NLP Training with Sue Knight

My Style

I have been asked so many questions about my style of training over the years both by those who have been present with me training and those who have not that I decided to attempt to describe it here on the web.

It is sometimes easier to capture through others quotes for example:-

“Our key learning as trainers has been that people relate to people more than ‘trainers’. It seems ironic that we have done so many other trainings and not really learnt this. Anyone can learn NLP and stand up and present the subject—but it is a far more refined skill to learn how to stand up before a group and truly be yourself. This course isn’t really for people who want ‘another certificate’—it’s for people who want to learn how to be the sort of trainer that is continually committed to excellence.”

My style is often described as emergent in the sense that I work with what is happening in the moment in the context of the outcomes for the programme and the current frame. For me this is what NLP is all about – being flexible in the moment, real time, sensitive to what is happening with me and others, open to feedback and steering a path towards the outcomes. I typically hold an outcome for every delegate on my programmes based on what I see as their patterns but productive and unproductive patterns. This outcome is unlikely to match exactly what someone says their outcome to be. It is about what I perceive their outcome to be and I will of course discuss and share that with them if they ask (and even if they do not!).

I believe that a trainer is a designer of experiences and I have taken that to include experiences of different cultures as well as exercises within the context of the programme. I work to Kolb’s learning cycle starting with the experience and using the NLP modelling skills to reflect on what is happening especially the patterns of delegates’ behaviour. We then use these reflections as the basis for the learning and subsequent practice.

I am a huge admirer of Parker J Palmer and what he says about teaching in his book ‘The courage to teach’ I quote him on the first page of the details for Trainer Training on my web

“As good teachers weave the fabric that joins them with students and subjects, the heart is the loom on which the threads are tied, the tension is held, the shuttle flies, and the fabric is stretched tight. Small wonder then that teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart – and the more one loves teaching, the more heartbreaking it can be. The courage to teach is the courage to keep one’s heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able to so that teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning and living, require.”

Given this way of working it is vital then that I have some very clear outcomes and I am proud of the outcomes that I expect not only of the delegates but especially of myself

Criteria for NLP Trainers

I expect you to:

  • Be an example of all that you teach or demonstrate that you are developing in those areas of your life where you are not
  • Express the truth of who you are in the way that you train and the way that you give and receive feedback
    Demonstrate that you are continually open to receiving and giving feedback that is open, honest and owned as being an expression of yourself
  • Are able to take feedback anytime, anywhere, anyway (no matter how it is given) and respond with curiosity, questions and learning
  • Do everything with the intention of furthering others towards their outcomes
  • Sacrifice your personal needs/wants in the interest of the group commit to owning and developing yourself as a way of managing your experience of others
  • Show how you can both show your vulnerability when appropriate but also manage your state so that you are constantly resourceful in your support of others
  • Demonstrate how you can manage the energy in room/group with whom you are working
  • Show how you are constantly working ‘on the edge’ using what is current in your life and work to support learning for others
  • Be able to be taking both a systemic view of the group with which you are working and simultaneously be connected
  • Recognise and act in line with the boundaries of the roles of delegate/assistant/trainer/co-learner
  • Design and deliver a training programme based on the TOTE model i.e. based on outcomes, with the content derived from the circumstances in the moment set and achieve delegate based well formed outcomes for all training
  • Have examples of how the NLP principles are working for you
  • Maintain a constantly resourceful state with any group you are leading or supporting
  • Are able to create a learning loving community in the groups with which you work
  • Embrace all situations as opportunities for learning for you and the group
  • See the unsuspected greatness in everyone
"The ultimate teacher is inside us"