Neuro Linguistic Programming Birmingham Diploma Learning
I attended the NLP Business Practitioner training course at The Learning Path, Alvechurch, west Midlands in May and June 2007 with a small touch of déjà vu. This was not surprising, as I had first attended the same course earlier in the year but due to some incredibly bad timing relating to a life changing decision I was faced with, of “do I or don’t I take redundancy”, it became clear the first time I attended, I was not able to participate fully, or gain anything close to what I potentially could gain, if my head had been in the right place.
I was extremely fortunate that Ellen Gifford, the owner of The Learning Path, and the trainer of this particular Neuro-Linguistic Programming course, was able to see through me right from the start. To her credit rather than put it down as one failure amongst a group of successes, she offered me the opportunity to return to redo the course, as a guest of The Learning Path, at a more settled time for me.
Thank goodness she did, because doing the course again, firstly allowed me to meet the best bunch of people ever, secondly it helped me realise that I had actually gained quite a bit from the first course, even if it took doing it a second time to realise that! Most importantly, it helped me realise that I could gain a whole lot more because there were sections on the first course that I had absolutely no recollection of – my mind certainly had been elsewhere!
By the time I attended the second training course I had decided that I would take the redundancy package and had decided to return to university for a year, lose weight and perhaps even like myself a little more. But in my work place I was still finding some aspects of managing people in redundancy situations difficult, the hardest was continuing to manage staff who would be staying after I had left.
I think it was day one or day two of redoing the course when I had the biggest "light-bulb" moment……I was already aware and accepting of the fact that I can, and do, "disassociate" from my feelings really easily but when we looked at the NLP subject of "Perceptual Positions" that really hit home how easily I had disassociated from work and solving everyone's problems for them having decided to take the money and run. Because I disassociating so easily, I had succeeded in confusing my team who knew they’d have to continue after I left but who were desperate for answers that I had suddenly switched off my responsibility for.
Don't get me wrong, there’s an awful lot more to it than that, but what it meant was that when I was back in the workplace between the two halves of the second course, I went in being more open and explanatory about where my head was with the situation. I was more sympathetic to my team and also more resolved and less likely to be pushed into giving them answers – instead it helped them to work out how to structure performance plans that would help them manage their own transitions to being manager-less.
To make this work effectively I decided to employ the use of some NLP Metaprograms to help establish who had more "global" than "specific" tendencies or who worked with a "bigger picture" down to detail or from detail up to a "bigger picture".
Other aspects of the course have helped me to see that I am a good person, to myself as well as family, friends and the world at large but there's only me that can choose to behave more openly. If I keep whinging that men find me intimidating and that I'll be single for ever. How can I complain if I am projecting an impression of someone who is mostly disassociated, doesn't need anyone, is independent and self-sufficient. Whereas in reality knowing on that on the inside I’m faking it and "no one knows the real me". How will people know who I really am if I don't tell them or show them? Harsh realities in some cases but a really uplifting course where you can come to these kind of conclusions and yet still spend most of it laughing and smiling because everyone is so supportive of everything you are all trying to do.
There’s no question that this course makes a huge difference to your understanding of yourself in your personal life as well as helping you understand your own impact on the workplace and how to work more effectively.
For me, I currently think the personal benefits far out-way the business benefits but if I am becoming someone who knows I can increase my personal confidence in myself, who can like myself for who I am and see my own value – surely that has to mean that in the long run I can see and appreciate the value in others, especially in the workplace where you don't always get to choose who you work with but always need to find a way through every situation.
Suffice it to say, I'd recommend this course to anyone – it's extremely cathartic to be able to talk about "Me, Me, Me, Me, Me!" in a safe, supportive and professional environment, for 6 days, and know that you come out of it with your head on straight and ready for anything. In fact, I have already signed up for the ANLP Masters Business course in October 2008 so if anybody reading this also attends that course too, you can test me on how "gung ho" I still am then!
Once again, huge thanks to Ellen and The Learning Path for believing in me and giving me the incredibly generous opportunity of redoing the course.