Dr. Salah FodaElectrical Engineering Department

King Saud University

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Presentation Outline

1. What is NLP?2. Definitions3. Underlying Principles4. Key Concepts5. History and Background6. Major Influences7. Critical Views

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What is NLP?

The acronym NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It was coined in the seventies by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

The science, discipline, methods, and the product that we now call NLP has outgrown the original scant ideas perceived back then.

Today, NLP has many definitions and the debate about them continues to generate a great deal of controversy as well as confusion.

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Richard Bandler’s DefinitionNLP is an interdisciplinary subject which

embraces, among other things, brain/mind research (neuro), the study of language (linguistic), and psychotherapy (repatterning, or re-programming).

NLP is an attitude and a methodology that brings about a trail of techniques. The attitude is identified as “wanton curiosity” and the methodology is that of modeling.

Richard Bandler: Using Your Brain – For A Change.

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In this definition, we notice the deliberate distinction between “attitude/methodology” and “techniques.”

NLP is based on an interactive, holistic view of the world, rather than a linear, reductionist one. This leads to generative, rather than remedial, change.

NLP is not concerned with theories, only with what works.

Generative Work

Remedial

work

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Neuro refers to our nervous system/mind and how it processes information and codes it inside our very neurology.

Linguistic indicates that the neural processes of the mind come coded, ordered, and given meaning through language and communication systems (grammar, mathematics, music, icons).

Programming refers to our ability to organize our sensory-based information (sights, sounds, sensations, smells, tastes, and symbols or words) within our mind which enables us to achieve our desired outcomes.

NLP is about taking control of our own minds.

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Underlying PrinciplesThe meaning of your communication is the

response it elicits

Recognising people’s responses requires clean, open sensory channels

People process all information through their five senses

There is no failure, only feedback; no mistakes, only outcomes

Behind all behaviour there is a positive intention

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Underlying Principles (continued)

Rapport is meeting people at their model of the world; people operate from their own perspective of the world, rather than how it actually is (internal model principle)

The map is not the territory; the description of an experience is not the same as the experience itself

People with the greatest flexibility have the highest probability of achieving the responses and outcomes they desire

Everyone is doing the best they can, given the choices they believe are currently available to them

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Underlying Principles (continued)

People have all the resources necessary to make any desired change

Change can be quick and lasting

People have two levels of communication: verbal and non-verbal; conscious and unconscious

Mind and body form one interactive system

Client resistance is a comment on the inflexibility of the change agent

Modelling successful performance leads to excellence.

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Key Concepts

The four cornerstones of NLP are:

Outcome Orientation (results focus)Sensory Acuity (paying attention to non-verbal

information)Behavioral Flexibility (choice about how to act)Rapport (being on the same wavelength).

The Meta Model or language model enriches understanding through the use of specific questions that clarify verbal Distortions, Deletions and Generalisations.

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Key Concepts (Continued)

The Neurological Levels model makes the most effective intervention by addressing client’s environment (where? when? with whom?), behaviour (what?), capabilities (how?), values and beliefs (why?), identity (who?), or transpersonal awareness (who else?)

The three main viewpoints or Perceptual Positions to gain information are:

1. Standing in your own shoes 2. Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes 3. Imagining you are a fly on the wall

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Key Concepts (Continued)

Perceptual Position

Time

Dilt’s or NLP jungle gym

Past Present Future

Belief/Values

Capabilities

Behavior

Physical

IdentityInterface or Logical L

evel

SelfOther

Observer

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Key Concepts (Continued)

In NLP, the five senses are called Representation Systems and are labelled V A K O G:

Visual (sight), Auditory (hearing), Kinaesthetic (feelings/touch), Olfactory (smell), and Gustatory (taste).

Fine distinctions of these are called Submodalities. For example, visual sub-modalities include size, brightness, colour/black and white, spatial location, and disassociated /associated State (do you see yourself in the picture or not?).

You can adjust your sub-modalities to eliminate unpleasant feelings and generate more effective behaviour.

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Key Concepts (Continued)

Calibration helps you read other’s state more accurately. Verbal clues called Predicates indicate whether that person is in visual, auditory or kinaesthetic mode.

Likewise Eye Accessing cues, which also let you know whether images and sounds are being constructed or remembered, and if internal dialogue is occurring.

VR (Visual Remembered)

AD (Auditory Digital)

(Visual Constructed )VC

(Kinesthetic) KAR (Auditory Recall)(Auditory Constructed) AC

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Key Concepts (Continued)

Matching and Pacing can then be employed to create and maintain rapport. Resourceful states are evoked through stimulus-response Anchoring and through Elicitation; this can also be used to identify Strategies (patterns of thinking and behaviour) which can be modified to improve performance. You can change the meaning of events by Reframing or redefining them.

Time Line work enables you to think differently about your personal history and invent your ideal future. Meta Programs are your internal filtering and external operating styles.

How not What you think!

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History and BackgroundNLP originated during the 1970s in the University of

Santa Cruz, California, when mathematician Richard Bandler and associate linguistics professor John Grinder studied, or ‘modelled’, three distinguished psychotherapists:

– Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy) – Virginia Satir (Conjoint family therapy) – Milton Erickson (Ericksonian hypnotherapy)

Grinder and Bandler managed to find out how these three people were able to produce such outstanding results with such consistency.

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The presuppositions (tacit assumptions), mental strategies and behaviour patterns employed by Perls, Satir and Erickson were identified by Grinder and Bandler and distilled into the discipline they named Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Grinder and Bandler’s early co-developers included Judith DeLozier, Robert Dilts, Steve Andreas and Leslie Cameron-Bandler.

NLP initially came to public attention in 1975 with the publication of Grinder and Bandler’s first book, The Structure of Magic. It has since been used to model high performance in many different fields.

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1. Psychotherapeutic approaches 2. Cybernetics (systems theory), including W

Ross Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety3. Gregory Bateson’s cybernetic epistemology

and his learning levels work

(epistemology is the set of fundamental assumptions from which a person operates)

4. Bertrand Russell and Alfred N Whitehead’s Theory of Logical Types

Major Influences

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5. Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics and Noam Chomsky’s Transformational Grammar 6. TOTE (Test Operate Test Exit) model developed by George Miller, E Galanter and Karl Pribram 7. George Miller’s theory: “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”

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Critical Views

There are many criticisms of NLP:

NLP is based on inconsistent referencing of both context and “logical types” and that the resulting confusion is more pervasive than most practitioners might be willing to admit.

NLP is manipulative. Some claim that this is a shortcoming of certain practitioners, rather than a truth about the practice itself.

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Critical Views (Continued)

NLP practitioners have different values and cultural backgrounds that may lead to inconsistent and confusing practice.

NLP training cost is usually exorbitant and cost is normally capitalizing on novelty of techniques and prospected return!

Claims of curing phobias, mental diseases like trauma in very short time (some claim 10-20 minutes).

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RapportRapport

Sensory Acuity

Sensory Acuity

Outcome Focused

Outcome Focused

BehavioralFlexibility

BehavioralFlexibility

NLPNLP

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Suggested Readings:

Bandler, R., and Grinder, J., (1975) The Structure of Magic, Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books

Bandler, R. (1985) Using Your Brain for a Change. Utah: Real People Press

Brownm, N., and Turnbull, J., (2000) Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and its relevance to effective communication, ACCA Students Newsletter

O’Connor, J. and McDermott, I. (1996) Principles of NLP. London: Thorsons

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Part Two

Applications