Michael recently mentioned an article written by Chris Collingswood of Inspiritive.com in which Chris addresses what he considers to be the Myths of a 7 day certification in NLP. I will not address in my email, what Chris has written specifically. Instead I want to provide my view of what is possibly happening, to those who hold fast to the paradigm that trainings “must” be a specific duration for it to be deemed a credible training and anything different, is less credible.
The question I pose above is a question that many NLP Organisations will likely need to address (if not already) and one that will challenge them to their very core. The length of time required to deliver a certification in either NLP or Neuro Semantic NLP has likely been linked to a specific measurement criteria they use, to define themselves as a “quality” training group.
Once you have announced that this is how long it takes to learn, then surprisingly – that’s how long it takes you to learn it! This should be of no surprise to those of us trained in NLP or NS. Beliefs have a wonderful way of determining our experience and defining our reality. How hard it must be for Trainers who are stuck in the paradigm that it takes exactly this long ( 7, 14, 20, 24 or 45 plus days) to be a certified Practitioner, Master Practitioner, Trainer or Master Trainer.
Personally, I was trained in the 20 day model of NLP certification. On 1st hearing that others did “the same” NLP training I did in 7 days and paid less for it than I did. I laughed and mocked the quality of both the content and the skill level of the participants that had attended this lesser training (without ever knowing it experientially). Naturally I did so, to console myself, that what I had attended was correct and what they had learnt was not. I also found creative and demeaning ways to express this to those I met (How many of you, who hold to a specific set of days to learn NLP, will actually admit that this is what you do, to those shorter certificating NLP Trainers and Organisations?)
As I wrote earlier, In this brief email I am not going to address the many, so called “myths” of those offering shorter version certification programs. What I am saying here, is that it becomes increasingly more difficult to believe that others can provide a service (7 day NS-NLP certification) while maintaining both the quality and integrity of a program, when you have the belief that this is not possible to do so. I consistently challenge the concept of time, efficiency and effectiveness when delivering trainings. In doing so I remain considerate of the possibility that more is possible in less time while maintaining or improving the quality of the skill acquired in the training by the participant. I also realize that there is likely to be a point where efficiency & effectiveness will begin to negate each other and result in the loss of quality & competency.
Irrespective of the time it takes to learn something it will require the learner to apply that knowledge on a consistent basis over time, to become proficient at it and hopefully achieve a level of mastery. Whether you deliver a 5,7 or 20 day training is neither here nor there. What will ultimately determine the success of the program is the quality of the student that emerges from these trainings.
When I ran my 1st NS-NLP Practitioner training in January 2003 one of the participants (who was a Trainer) said to me and the group, how he had completed a 20 day NLP Practitioner certification and was skeptical whether it was possible to teach it in only 7 days. At the conclusion of his 7 day training with me, he said to the group, that he now realized that it was possible to do so and saw people on the training achieve a level of competence that superseded what he had experience in a 20 day training.
Results will always be the benchmark of a trainings success and not the length of time we say is required to learn it.
The link to Chris Collingswood’s article is attached below – there is much more that could be said to address what he has written, perhaps others of you would like to do so? (or not!) J
http://ia-nlp.org/pdfdocs/
Kind regards to you all…
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Colin Cox
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Director Ignition
NS Master Trainer (ISNS)
Corporate Training Consultant
Executive Performance Coach (ACMC)
Conference Keynote Speaker
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