraisal form for assessing the
Application of this material.
4) Write a short answer essay question to assess
each of the following levels of learning about
this topic: Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.
Write your criteria for accepting an answer to
each of these as correct (write it so that any
trainer in your field could assess the answers
reliably).
5) Design a small group exercise which will
provide peer assessment of as many of these
levels as possible, as well as enabling people to
discover how they are attempting to learn, so
that they can adjust their method, if they would
like to learn more effectively (dynamic
assessment).

Producing Excellence

When You Really Learn How To Teach, You
Teach How To Learn

I live in a small city in New Zealand, called
Christchurch. At the Teachers Training College
here, a few years ago, there was a rather eccentric
lecturer named John Moffit. John was known for
his strong view about the role of the teacher. One
of the other lecturers arrived at work on this
particular morning and passed by the main lecture
theatre on the way to his class. He happened to
glance in, and saw John Moffit giving a most
rousing lecture from the front of the room. John
was gesturing enthusiastically, and eagerly writing
on the board. But when the other lecturer looked
around the lecture theatre, it was totally empty. A
little concerned about Johns sanity, he decided to
raise the matter gently at morning tea later on.

John, he observed I saw you teaching over in
the lecture theatre this morning.

Yeeees. John replied in a thick New Zealand
accent, and with a wide smile.

But John, I must say I noticed that there didnt
seem to be any students there.

Yeees, thets roight. No-one turned up this
morning.

And I noticed, the other man continued, that
you were still teaching. He waited hoping for
some simple explanation.

Sure enough, John replied Yeees, thets roight.
Well, they pay me to teach, and thets what I was
doing!

It was at this moment, the other lecturer told me,
that I finally understood that teaching and learning
are two separate things.

This is a book for teachers. But its about learning.

NLPs First Adventure With Teaching

NLP was developed by modelling some
remarkable communicators. Virginia Satir, for
example, was a highly skilled change agent. But
she confesses in her comments in the first NLP
text, The Structure of Magic that before working
with Bandler and Grinder, ...although I was aware
that change was happening, I was unaware of the
specific elements that went into the transaction
which made change possible. In the same book,
Milton Erickson says, In reading this book, I
learned a great deal about the things that Ive done
without knowing about them.

That is to say, Satir and Erickson were skilled, but
they were, like most experts, unconsciously skilled.
They did not know how they did what they did. To
the extent that this was true, their ability to assist
someone else to learn those skills was limited. To
that extent, they could teach, but not in a way that
others would easily learn. NLP is a system for
enabling skills to be transmitted from experts to
learners; some of whom are novices and some of
whom are nearly experts themselves.

Maslows Learning Stages

Maslows learning stages provide another
framework for understanding this process of
learning. Maslow describes learning as having four
steps:

Unconsciously unskilled
Consciously unskilled
Consciously skilled
Unconsciously skilled

Stage One: Unconsciously Unskilled:
Unfortunately, when people first hear about the
idea of learning skills like NLP, they often suspect
there's nothing to learn. After all, you can either
talk to people or you can't. Youre either
resourceful or youre not. Aren't some people just
naturally good at it and some not? And isn't it all
just theories anyway? This kind of question always
occurs at the first stage of learning something. Tad
James calls it Premature Closure, and he says its
almost as bad as premature.... Well, anyway, its a
problem. Probably you have met people whove
read the first chapter of a book in your field and
now think they know the whole field. They cant
do what you can do; but they dont know they cant
do it! In 4MAT terms, the unconsciously unskilled
person hasnt had the Why question answered.

I like to tell a story about this, to preframe the
learning process for my students. Remember
learning to ride a pushbike? Quite often very young
children are eager to get a bike. Perhaps they've
had a tricycle before; that's much the same thing,
right? Wrong. Going from three wheels to two
turns out to be a major problem. The kid who was
just waiting to ride off into the sunset suddenly
comes to suspect that she or he may never ride a
bike. Perhaps it's just not their scene. They have
now reached the second stage of learning.

Stage Two: Consciously Unskilled. You can't do
it and you know you can't. A lot of people give up
at stage two, but for those of us who stuck at it,
riding a bike gradually became more possible. At
first, someone pushed you, letting go for a brief
time. You could ride at those moments, but you
knew you had to hold on for your life. The slightest
move to the side and you came off.

