Introduction

In this chapter I will define NLP based on the definitions which I derived from the work of leading NLP developers and creators. There is no fixed definition of NLP as the field holds many different meanings for many different people. Nevertheless, we need a definition that holds true to the originator’s intentions and in this chapter, I will offer such a construction. I will briefly survey the historical roots of NLP to provide you with a sense of accessibility to its development as a field of change practice. Finally, I will consider NLP as a distinctive field of applied sociology with powerful complementary synergies with management science being taught in traditional business schools throughout the world.

Definition of NLP

NLP involves critical reflection towards subjective experience to enable social change. O’Connor and Seymour, (1990, p. 3) define NLP as follows: “NLP deals with the structure of human subjective experience; how we organize what we see, hear and feel, and how we edit and filter the outside world through our senses.” NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP, for me, is not an area of scientific enquiry, rather it is an area of social practice. Whilst NLP is heavily influenced by ideas rooted in science, particularly anthropology, linguistics, psychology, psychotherapy, and political science, the field itself is not and never has claimed to be an area of scientific enquiry. NLP is the product of classic sociological and anthropological research. Its aim is to help people achieve greater social results through the conscious management of social construction processes. To understand what NLP is one must appreciate the logic behind its choice of name.

Neuro

The ‘Neuro’ element signifies the neurological processing within the brain. This is where empirical sense data are processed and sense making occurs. It is within our neurological vaults that our memories are both created and stored, and it is by working with memories that NLP practitioners can alter meaning systems and associated emotional states, social strategies in use and behavioural norms.

For NLP practitioners, the neurological system includes the complete nervous sensory system throughout the body. Thus, we believe that we all have two minds: (1) our cognitive rational mind; and, (2) our physiological mind or our somatic mind. Derks (2005) argues that the cellular structure throughout our body is part of the system we normally call mind. Thus, we have the part of mind contained within the brain and the wider structure of mind, our somatic mind distributed throughout our body. Consequently, NLP practitioners do not interpret the mind and body as two separate systems; rather, we view these as forming an integrated whole, a change in mind-set will influence a systematic change in physiology.

We also hold the view that our neurological system generates energy which influences the nature of the wider social field. Thus, our emotional states are projections of our neurological sense making and they carve themselves symbolically on our bodies, speech patterns and vocal tone. This process is often unconsciously modelled by others who regard us as significant in some way and, through a device we call mirror neurons, a systematic shift in the mental programmes, emotional states and mind-sets in groups can be stimulated.

Linguistic

The ‘linguistic’ element signifies the important role that language use plays in NLP interventions and in the neurological processes through which reality constructions are formed and laid down in unconscious thought. The anthropologist Mark Pagel (2013) claims that there are over 7,000 active languages being performed at any point throughout the world. This proliferation of languages is evidence of the variety of cultures that also populate our world. We have, as a race, established an awesome meaning system and the main technology for this accomplishment is our spoken language. This is not to detract from written language systems, or body language; it is simply to point towards the overarching significance of linguistic expression as a critical element of reality construction processes.

A significant challenge for change management teams is the process of accepting new linguistic terms into their culture. Often, they filter and even censor the introduction of language that is not already established as part of their normal conceptual structure. This is because language structures our understanding of experience and the kind of reality models we relate to (Spradley, 1979). Language patterns represent organizational culture and culture is normally defended by its members as it has probably served them well and cements established power structures. If, as NLP practitioners, we can create a climate of tolerance towards the introduction of alternative language patterns and linguistic terms, we can alter the structure of experience modelled by people and, thus, shift their attitudes and corresponding social strategies and, therefore, their results.

