Before getting into the first exercise Peter told us a story and demonstrated - with a willing volunteer.   Actually he only told us the beginning of a story thus ‘opening a loop’ which kept the audience wondering what would happen next.
Called in to run an NLP day at a school in East London Peter found himself faced with 40 teachers many of whom were ‘openly hostile’. He regards this as a challenge and relishes such attention. ( NOTE:- I asked him to repeat this story when I interviewed him later in the month and the full story, in Peter’s words, is on the CD that accompanies the Practice Pack for May. It’s a great example of the power of NLP). Products.
In the afternoon of this training he was asked by the teachers how they could better understand the behaviours of their pupils, and what was happening in their minds(the pupils) that affected this behaviour. He decided to use a simple exercise of helping someone access their ‘sub-modalities’ to discover their view of the world. This was a demonstration of CONTRAST.

Calling on the teacher’s group for a volunteer Peter found himself working with the ‘ringlreader’ of hostility a lady seated at the front. She sat down and he asked her what her name was. “Susan Brown” She said, “But you can call me Miss Brown!” (Name changed to protect the innocent and Peter). In brief (if you want the full story to discover how he handled this challenge you’ll just have to get the Practice Pack, won’t you?) Products he took her through accessing two different ‘states’ and their ‘internal representations’. He used the same process in his live demonstration with us and then we moved into pairs to have a play as well.
If you were there you’ll remember the fun we had with this exercise. You don’t? You weren’t there?  O.K. So here’s what we did! In pairs A = client - B = coach, A  is asked to think of a time when they were ‘disappointed’. Once they have one, B  then asks them to make a ‘representation’ of it. Picture it, feel it, see it, hear it, smell it etc. Then B  helps A  to explore its sub-modalities. Its location? size? black & white? colour? Associated or disassociated? Etc. Got the idea? Good. Then discuss the weather and break state. B  then asks A  to think of a time when they felt proud, perhaps even a little smug. B  helps A  unpack sub-modalities of this experience. A  notices difference and so does B . Change over and play again. We all did this and as we all started at the same time we also pretty much got to the second ‘smug’ moment together. As the sub-modalities of ‘smugness’ were elicited the energy in the room leapt up. So did the volume! (For a fuller description of just how to play this game at home get the NLP-South Practice Pack for May, £15.00 including the CD interview).Products.
The important point about this exercise is that our senses work with contrast. Everything is relative. Dark is only dark compared to light, which is only light compared to heavy, which is only heavy compared to lager, which is only beer compared to water!
 

Thursday 1st May 2008

“I love   the challenge of an openly hostile           audience!”
    P Freeth.

Peter joined us in May for his second go at NLP-South. (Back by popular demand!) During the evening Peter claimed he really enjoys the challenge of an openly hostile audience!!
He told me later he also enjoys visiting NLP-South because the group is open to experiment, provides a friendly challenge and will play with new ideas. (maybe next time we’ll try him with openly hostile).

In discussions we’d had before the evening about how to fit his session into our theme for the year (How to have even more fun, Now Let’s Play)  we discussed ideas around the ‘serious business’ of coaching and therapy, and the need to be professional with clients, versus the idea of finding humour and laughter in coaching and helping clients make a change that moves them from unresourceful to feeling better. Knowing that this was roughly the area to explore Peter left the rest of his planning to his unconscious mind.
 

Setting goals can often limit the potential outcomes for us all. Setting goals for the client may limit their growth, setting goals for ourselves as coaches for the client’s changes may limit us and them. As coaches we can focus on the client, where they are now (problem), where they want to be (Goal) or how to get them moving from one to the other (Resources). We can also form rapport with their problem, their goal and their resourceful state. Whichever we choose tends to set the tone for the interaction between coach and client. If we are in rapport with a future happy state then surely humour, fun and laughter are important facets of the rapport state. If we look at any problem it usually has more than one side. It could have a funny side, a serious side, a pretty side, an ugly side, an in side and an out side, maybe an other side, if its really bad possibly a suey side? Generally the ‘problem’ is in the client’s mind or internal map and not out in the real world.
With this as his start point Peter trusted his NLP experience & sensory acuity, and our willingness to play and learn, to provide the rest of the content for the evening.

