Professionalism in NLP

What is a professional?

In my first year of Nursing training, one of the placements for practical experience was at a busy medical centre. I was there for two weeks (10 days) and the idea was that the nurses at the centre would involve me in their work, have me sit in on nursing consultations and explain how they structured their work. Unfortunately, the nurses at the centre did not approve of their centre being used as a training centre, and they simply told me to sit in the staff room and wait in case there was anything to do. On the second day, a nursing tutor visited and while she was there I got to be in on client sessions and to help. As soon as she went, I was back waiting in the staff room. After the first week, humiliated, I decided not to come in the second week.

That nearly cost me my career as a nurse. The head of the Nursing department called me in to her office, found out what had happened, and told me in no uncertain terms that my response to the situation was “unprofessional”. While she could see that I was put in a very unpleasant situation, it was my job as a professional to use whatever approved methods there existed to advocate for my position, and not just to give up and abandon my job placement. I was 18 years old, and for the first time, I now understood that for a professional, every singly act on the job, and almost every other act, is expected to meet standards of quality control and ethics.

When you go to see a medical practitioner, you expect them to have completed the training they say they completed, not to have walked out in protest because they just didn’t like parts of it (and there was plenty that I needed to train to do as a nurse that I didn’t approve of personally). You expect your doctor to make decisions for your benefit, and not merely for their benefit financially, sexually or otherwise: to act as your agent and not just act selfishly. You expect that they will not tell your personal information to all their friends as a form of amusement. You expect that they will tell you honestly how much sessions will cost, and what is likely to happen as a result of them, before you commit to them; to make and abide by a professional “contract” for services. You expect that they continue training and are familiar with the most recent research in their field. You expect that they have some way of shielding you from their personal stresses, so that they don’t “dump” their frustrations on you. And you know that, should they betray these trusts, you have a legal right to take action to correct the harm as fully as possible. To sum up, you expect them to behave as a professional.

Largely, then, professionalism consists not merely in “doing NLP as a paid job” rather than being an “amateur”, but also in delivering your paid services in a systematic, responsible, ethical, skilled and verified way. As soon as you charge money for your NLP services, you are counted legally as being responsible for ethical standards and legal requirements. In New Zealand, for example, the Health and Disability Commission has a court system for hearing complaints against people who see others as a “coach” (or whatever they choose to call themselves), and as soon as you charge money, they expect you to align what you do with their published ethical standards (the same ethical standards you see published in notices on New Zealand hospital walls). I want to urge you to consider 3 specific actions to confirm your professionalism as an NLP coach/trainer:

  1. Join a professional organization
  2. Commit to ongoing training and supervision
  3. Create written contract letters for your clients

I also urge you to consider the wider field of committing to codes of ethics and quality assurance arrangements. Quality Assurance is a process where you identify standards for your training or coaching practice, and then specify times and strategies for independently verifying that you are meeting those standards. In the case of NLP training, for example, the IANLP (see below) asks all Fellow member Trainers to commit to ongoing peer evaluation of their standards for advertising, delivery and assessment of their trainings, with written documentation. They need to monitor compliance with curricula, clarity of educational concepts, public relations, confidentiality and privacy rules, learning support for students, continuing professional development, evaluation and feedbacks systems, and self-reflection meetings.

(www.ia-nlp/pdfdocs/IANLP_FMT_Quality_Guidelines.pdf ).

Professional Organizations

Firstly, professionals are expected to be trained to deliver their services, and to belong to professional organizations that supervise their work or at least clarify the standards they are expected to meet. If you discovered that your medical practitioner had no such organization to which they belonged, and had no organization recognizing their training, I assume you’d be suspicious: and I’d advise you to change your doctor! Increasingly, international NLP certifying organizations require that NLP students are advised of all these ethical expectations. There are three main International NLP Certifying organizations that have 18 day standards for each of the 3 levels of NLP Training – Practitioner, Master Practitioner, Trainer; and they have a unified ethical statement at www.unifiednlp.org/ :

There are other NLP organizations worth considering joining also, of course, who also align with such standards. They often allow courses that have 7 day face-face training plus verified study at each level. For example:

Karen Falconer, by the way, is the author of an excellent book on the subject of this article (The NLP Professional: Your Future in NLP). I strongly recommend that you get a copy of this as soon as you have finished reading this article.

In the case of IANLP and IN, if you have a “Sealed” certificate with them (The sticker with their logo should have a number as well, or there should be such a number printed on the certificate) then you can be listed on line on their site for free. If you have a certificate that does not have such a number, this is not a “real” certificate for that organization, and you need to get a real one from one of the trainers in that organization. Seals usually cost Trainers about 15 Euro, and so expect to pay maybe NZ$50-100. On each of the sites listed, there is a list of certifying trainers. To apply to be listed free with IANLP, go to www.ia-nlp.org/graduates/registration , and to apply to be listed free with IN go to www.nlp-institutes.net/apply .

