History
NLP was developed in the 1970’s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who had combined backgrounds in therapy, math, computer science, and linguistics. They wanted to know what patterns got effective results in therapy, business, education and other areas. They studied individuals who were getting excellent results, and modelled step-by-step how these people got the results they achieved. What did these successful people see and hear in their brains? What internal states and feelings did they have? What behaviours did they exhibit? What was their physiology like? By modelling the important elements of a particular skill, which was often unconscious for the person possessing the ability, they were able to teach it to others. Through this modelling process of patterns and techniques that resulted in more effective communication and successful behaviour changes, NLP was born.
In addition to eliciting the strategies of these excellent communicators and change agents, the founders discovered these people operated on several useful presuppositions and assumptions, which NLP is based on. It does not seem to matter if these presuppositions are true or not. What does matter is if an individual acts as if they are true. A few of these assumptions are:
- There is no such thing as failure, only feedback. Every response or result can be utilised and is information about whether you are on course, or if it’s time to change your course.
- People work perfectly. No one is wrong or broken; it’s simply a matter of finding out how they function now so that you can effectively change that to something more useful and desirable.
- People already have all the resources they need. What they need is access to these resources at appropriate times and places.
- Anything can be accomplished (by anyone) if you break the task down into small enough chunks.
- The person in a group with the most flexibility will also have the most control in that group.
- The meaning of your communication is the response you get. Communication is not about your intent: it’s about creating an experience in, and getting a response from the listener.
The bottom line is the response you elicit.
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