This may sound like he gave it no further thought and very probably in conscious terms that is ‘true’.
One of the key things I notice about NLPers, who have truly embraced the spirit of ‘wanton curiosity’ and who are able to trust their unconscious, is they always deliver a fresh and interesting evening.  Therefore as I was introducing the evening, and our speaker, Peter was wondering  where he might start, and it’s good to wonder,  when he spotted the latest NLP-South Practice Pack, wandered over to it and wondered again, about the NLP pre-supposition “ there is no failure only feedback”. So he started the evening by suggesting “there is also no success only feedback”.

Peter set the wider frame for the session. DIRECTION - CONTRAST - INTENTION. When someone visits a ‘coach’ with a ‘problem’ it’s important to discover the direction they would like to go in. The direction to avoid is the way the problem wants to go.

Peter has a down to earth approach using plain simple language and as he tells stories it’s often easy to think he’s not using NLP at all. Indeed Peter readily admits that his NLP skills are so much part of his normal operating system that even he’s not sure when he’s using it! He makes it look deceptively simple or as I remarked at the end of the evening he may just be simply deceptive!

Is he deceptively simple or simply deceptive?

Before the break we considered the process of ‘worry’ and how it works. Our mind makes a representation of the future and its bad, very bad! We then use this representation to ‘act as if’ it was real. This induces a sense of fear. Which of course is not actually real unless faced with a man eating tiger!
Interestingly ‘excited’ follows the same pattern with one minor difference. As we make our internal representation of the future we make it good, very good, then act ‘as if’. You choose which works best for you, or do you? We are great pattern making systems and easily get stuck in less than useful patterns. So do our clients when we are coaches.

Fear.
Is an acronym.

Future
Events
Appearing
Real

Except when faced with a man eating tiger when it stands for

F**k
Everyone
And
Run

I think we took the break around here, no embedded commands about cups of tea this month! So we were quite quickly back upstairs.

After the break we played with the unsticker. At first glance this seems like a bit of fun  - not really of any ‘serious’ use. On deeper inspection you will find there is some ‘serious’ NLP magic woven into this little gem.
If you missed the meeting (you really must organise your diary around the first Thursday of the month) you may be wondering what I’m on about. (Even if you were there you may be in the same confused state). The unsticker or to give it it’s full title “The World Famous Unsticker” is now a small book, an online resource, and more, containing questions to ask someone when they have a problem. The cunning bit about the WFU is that, when he wrote it, Peter had no idea what your problem was, so none of the questions relate to your problem. This is of course sheer genius as asking questions about the problem makes the problem feel important and gives weight to a problem that basically needs to go away and stop bothering you. Asking questions that have no relevance at all to the problem, but cause you to examine it in ways you may never have considered before, disturb your current pattern of thinking and help you  discover new things you can now do with this new resource that used to be a problem, didn’t it? So does your problem look good naked? Who would benefit from receiving your problem as a birthday present? What would Father Christmas say to this problem? (None of these appear in the unsticker, it just shows how easy it can be to ask totally unrelated and probably stupid questions and justify them by saying they are a deep and meaningful way to address a problem such as this.
I’ll be better after my afternoon nap, honestly!!
To find out more about the WFU, the brain fairies and other online interactive stuff go to Pete’s site.
So what we discovered playing with a very small pocket version of the WFU was that after about three or four totally unrelated and off the wall questions the problem throws in the towel and goes off in a sulk followed by peals of laughter.
Before we finished Peter closed the loop on his story and gave us the outcome of that one day NLP training for teachers in a failing school in East London. Unfortunately there is not enough space here to include it so you will jolly well have to buy the Practice Pack to discover how it all ended. Products
 

NLP as she should be spoken is definitely what we got from Mr Freeth.  Thank you Peter for coming down to share your stories and expertise, your sense of fun and your willingness to share.
Peter stayed with us, and on Friday 2nd May shared more insights and coaching marketing wisdom with a small group of us at Jinglewood, in a one day special event. We (that is Jenny and I) plan to distil the nuggets of the day into another Practice Pack. We’ll publish this on the products page once its done.
To find out more about Peter, his business coaching, his self publishing, his books and his NLP training and leadership work start at Communication in Action.

We sent a copy of the May  NLP-South Practice Pack to Peter here’s what he had to say:-

“This is awesome stuff! I'm amazed at how you are able to pay so much attention to all the stuff I don't know I'm doing! many thanks, I hope you'll book me in again for next year.... “ Pete.

I don’t expect,You probably want to get your hands on one of these fantastic NLP-South Practice Packs, won’t you? Follow this link to get yours here and now. Including the downloadable interview between Nigel and Peter where you can hear about his daughter’s problem solving service, his plans for the future and lots more!