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NLP Modelling the Masters - Tom O Connor

Hypnosis - Discussion between Michael Beale and Tom O Connor, October 2007.

Tom O’Connor is the Managing Director of Inside Leap. Inside Leap is an innovative graduate career and professional performance company.

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http://www.ppimk.com/nlp-podcast/tom-2.mp3

Michael :  Good morning Tom 

Tom: Good morning Michael, how are you? 

Michael : Very well thanks. And I’m particularly pleased that you’re taking some time out to let myself and our listeners know a little bit more about this really interesting project that you’ve done on modelling the NLP master.  So can I ask you to remind everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do.  

Tom: Sure, my name is Tom O’Connor and I’m a managing director of a company called InsideLeap which is a company in innovative and gradual career and performance training. We help organisations improve their  process and organisation of people issues, to improve the bottom line in terms of productivity, and as a by-product, profitability of the organisation.  

Michael : And how did you get involved in this Modelling-The-Masters project?  

Tom: Well it was more a very good friend of mine, Vikesh Ghelani who became my partner on the project. We were having these discussions just around NLP, and what we found out was all the NLP books that had been written, and many recent books that had been written, kind of come out, and to some degree are an application of previous works. And later on we thought, one of the things that would be fascinating is to understand, if you had the opportunity to go and interview some of the leading men of NLP, and find out what they went through to get to where they are today. And there’s that whole matter of – once you’ve had a strong idea of modelling, but also in NLP and belief structures and all the components of that – I thought it would be a fascinating project to go and interview some of the top people who’d be able to share that information to both NLPer’s new, and experienced.  

Michael : When you started talking to these NLP masters, what were some of the things that surprised you?  

Tom: There’s a few things I’d say surprised me with the project and also dealing with the various methods of training developed, that came from all around the world. One thing that became very clear and this is more towards the end of the program, which I suppose gave me a very strong feeling that first of all almost all of the NLP masters that we’ve interviewed, in my opinion at least, were very much, very human. And by that I mean, many NLPers evolved maybe ten or fifteen years ago, and after them came their forms of training, one of the things that you see amongst students, is that they seem to put master trainers up on a pedestal, and when I got to spend a lot more time interviewing them and speaking to a lot of other trainers as opposed to a select few I would have been familiar with before, the only thing that really came out is that these people are very much human beings and very down to earth and regular Joes, in jeans, so to speak.

That was one of the things that surprised me, I suppose because it was an unconscious belief that I had picked up in my own head and by being around them and seeing their strength and their weakness’s and the areas where they were clearly brilliant at NLP and other areas where they chose in their careers to naturally not focus on, where their knowledge base wasn’t as advanced as other trainers. That fascinated me.   

Michael : So they were human, what else interested you, and fascinated you?  

Tom: The other thing about the project is how polar were these people are. And by that I mean is that in NLP there are obviously John Grinder then there’s Dr Richard Bandler, which I’d say are different extremes. And one of the things that was an issue when we were launching the product and in conversation with people in the NLP space, who’d come from both sides of the house of speakers to say that there is such a strong polarisation just among NLPers. Which some found something quite difficult to conceive, you’d go off to one interview, and you’d be asked how you’d include one trainer but not necessarily all the other trainers. I find it fascinating that in this day and age, 2007, you find such a strong polarisation that goes on – and obviously not necessarily the within the community but definitely within some people. And that surprised me.    

Michael :  That’s interesting because in Mind Map, NLP is about modelling which can be as simple as asking questions and we should be continuously learning from whoever it is.  

Tom: Yes I totally agree – and another thing I noticed is people would always say ‘even personally, if I hadn’t been around the park, I would have certainly been to the downtown Borders, and looked to learn from this,’ because getting access to the people that we did, the research that we did and the way that we constructed our interviews and made a lot of invaluable information available, where to me I don’t particularly mind if you’re a master trainer, you’re a lead person or you’re just somebody that’s totally new into NLP, there is something very big that can be learned from the experienced people that have gone before you and have really mastered the feel of NLP. So it surprised me when there were some people that automatically just would have shut down on the idea because they might have just felt polarised and saying ‘what can NLP do? Why are we doing this sort of thing? All of NLP has already been discovered.’ I’m not sure that that’s the case, certainly the individual opinions and personal experiences of trainers and people that we spoke with are something that’s unique and different then what’s typically available in most NLP products.      

Michael : I totally agree, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re having this conversation because I actually think that it’s a really great thing that you’ve done and I found it absolutely fascinating just listening to the approaches and views of other trainers, whether I like them, whether I don’t like them – seeing the paths and the approaches that other people have taken.  

Tom: Yeah, and one of the things that I’ve found interesting and fascinating, in relation to what we’ve found in XXX is that one great thing that comes out of – when you have the ability – and maybe people who are total new people into NLP and haven’t had a former training or much experience may not necessarily pick this up straight away, but anybody else will, and obviously those who progressed will as well, it that the in built – so to speak- and unconscious beliefs and values and the way in which the trainers themselves thought to construct their own sentences and language – it’s extremely powerful and tells you a lot about that individual person, but also in relation to the kind of meta-patterns you can notice across interview in relation to – like one of the key things we looked at was how these trainers work when they’re working with clients who’ve have hypno-therapy. And understanding, how do they approach that? In order to know what’s different, and what’s consistent – and what I loved about it was that you have lots of trainers lots of different expertise and each of them brought something new in many cases or something different like most of them were very structured in there approach and quite methodical, and others were very not-structured, very fuzzy-like, and again were highly effective.