Stage Three: Consciously Skilled: You can do it,
but its something you have to keep remembering
consciously to do. In 4MAT terms, the person at
this stage has the What and some of the How,
but theyre not ready for the What If yet. Some
people give up at this stage too. They say, Sure, I
can do it. But it's a lot easier to get around the
natural waythe way I always have before. Maybe
it only works for certain people. I know when I'm
doing it I feel really phoney. If youre a trainer
and your students are doing their first exercises
with your material, you may hear some of this
stuff. And theres some truth in it; what theyre
doing probably is more rigid, more rule bound than
what an expert would do. Whats important is not
to agree or to argue with the complaint, but to out-
frame the comment with this model, because they
will eventually reach....

Stage Four: Unconsciously Skilled: It's just
practice that enables you to get to stage four, to
expertise. Did you make it with bike riding? Can
you ride a bike while thinking about where you're
going, while carrying a parcel or waving to
someone? If you can, the actual work of keeping
your balance on a bike is now something you know
so well, it's unconscious. You can do it and it just
happens without thinking about it. In 4MAT terms,
youre ready to ask What ifs. What if you rode
while holding a parcel? What if you rode over a
gravel surface? What if you let go of the handlebars
for a moment? Learning other skills is exactly like
that.

Interestingly, this model was well understood in
medieval Japan. The 16th century Zen teacher
Takuan explains the shift from unconscious
incompetence, through conscious incompetence
and conscious competence, to unconscious
competence:

Let me explain in terms of the martial arts. As a
beginner you know nothing of stance or sword
position, so you have nothing in yourself to dwell
on mentally. If someone strikes at you, you just
fight, without thinking of anything. Then when
you learn various things like stance, how to wield a
sword, where to place the attention, and so on, your
mind lingers on various points, so you find yourself
all tangled up when you try to strike. But if you
practise day after day and month after month,
eventually stance and swordplay dont hang on
your mind any more, and you are like a beginner
who knows nothing ... . The cogitating side of your
brain will vanish and you will come to rest in a
state where there is no concern..

Ever known someone who got married and was
unconsciously unskilled about building a
relationship: someone who thought there wasn't
anything to learn? Then watch them as they learn
new ways of behaving. Probably they feel phoney
when they try and act or speak in new ways: they're
consciously skilled. It takes a lot of practice to
change fully. You may even 'fall off the bike' a few
times in the early stages. But in the end, it can also
work. The question for us as trainers is how to
support people shifting from consciously skilled to
unconsciously skilled. And thats where the
Dreyfus model of expertise, described below, fits
in. However, John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn
point out that there is a step beyond Unconsciously
Skilled.

Step Five: Consciously Unconsciously Skilled:
This is the stage you need to be at to teach. You
can do the skill unconsciously, and you also know
consciously how you do it at the unconscious level.
This is the level that Virginia Satir and Milton
Erickson were struggling to reach, when NLP
began and studied their skills. In terms of their
therapeutic skill, there was no problem. But in
terms of being able to teach that skill to others,
there was a need for them to get more conscious
about what was happening (unconsciously) as they
did therapy. On at least two levels, thats what this
article is about: your getting conscious about your
unconscious skill.

A Model For Understanding Generalised
Unconscious Skill

Stuart Dreyfus and Hubert Dreyfus (at the
University of California, 1980) studied chess
players and airline pilots to identify the specific
differences in the strategies, sensory awareness and
belief systems of novices (people who were
consciously skilled) and experts (people who were
unconsciously skilled). Patricia Benner researched
new nursing graduates and experienced nurse
clinicians; confirming that the Dreyfus model also
explained the differences between them.

The Dreyfus studies identified 5 distinct stages in
the development of unconscious skill from
conscious skill. I'll describe these as they relate to
one-to-one work as an NLP Practitioner with
clients, and you can easily understand how the
same pattern occurs in your field.