Programming

It is generally agreed amongst anthropologists that culture can be regarded metaphorically as a kind of software program and the brain a computer (Hofstede, 2010). Each cultural group runs a different cultural software program that produces its expressions and generates its social results. As NLP practitioners, we also acknowledge this metaphor as a very useful way to think about the ways in which people construct social reality in the theatre of their mind. Thus, the programming element of NLP signifies the fundamental idea behind NLP interventions – that we can literally re-programme our minds to construct new or altered meaning systems that lead to changed emotional states, new attitudes, new thoughts, new social strategies, new behavioural norms, and new results. It also stands as a metaphor for the brain, presenting it as a kind of computer that works as a sense-making centre for us as well as a central control system for all our physiological functions. Our brain, as it processes sense data into memories is – according to the implied metaphor – simply being programmed with data and, as with computers, these programs can be edited. It is this idea that provides the clear linkage between NLP and the social sciences, and the theory of social constructivism (Hofstede, 2010).

If you accept the idea that you never have access to reality and if you accept that our filters (beliefs, values, and selective representations) limit our social imprints, then you can also be open to the idea that as social reality and the meanings associated with it are your constructions then you must have the power to change these impressions. Also, as we are always living in the past, i.e., all memory is a picture of a past event, then moving up and down our timeline to re-programme our sensory impressions is also very possible. These observations are the basis of the programming principles that underpin NLP as a field of generative change practices.

Brief history of NLP

NLP is a child of many theoretical parents. It has its roots as a body of knowledge and practice in psychotherapy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and linguistics. It is a conceptually rich and fascinating area of thought and practice. NLP was established in 1976 as an integrated field of practice and knowledge by three inspirational pioneers: John Grinder, Assistant Professor of Linguistics, University of California; Richard Bandler, a student of psychology at the same university; and Frank Pucelik a Vietnam veteran who was studying at the university. These three NLP developers collaborated to study the work of three outstanding therapists: Fritz Perls, who developed Gestalt Therapy; Virginia Satir, who worked with family dysfunctions; and Milton H. Erickson, who was at that time an internationally established hypnotherapist. Bandler and Grinder were interested in developing a learning approach that they called ‘modelling’. The idea that drove their initial enquiries was that experts have patterns or methods that they use to do what they do in the excellent way that they do it. They thought that they could de-code these patterns and use the knowledge to achieve the same results. They were developing a new learning model.

The three NLP pioneers established a network of action learning sets, which included amongst others Robert Dilts and Judith Delozier, to develop their ideas, methods of practice and to test these on each other. They then took their methods out into the field of therapy and business and generated considerable success in achieving personal and group change that had previously been considered as highly challenging. This development period lasted nearly 10 years and is widely regarded as ‘First Generation NLP’. Since then, the field has grown to include ‘Second and Third Generation NLP’. This book draws on influences across all three developmental stages.

The early NLP development team discovered that whilst Erickson, Satir and Perls were all therapists, they worked with similar ideas yet they used different conceptual language. The NLP pioneers realized that what they were dealing with was a model of social construction. They developed the metaphor that the brain is essentially a computer which is programmed with data collected through our neurological systems and given meaning with the aid of language. This meant for Grinder et al. that if a person is programmed to see the world as they see it then they could also, with the aid of therapeutic intervention, be re-programmed to see the world or aspects of it differently.

Critically, what these modellers were doing was de-coding how these three therapists achieved their results. They paid particular attention to Dr Erickson and studied the micro process he worked with which brought about his results. When asked how he achieved his results Dr Erickson would often say that he did not know the answer to the question. It is often the case that successful people have unconscious competencies that they themselves are unaware of. The modellers studied exactly how Dr Erickson achieved his results and what emerged was a model of rapport building. The ability of Dr Erickson to build rapport with clients enabled him to work in co-operation with them to achieve substantial personal change. NLP, accordingly, is fundamentally rooted in the practice of modelling excellence in others and teaching this excellence to others.

Grinder et al. also developed a theory of meaning that was previously established in anthropology, sociology and psychology which advocated the view that people act towards things based on the meaning that these things have for them. Thus, if you change the meaning of an attitude object for the person, you can change their behavioural strategies and their emotional states. They developed a body of work that could be used for modelling purposes, or as a learning resource, or as a medium for personal and group change of the transformational kind. Grinder et al., as Californian-based educational pioneers, worked on their ideas together and in 1976 Grinder and Bandler spent a weekend in a log cabin in the hills above Santa Cruz burning through their emerging conceptual framework. They decided to call their product ‘NLP’ which stood for ‘Neuro-Linguistic Programming’.

