Pegasus NLP Blog

NLP has now been around for about 35 years or so. Among other things, NLP has always sought to improve the quality of interpersonal communication. Except in one area – the teaching of NLP, itself.

Even in the early days would-be NLPers had to wrestle with a wonderfully obscure terminology including such terms as:

• Modal Operators of Necessity (words or phrases which denote a rule or a belief that something is necessary)
• Well-Formedness Conditions for an Outcome (goals which have been well designed)
• Lost Performative (making a value judgement but denying ownership of it e.g. “it has been observed that your timekeeping hasn’t been very good recently” instead of “I don’t think you’re timekeeping has been very good recently”)
• Model of the World (a person’s view of reality or of how things are)

These are just four out of dozens or perhaps hundreds of arcane terms which the ‘in the know’ NLPer can bandy about. I’ve actually heard one well-known Big Name in the word of NLP talking about operationalising the Presuppositions of NLP by which he meant walking the talk of the NLP principles. The same individual talks about the field between people or sometimes the mind field by which he means (I think) the ongoing communication and relationship between them.

Why do we need such gobbledygook? Why do we need to have ordinary terms relabelled?

If I were a somewhat cynical person (which, of course, I’m not) I’d suggest it might be a marketing ploy to get people to attend NLP workshops e.g. the terminology is so complex you’ll have to attend a workshop to be able to understand it.

So, as I’m not a cynical person, I’ll suggest that it’s probably laziness supported by a tendency for some of the NLP Big Names to live in a world apart from the “real world” in which the rest of us live – a world where they are surrounded by admiring groupies hanging on their every word and never daring to challenge them because what they say must be true – after all, they are Big Names (Emperor’s New Clothes).

One mark of an expert is that they can explain things concisely and in simple everyday language. Which is why in our own Pegasus NLP Courses we seek the proficiency of being able to explain NLP concepts to a child of 10!

Yesterday the UK financial market briefly lost confidence on HBOS, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender. And HBOS shares dropped by 17% at one stage.

It’s been a tough time for The Markets recently, according to the media, and they’ve been variously feeling uneasy, running scared, feeling more confident, getting excited, and panicking.

In reality The Market is simply groups of traders in different countries guessing how shares are likely to move and then buying or selling these shares in order to make profit. And it appears that yesterday’s crisis for HBOS was caused by rogues traders spreading unfounded rumours to drive the shares down so they could then profit from the shares price.

The NLP Meta Model enables us to identify from a person’s comments how they are thinking and, properly used, it one of the most powerful and widely applicable NLP models. One of the categories in the NLP Meta Model is called Nominalisations.

A Nominalisation is an activity viewed and described as a thing and following the news is a great way of Nominalisation-spotting!

The Market: a Nominalisation for the activity of financial traders buying and selling shares in order to make profits turned into a thing. Using the Nominalisation deflects our attention from the reality of what is happening.

The Government: the activity of politicians deciding things – or, sometimes, not deciding things. Again the use of the Nominalisation deflects our attention from the personal actions and motivations.

The Times said: this usually occurs in ‘what the papers say’ reviews when we are told what The Times or The Daily Telegraph or The Daily Mail editorials say about today’s hot topic. But The Times doesn’t write or speak. As used here it’s just a Nominalisation which deflects our attention from the fact that these are simply the views of some hard-pressed writer trying to meet a deadline – or, more usually, the views of the individual who owns the newspaper.

Then there are the more every-day Nominalisations

• There’s no communication in this team = we are not talking effectively with one another
• This relationship isn’t working = we are not relating satisfactorily with one another
• Friendship is hard to find = how I have been making friends up to now hasn’t worked
• He has an attitude problem = I don’t like his behaviour
• We need more motivation = we need to motivate ourselves

The list can go on and on - just like this article could - but you’ve likely got the idea … In all cases Nominalisations deflect our attention from what is really going on. And, critically, deflect our attention from possible solutions.