1) Novice. (eg. early in an NLP Practitioner
course) The novice has no experience with the
situations where they'll be using their training.
They are taught certain context-free rules to guide
what they do (adjust your voice tone to match the
client's; identify the submodalities (the details of
how the person thinks of their internal experience;
for example if they make internal pictures of the
experience, whether they see things as close or far
away) for a belief change by asking this list of
questions; when a client is associating into trauma,
use the NLP trauma cure; and so on). Left alone in
a situation, the novice cannot be expected to
succeed because they don't know which of the
"rules" are priorities, or when to make an exception
to the rule. At this stage it's complex enough just
to remember the rules.

2) Advanced Beginner. (eg at the end of a
successful NLP Practitioner course). The advanced
beginner can recognise what the Dreyfus model
calls "guidelines" for a situation. These are like
rules, except they cannot be stated in black and
white. An advanced beginner might say "I began
asking about submodalities by checking distance,
because she kept saying that the problem was
closing in on her" or "He told me the situation was
traumatic, but he had a very calm, slow voice and
when I explored further it was his last counsellor
who had told him that. Actually he just wanted to
be more resourceful in those situations, so I
decided to use collapse anchors". Guidelines can
and are taught at a Practitioner course, but depend
on the trainee having at least some experience of
"what usually happens" so as to notice when a
guideline applies. In a Practitioner course, rules
can be given before a practise exercise, guidelines
are best explained after.

3) Competent. (eg after some weeks of NLP
practical work, and/or after a Master Practitioner
course. This level took 2-3 years for nurses in the
Benner study to reach). The competent practitioner
can manage the complexities of actual client
situations, and has an ability to combine processes
and design interventions as part of longer range
goals. They no longer get thrown off track by
"unexpected" responses to the NLP processes they
are using, and they have a general feeling that they
can "cope". The competent practitioner is at ease
applying a vast array of guidelines, and so will
enjoy learning from less structured, "inductive",
simulation-style training's. The competent
practitioner has everything ready to allocate the
running of the NLP processes to their unconscious
mind; they are on the threshold of unconscious
skill.

4) Proficient. The proficient practitioner is
unconsciously skilled at the things the competent
practitioner "manages". When dealing with a very
complex client situation, they only need to be
aware of a few most unique aspects in order to
decide what to do next. It's not simply a matter of
unconsciously applying the rules and guidelines
however. The proficient practitioner accesses their
vast array of past experiences instead of the
guidelines. They therefore cannot necessarily even
put into words how they are deciding. The
decision comes as a response to hundreds of
accessed VAKOGAd memories, rather than the Ad
"principles" a competent practitioner is aware of
being at ease with. A proficient practitioner, if
asked, will often explain their actions in terms of
"maxims" -guidelines that describe what to the
novice would be unintelligible nuances of the
situation; which seem to mean one thing at one
time and quite another later on. Some of NLP
trainer Richard Bandlers training videos contain
good examples of such "maxims"; suggestions
which sound useful but may seem puzzlingly self-
contradictory (they may also simply be self-
contradictory of course!). Their criteria are no
longer able to be described adequately in sensory
specific terms. The leap from competent to
proficient is the breakthrough in training. It's the
difference that enables expertise.

5) Expert. The expert has an "intuitive" grasp of
the situation and zeros in on the issues that need
attention without any wasted "problem solving"
time. In the Dreyfus research, for example, one
chess master, when asked why he made a particular
move, explained "Because it felt right. It looked
good". An expert will confidently challenge rules
and guidelines based on such intuition. Expert
practise is holistic rather than step-by-step. Both
Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson were fascinated
by NLP developers Bandler and Grinder's ability to
discern new rules and guidelines in their methods.
An expert could, of course, model their own
behaviour. But (if the Dreyfus model is right) the
consequences of training based on such modelling
is never "the same" as expert behaviour. Expert
behaviour is qualitatively different; it uses
experience as the comparison in the Test phase of
the decision-making strategy, instead of a set of
guidelines. Experience means collected internal
memories of previous events. For simpler tasks,
NLP trainers have been innovative in developing
simulations which install several hundred
experiences of a particular comparison image. For
a task as multifaceted as "being an NLP
Practitioner" the choice is between actual
experience based installation on one hand and
reducing the task unholistically to separate chunks
on the other.

