Trainer Training Review

Richard Bandler

 
















John La Valle

I completed my initial SNLP trainer training with McKenna Breen in London in 2000 and have been training    Business NLP ever since.  I was particularly pleased to revisit this training in Orlando with Richard Bandler and John La Valle from the 3^rd – 8^th March 2004, after attending Persuasion Engineering and Design Human Engineering.

There were about 140 delegates from a real cross section of countries: US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Denmark etc. with some of the very best trainers and master trainers assisting. 

The thrust of the training was to give delegates the attitude and skill set to be excellent NLP trainers and inspiring public speakers, and to put in the feedback mechanisms to continually improve their performance in these arenas. 

There was simply too much packed in to the six days to give a detailed review, however there are some of the key points I noted. These are meant to be reminders and not complete descriptions. Each one is worth continued practice. 

• State
  
  
  

As with all NLP the trainer / practitioner leads with their state and attitude. A state where you had a ‘peak experience of influencing someone’ and a ‘this is going to be fun attitude’, is a good start. 

• Posture and Centrering
  
  
  

Normally stand at 45% to your audience. Centre yourself by imaging a shaft of light coming down from the top of your head and going down through your body to the floor. Start by focusing your attention about 2 inches below your navel. 


Practice rotating your body at the hip bones. As you rotate to the left your right knee will bend and vice versa.

• Breathing
  
  
  

Breathe! Practice breathing in enough so the out breath is automatic, practice using less words for each out breath so you have more ‘breath’ left. Normally speak from 2 inches below your navel. Remember you can use your voice to bathe your audience in sound. 

• Rhythm
  
  
  

Use rhythm, practice with a metronome. Speak between the beats. Practice moving your hips: left – centre – right – centre – left – etc to a metronome. Then imagine the beat in your hips without moving them.

• Engaging the audience
  
  
  

Consider drawing the audience in by casting your eyes like a ‘Z’ across the back, diagonally, and across the front of the audience. 

• Mean the words
  
  
  

Express words to reflect their meaning, generally stretch vowels and soften constanants. 

• Use ambiguities
  
  
  

Appropriate use of ambiguities creates genuine humour and a more ‘open’ state in your audience. Practice writing out lists of ambiguities. 

• Anchoring
  
  
  

Remember you can anchor visually and auditorally. When you notice that the audience is in a useful state anchor it! Practice anchoring by changing a ‘cupped hand’ to a ‘flat hand’ or by leaving a ‘hand print’ on the imaginary wall surrounding your ‘presentation space’. 

• Spatial anchors and chaining anchors
  
  
  

If you want your audience to be able to, for example, move from an ‘anxiety state’ to a ‘wanton motivation state’, anchor a chain of states that will help them make this transition. Mark out areas of the stage for different states. For example from ‘anxiety to ‘mild confusion’ to ‘intrigue’ to ‘wanton motivation.’ Then fire the anchors in sequence. Remember you have to access each state yourself before can expect your audience to follow and that you need to ‘break state’ between states. 

• Stories and nested loops
  
  
  

Practice starting a story and then without finishing it start a second, a third and forth (or more). You can add a useful embedded command in the middle. Then finish the forth, then the third, second and first. 
Now combine stories and spatial anchors, and the preceding bullets – remembering that your tempo needs to match the state and use a different voice for each story. And complete the whole sequence in 2-3 minutes! 


As a separate point remember that the purpose of a demonstration can be to complete the exercise on every member of the audience using the demonstration subject as a point of focus. 


And also remember the rumour that Richard and John install a phobia of public speaking at the beginning, so that they can then install highly successful strategies to overcome it…is just that …..a rumour! 


The training was good for me because it enabled me to practice a number of new behaviours, with the back drop of Richard and John’s powerful stories, supported by some of the best very best NLP trainers around.  Highly recommended for anyone wanting to develop their NLP training and presentation skills to large audiences. 


NB Richard’s wife Paula died shortly before the training. Richard carried out the training demonstrating genuine courage and emotion, weaving in stories about Paula and the realisation that life is precious. A unique and moving  experience.

Michael