Training and Supervision: What Makes An Expert?

Secondly, NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner training is the beginning training for a career as an NLP consultant, but if it is the “last” training your consultant ever does, that too is a concern. Expertise develops from experience. What makes the difference between a newly trained NLP Practitioner (who apparently knows all the language patterns and change techniques) and an accomplished NLP expert?…  Obviously, the years of experience.

So why hasn’t someone modelled the process of becoming an expert; the ‘how’ of those years of experience?  Well, three University of California researchers did.  Stuart Dreyfus and Hubert Dreyfus (1980) studied chess players and airline pilots to identify the specific differences in the strategies, sensory awareness and belief systems of novices and experts.  Patricia Benner researched new nursing graduates and experienced nurse clinicians; confirming that the Dreyfus model also explained the differences between them.

In this section I’ll explore their finding in relation to your work as an NLP coach and trainer, and frame the process of Consultive support (also called Supervision) as an ideal format for using their model to create expertise.  Having discussed the model of supervision used in counselling, I’ll identify keys to maximising its effectiveness in this new role.

An expert practitioner (in any field) simply does not approach situations in the same way as a beginner.  The Dreyfus-Benner research shows that experts guide their actions in a totally different way.  This way cannot be simply ‘taught’, but its development can be dramatically accelerated by an understanding of how, specifically, it naturally evolves.

The Stages of Excellence

The Dreyfus studies identified 5 distinct stages in the development of an expert.  I’ll describe these as they relate to one-to-one work as an NLP Practitioner with clients.

1) Novice.  (eg. Early in an NLP Practitioner course) the novice has no experience with the situations where they’ll be using their training.  They are taught certain context-free rules to guide what they do (adjust your voice tone to match the client’s; identify the submodalities for a belief change by asking this list of questions; when a client is associating into trauma, use the trauma cure; and so on).  Left alone in a situation, the novice cannot be expected to succeed because they don’t know which of the “rules” are priorities, or when to make an exception to the rule.  At this stage it’s complex enough just to remember the rules.

2) Advanced Beginner.  (eg at the end of a successful NLP Practitioner course).  The advanced beginner can recognise what the Dreyfus model calls “guidelines” for a situation.  These are like rules, except they cannot be stated in black and white.  An advanced beginner might say “I began asking about submodalities by checking distance, because she kept saying that the problem was closing in on her” or “He told me the situation was traumatic, but he had a very calm, slow voice and when I explored further it was his last counsellor who had told him that.  Actually he just wanted to be more resourceful in those situations, so I decided to use collapse anchors”.  Guidelines can and are taught at a Practitioner course, but depend on the trainee having at least some experience of “what usually happens” so as to notice when a guideline applies.  In a Practitioner course, rules can be given before a practise exercise, guidelines are best explained after.

3) Competent.  (eg after some weeks of NLP practical work, and/or after a Master Practitioner course.  This level took 2-3 years for nurses in the Benner study to reach).  The competent practitioner can manage the complexities of actual client situations, and has an ability to combine processes and design interventions as part of longer range goals.  They no longer get thrown off track by “unexpected” responses to NLP processes, etc., and have a general feeling that they can “cope”.  The competent practitioner is at ease applying a vast array of guidelines, and so will enjoy learning from less structured, “inductive”, simulation-style training’s. 

4) Proficient.  The proficient practitioner is unconsciously skilled at the things the competent practitioner “manages”.  When dealing with a very complex client situation, they only need to be aware of a few most unique aspects in order to decide what to do next.  It’s not simply a matter of unconsciously applying the rules and guidelines however.  The proficient practitioner accesses their vast array of past experiences instead of the guidelines.  They therefore cannot necessarily even put into words how they are deciding.  The decision comes as a response to hundreds of accessed VAKOGAd memories, rather than the Ad “principles” a competent practitioner is aware of being at ease with.  A proficient practitioner, if asked, will often explain their actions in terms of “maxims” –guidelines that describe what to the novice would be unintelligible nuances of the situation; which seem to mean one thing at one time and quite another later on.  Some of Richard Bandler’s videos contain good examples of such “maxims”; suggestions which sound useful but may seem puzzlingly self-contradictory (they may also simple be self-contradictory of course!).  Their criteria are no longer able to be described adequately in sensory specific terms.  The leap from competent to proficient is the  breakthrough in training.  It’s the difference that enables expertise.

