Reply To: Standards of Training

[Heidi Heron]

(Reply from Hugh Comerford)

Thanks Lisa,

Yes and, as a measure of training rigor, the number of instruction hours is not a radical or unique concept. Many (most?) professions a the number of training hours as a criteria for certification. Is NLP so unique (or are others such brilliant trainers) that you can train to excellence in 1 or 2 or 5 or 8 days? If you can, please let me know how.

It’s the old saw but it’s a valid one: do you want the brain surgeon who was certified in a 4-day brain surgery course? Because that’s what we have going on in the field.

Content, standards, supervision are great. Instructional time matters as well.

As far as I can tell, the 2nd longest course in Canada is 9-days in duration. Does anyone reading this believe that a 9-day practitioner certification is equal to or greater than a 20-day practitioner certification all things being equal?

As I said, and I believe this, we can either do something about increasing the credibility of NLP via training standards (as one part, granted), or we can simply accept things as they are.

It puts the conversation on the table, at least here in Canada. . I’ve had people attend others introductory sessions where the Trainer said, “You can be certified in 6 days! Why would you want to do a 20-day certification training??!” as if a) 20 days is a waste of time and b) 6 days is more than sufficient for excellence to be transferred and c) Certification is more important than education and skill…

I wouldn’t have any problem whatsoever doing a hybrid model where we can have (and I’m just making this up):

a) NLP Professional Practitioner that follows Peter’s standards,
b) NLP Certified Practitioner that follows the training criteria that’s been floating around for +/-20 years that I shifted to accommodate (120hrs etc)
c) NLP Technician certification (or something similar) which can be the catch-all for training that doesn’t meet shared criteria (i.e. the self-referenced crowd creating their own accreditation criteria with a puppet certification ‘board’).

I don’t pretend to have any control over NLP in Canada, but via my own actions I do have some influence to change the conversation, or at least put it on the table. As a group the influence we wield could reframe the perception of the field in a positive way. I think we all want that…but to steal Lisa’s line, I think we need to be brave enough…

The truth is I don’t feel 20 days is enough…but it’s enough for now.