Getting Started

The Dreyfus study noted that most formal
(conscious) training tends to aim at the first three
stages of expert development. This is extremely
useful for new trainees, and very frustrating for
those who are already proficient or expert, a
situation well discuss later in the article.

On the other hand, teaching the first three stages is
frustrating for the teacher, if they are an expert
themselves. Remember that, as an expert, they use
intuitive maxims to guide their behaviour, and
access full previous experiences. They are
unconsciously skilled, and they want the trainees to
be unconsciously skilled as well. This is the
problem that Satir and Erickson both had. Both
Satir and Erickson had been teaching
psychotherapists for some time when Grinder and
Bandler began modelling them. But both had
been trying to teach from the expert position.

This, it turns out, is a much slower way to get
someone through the first stages towards expertise.
NLP developer John Grinder says that Milton
Erickson was very impressed when John delivered
an induction using Ericksons own patterns, in their
first phone conversation. Erickson himself had
much less success quickly teaching someone those
patterns (rules and guidelines) than Bandler and
Grinder did with their model using their knowledge
of linguistics. Outside NLP, many Ericksonian
therapists still rote learn and repeat Ericksonian
scripts as they attempt to leap straight from
unskilled to expert, without learning the rules,
guidelines and maxims that make expertise work!

Unconsciously Skilled
Expert
Proficient
Competent
Advanced Beginner
Novice
Consciously
Skilled

Consciously
Unskilled

Unconsciously
Unskilled

Novices Dont Want Fluency, They Want Rules!

I believe that successful teaching of novices
involves being able to reduce ones expertise to a
set of guidelines, and even further to a simple set of
rules. Put another way, teaching involves being
able to be conscious of the processes occurring
when you are unconsciously skilled at what you do.
Teachers who do not do that become magnificent
demonstrators of their own expertise, but their
students become awestruck rather than aware. Its
one thing for a student to think that Milton
Erickson is the best psychotherapist in the world.
Its quite another to be able to do what Erickson
does.

Successful teaching of novices requires the ability
to oversimplify life into precise sets of points
(seven plus or minus two at a time). To the expert,
their own skill is an undivided flow. To the teacher
of novices, that skill can be chunked into separate
and specific units to be taught sequentially, in the
order they are most likely to be used. Instead of
rambling from subject to subject, teachers of
novices benefit from creating quite non-real step by
step instructions, and emphasising each of their key
points at the expense of the real life merging of one
truth into another. This means creating specific lists
of key points (ideally no more than 7 in a list) and
teaching to those points.

For example, as an NLP trainer I know that
anchoring is just a way of reframing
experiences by association, and that all rapport
involves anchoring a state; I know that
everything in NLP implies everything else. But
teaching novices involves talking as if these things
are all separate entities. As if anchoring was a
thing in itself, to use after youve established
rapport and set an outcome, and to use by
following four basic keys to anchoring.

In teaching each subject to novices, I first decide
what the rules are and teach those (the What
phase of the 4MAT). Then I demonstrate using
those rules (moving us into the How phase of the
4MAT). I do not demonstrate doing the process the
way I would as an expert. Thats just
showpersonship. If I do decide to use something
beyond my rules, in a demonstration, my aim is to
have this extra skill fit seem-less-ly into the rules. I
demonstrate (ie display up front) what I taught; the
rules. If someone challenges the rules at this stage,
Ill often ask them to hold that till after theyve
tried out the process.

Advanced Beginners Want Guidelines

After the trainees have completed the exercise, I
discuss what actually happened, and we discover
that the rules are not always perfect. As we
consider What happens if... (the last phase of the
4MAT) Im teaching the guidelines; when to vary
the rules, when one rule takes precedence over
another, when to abandon the rules. The trainees
are now, in relation to that task, advanced
beginners. In planning this stage of my teaching, I
think carefully about how the rules relate to each
other, and where one takes precedence or another
becomes irrelevant.

If I had raised these issues earlier, I would have
come across as denying my own rules (and
supported the students staying unconsciously
unskilled). For example, if a trainee complains that
associating someone into a state isnt always
necessary before anchoring, before theyve even
done any anchoring exercises, I dont get into a
discussion about the guidelines. I simply
acknowledge their idea, say well come back to it,
and ask them to do the exercise. At my next time
teaching that process, Ill design a preframe to
ensure the rule is accepted.

