An NLP Epiphany or Comfirmation of my Scepticism?

This weekend I will be spending two days on a NeuroLinguistic Programming course. My wife is not best pleased with the pressure of Christmas preparations growing, but it was an offer on a discount site that I decided to take advantage of.

I confess to going into the two days with mixed feelings. My exposure to NLP has been limited to

• A general osmotic awareness of NLP.
• Having been subject of a coaching session with an NLP practioner.
• Reading the book "NLP for Dummies" on holiday a couple of year ago.

My general awareness gives me considerable misgivings that NLP is a manipulative technique to be used on other people. Now I realise the inconsistency in my fear given that I have attended and taken away ideas for influencing other people from many management and negotiation courses. The line between what I see as acceptable influencing and unacceptable manipulation is not entirely clear - I just believe there is one. It may just be the word programming which implies that once set in motion the outcome is predetermined.

The coaching session with an NLP practioner was at a time of considerable professional stress and the company brought the coach in to help provide support and advice. It may be being a (literal?) scientist, but I found it weird and unhelpful to be asked to imagine a small man standing on my upturned hand and to tell him how I felt about what was happening at work. It is seemed silly, disrespectful and unhelpful. It certainly did not leave a positive impression.

While being starnge holiday reading I decided that I would have a look at NLP presented in a simple way. My lasting impression from the book was a degree of confusion of what came first. By this mean that as I read about different aspects it felt as if it was a collection of ideas and approaches that I have come across in other tools and techniques - ones which seemed to have made their cases better, at least in my eyes. There was also a touch of "The Secret" - another book I found unconvincing - seemingly written for those desperate to believe.

So, I enter into two days of professional training and I have no idea if I will have an epiphany and become a convert of whether this experience will confirm my scepticism. Either way I should better understand NLP and be able to better rationalise my feelings.

Stay tuned and next week I will report on my experience.