5) Expert.  The expert has an “intuitive” grasp of the situation and zeros in on the issues that need attention without any wasted “problem solving” time.  In the Dreyfus research , for example, one chess master, when asked why he made a particular move, explained “Because it felt right.  It looked good”.  An expert will confidently challenge rules and guidelines based on such intuition.  Expert practise is holistic rather than step-by-step.  Both Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson were fascinated by Bandler and Grinder’s ability to discern new rules and guidelines in their methods.  An expert could, of course, model their own behaviour.  But (if the Dreyfus model is right) the consequences of training based on such modelling is never “the same” as expert behaviour.  Expert behaviour is qualitatively different; it uses experience as the comparison in the Test phase of the TOTE, instead of a set of guidelines.  Experience means collected internal VAKOGAd representations of previous events. For a task as multifaceted as “being an NLP Practitioner” the choice is between actual experience based installation on one hand and reducing the task unholistically to separate chunks on the other.  Actual experience based learning is where supervision becomes important.

Practice with Consultive Support:  Training Experts

The Dreyfus study noted that all formal training tends to aim at the first three stages of expert development.  Proficient and expert practitioners will tend to find step-by-step trainings and even simplified “simulations” too reductionist (reducing real life to a set of patterns).  So how could ongoing training support us developing from competence to expertise?  Two answers are the case study practice and consultive support.

By the case study I mean here an example presented by an expert, for study by practitioners.  Such a study will provide examples of guidelines for advanced beginners or competent practitioners.  It also provides vicarious experiential learning for practitioners  moving towards expertise.  Examples in the NLP literature include “Virginia Satir: The Patterns of her magic” by Steve Andreas, “Magic In Action” by Richard Bandler, and the retelling of Milton Erickson’s casework in his essays. In my training of NLP Master Practitioners around the world, advanced practitioners are always more concerned to “see me” do my work, rather than to learn the theory. They want case studies, not new guidelines.

By consultive support, I mean the kind of experience practitioners get by discussing their own work (especially using audio taped sessions) with another practitioner at their own or a “higher” stage of expertise.  Consultive support is not training, but it is the next step in developing expertise, after training.  Simply attending more trainings doesn’t create expertise.  Consultive support can.

In the rest of this section I want to explore the process of consultive support as the accelerated creation of expertise. 

Defining Supervision in Coaching

Coaches and other change agents frequently make an ongoing arrangement to meet with a similarly trained professional (perhaps once a fortnight for one-two hours) in order to discuss their casework.  In New Zealand, professional organisations such as the Association of Counsellors (NZAC) require this arrangement as a condition of membership.

Both the British and the New Zealand Associations of Counsellors say “Supervision includes monitoring, developing, and supporting individuals in their role as counsellors”.  They cite four issues that are the domain of supervision (The counsellor-client relationship, the counsellor-supervisor relationship, the wider system of counsellor-client-supervisor-referring agent etc, and ethical standards).  They also cite three things which are not considered central to supervision (training, personal coaching of the coach, and directing the coach’s work).

In the light of my previous description of the development of expertise, this NZAC code clearly uses an impoverished definition of “training”.  Another view is offered by Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet (1991) who say that supervision contracts should specify whether supervision is:

  1. Tutorial supervision, where an open-ended education purpose is meant.
  2. Training supervision, where the supervisor is responsible for training goals.
  3. Managerial supervision, where the supervisor is also the counsellors manager.
  4. Consultancy supervision, -similar to the NZAC model.

Supervision:  The Dilemma For NLP Practitioners

Once an NLP Practitioner decides to arrange supervision (or consultive support, as it was known in the NZANLP), they may face a dilemma.  The consultive support model I’m proposing assumes you have access to a person who is a) At least a competent NLP Practitioner, and b) Familiar with the ethical responsibilities and varied focus of supervision.  While NLP Practitioners are few and far between, they obviously will sometimes accept compromises.

That’s one of the two main reasons I’m writing this section.  My aim is to provide another option for NLP Practitioners; to get together in two’s or three’s, read this article carefully, and begin peer support.  If your partners in this venture are also members of an accredited counsellor organisation, this will usually meet their requirements as well.  To counsellors who believe in the sanctity of “trained” supervisors with long counselling backgrounds, and who are uneasy with this proposal, I’d say “You’re right.  It may not be perfect.  But it sure beats no supervision”.

(My other reason for writing the section, by the way, is to enrich NLP consultive support which is being run by competent or better NLP Practitioners with Supervision experience).

