What is an NLP Master Trainer?

I once presented at an NLP conference in the UK and after my presentation (which was very well received, he stated modestly), I sat in on some other seminars and generally had a good time listening in on other people's stuff and learning about their approaches.

I am not 100% (would have to look at my notes), but I seem to remember enjoying a presentation by Penny Tompkins on clean language and a seminar on sub-personalities by a trainer whose name I forgot (but who I seem to remember was very pretty).

Then there was this guy I'd never heard of before who presented on something called Thought Pattern Management. Turns out that TPM is a very interesting concept and I will be writing more about it in another post. The guy who presented it was not very impressive, but since I was interested in the topic, I introduced myself and asked him where he learned about it and whether he was an NLP trainer. His indignant answer was: "I'm not an NLP trainer, I'm an NLP MASTER trainer!". I was quite shocked that this guy who I had never heard of before should be one of the chosen few. A Master Trainer? Wow! 

So I researched  bit and found that you can actually attend courses to become a Master trainer. You also have to present a certain number of events before they let you get the tattoo, golden underwear and whatever status symbols are bestowed upon NLP Master trainers (I'm just guessing here, as I am only a lowly trainer). I think this procedure is similar for ANLP and INLPTA, two of the largest NLP organisations worldwide. Not sure if the people certifying you are Master Master Trainers or Meta Master Trainers, but at one point your title wouldn't fit on your business card anymore.

If I got my history right, Wyatt Woodsmall was the first NLP Master trainer, because he handed Richard Bandler a certificate stating "Master Trainer" and Richard signed it. Wyatt is grumpy, but very good at what he does and he really contributed to the field of NLP, so he probably would be a good choice for a Master trainer. 

On the other side of the coin, the SNLP side, you can't attend courses, but you can be liked by Richard. Which helps. Allegedly, some SNLP Master Trainers received their certificates because they helped Richard move house, kissed his ass, or just because he likes them. Not a lot of quality control there. 

Truth be told, some of the Master Trainers I've met are really, really good. Many are not and it taught me not to look for the label, but to evaluate a trainer on his or her own merits. Titles in the world of NLP don't mean that much and Bandler seems to think along the same lines, as he once said that we shouldn't take these things too seriously, because, after all, he himself is not even an NLP Practitioner...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Tad James

I had read books on personal development for years and had also already encountered NLP through the books of Anthony Robbins, but I had never attended a live seminar until I traveled to London to see Tad James deliver "The Secret of Creating Your Future".

This was sometime in the early 90s and since I had not heard of Tad James before and just went because I liked the title of the seminar, I had no idea what to expect.

Here is my review in a nutshell:

Seminar: excellent
Trainer: patronising

The seminar was really good and I learned a lot of tools, some of which I still use.

It went like this:

find out about your time line
clear past blocks/limiting decisions
clear past negative feelings
align your values
put good stuff into your future time line

Looking back at the seminar with my current knowledge, the biggest complaint would be that it was a 3-day seminar. I normally teach all those things in maybe half a day, including different applications and methods of using your time line.

My biggest complaint back then was that I and other delegates felt quite unsupported when we had questions or challenges.

And I really hated that the whole course seemed to be a setup for selling us other seminars, books, and tape sets (remember audio tapes? Yes, I am that old!).

As I was so inexperienced, I fell for it and bought some tapes, books and also  attended an intro day on Huna, which was just not very good. I trained with several other people in Huna and they would eat Tad James for breakfast.

Oh yes, Tad James, let's see: Back then I did not know better, so thought he must be quite good, but listening to his tapes now and having seen him since, I must say that he is the most patronising NLP/Personal Development trainer I have ever encountered! 

He talks down to you. He does not answer questions properly. He is obviously so happy when he uses "clever" language patterns. He is constantly trying to upsell stuff (not as badly as his disciple David Shephard, but it still gets pretty annoying).

I met his son Matthew once at an NLP conference and while he had good rapport skills, he came across as a lightweight.  

