« Of Bomohs and hypnosis | Main | Zombies in your head »

July 20, 2006

Short or long training?

Different organisations offer NLP certificates but some offer the same certificate in 5 days versus a longer period of time, say, 12 days.

The effects on the participants of the course are very different, as I can see when I compare my own earlier training with the training in which I happened to be a facilitator.

While I talk about NLP here, I believe that this applies to other training offers as well. It might even apply for workshops in companies.

Let me outline the pro and con of both, starting with the longer timeframe.

A training in Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP is stretching for participants. For one, the participants discover a lot of new stuff inside and outside of them. NLP plays with your brain, enhances your thinking, eliminates limited beliefs, but also makes you look differently at the world and other people. With greater understanding, so to speak. In addition to this and because you are opening up so much to other participants and the trainer, participants often win friends for life. Hey - I remember my training sessions and am still very close and very much in touch with the participants. It is this opening, this transformation of participants that makes NLP so beautiful. Moreover, there are so many changes in people's life after participating in a course. Many climb the career ladder, find new meanings in their life, get higher sales, be in a happier relation and marriage - this is so because NLP is able to transcend any sphere of life. And because it is applicable to anything in life. Why not? If people say: "I can't get this sale" or "I will never be able to make it to the stage to present" or "I am not smart" or "I simply cannot do this" - these are limited beliefs and any good NLP practitioner can identify those and is able to help, if help is required or wanted. As simple as that!

Now, this is also the difference to a short course. Here, participants are required to read material, e.g.; books, before the course about NLP, its exercises and function. But then, it is the challenge to translate what you read into a real life situation, the how-to-do's. It is not always easy to map the learning from one book into your real life. Okay, not for everyone but for some. Next, the inter-group participation, the learning from each other is simply not there. Not always there. Okay, participants bond in some way but in a different way than you do when you are in a long course.

During the 5 days of the course (in Melaka), the trainer is asking the participants to conduct one exercise after the next, and not often explains the real background to the changes that are happining. This might be fine for some or many, of course, and some of the participants will run with it and see changes in their life - but what about the others?

As such, I am really for longer courses. Not necessarily in a stretch because it is difficult or challenging for participants to have such long time off from work. Especially when they have to travel. I am thinking of changing the whole structure of trainings once I have become an NLP trainer on my own. For me, the most important part is that participants really, really get it in my training. This is my value to them, this is my mission, and my gratitude. My gratitude, because they are going to spend time with me instead of somewhere else. What more can I give to them than to see their transformation!

World, watch out, here I come - a new trainer that is going to change the world, or, to start with, the participants in my training :).

Posted by Andreas at July 20, 2006 10:08 AM

Comments

Dear Andreas,
I totally agree with all that you have said because during the 5 day training I felt the missing link, that is the post mortem to the practice exercises. Furthermore, training became more impersonal and useful finer details were not given, for eg. importance of one's voice, positions of experiencer and practitioner etc.

Posted by: Low Swee Ping at July 23, 2006 01:42 AM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?