The Changing Focus of Supervision/Consultive Support

Shohet and Hawkins point out that the focus of supervision is likely to change as the counsellor develops expertise.  Using the Dreyfus list of stages, they would say that the central issue of supervision –for the counsellor evolves in this way:

Novice:  Can I make it in this work?  (“self-oriented”)

Advanced Beginner:  Can I help this client make it?  (“client-oriented”)

Competent:  How are the client and I relating?  (“process-oriented”)

Proficient and Expert:  How do processes interpenetrate?  At this stage the counsellor is not acquiring more Knowledge, but instead integrating learning’s and experiences, to create what Shohet and Hawkins call wisdom (the “maxims” described by Dreyfus).

Of course, all four issues occur at each level; it’s just that the focus shifts.  Shohet and Hawkins suggest that with newer practitioners the consultant needs to help the practitioner attend to:

1:  Sensory specific descriptions of their clients’ dilemmas.

2:  The practitioner’s choice of interventions.

3:  The overview and outcome focus of their relationship with the client.

            With more experienced practitioners the consultant needs to help the practitioner explore:

4:  Ways in which the practitioner may be over protecting, or transferring their own needs and frustration’s onto the client.

5.  Ways in which the practitioner’s behaviour with the consultant parallels the behaviour they find difficult in their client.  When this is so, as the consultant and practitioner resolve their “block”, the practitioner learns ways to resolve the issue with the client.  e.g. A practitioner may bring up a whole lot of confused goals they have for assisting a client whose problem is an inability to focus on one outcome in their sessions.  As the consultant confronts the practitioner’s indecisiveness, the practitioner learns a model for confronting their client.

6. The interaction between the consultant and the practitioner itself, including any overprotection or transferring of the consultant’s feelings into their relationship.  In doing this, the consultant models solutions for issue 4. above.

Consultive Support and Responsibility

NZAC identifies the maintaining of ethical standards as a central goal of supervision.  In some court cases in America, supervisors have been held responsible for failing to challenge their counsellors actions or negligence with clients.  This suggests that consultants need to actively check practitioners’ behaviour and be willing to confront them where the client may be at risk.  A consultant could be expected to remind practitioners of issues such as:

  • the importance of keeping client information confidential.
  • the unacceptability of client-practitioner sexual relationships.
  • the value of checking out clients contingency plans to avoid suicidal or violent actions.
  • the unhelpfulness of a practitioner taking over life decision making from a client.
  • the value of a practitioner communicating with other similar change agents involved with the same client.

There is a second kind of responsibility which I believe is crucial for consultants of NLP practitioners to attend to.  It is a responsibility to raise issues about the embodiment of the presuppositions of NLP.  An NLP consultant might choose to remind practitioners of issues such as:

  • the value of respecting other’s models of the world, and treating resistance as lack of rapport.       
  • the importance of designing interventions to increase choice and protect ecology.
  • treating the client as being in charge of their own neurology; “at cause” in their life (responsible for taking action to change), rather than “at effect” of either their environment or the magical techniques offered by the Practitioner.

If all this talk about responsibility seems a little one-sided, that’s because it is.  One question I as a consultant frequently ask NLP Practitioners is “ Do you enjoy working with this client ?”.  I believe Practitioners have a right to decide whether they work with someone.  Feeling they have to “stick at it” with a client (to prove NLP works, because they owe it to the person etc.) doesn’t support a positive outcome.  A practitioner-client relationship which isn’t enjoyable can be changed or supportively ended.

Consultive Support For Expertise

I believe that the responsibility and ethical issues are as important in consultive support as in formal training.  No more and no less.  NLP trainers have a responsibility to check that the people they certify meet their course outcomes.  But training isn’t centrally about identifying lack of attainment.  It’s about learning.  It’s about trainees transforming their lives.  That’s my interest in it too.  Like most counselling itself, most of the literature about supervision of counselling has a problem focus.  Lets come back now to the real outcome of consultive support: expertise.

I have ten years experience as a supervisor and consultant, firstly with counsellors and then with NLP Practitioners, using both individual, group and peer group formats.  To maximise the creation of expertise, I recommend the following four principles.

  1. Use a Group Format.

Hawkins and Shohet (1991) point out that supervision groups are less likely to parallel the dynamics of the counsellor-client relationship, that they create their own group dynamics issues, and provide less time for each individual counsellor to discuss their cases.  On the other hand, they have a wide range of benefits over one to one supervision.  The simplest is that they are economical of time and money (most consultants charge an hourly rate, so if they meet with 3 practitioners for two hours, it’s cheaper for each practitioner than an hour of individual consulting).

The other benefits of group consultation are the precise ingredients which NLP Practitioners can utilise to develop experience-based expertise.  Groups provide a support group of peers, input from a wider range of people with different perspectives, the opportunity to act out (role play) situations, and an opportunity to learn from others’ success and challenges.

As Practitioners become more experienced, they can be expected to participate more and more actively as “co-consultants”, so that, as Hawkins and Shohet note, for expert practitioners peer supervision is by far the most successful model of supervision (where members take turns raising consultation issues for the group as a whole to assist them with).