A successful track record

There has been and continues to be a degree of controversy surrounding NLP. In my experience if you have attended NLP training and applied it as part of your management skills it is self-evident that the techniques work. If, however, you do not attend a NLP training course there is a possibility that you will succumb to the alternative view that NLP is a pseudoscience, that its methods have not been scientifically validated and that the evidence proves that it does not work. These are simply alternative maps. They are different understandings of NLP. As I stated earlier, NLP is concerned with conscious change leadership and social influencing processes. Its aim is to improve one’s social skills. And what do we need social skills for? To have influence and to build productive relationships. We want to influence our social outcomes, and this includes how we think, emote, behave, and the kind of social strategies we design and invoke, which all interact to generate our social results. As a practical tool kit there are millions of people throughout the world who would testify to the power of NLP to achieve change at the level of self and in our social results. For me NLP has been and continues to have a transformational influence on the quality of my life and my social results.

NLP is one of the very few disciplines to have practiced change leadership with impressive results at an individual practitioner level over the last 40 years. NLP has an extraordinary level of success in relation to change interventions. When one applies NLP methods introspectively the evidence overwhelmingly points to a very high success rate. Also, when one engages with groups and explores NLP methods the groups tend to enjoy the experience and acknowledge the effectiveness of the applications and their relevance to change leadership situations. I appreciate that these claims are based on anecdotal evidence and for me NLP works as a change technology.

Also, throughout the world there is a network of NLP institutes which have developed sustainable markets that are characterized by repeat business. NLPU, for example, which is run by Robert Dilts at the University of California offers multiple courses on NLP covering Practitioner, Master Practitioner, Trainer, Master Trainer, Success Factor Modelling, Generative Collaboration, Generative Change, Entrepreneurship, Collective Intelligence, Health Interventions and many more NLP inspired courses. NLPU enjoys a global reputation because the methods work. This is also the reason NLP enjoys the current level of expansion throughout the world and, I think, will continue to grow over the next 20 to 30 years. The reason for this is that as a social change technology the methods are effective, and the world needs such technology that can be easily modelled.

NLP is a very rich area of practice which has now migrated into the fields of sport, politics, business, therapy, personal development, education, health, and community social work. The reason that NLP is so versatile across sectors is that it deals with the structure of subjective experience and describes methodologies for changing structures that are inhibiting personal and group development.

NLP has exploded throughout the world and, to date, approximately 40 million people have undergone some kind of direct or indirect NLP training. World-famous life coaches have emerged, such as Tony Robbins and Paul McKenna, who use NLP techniques as the foundations of their business models and products. There is a global structure of NLP institutes that teaches NLP practitioner and master practitioner courses.

NLP is user friendly

The NLP literature is also presented in a user-friendly way that does not alienate those who, perhaps, do not come from an academic background. NLP also offers five levels of service to practitioners:

The important success factor in the NLP model involves practitioners being open to the ideas and methods that underpin the field of NLP and trying out the methods with sincerity and practicing these so that they internalize the methods and associated values of NLP practice and thinking.

Why does NLP work?

NLP works because it deals with subjective experience and, in doing so, it targets social construction processes both internal and external to the self. For example, if I believe that I cannot write and therefore I will never be an author I can, once I recognize this belief as limiting, identify the historical roots of the belief and reframe the meanings associated with its genesis. I can reconstruct my belief and turn it from a limiting construct to an enabling construct and thus change my internal definition of self. I can believe that I can learn to write, and I can create a book and take it to market as a published author. And I am speaking from personal experience. There is a well-established body of literature that has been scientifically addressed and produced around social construction processes (Boje, 1999). These are the processes through which we create culture and make sense of ourselves and others as well as social situations and create the habits of mind, emoting, and behaving that enable us to fit in and function as part of cultural groups. NLP recognizes that as we construct our identities and attitudes, beliefs and values and emotions and cognitions, we can reflectively go back and restructure these if they are proving to be un-resourceful. NLP has developed a series of patterns that we can enact that are designed to activate social construction processes and generate internal change that results in external change and a broader change in our social results.