Beyond Conscious Training A) Case Studies

Proficient and expert practitioners will tend to find
step-by-step trainings and even simplified
"simulations" too reductionist (reducing real life to
a set of patterns). And competent practitioners
sometimes get the feeling that theyve collected so
many guidelines theyre going to burst. Theyre
seeking something more. So how could training
support them developing from competence to
expertise? How could it support the leap from
accessing guidelines to accessing whole
experiences and trusting your unconscious mind to
select the guidelines to use? The four answers Ill
discuss here are the case study, unconscious
installation, consultative support and assisting at
trainings.

By the case study I mean here an example
presented by an expert, for study by practitioners.
Such a study will provide examples of guidelines
for advanced beginners or competent practitioners.
It also provides vicarious experiential learning for
practitioners moving towards expertise. Examples
in the NLP literature include "Virginia Satir: The
Patterns of her Magic" by Steve Andreas, "Magic
In Action" by Richard Bandler, and the retelling of
Milton Erickson's casework in his essays and in
NLP books such as Phoenix by David Gordon
and Maribeth Meyers-Anderson. Videos and
audiotapes of advanced NLP or real client sessions,
such as my RESOLVE video series, are another
great source. Case studies contain far more than the
guidelines. A trainee can go back to them and
discover their own new guidelines, or make
intuitive connections to other situations. In that
sense, they are packaged experience.

Many of the stories I tell as metaphors on a training
are case studies in this sense. They become a
vicariously experienced addition to the trainees
collection of real life experiences. You may
yourself have had the experience of working with
someone, and suddenly thinking Hey; this person
is just like so-and-so that my trainer worked with..
Having intuitively correlated the two cases, you
then act not from rules or guidelines, and not by
simply copying a script, but by responding to the
deeper similarities.

Beyond Conscious Training b) Unconscious
Installation

Unlike rules and guidelines, the maxims which
experts use are installed at an unconscious level.
When the expert attempts to explain them
consciously, they often sound obscure or self-
contradictory. In NLP training, I aim to install
patterns such as the Milton model language
patterns (originally used by Milton Erickson) at an
unconscious level. Having presented the patterns as
rules and guidelines, most of my focus in a training
goes into using them again and again, in the state
(of relaxation or trance) that I want students to
access them. In this way, the students build up a
real sense of familiarity with the sound of the
patterns: the type of familiarity that is called
expertise. The number of experiences of Milton
Ericksons language patterns needed for this to
occur is dramatically less than would be expected
from the years that it traditionally took for an
Ericksonian therapist to learn to talk like Erickson.

Reports of the success of unconscious installation
by Photoreading, an NLP based speed reading
system (Scheele, 1996), also suggest that some
degree of expertise is able to be assimilated without
the person being conscious of the learning at all.

Beyond Conscious Training c) Consultative
Support

By consultative support, I mean the kind of
experience practitioners get discussing their own
work (especially using audio taped sessions) with a
supervisor or consultant at their own or a
"higher" stage of expertise. Consultative support is
not training, but it is a next step in developing
expertise, after training. Simply attending more
trainings and learning more guidelines doesn't
create expertise. Consultative support can.
Counsellors and other change agents frequently
make an ongoing arrangement to meet with a
similarly trained professional (perhaps once a
fortnight for one-two hours) in order to discuss
their casework in supervision. Mentoring and
coaching in business settings meet a similar need.
For you as a trainer, the role of support consultant
allows you to assist your students as they move
beyond training. I believe this arrangement is
ethically appropriate for all those working with
people skills, and I recommend the following
guidelines.

1. Use a group format. Groups provide a wider
range of experiences to share and learn from,
allowing for cross fertilisation of ideas and skills.
Issues described by one practitioner almost
invariably provide insights for issues being dealt
with by other practitioners in the group.

2. Structure the sessions, to allow time for each
person to discuss issues from their one to one work
or their learning as a practitioner.

3. Focus on the outcome of expertise. Traditional
counselling supervision is focused on problems,
just as traditional counselling is. NLP focuses
instead on successes. Celebrate successes as well as
puzzling over unsolved cases.