For my model of consultive support as building expertise, the most significant gift a group setting gives is the rich variety of experiential issues raised.  There is a cross-fertilisation effect whereby dilemmas or successes described by one Practitioner almost invariably provide new insights about situations another Practitioner faces (ones they may not even have planned to raise in consultive support).

  • Structure Your Sessions

It’s worth developing a structure for group consultive support sessions; beginning with a brief check-in and individual Practitioners giving an estimate of the amount of material they’d like to explore in this meeting.  Because each Practitioner has paid for the session, I am reluctant to arrange sessions where one person doesn’t take a share of the time (perhaps because they “haven’t seen any clients” or “haven’t had any issues come up”).  Instead, I tend to suggest they utilise some of the time raising a subject of interest to them, reporting a successful case etc.

As with most groups I facilitate, I generally invite my consultive support groups in their first session to compile a “group contract”-a list of agreement about how we’ll work together, including –such things as confidentiality, and starting on time.  A consultive support group is a group, so its useful to have an understanding of how people function in groups (especially the importance of balancing the focus on task achievement with the focus on group maintenance). See my book Transforming Communication for this.

  • Focus On The Outcome of Expertise

Traditional supervision was like traditional counselling.  Most of the energy went into discussing what was going wrong.  Often practitioners new to consultive support will choose to report only problems.  I encourage them to check in as to how their client work has been overall.  Often some mysterious “psychic weather condition” results in a week of successes or a week of difficulties.  Practitioners may be able to elicit their strategies for contributing to such results.  I ask Practitioners to report successes and describe innovative interventions or change strategies they’ve discovered.  Also, as they describe challenges, I validate and reframe their successes.  This is a parallel process to their work with clients.  If a client came each week only reporting their “failures” and “problems”, I’d expect an NLP Practitioner to identify, challenge and support change with that self- defeating pattern.  Practitioners themselves deserve the same quality of support to enjoy their life.  What you focus on is what you get more of.

In my peer consultive support group, we adopted a pattern for some time where one member would present a successful case to the group each session.  We rotated this case presentation.  The result were awe-inspiring.

  • Direct Your Consultive Support Interventions At The Next Step Towards Expertise

As a Practitioner describes a situation with a client, the supervisor has considerable choice as to where they direct the Practitioner’s attention.  If the central aim of consultive support is the development of expertise, then the core question for the effective consultant could be stated as “How can I best support this Practitioner taking the next step towards being an expert ?”  The Dreyfus model of the development of expertise is a useful framework to consider this question in.

  • Novice and Advanced Beginner Practitioners.  These practitioners are concerned with whether they can be a successful change agent (both with the particular clients they have, and in general terms).  The aim of consultive support will be to support their discovery and utilisation of guidelines.  Guidelines, remember are meta-rules which tell the Practitioner when to apply rules such as rapport skills, the metamodel, setting a wellformed outcome and the actual NLP change techniques.  These guidelines help them notice when a “rule” from their basic training needs to be applied more or less fully.  The consultant assists the Practitioner to recognise what results they’re getting in each specific situation, develop guidelines based on that feedback, and apply guidelines so as to reach their client’s outcomes.  The consultant may share their own guidelines (essentially a teaching process) within this process.  This needs to be done in a way that models the process the consultant is recommending to the Practitioner (Supervision is a NLP process and the counsellor is a client with a specialised outcome –the development of guidelines for successful change work).
  • Competent Practitioners.  These practitioners are concerned with the complex structure of their relationship with each client and the overall “design” of their work.  They know they have a rich collection of NLP guidelines and an ability to integrate these and achieve results.  A consultant who focuses on guidelines here will seem a little patronising.  The competent practitioner will prefer to be guided to a deeper understanding of this unique relationship with this client, or of this unique challenge in how they act as a Practitioner.  The aim of consultive support is to enable the Practitioner to more fully store (and later access) this particular client relationship as a whole.  The leap from competent to proficient will come as they shift in their Practitioner Strategy from accessing guidelines to accessing whole client experiences.  Other Practitioner’s stories of their process will be a valued source of extra experience for the competent Practitioner.  Rather than sharing guidelines, consultants could more usefully share stories from their own experiences ( often I tell stories which pop up from my unconscious responses, with little obvious “guidelines” connection to the case being discussed.  Trust your unconscious mind !).  Consultants can also explore how they experience the Practitioner now in the consultant support interaction, the aim being to enrich the experiential information which the Practitioner is collecting about their own way of acting and using NLP skills.  Such information could overwhelm a novice Practitioner, but will often give the competent Practitioner useful insights into parallel events happening between them and their clients.
  • Proficient and Expert Practitioners.  These practitioners already have a richness of experience which makes them excellent consultants themselves.  Peer consultive support and peer case studies are the keys to their ongoing evolution.

