The Fifth Leadership Summit – 2020
Alicante, Spain — Jan. 10, 11 & 12 2020
NLP Leadership Summit Members – you are invited to attend the NLP Colloquium taking place in Alicante, Spain. We hope you will be able to join us for associating, collaborating, assimilating and communicating with your fellow leaders of NLP.
As we did in 2016 & 2018, we are meeting and staying at the Melia Alicante Hotel. Meeting delegates are responsible for their own transportation, accommodation and meals during the meeting. We have secured a group rate to assist everyone to be able to attend.
We will provide you to a link to secure your discounted accommodation once you register. Please use the link below to register your attendance and pay your fees. Heidi Heron, who will be keeping a list of the participants.
Payment of €55 is due at the time of registration. If your plans change, please let Heidi Heron know by 30 December and a full refund will be provide (less any bank fees).
Design and Intention
- The plan is to call top NLP Leaders together for a 3-day Colloquium wherein we get acquainted, associate with one another, and have the kind of critical and difficult conversations that we need to have.
- Leaders: The “leaders” include anyone who is operationally leading people in the field of NLP— Trainers, writers, researchers, editors, sponsors, etc. anyone who has or is influencing people to care about and operate in the field of NLP.
- Assumption: Our working assumption about this is— Like it or not, we are the leaders. The challenge is: how are we doing? Are we the leaders we need to be? Are we grooming leaders for the next generation? Are we leading the field in a way that will make people proud?
- Leadership: As a field without formal leadership but hundreds if not thousands of operational and functional leaders— the time has come for us to do some critical thinking about where we are and where we want to go.
- Associating: As a field we have lots of Associations and small communities. These are usually built around a single person or a model, but we do not have a sense of a worldwide community. We are not seeking to create a super-association, but something much more simple— to simply associate with one another. The design is to reduce the separations, the suspicion of each other, the bad-mouthing of those we disagree with and create a more respectful and cooperative international presence.
- Colloquium — colloquium (klkwm) n. pl. colloquiums or colloquia (-kw-)
- An informal meeting for the exchange of views.
- An academic seminar on a broad field of study, usually led by a different lecturer at each meeting.
[Latin, conversation, from colloqu ,to talk together : com-, com- + loqu, to speak.]
Then, as “an informal meeting for the exchange of views,” our aim will be to come together and use various group self-management processes and practices— Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, Groups of 8 to 10 persons to work on subjects and sharing results on dozens of flip charts, then sharing the “leadership” by drawing names for who will moderate or summarize and lead a larger group conversation. These are just suggestions given to begin a conversation about how we will move forward.
Proposed Agenda
FELLOWSHIP OF THE ELDERS
“The Fellowship of the Ring” in the movie series, Lord of the Ring, brought together people of very different groups for a singular purpose. What seems to have worked best for The NLP Leadership Summit is the idea of associating. Rather than focusing on creating a new association, we have focused on associating. We gather together to focus on a singular purpose — creating a future for NLP that will be credible and exciting, raising the quality of NLP, supporting it with research, and living the communication principles. That makes us The Fellowship of the Elders.
At the last NLP Leadership Summit, we unanimously decided to move forward toward creating a Global Body. The committee worked on it, but to move forward depends on most of the other committees completing their work first.
DAY 1— Opening the Colloquium
Welcome! The vision of this Summit is to associate with each other with respect, care, and professional integrity. The hope is to create a sense of community and collaboration which will lead to greater quality and credibility for NLP. The realization is that we are the leaders and the future is up to us to leave a legacy we will all be proud of.
We will self-organize into small groups repeatedly, to create new groups each time. The small groups will take a Guiding Question to explore and then report back in the plenary group.
Theme Day 1: Our Singular Purpose as Associating Trainers and Leaders
Objectives: Associating together as Leaders in the field of NLP; Getting practical ideas from each other about how to be more effective as trainers and leaders in this field, Raising the Quality of NLP, the Credibility of NLP, upgrading the brand of NLP.
Under Associating— many of us come to the Summit for our own personal and professional development, to learn what others are doing around various topics. This will be an open exploration based on each person’s interests.
Discussion Questions for Day 1:
What are you doing that’s working in this area? What are your questions and challenges? What have you found as best understandings or practices?
Activities during Day 1:
Time for “Commissions” (the committees) to meet and update themselves and then report to the plenary session.
- Media Response Group
- Ethics Group
- International Global Body Group
- Research Group
- Standards Group
- Planning Group (for next summits)
- 4th Generation NLP Group
- Best Practices Group
Day 2: Becoming a “Fellowship of Elders”
Open Space activities led by Ueli R. Frischknecht. Ueli is working now to create a format for how the Open Space will work.
Taking the idea of just associating, and being the kind of people we need to be to live and promote the singular vision of quality, credibility and branding. We began this Leadership Summit out of the need to begin to be the kind of leaders that the NLP tribe needs. Among the common complaints against NLP is that we don’t really have leaders, and the leaders we look to are not providing leadership … and one day, when the founders are gone— will we be the kind of leaders that people will follow?
Other Activities on Day 2:
Special Reports for the plenary group:
R&R – Frank Bourke — Research
Day 3: Taking the Fellowship of Elders back Home:
Discussion Questions for Day 3:
- What do you see as the next things for us to do to take NLP to the next level? What will that entail? What ideas do you have for doing that?
- What difference will this NLP Leadership Summit make for you back home? What can we do to make it more transformative?
- What additional ideas do you have for continuing the spirit of this associating during the time prior to us meeting again in the next forum?
Other Activities on Day 3:
Special Reports for the plenary group:
Intentional Fellowship – with Robert Dilts & Ian McDermott