What I found extrapolating from that is very useful bringing information together and when you have multiple perspectives, it allowed me in my own work to become a lot more effective with particular clients that before were to challenging for us.

Michael : What else did you learn form doing it? 

Tom: Well, one natural by-product, and it’s something that a lot of people in sales used to go over and take back to us, was certain interviews would have a theme, and that is very much the goal for us. Often I think it’s flippant and off the cuff, but you can really hear in the trainers voices and their experiences, and what they care about how they went through it, and very much how they’re human. Some of them when they worked with their first clients would have been nervous or under confident, and how they transformed to become the amazing trainers that they are today.  

I thought that itself was very interesting from a learning point of view. Being able to go inside and really getting the idea that the map is not the territory and being able to identify your own construct in your own mind about how you work with clients, or how you go out and get business and any of these facets of NLP that we’ve looked at. It was a very useful mirror that I’d found that going through the interviews, automatically evaluating – ‘how do I compare against that?’ not quite ‘am I better or am I worse?’ situation, but rather ‘what can I learn? Is it different, and is there something useful here that I could apply?’  

Michael :  Is there anything that you think you do differently yourself after having gone through this exercise?   

Tom: Definitely, one is showing that any projects that I get involved with, and I’ve had a lot of opportunities to get involved with NLP related parties with multiple people, in all kind of contexts given the work that I do. And that is, the projects that I go for and the ones that I move towards, are ones that inspire me, and  follows my fascination. Again, some of the projects done, some of them Vikesh and I are very much working on basic principles – there are a lot of companies and projects that are done to create value for the people, but for me one of the few things that came out of it was ensuring me that I am just doing projects that I enjoy, that they’re a pleasure to do and also it gets you on something new, as it did with this.     

Michael : Who do you think will get the most out of listening to Modelling of the Masters?  

Tom: I would say the avid student, and by that I mean –  rather than classifying it as a prac or master prac or somebody new – If you want to get the most of Modelling the Masters, rather than just listening to it once through, and thinking ‘that’s nice, or hearing a pattern or a way of doing things about your business, obviously positively, that you may have done before – Modelling the masters, there’s so much information in there, where it’s quite densely packed that people will get the most out of it at any level – you could be a prac, and we’ve had this, we’ve had both very experienced trainers, and even the master trainers themselves, where most of them if not all of them have listened to the interviews themselves and given us feedback about what they enjoyed about it, themselves personally – and what they  got out of it and what they found interesting. But a couple of things, that if you’re a prac, definitely, and even if you’re somebody who isn’t a practitioner but has a strong interest in NLP, then you will really get a fascinating and thorough groundwork on NLP in relation to some of the leading master trainers –well not all, but many of the leading master trainers are under warrant for their input and viewpoint, on NLP and how to do it extremely well. That is invaluable in itself. If you’re a more experienced person, like a master practitioner, or trainer the kind of thing that you learn is, some distinctive programs – is being able to work with all types of clients but also being able to approach how you do your business differently then how you would typically do it after a training program, which is just ‘I just want to set up an NLP training school or a coaching program or a hypnotherapy thing,’ and which isn’t necessarily the most effective way. 

So certainly it really comes down to what you’re appetite is and how much you want to draw out of it, because the more you want to draw out of it than the more you will find there. And for most people, the feedback that people have found is all about the fascinating and interesting perspectives that they’ve got on us, their ability to now approach business in a different way, their confidence, not by knowing or by listening to a certain degree – like it being installed, or learning through the patterns of other trainers and how they’ve got good, how they overcame challenges and their go-for-it attitude – all of those components, those are things that are almost physically installed in you to a certain degree, just simply by listening, and really taking the time to stop and think ‘how can I use this? How’s it going to benefit me,’ and go in there with specific objectives , and think ‘ok if I’m working with a client, I should use this next – and what could I get out of it that could help me with that?’ in a business context – all of those things would be useful  

Michael : After doing modelling the masters, what are the other projects that you’re looking at?  

Tom: We’re looking at a lot of projects. Across the fields one of the things we did was go off and interview well over five hundred NLP trainers and not just NLP trainers, NLPers. Ranging from entry level people to trainers, to get an understanding of – people get these ideas of NLP, one being that its just some cult or some living breathing thing, when it’s not quite that, and on top of that there’s demand and expectation of NLP saying that it has always been, which again I think is an inaccuracy.  

So one of the things I’ve been doing of late is we’ve taken a post in ‘what is it?’ people in the NLP community, and we’ve got people from everywhere, Australia, Japan, all over Europe, south America – we’ve literally had answers from all over the world – and just getting an opinion, and a post, on where is it people right now are having challenges, practicing and mastering NLP? Where do they want to use it? And what would be of value to them? So we’re looking at a number of courses that we can offer, again, Vikesh and I are very much in the online phase, rather than the offline NLP training – and once we have those things confirmed, what he have right now in our system about trainers, and about some of this stuff, once that’s out, I’ll be letting you know Michael and anybody else that’s interested – but unfortunately my hands are tied at the moment, I can’t exactly tell you what it is! 

Michael :  Ok, that’s fine. Can you let people have your contact details? 

Tom: Sure if anybody wants to get in touch with me they can email me direct tomoconnor@insideleap.co.uk and my phone number if anybody wants to reach me is +448450944603 so if you have any questions, comments anything you can always get hold of me, or alternatively you can also email Mackesh or myself if you’re interested in Modelling the Masters at www.modellingthe-masters.com    

Michael :  Ok, excellent. Thanks a lot Tom.

Further information on Modelling the Masters 

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