Contracting

After professional associations and ongoing training/supervision, a third key element of professional behaviour is ethical contracting. One time a client contacted me after a session with someone I had trained. She was very upset. She went to see my ex-student for help with her anxiety. He skilfully helped her enter a trance, and showed her how to relax.

Then, at the end of the session, while she was still “more relaxed than she had ever felt”, he casually mentioned that if she was anxious, a home security system was an important addition to her peace of mind. He explained that he (luckily) sold such systems, and for less than $5000, she could know that her home was monitored by a security system 24/7. She signed up, but when she got home she realised that she didn’t want and couldn’t afford the system she had agreed to pay off. She phoned up to cancel, and was told that unfortunately the system had already been ordered and she had signed, so there was nothing that could be done. Actually, there was: I explained to her how to complain and make sure the deal was cancelled. She contacted the practitioner again and he found a way to cancel her deal.

Making a deal is not just protection for your client. It also protects you. Clients do not understand what NLP coaching is like, and sometimes will come to a session thinking they can tell you what NLP processes you can and can’t use with them. I tend to think that while it is useful for them to know what they like, as a professional I am in charge of what practices I am comfortable doing in what situations. You can’t tell an electrician which wires to connect to which terminals, or which safety requirements to ignore. You can expect them to work for your outcomes, but to do so with their professional skills and safety requirements.

You also need to have arrangements about payment, and about what will happen if a person misses their session or fails to pay. Some things are not worth you spending your energy on (disturbed clients refusing to pay is, in my opinion, an example). On the other hand, no-one expects to be able to cancel a doctor’s appointment at the last minute without a booking fee, and your time is valuable.

All these things can be explained before you begin, both in your online advertising and in your initial letter to each client. For example:

Sample Welcome Letter to Coaching Client:

Dear

Welcome to your NLP Consulting session with me. The following information will help you get the most out of your session/s and I encourage you to read it fully.

Decide What You Want From Your Session

In my sessions I use change techniques from several modalities in which I am a certified practitioner (including Neuro Linguistic Programming, and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy). These are solution focused approaches to change, so it will help you to get the most value out of your time with me if you consider the following questions even before you come to your next session:

  • What do you want to change in your life?
  • How would you know that this change had happened fully?

It is most useful if you do not simply describe what you don’t want (e.g. “I don’t want to have panic attacks”, “I don’t want to have insomnia”). Instead, describe what you DO WANT in as much detail as possible (e.g. “I want to feel relaxed and confident when I stand up to speak in front of a group of 30 people”, “I want to be able to fall asleep easy and sleep for 7 hours a night)”. In your session I will help you to get clearer about these goals. The aim of your session is to achieve what YOU want, using the processes I am trained in.

Our Arrangements

Our sessions will take place at:

My fee for the sessions will be $200.00 per hour.

Our next session is at the following time:

Fees can be paid by cash or cheque. When a client arranges a session, I put aside that time for them, and so sessions which are cancelled with less than 24 hours notice will usually incur a fee.

My Professional Commitment to You

I work within the code of ethics of the New Zealand Association of NLP and the New Zealand Health and Disability Commission. A detailed copy of these codes is available from me on request, and they ask that I make clear to you the arrangements for our sessions, and that I make sure I am supporting you to reach your goals and to create a life which you are pleased with.

As these codes suggest, the matters you discuss with me will be kept confidential. Preserving that confidentiality, I may at times discuss my work with my consultative support person (my own trained consultant or ‘supervisor’) only in order to ensure I am delivering you the very best consulting possible.

Please advise me if you are receiving any other professional assistance, including medical care, to help with the issues that you discuss with me. My work is complementary to medical care and not contradictory.

What Will Your Sessions Be Like?

You can expect our time together to be enjoyable, exciting and affirming. You may be pleasantly surprised with the ease with which you can change even long term patterns of behaving, feeling and thinking. As the client, you will be in charge of the outcomes we work towards and, as a consultant, I will guide you through tested processes to reach these outcomes.

Looking forward to your next session,

Richard

Codes of Ethics

I was on the Ethics Committee of the New Zealand Association of NLP when they developed the following Code of Ethics (a Code of Ethics is usually a general set of guidelines) and Code of Practice (A Code of Practice is a set of more specific examples of how to apply these ethical frames). Life is never quite as simple as such codes make it seem, but research suggests that prior thinking through such codes helps practitioners make better decisions.