The strategies that NLP interventions use are usefully described as micro interactive strategies. For example, belief change involves deep introspective thinking and granular interactive strategic manoeuvres at the core of our meaning systems. They are not abstractions from human conduct in the sense that they are essentially things that people do to themselves that create internal and external effects which can have positive outcomes regarding change management situations. NLP is based on techniques that were practiced by some of the world’s leading change practitioners who were passionate about enabling positive change in people. These change practitioners worked with individuals and family groups to help them restructure subjective experience so that they may free themselves from limiting beliefs that were damaging their internal and external relationships. Grinder et al. modelled these world class psychotherapists and, in doing so, mapped out the micro strategies they used to achieve their change results.

A new field of applied sociology

The genius of Grinder et al. and their co-developers was that they also developed a sociology for the new field they were to go on to call Neuro-Linguistic Programming, later abbreviated to NLP. Sociology is the study of human social relationships and institutions. Sociology’s purpose is to understand how human action and consciousness both shape and are shaped by surrounding cultural and social structures.

Sociology is an exciting and illuminating field of study that analyses and explains important matters in our personal lives, our communities, and the world around us. At the personal level, sociology investigates the social causes and consequences of human interactions. NLP mainly works at the level of the individual although, as discussed previously, as all societies and the organizations that form these societies are part of open systems, then the butterfly effect is always stimulated when change occurs at the micro level of the structure of human relationships. Thus, NLP has the potential to generate macro level change at every level of society.

Another feature of NLP is that it has its own distinctive language for its ideas and practices which define it as a discreet sociology. It is this language and the associated areas of applied practice, i.e., the change strategies that NLP practitioners and trainers use, that defines NLP as a unique discipline of applied social change in relation to other sociological disciplines.

NLP developers, not trainers, are akin to sociologists as they also emphasize the careful gathering and analysis of evidence about social life to develop and enrich our understanding of key social processes. The research methods they use are based on literature reviews and the acute participant observation in the everyday life of individuals and groups. The research methods, theories, and findings of NLP developers who created and continue to add to its sociology yield powerful insights into the social processes shaping human lives and social problems and prospects in the contemporary world. By better understanding those social processes, NLP developers have come to understand more clearly the forces shaping the personal experiences and outcomes of our own lives. The ability to see and understand this connection between broad social forces and personal experiences is a highly practical preparation for living effective and rewarding personal and professional lives in a changing and complex society. The gift of NLP is that, as an area of applied sociology, it has de-mystified complex social processes and presented to the world a portfolio of methods that, with practice, can create profound changes in the nature of our social results.

Those who have been well trained in NLP know how to think critically about human social life, and how to ask important research questions. They know how to design good change interventions at the micro level of individual and group dynamics and how to carefully collect and analyse empirical data, and structure and present their findings back to their clients in highly productive and ‘user friendly’ ways. NLP developers are like students trained in mainstream sociology and anthropology as they also know how to help others understand the way the social world works and how it might be changed for the better. It is, perhaps, no surprise that Grinder et al. and their team of co-developers were heavily influenced by mainstream ideas rooted in anthropology, sociology, social psychology, linguistics, and psychotherapy. NLP developers have developed distinctive competencies that enable them to think, evaluate, and communicate clearly, creatively, and effectively. These are all abilities that are critical to the practice of change leadership in organizations.