4. Direct the consultative support at the
practitioners next step towards expertise.
Emphasise rules with new practitioners, and share
guidelines with those who have memorised the
rules and found the exceptions. For competent
practitioners, though, explore the unique challenges
of each particular client relationship, and share
stories of other similar relationships. Explore the
unique ways in which the practitioner is behaving
towards this client, as clues to how they could
improve their success.

Beyond Conscious Training D: Assisting At
Trainings

Training is an ongoing relationship. Your work
with course participants often creates a deep sense
of personal bonding between them and you.
Furthermore, you have much more to offer them
than formal training. Consultative support is one
way to move your relationship with them beyond
the training roles. Another way is to invite them to
assist on your trainings. My assistant trainers build
a very different interaction with me. I provide them
with:
An opportunity to review the content of the
training from a higher level.
An opportunity to study my training skills
without being immersed in trying to learn the
content I am teaching.
An opportunity to get high quality feedback
from me, and to ask me higher level questions
about what I am teaching.
Recognition in the NLP community as experts.
A chance to practice explaining and coaching
skills (training).
Opportunities to have fun.
The chance to add immensely to their
repertoire of experiences leading to expertise.

They provide me with a number of benefits too,
including:
Managing some of the logistics of my
trainings, such as organising refreshments.
Providing my students with valued personal
contact, help and coaching.
Individually assisting participants to achieve
course objectives.
Providing verbal and written testimonials
which help people choose my trainings and my
products.
Giving me expert feedback about how I am
coming across in the training, and how
participants are succeeding.
Organising support services for my training
institute, such as running a library, offering
consultative support, and organising study
groups.

Case Study: A. Introductory Level

Recently my organisation ran a series of short (one
and a half hour) training sessions, some for 100
people new to NLP and some for 50 NLP
Practitioners. The comparison of my two sessions
(one at each level) illustrates much of what Ive
described above about the difference between
training novices and training competent
Practitioners.

My session for people new to NLP explored the
topic of Visionary Leadership. Dealing with people
who were mainly unconsciously skilled about such
NLP refinements as Time Lines, first second and
third position, mission setting and sensory system
use, I spent approximately half my session
answering the Why question. I told stories about
a collection of visionary leaders: Walt Disney,
Steven Spielberg, Kate Sheppard (who enabled
New Zealand to be the first country which gave the
vote to women), Steve Gurney (New Zealands top
triathelete, and an ardent advocate of our NLP
services), Kate White (editor of Redbook
magazine) and Ted Turner. In doing so I explained
how each of these people embodied certain basic
qualities of visionary leadership, which enabled
them to succeed. I framed NLP as the systematic
study and replication of such excellence. By the
time I asked if they would be interested in learning
how to do this, people were all but pleading to be
told (which I treat as a positive response).

My handout listed nine keys to visionary
leadership. These are rules, in the Dreyfus model,
and included such things as setting a mission,
having a long future time line, and being able to
use the three perceptual positions. They suggested
that Visionary Leadership is a step by step process:
Do A, B and C and you get D. I went through
these rules illustrating each by referring back to my
original examples (this is the What phase). I then
focused on one of these nine (sense of mission) and
had the participants each answer four questions
leading to their identification of a personal mission
(giving them a sample of the How of Visionary
Leadership). They discussed their responses in
pairs, and we concluded with a few brief questions
(What if). This was a moving experience: One
older man stood up to say that he had finally found
something hed been searching for all his life.
Several were in tears, describing the power of the
process.

Case Study: B. Advanced Level

My workshop for the NLP Practitioners was on
setting tasks for clients. It needed very little
answering of the Why question because these
participants had already worked with clients and
knew that there would be advantages to being able
to ensure clients took more responsibility for their
changes. I wound into the session by telling a
couple of inspiring stories of Milton Ericksons
work setting tasks with clients. I briefly outlined a
series of pre-framing issues about setting tasks, and
had them get into pairs ready for the exercise.