As I am talking through ethical dilemmas with practitioners, I often ask them to consider what their stance would sound like if they were required to explain and justify it in front of a court. I was involved (as an “expert witness” to explain what was NLP and what was appropriate use of it) in just such a court case in New Zealand, where an NLP Master Practitioner was brought before the Health and Disability Commission court. The man involved had a single session with a person (charged) and then broke off the professional relationship and began a sexual relationship with her. After a while he realized that she was not a person he wanted to be in a relationship with and he tried to end it. In the messy follow-up process, an on-again-off-again relationship and an attempted therapeutic interaction blurred the boundaries between them to the point where she became deeply distressed by what she saw as his abuse of therapeutic trust. The court ruled that he pay a very large sum of money in damages, and it limited his future work with clients dramatically. He, of course, felt that he had not directly had sex with a client (at least initially). The important point is that this claim did not convince people when said out loud in court.

Perhaps the hardest ethical requirement for new coaches to get their heads around is the Privacy Law. This law states that personal information is given to use in a specific professional context and cannot be revealed outside that context. If someone’s partner or parent contacts you and asks you how their family member’s coaching sessions are going, without a signed agreement from that person to discuss the matter, you cannot even reveal whether or not you are seeing the client, let alone share your opinion on “how things are going”.

As a professional you are expected to respect other professionals too. You cannot legally give advice that contradicts medical instructions, and you need to bear in mind that insulting other practitioners from any profession can be considered libel or defamation, and, again, will not sound good when it is reported in court.

Most ethical dilemmas would not happen if the practitioner planned more carefully. For example, imagine that you are seeing a married couple for joint sessions. Then you see one of them individually for help with a personal matter. “This session is confidential isn’t it?” they ask. “Yes.” You say confidently. “Good,” they add “because I’m having an affair, and I don’t want you to mention it at our next session as a couple.” There is no good path forward from here. Eventually, the coach’s collusion in the affair will be revealed, the other partner could even take a legal case if they believe that they were harmed by this. The best solution is prevention, by explaining that such “secrecy deals” cannot be made in couples coaching, and if the clients want such individual confidentiality they are better to do that with a separate coach.

Following is the original NZANLP code of ethics as an example of such a code designed specifically for NLP coaches.

NZANLP Code Of Ethics And Code Of Practice (May 2010)

Purpose

The purpose of this code is to establish and maintain standards for practitioners, who are members of NZANLP, and to inform and protect members of the public seeking and using their services.

All members of this Association are required to abide by existing codes appropriate to them. They thereby accept a common frame of reference within which to manage their responsibilities to clients, colleagues, and members of this Association and the wider community. This code aims to provide a framework for addressing ethical issues and to encourage optimum levels of practice.

This Association has a Complaints Procedure, which can lead to the expulsion of members for breaches of its Codes of Ethics & Practice.

The nature of Neuro Linguistic Programming

“NLP is a meta-discipline which focuses on the discovery and coding of patterns which distinguish the most capable of the practitioners of some particular discipline (managerial practice, medical practice, sports, therapy…) from the average practitioner. These distinguishing patterns are the substance of NLP.” (Reference: John Grinder letter to NZANLP, 1998).

The scope of this code

This code relates to the use of NLP applications by a practitioner in professional practice. Only when both the user and the recipient explicitly agree to enter into a practitioner-client relationship does it become “professional practice”‘ rather than “the use of practitioner skills”.

1. Code Of Ethics

1.1. Members are expected to conduct themselves in a responsible and professional manner at all times and abide by the Code of Ethics, Rules and Constitution of the Association. Failure to do so shall result in disciplinary action.

1.2. Members shall recognise an obligation to the client at all times, and shall practise their profession to the best of their ability for the benefit of the client. All reasonable steps should be taken to ensure the safety of the client.

1.3. Members shall take all reasonable steps to monitor and develop their own competence and to work within the limits of their competence. They should refer on any client to another member, or specialist, competent to deal with any presenting issue beyond their capability.

1.4. Members shall keep in confidence all information derived from a client, or from a colleague regarding a client, and except where the law requires otherwise, divulge the information only with the express permission of the client, or where failure to take action would constitute a menace or danger to the client or another member of the community.

1.5. The terms on which services are being offered should be made clear to the client before commencement. Subsequent revisions of these terms should be agreed in advance of any change.

1.6. Members shall not exploit a client for financial gain through misleading guarantees, inferences or misrepresentation.

1.7. Should any dispute or differences arise between members, the members concerned shall make a determined effort to settle it between themselves. Should agreement not be reached they shall submit it for settlement in accordance with the rules of the Association.

1.8. Members must ensure that advertisements and other public announcements are such that they will not bring the Association into disrepute.