One last thing about Tad: in 2000 he (well, Matthew actually did it) bought the web domains www.richardbandler.com and www.johngrinder.com and had them forwarded to his own web page. However, he did not know that Grinder and Bandler had their names trademarked and so they had him hand over the  sites pretty quickly. 

Still, quite a despicable and unethical act, methinks.

Make good decisions!


Update: Here is a very interesting comment by Gerrith Wil Lassen on a LinkedIn Group about Time Line Therapy:

"I think there is some confusion here. Interesting to read the story of Tad and his wife from a Wyatt Woodsmall perspective. He brought Timeline to Hawaii 3 years after the discovery in a Workshop about Metaprograms and Beliefesystems in 1982 with Leslie Cameron in Illinois. There was two students: Anne Linden and Frank Stass who did discover the timeline whilst exploring their Metaprograms In-Time and Trough-Time. They asked all the other students, how they experience time. A idea was born. A year later it was demonstrated by Steve Andreas on the 2th NANLP conference and at the same time Robert Dilts was also working with exploring the timeline on the west coast. They did not know from each other. No Bandler involved at all! In fact Timeline was discussed already intensively in the 20s and 30s by Huserl and Heidegger in Europe.

 About 3 years after the workshop in Illinois, Woodsmall started a practitioner group on Hawaii and Tad James and his wife Ardie did participate as students. Tad was immediately fascinated and did explore the Timeline with Marvin Oka and Richard Diehl in a little group, together with Wyatt Woodsmall. Before Internet, nobody had a clue about whats happen in Santa Cruz, in Boulder Colorado or Illinois and Tad seems he was very clever when going to the patent office on Hawaii 5 years after he heart about it and protecting the Timeline on Hawaii. It was never his in first place.

 The guy in the office hasn't heart about NLP at all and nothing about what the other groups have explored the last 8 years already. So Tad James got the patent on Hawaii - and only there! It was a lousy chess move by an Practitioner, who did not understand the rules in our field. Ego wins over the Soul from time to time. NLP belongs to those who carefully learn it and using it and comply with the ethical rules and prepositions."

Just another interesting tidbit about Tad's ethics (and excellent business sense!).

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Paul McKenna

I went on the first large-scale NLP Practitioner course that Richard Bandler conducted in the UK and he was promoted by Paul McKenna and Michael Breen. This was in 1996 or so and there must have been something like 350 participants on the course and the three trainers took turns in being on stage.

Paul was the odd one out. He was obviously the most famous one to the audience (Paul used to be a radio DJ and TV personality), but as a trainer he was just not very good. 

He was given the easiest techniques to demonstrate, but even there he often fell into the trap of picking someone from the audience who was his "type" (blonde, long legs) and who had deer-in-headlight-syndrome. 

I remember one time where he tried to get this girl relaxed on stage and every time she was about to close her eyes, she looked at the audience, started giggling and exclaimed how excited she was to be on stage...

On a personal level, Paul is very friendly. You can talk to him about lots of different things, the only problem is that he has absolutely no attention span. But that might just come with the territory when you are a celebrity...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Jamie Smart

Jamie Smart is excellent at marketing. His company, Salad Ltd, has put out lots of products and he has marketed them very well.

I haven't been on any of his courses, so can't review Jamie Smart's seminars, only his products.

Do I like them? Not really. Maybe it is because I am actually quite experienced in NLP, but I think that everything he has put out (alright, I have not seen all his stuff, just bought some of the "advanced" things) is basically for beginners. Since there are more beginners than experts, it's probably another proof that Jamie is great at marketing.

I guess I would say that he is okay. He knows his stuff and seems to be a good teacher and a caring guy. You could do much worse.

On a personal level, he is a very nice guy, as we had a few beers together at different conferences.

One thing I don't quite understand is his silly little feud with Eric Robbie about submodality eye accessing cues. There are several blogs out there where they are engaging in one-upmanship which is very annoying, as the three of us had several drinks together and it always seemed to me that they got along quite well.