Each person was then asked to tell their partner
about a change they wanted to make in their life
(ideally one that they had tried to achieve
previously and not yet succeeded with). They used
the preframing I had just explained to set up an
agreement with their partner, to design a task for
their partners change issue. They then separated
and I began going through a series of general
categories of therapeutic task, detailing where each
would be useful, and giving examples from my
own and others work. While this answered the
What question, it was also part of the How
because each person was searching for a useful task
to set for their partner. After my presentation of the
types of task, they took ten minutes to select and
design a task for their partner, met together again,
and delivered the task. They had arranged to
contact each other by phone in one months time to
check the results. We closed with a brief question
time to deal with What if issues.

In this workshop, then, my focus was not on rules. I
gave some guidelines for selecting tasks, but relied
on my case illustrations to convey the feeling of
how I choose tasks. And the participants were
engaged in a live case study as they learned. Most
of the session was taken up by What and How.
My aim was to shift students further along the path
from being just consciously skilled, towards
expertise. Participants said at the end that they felt
more equipped to actually use tasking in their
practices.

Summary

NLP trainer and co-developer Robert Dilts
emphasises the value of getting different
descriptions of any situation. In this chapter Ive
considered Teaching and Learning from the
perspective of two separate models. The first model
is Abraham Maslows Learning Steps model, in
which learning is considered to happen in a
sequence of Unconsciously Unskilled, Consciously
Unskilled, Consciously Skilled and Unconsciously
Skilled. Julie Silverthorn and John Overdurf add to
that sequence the trainers stance: Consciously
Unconsciously Skilled.

The second model is Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus
model of Expertise, which holds that expertise
develops through the levels of Novice (rules),
Advanced Beginner (guidelines), Competent
(integrated guidelines), Proficient (accessing past
experience and unconscious maxims), and Expert
(intuitive). I recommended case studies,
unconscious installation, consultative support and
assisting as processes for Competent, Proficient
and Expert practitioners.

These models are only guidelines. But by
integrating them and developing your own maxims,
youll enrich your teaching. For more case studies
of their use, Id recommend two processes.

1) Check out some videos of NLP training (eg my
Transforming Communication set).
2) Video or audio record your next training, and
discuss it with a colleague, bearing in mind these
guidelines.

John Moffit may have been right. He was paid to
teach, and he was teaching. There are many things
to learn about teaching. But thats not really what
this book is about. Its about Learning. Thats why
you teach.

Exercise 17.1: Beginners and Experts

1) Select a core process you teach.
2) Write at least three reasons why people in the
context where you teach would want to learn
this process.
3) List the 5-7 key steps of the process.
4) Identify 5-7 core rules which you would
emphasise in teaching this process to novices.
5) Identify at least three guidelines about how
to apply these rules in different situations.
6) Write a 500 word case study of your use of the
process, giving as much sensory specific data
as possible.
7) Design a task you could set to enable more
advanced learners to discover some more
refined distinctions about how and when the
process works.
8) Plan two 2 hour workshops on the process; one
for beginners, and one for experienced
practitioners.
9) Imagine you have, in your training for
beginners, one person who is actually an
experienced practitioner. Design a task which
they could do, which would challenge them at
the competent-proficient level while they
participate in a training for novices.

Exercise 17.2: Ericksons Teaching

1) Read the book A Teaching Seminar With
Milton Erickson by Jeff Zeig (1980).
2) Identify a new pattern in Ericksons teaching
process (as opposed to his therapy processes).
3) Write an essay about it.

About The Author

Dr Richard Bolstad is a trainer with the
International NLP Association, and five other
International training organisations. He teaches
NLP Practitioners each year in Japan, Europe and
New Zealand. Together with his late partner
Margot Hamblett, Joseph OConnor, Tim
Murphey, Lynn Timpany, Bryan Royds and other
trainers, he has run NLP Trainer trainings
recognised by INLPA. This book presents the core
material from that training. He is also an
internationally authorised trainer of Chinese Chi
Kung, and he and the late Margot Hamblett were
the developers of the Transforming
Communication Seminar. They were the authors of
three previous books, including "Transforming
Communication", which is used as a text in several
New Zealand degree programs, including at
Auckland Medical School. Their articles have
appeared in a number of magazines internationally,
including Anchor Point and NLP World. Richard's
doctoral project was based on the work that he and
Margot did training psychiatrists and social
workers in Bosnia-Herzegovina to deal with the
psychological trauma of the Balkan wars. He has a
New Zealand Diploma of Teaching, and is a
Registered Nurse with a decade of experience
teaching in the tertiary field in New Zealand.
Richards company, Transformations International
Consulting & Training Ltd., can be reached at:

