I get many requests from potential students for information on the specific benefits of using NLP in business and organisations.

NLP has applications for many different fields, business, sales, therapy, education, and sports. We have trained people in each of these fields and they are generating fantastic results with their businesses and clients.

I used NLP in business for over 20 years and much of my success could be attributed to what I learned from NLP many years ago.

In my time before starting Excellence Assured I used NLP in a sales role first of all and became the top salesperson out of 60 and 70 salespeople respectively in my two sales positions. I then went on to sales management and subsequently senior management, where I used NLP for myself and also trained my staff in various aspects of NLP, the results were phenomenal.

Specifically, using NLP in my last role as a senior manager I reduced the attrition rate in staff numbers by half (therefore reducing costs at the same time) and trebled the business income. I’ll explain how.

Here is how NLP can benefit organisations and businesses:

Replicate excellence in any field

NLP has been described as the “art and science of excellence”- Excellence Assured. NLP provides methodologies and techniques that are replicable. Thus through using NLP we can replicate excellence in any field. This is the ultimate outcome from being an NLP Master Practitioner, you can take any field, find out what is making people excellent in that field and then do it yourself (obviously for intricate skills this may take a while!).  The NLP Trainers course teaches you how to train others in these skills.  The replication of excellence is a skill referred to as Modelling in NLP and it uses a combination of all of the other intermediate skills that you will learn.

Imagine how effective your organisation could be if you took the best parts of each employee and put them together to form a kind of “super employee”! This is the premise that we are talking about. Find out what specifically people are doing to be great and train others to do the same.

Using language to produce outstanding outcomes

The use of language in Neuro-Linguistic Programming plays a prominent part. NLP is about how we can understand the language of the mind to produce outstanding outcomes and uncover where we may have problems. Many of our behaviours are unconscious to us, which means that if you ask someone how they are doing something really well they often can’t give you a specific answer. They don’t know!

NLP gives us processes to enable us to decode behaviours and thoughts so that we can become consciously aware of what is going on in the background.

In much of NLP there are dual benefits, personal benefits and benefits in working with teams – NLP focusses on outcomes and provides us with processes to ensure that we can set outcomes effectively.

We learn how our attitude will affect our results. NLP promotes a can do attitude, an attitude of excitement and curiosity and provides models to help us understand in which areas of life we are being proactive and in which we tend to be reactive.

Communication and relationships

One of the key frames that NLP uses to help people communicate with others more effectively is through something called the NLP communication model. This illustrates to us how our inner thoughts, focus and our behaviours result not from what is going on around us but from how we interpret these things internally. This is often a revelation to people!

There are many different tools to help people communicate more effectively and build better relationships and one is through a model called Perceptual Positions, which we cover on the NLP Practitioner course. This model helps us to see communication from three different positions; from our own perspective, the other persons perspective, and a third person perspective. It is really effective in helping people develop empathy and helps repair communication breakdowns.

In our NLP courses we will build on these initial frames and uncover how you can learn to study behaviour and reactions in others that are unintentional, normally go unnoticed and translate to us how they are thinking. This may be shown in terms of bodily reactions and also be apparent from the kind of language that they use.

NLP has a process called Rapport which is the ultimate tool in creating good relationships and a good impression! It enables us to create great “rapport” with anyone that we meet by presenting ourselves in a way that appeals to them “unconsciously”. This means that we create the rapport out of their awareness and it results in an energetic feeling of trust, which is what you will recognise that we have with people that we like and who we typically get on best with.

We learn how to use our own language, words and phrases to carry our message most effectively and get the best from others. We discuss in our courses how to use metaphors and word patterns in phrases that will create motivation, persuasion and influence (some would also say manipulation).

There are many talking therapy techniques that we also train you to use which include reframing of memories and changing conditioned behaviour which can also be used in business environments effectively.

Confidence & being on top form

Anchoring is one of the key elements in NLP at Practitioner level and is fantastic to use in creating motivating states of mind, confidence, in eliminating negative thoughts and in being on top form just when you need to be at your best (eg in Presentations).

Organisational change – motivation and morale

One of the ways that I was able to create a loyalty in my teams was through using tools in NLP associated with personal and organisational Values. NLP has a model called the Neurological or Logical Levels of Change which is essentially a model for organisational and personal change. This model shows us how organisations can work with their employees to create better motivation and morale by marrying up the company values to those of the individuals in the workforce.

Studies show that most people leave organisations because they do not feel valued by their employers and bosses. This process ensures that we are able to work with our staff to enable them to see how their role fits within the overall value produced by the organisation and how that value fits within and compliments their own personal values structure. This is a highly effective process and one that I go through with all of my executive coaching clients. The process can be used at board level right down to staff 121s.

Direction and focus

An additional tool that is fantastic to use personally to help create direction and focus personally and professionally and one that is perfect for use with direct reports in a coaching setting is the NLP Values Elicitation process.

This process involves taking an overview of the different areas of life and work in order to establish priorities and identify areas of drift or neglect. It enables us to agree measurable actions and objectives that have shared benefits for the individual and the organisation.

Magnificent, powerful and engaging presentations and trainings

Finally the NLP Trainers course puts all of this together in a package that you can use to take this training to your business or organisation (or use as a business on its own), to use with teams and individuals and to certify your students in NLP and coaching.

The Trainers course will help you to transform your presentations, to enable you to deliver magnificent, powerful and engaging presentations and trainings in NLP and any other subject that you choose.

Specifically we help you to use your new knowledge of the key parts of NLP, anchoring, state elicitation, language patterns, metaphors and rapport with groups.

We focus on presentation style and content to provide you with a template to use in your training and presentations that will enable you to write easily memorable presentations in a matter of minutes and structured in a way that enables you to address different learning styles amongst your students.

I could go on…and hopefully there is enough here to show you the value in learning NLP and taking our NLP Masters & Trainer combination course.

My NLP course objectives were to become a better coach for my job and get on the path to become a “professional” coach down the line. 

I believe I am now better at helping and supporting people and it will make me a better manager, immediately and that is something I am looking forward to. 

In my everyday life, I still need to be intentional in my modeling, and practising all the NLP tools. It takes some commitment and is not fully part of my routine, to the point I do it unconsciously. 

I have noticed though that I am more aware of the others and what they actually do not say, but how they behave etc… 

I always pride myself in believe in a good listener and I am a better one thanks to that course. I also am more equipped to help. It is also becoming easier to model and re-create that process, which will become second nature.

The main change in myself is that I am moreat peace” . 

  • With others, as I am more curious about everyone and tend to be more aware and more open to their differences and emotions.  Which also make me less judgmental in a way and less prone to negative emotions. People’s own negative emotions or behaviour don’t seem to affect me as much as it used to. 

Because I now try to guide them to get the solution for themselves instead of telling them, it’s less personal.

  • With myself: I have learnt quite a bit about what I can do and how I can better myself. And after a very difficult year, it was nice to take the time for myself and use the NLP tools from the course on myself as well. I am in a much better place and strongly believe I will be a better manager as well thanks to it. 

Some people around have asked to be spending time with me and I think it will be a great first step. For me to get more practice and for them to get some support and guidance. 

Gillian Legrange