Diagram – Four Stages to Learning – Click the picture to enlarge

One of the reasons that I decided to specialise in NLP was because of the power that it gives the individual through its processes and techniques to bring about change. On top of that I found the whole subject fascinating. I remain intensely curious about anything to do with the brain, behaviour and what produces excellence.

I think that one of the main benefits that people experience when they train as a Practitioner of NLP is that of improved self awareness.  NLP Training helps people to understand in greater depth what is going on inside their brain and how behaviour is produced, and improved awareness of course brings choices and with choices brings the potential for change.

It is a strong belief of mine that we are all born with the potential for greatness. We are born with that potential and over time we gradually lose our enthusiasm to pursue our dreams as we come up against more and more obstacles and as we sadly settle down to a life of mediocrity as encouraged by society, friends and family. Leaders do not follow the same pattern of descent down into mediocrity, they manage to blaze their own path to success and excellence stepping over their obstacles and settling for no less than being the best at what they do.

The thing is that we all have the ability to become leaders. Maybe not leaders of people, but leaders in our own lives. We all still have the potential to become leaders and the potential for greatness. I believe that NLP provides the self awareness that is required in order give people the choice to become a leader in their own life. It also provides the processes and techniques required to change previous bad habits, change poor behaviours and enable people to develop into a leader and achieve their dreams, reach their potential.

Four Stages to Learning

How does the process work? You may have come across the four stages of learning in the diagram above.  When we are learning or developing a new skill, we progress from one through to four on the diagram.

Let’s think in terms of how NLP helps create a learning pathway to leadership. Looking at the diagram, we start at stage one, unconscious incompetence. Our lives are as they are, the world is how we have understood it to be and we have an image in our minds as to who we are and how we fit into the world picture, a self image. At this stage we do not know what we do not know, we are blissfully unaware of how great we could actually be and how easily we can change our lives and our destiny.

Then we discover NLP and we move to stage two, conscious incompetence. We learn through NLP that we each have our models of the world, and that the way that we think and the way that we behave is habitual and that we have a choice over what habits we have. We learn that we are all able to change anything about us that we do not like, we learn that there are techniques and processes that will allow us to be excellent in whatever we chose to do. We learn all about this and we realise that we need to change now, and we don’t know how at this stage.  We are consciously incompetent. This is the stage of awareness.

We then move through our NLP Training and we learn how the change techniques work, we learn how to assist other people to use the same techniques and this is the stage of conscious competence. We learn how to use the processes and techniques to produce change and to produce excellence in ourselves and others. We have to work hard at each technique at this stage. We have competence in producing excellence and being a leader, we just need to concentrate 100% on doing the right thing at the right time and using our NLP manuals in order to find the correct techniques. At this stage we have choices over our behaviour and over the lives that we lead.

The final stage is that of unconscious competence. This is the final stage also of your NLP Training where you practice, rehearse the techniques and processes and integrate them into your new life. You live the life that you have designed for yourself, you live without fear, taking full responsibility for your actions and you are able to help other people make better choices in their own lives. You are competent in applying excellence to your life and you can do it naturally with ease. This is when you become a leader.