Ian McDermott answers your questions:
What is NLP?
“Some people are really good at what they do, and some people are outstanding. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to find out how people who are simply the best do what they do…live to the fullness that’s possible for them. NLP makes this possible by providing us with a whole raft of tools and techniques to find out what it is in people that makes things work better for them.”
How long have you been training?
“I’ve been training people for over 20 years in NLP. A lot of what I’m about is training the next generation of NLP practitioners and coaches. So many people who are up there and training have at one time or another been my students. It delights me to know that there are so many out there now.”
You obviously enjoy it?
“I love it. Much of what I do is really about creating an opportunity for people to find more of what they have inside themselves already. When you do that it’s unbelievably exciting and fulfilling because it’s like seeing people grow in front of your eyes. It’s also very rewarding because people know they’re doing what’s really important for them, like finding what it is their going to be doing in life that really matters to them – finding a right direction. I love creating an environment where people would have a more successful career than they ever thought possible.”
Do you have a favourite module?
“All the courses that I’m involved in I’ve created and crafted and as a result every one of them is dear to my heart. In different ways they open up new possibilities and give people new opportunities, tools and techniques so there isn’t one I love more than the others. It’s just I love the variety and that’s why I’m also still creating new programmes.”
What is the most memorable experience you have had when training?
“This is a really tough question because there isn’t one single moment that stands out above all others. If I was to say what’s most memorable consistently its probably the demos I do with people because when I’m working with somebody in real time, in front of the group, it’s a magical experience to see someone begin to make the change, right there, in front of your eyes. That makes everybody, go for more, because they know it is possible, they’ve just seen it. And I guess the other bit of that for me is the sort of steady stream of letters and emails over the years from people telling me the changes that are happening in their life because of the training, that’s really very important to me as well because that’s part of the feedback that lets me know I’m really delivering.”
Where do you see NLP in the future?
“My hunch is that a lot of NLP will be absorbed into other ways of working and the reason I say that is because I see it happening already. For example, something like the understanding of how important different representational systems are to learning staff, for instance or to effectively communicating. This has now become part of a lot of other training approaches that have nothing explicitly to do with NLP and indeed don’t acknowledge the source of what they’re using. But I think it’s almost inevitable that when something is found to be of value it becomes more widely adopted, and in the process it becomes part of everybody’s inheritance. Yet at the same time I think there’s the opportunity for new modelling of excellence and expertise, which would consistently allow NLP to make new contributions. The question for me is whether we have enough people who have an understanding of NLP to do that modelling and thus generate the innovation on a consistent basis in the future – I don’t know yet.”
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