Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Nick Kemp

I realise that Nick Kemp is not very well known, but StanNLP65 asked me to write about him and since I've met Nick several times while assisting on Bandler's training in London, I'm happy to give some feedback.

Nick is an NLP Trainer based in the North of England (Leeds or Manchester, not quite sure) and the only reason I know him is because both of us were assisting on the Bandler/McKenna-Breen courses in London. The last time I met him was during one of Derren Brown's TV specials where all sorts of NLP people were invited to come to London. Since then, we only had a few exchanges in online groups.

He has very good rapport skills and seems to be very good at PR, meaning he is good at getting people to think that he is an excellent trainer. According to StanNLP65 "Nick's Master Prac was mostly about Nick and what a great trainer he is. Training was okay, though!"

So, it seems that as a trainer he is certainly not one of the best, but probably not one of the worst.

He used to have a business partnership with Tina Taylor, an NLP "Master" Trainer, who is nice enough, but quite a lightweight when it comes to NLP training. She also was one of the perennial assistants at the McKenna-Breen courses in London. They had some kind of a bust-up, but I don't know any details.

Nick is also one of the few trainers (that I know of) who has been kicked out of the Society of NLP (SNLP), which should make him my hero (fight the machine!), but again, I don't know what really happened.

Nick is also very vocal on LinkedIn, where he has become a top contributor on several forums/groups by posting LOL and ME TOO in just about every thread, which I find highly annoying.

One thing that he deserves a lot of credit for, though, is his re-discovery of Frank Farelly, creator of Provocative Therapy and one of the forgotten (or at least rarely mentioned) therapists who were modeled by Bandler and Grinder when they started the whole NLP thing. Provocative therapy, if done by a master, is a wonder to behold, so kudos to Nick for introducing Frank to a wider audience.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Tom Vizzini

Tom Vizzini is the guy behind Essential Skills Seminars and the 3D Mind technique/process.

I never met him in person, but we had quite a few fights on the old alt.psychology.nlp message board. The closest I got to him was (if I remember correctly) one time in Manchester, where I presented to an NLP practice group and one of the attendees asked me if I had met Tom, because he had presented at the same venue the day before.

So my experience with him and his stuff stems from video tapes (tapes, yes, he's been around for a while...).
I am not privy to any inside information, so I don't know how much influence his partner Kim McFarland has/had on the whole Essential Skills and 3D Mind thing, but I will just focus on Tom Vizzini for now.

Would you like to hear the good stuff or the bad stuff first?

Sorry, I'll be starting with the good stuff:

The 3D Mind technique is fantastic! One of the best change techniques I have ever encountered and I recommend it unreservedly. I hear that he updated the technique a few years ago, but even without an update, it is an essential tool for every NLP/Change/Whatever practitioner.
Really. No snarky comment from me. Go out and buy it!

Now the bad stuff:
Tom is an absolutely horrible presenter. Granted, he might have improved (the last info my spies gave me was from 2008), but he certainly used to be so bad that I nearly missed the greatness of the 3D Mind technique, because I was so annoyed with his presentation style. Horrible sense of humour, always laughing at his own jokes - just awful. And, Tom, here is a piece of advice from someone who is a good presenter: STOP FIDDLING WITH THE PEN!

Rant over.

His Essential Skills tapes are very basic, probably far too basic for anyone who has attended an NLP intro session, but again, the 3D Mind stuff is fantastic, and you can easily tweak it to fit your own style. Highly recommended!

Update:
Tom was kind enough to point out that the tapes I was talking about are not available anymore and they now ensure that only their newest stuff is available on their website.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Michael Carroll

Bwahahahaha!

You can't be serious!

Alright, I have not trained with him. Only met him twice during an event his company organised with Overdurf and Silverthorn down in Croydon. He came across as the most arrogant twat in in the world of NLP.

During a break in the (really good seminar) I attended, he got up on stage to sell some further seminars and I have rarely seen a so-called NLP Master Trainer be so bad at selling. Very obvious and very easy to see through. I was not the only one who left his presentation early.

The one time I talked to him was in the men's room. I was doing my business when he planted himself next to me and started up a conversation about whether I would be interested in attending an NLP Trainer's Training.
When I replied that I already had a trainer's certificate from a different certification body, he stopped dead in his tracks and ignored me from then on.
It is possible that he shut up because he caught a glimpse of our respective magic wands, but that is just conjecture on my part.

One thing I have to admit, he is probably among the top three most successful NLP Trainers in the UK, at least from a financial standpoint.

From everything I have seen and also heard from others, he is blatantly and pathetically obvious about his motivation. Money, money, money. Yep, back then he drove a Maserati or something, and his students regaled us with stories about how quickly they made back the money they spent on his seminars, but from everything I have seen on videos and in person, he is just not very good.

Of course, we all know that being good doesn't count for much in the world of NLP...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Eric Robbie

I once heard Eric Robbie say that if Richard Bandler is the Pope of NLP, he would have to be a Cardinal and while this might sound like bragging, I believe that Eric is a masterful trainer and that his contributions in the field of NLP are vastly underrated.

Eric is an incredibly astute observer. If you learned about SMEACs (sub modality eye accessing cues) during your NLP Practitioner or Master Practitioner course, he is the guy who first noticed that they exist. His sensory acuity is off the charts!

Very neat party trick, where he tells you about the submodalities of your internal images, sometimes even down to the colours you are thinking of. And the cool thing is that he teaches this skill and after I had learned it from him, I was able to teach it to others, which makes him a fantastic trainer in my opinion.

Other really valuable contributions by Eric are the discovery of Meta-Programme accessing cues and my personal favourite, his revised structure and way of teaching the Meta Model, which is a thing of beauty.

If there are criticisms, they are that he sometimes could speed up his trainings and certainly that he should get off his ass and publish more!

I have read several of his articles on NLP and he is so knowledgeable and has such a different way of looking at things that the NLP community is poorer for not having more of his stuff widely available.

So, come on, Eric! Publish, publish, publish! Please? The next G&T is on me!