The sociology of NLP offers both a distinctive and enlightening way of seeing and understanding the social world in which we live, and which shapes our lives. As with mainstream sociology the field of NLP looks beyond normal, taken-for-granted views of reality, to provide deeper, more illuminating, and challenging understandings of social life, in particular the social construction processes that people use to form their model of the world. Through its unique blend of transdisciplinary theories, and applied methods, NLP is a discipline that expands our awareness and analysis of the human social relationships, cultures, and institutions that profoundly shape both our lives and human history. Perhaps, though, its unique gift is its ability to change the nature of subjective experiences and thus have an impact on the nature of our social results.

The evolution of business schools

There may be a temptation to dismiss NLP as a serious change management technology specific to management communities on the basis that NLP was forged from within the social sciences. Perhaps many professional managers may feel that sociological ideas and practices are detached from the hard, practical business of leading change in organizations. This would be an understandable point of view albeit a very limiting one. Many business schools throughout the world have members of faculty staff who were either trained in the social sciences before they entered a business academic career or who were influenced by change management literature that takes a socio/cultural orientation towards change management.

If one surveys mainstream change management literature which is used as part of MBA programmes it does not take long to identify fundamental concepts that have their roots in the social sciences. The seminal work of authors such as Ed Schein on organizational culture; McGregor (1960) and his proposal of ‘Theory Y and X’; Blake and Mouton (1966) on high performance organizations and their ‘New Management Grid’; Johnson (2000) and his concept of the ‘Cultural Web’ and strategy work; and the highly influential work of Argyris (1992) on ‘Organizational Learning’ have all helped shape the curriculum of MBA programmes and all of their ideas are rooted in the social sciences.

MBA programmes are generally accepting the paradigm that organizations are not only economic and technological constructs, they are also social and cultural systems through which economics and technologies are manipulated by social and cultural forces. I take the view that organizations are cultural social constructs as opposed to the idea that has traditionally been floated within business schools that suggests that organizations have a socio/cultural system that is a variable of the organization. Therefore, it appears self-evident to me that if managers are to be effective at leadership then they need to master the craft of building rapport with people using methods shaped by acute insights into cultural, cognitive, and social processes that shape human attitudes and behaviours. NLP does all of this to great effect.

We need more collaborations between managers, consultants, and management practitioners to produce what could usefully be called pracademics which, basically, involves a fusion between the world of research and the world of management practice to both understand organizational dynamics and to develop interventionist methodologies that are research-based, and work as applied to change technologies. NLP offers a practical bridge between academic approaches to understanding organizational behaviour and change practice within the organization.

Concluding thoughts

The field of NLP is a good example of an area of sociological study which embraces the complete research cycle. NLP developers have researched human behaviour to understand and explain how personal change can occur in the assumptions, beliefs, values, attitudes, and associated behaviours in people. NLP is a very user-friendly set of ideas and related methods which are easily modelled by change leaders and highly applicable to change leadership challenges. NLP is, relatively speaking, a new field; it has its own history although its ideas and methods are firmly rooted in traditional sciences such as sociology, anthropology, political science and linguistics and social psychology. NLP is an effective application because it works with the same sociological processes human beings use to construct their models of social reality and their cultures.

References

Argyris, C. (1992) On Organisational Learning, Blackwell.

Bandler, R. and Grinder, J. (1974) The Structure of Magic, Science and Behaviour Books Inc.

Blake, R. R. and Mouton, J. (1966) New Managerial Grid, Gulf Publishing.

Boje, D. (1999) Hegemonic Stories and Encounters between Storytelling Organisations. Journal of Management Enquiry, 4: 340–361.

Derks, L. (2005) Social Panoramas: Changing the Unconscious Landscape with NLP and Psychotherapy, Crown House Publishing Limited.

Hofstede, G. (2010) Culture and Organizations: Software of the Mind, McGraw Hill Books.

Johnson, G. (2000) Strategy through a Cultural Lens. Management Learning, 4: 429–452.

McGregor, D. (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise, McGraw-Hill.

O’Connor, J. and Seymour, J. (1990) Introducing NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming, Mandala.

Pagel, M. (2013) Wired for Culture, Penguin.

Spradley, J. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview, Wadsworth.