Transformations International Consulting & Training Ltd
Phone/Fax +64-3-337-1852,
Email learn@transformations.net.nz
26 Southampton St, Christchurch 8002, New Zealand
Internet site www.transformations.net.nz

Margot Hamblett and Richard Bolstad

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Index

4MAT
Advertising bulletin boards
Advertising directories
Advertising internet
Advertising introductory talks
Advertising magazines
Advertising mail
Advertising newspapers
Anchors gestures
Anchors music
Anchors stage
Anchors tonality
Anchors chaining
Assessments objective
Assessments reliability
Assessments standards
Assessments subjective
Assessments validity
Assistants
Attractors
Bandler, Richard
Blamer (Satir)
Board breaking
Board games
Breakthrough experiences
Card games
Chaining anchors
Chaos theory
Checklists
Commitment
Computer (Satir)
Conflicts
Contract
Convincer strategies
Co-operative games
Deductive teaching
Demonstration games
Demonstrations
Dilts, Robert
Distractor (Satir)
Dreyfus model
Energy
Entrepreneur
Erickson, Milton
Evaluation
Evangelism model
Examples
Expertise
Explanations
Feedback
Firewalking
Fractals
Futurepacing
Games
Grinder, John
Group life cycle
Heroic challenges
Inductive teaching
Karate
Kolbs learning stages
Leading
Learning stages
Leveler (Satir)
Loops (metaphors)
Manager
MARKET model
Market research
Memory techniques
Metaphors
Metaprograms
Milton model
Mind maps
Mismatching
Mission
Mneumonics
Neurological levels
NLP definition
Overviews
Perceptual positions
Placator (Satir)
Power use
Preframing
Presuppositions in questions
Presuppositions of
Pricing
Problem ownership
Process & content
Questions clarifying
Questions depth
Questions eliciting
Questions responding
Questions timing
Rapport
Rapport leaders
Sales
Satir categories
Satir, Virginia
Seeding
Self-actualisation
Sensory systems
Spiral Dynamics
State learning
State trainer
Strategies NLP model
Systems
Taxonomies of learning
Technician
TOTE model
TRAINER model
Two step
Values influencing
Venues
Warmup
Win-win
Zits
The Training Secrets Of NLP

At last, the book that gives out all the secrets of
NLP training, from use of metaphors in training to
creating clear descriptions of jargon terms; from
marketing a training to organising assistants; from
building rapport in a group to accelerated memory
devices, from delivering powerful breakthrough
experiences like a firewalk to playing learning
games. A thorough introduction to NLP (Neuro
Linguistic Programming) for teachers new to it is
also included, so you can start taking advantage of
these powerful skills right now, whatever your
previous experience of the subject. Written by an
acknowledged expert who has taught NLP at
Practitioner, Master Practitioner and Trainer level
with the International NLP Association. The most
in-depth look at NLP Training techniques ever
seen, this book was written as a text for the NLP
Trainer Training itself, and expanded to give these
skills to the widest possible audience. Each chapter
delivers you another dramatic secret of the kind of
motivational training that international training
superstars have learned from NLP.

Transformations International Consulting & Training Ltd
Phone/Fax +64-3-337-1852,
Email learn@transformations.net.nz
26 Southampton St, Christchurch 8002, New Zealand
Internet site www.transformations.net.nz

Richard Bolstad

Chapters

1. Teaching to the Right Sense
2. On Becoming a Trainer
3. Where Are All The Students?
4. Chaos and Order in Teaching
5. Making It Happen
6. Preframing
7. The First Hour: The Power of Beginnings
8. Mind Your Language
9. Educated Commitment
10. Training Questions
11. Revealing State Secrets to Teachers
12. Providing Heroic Challenges On Trainings
13. Learning Games
14. Transforming Conflict in Training
15. Metaprogram Flexibility
16. Evaluating The Evaluator
17. Producing Excellence


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