1.9. Members shall display current membership Certificates and Code of Ethics in a prominent position in their premises, or make them available on request to clients in other contexts.

Code Of Practice

Introduction

This code applies to specific situations that may arise in day-to-day practice.

Issues of responsibility

The practitioner-client relationship is the foremost ethical concern, but it does not exist in social isolation. For this reason, the practitioner’s responsibilities to the client, to themselves, colleagues, and other members of the Association and members of the wider community are listed under separate headings.

2. Responsibilities To the Client

2.1. Client safety

2.1.1. Practitioners should take all necessary steps to ensure that the client suffers neither physical nor psychological harm during consultation.

2.2. Client autonomy

2.2.1. Practitioners are responsible for working in ways that promote the client’s control over his/her own life, and respect the client’s ability to make decisions and change in the light of his/her own beliefs and values.

2.2.2. Practitioners do not act on behalf of their clients. If they do, it will be only at the express request of the client, or else in the exceptional circumstances detailed in 8.

2.2.3. Practitioners are responsible for setting and monitoring boundaries between the professional relationship and any other kind of relationship, and making this explicit to the client.

2.2.4. Practitioners must not exploit their clients financially, sexually, emotionally, or in any other way. Engaging in sexual activity with the client is unethical.

2.2.5. Clients should be offered privacy for sessions. The client should not be observed by anyone other than his or her practitioner(s) without having given his/her informed consent. This also applies to audio/video taping of consultations.

2.3. Promotional information

2.3.1. Any publicity material and all written and oral information should reflect accurately the nature of the service on offer, and the training, qualifications and relevant experience of the practitioner/

2.3.2. Practitioners should take all reasonable steps to honour undertakings offered in their promotional information.

2.4. Contracting

2.4.1. Work with clients should be on the basis of a clear contract.

2.4.2. Practitioners are responsible for communicating the terms on which the session is being offered, including availability, the degree of confidentiality offered, and their expectations of clients regarding fees, cancelled appointments and any other significant matters. The communication of terms and any negotiations over these should be concluded before the client incurs any financial liability.

2.4.3. It is the client’s choice whether or not to participate in a session. Steps should be taken in the course of the professional relationship to ensure that the client is given an opportunity to review the terms on which services are being offered and the methods being used.

2.4.4. Practitioners are expected to make explicit to the client any relevant conflicts of interest.

2.4.5. If records of consultations are kept, clients should be made aware of this. At the client’s request information should be given about access to these records, their availability to other people, and the degree of security with which they are kept.

2.4.6. Practitioners have a responsibility to establish with clients what other therapeutic or helping relationships are current. Practitioners should gain the client’s permission before conferring with other professional workers.

2.4.7. Practitioners are required to be aware of the provisions of the Privacy Act as they relate to client records

2.5. Professional competence

2.5.1. Practitioners should monitor actively the limitations of their own competence through consultative support, and by seeking the views of their clients and other practitioners. Practitioners should work within their own known limits.

2.5.2. Practitioners have a responsibility to themselves and their clients to maintain their own state, effectiveness, resilience and ability to help clients. They are expected to monitor their own personal functioning and to seek help and/or withdraw from practice, whether temporarily or permanently when their personal resources are sufficiently depleted to require this (see also 3).

2.5.3. Practitioners should not practice when their state, functioning or good judgment is impaired due to personal or emotional difficulties, illness, disability, alcohol, and drugs or for any other reason.

2.5.4. Practitioners will make appropriate referrals when they recognise their inability to consult a client or clients.

3. To self as Practitioner

3.1. Practitioners should have received adequate basic training before commencing professional practise, and should maintain ongoing professional development.

3.2. Practitioners should review periodically their need for professional indemnity insurance and to take out such a policy when appropriate.

3.3. Practitioners should take all reasonable steps to ensure their own physical safety.

4. To other Practitioners

4.1. Practitioners should not conduct themselves in their NLP-related activities in ways, which undermine public confidence in either, their role as a practitioner or in the work of other practitioners.

4.2. If a practitioner suspects misconduct by another practitioner they should implement the Complaints Procedure, doing so without breaches of confidentiality other than those necessary for investigating the complaint.

5. To colleagues and members of the caring profession

5.1. Practitioners should be accountable for their services to colleagues, employers and funding bodies as appropriate. The means of achieving this should be consistent with respecting the needs of the client.

5.2. No colleague or significant member of the caring professions should be led to believe that a service is being offered by the practitioner which is not, as this may deprive the client of the offer of such a service from elsewhere.

5.3. Practitioners should accept their part in exploring and resolving conflicts of interest between themselves and their agencies, especially where this has implications for the client.

6. To the wider community

6.1. Law

6.1.1. Practitioners should work within the law.

6.1.2. Practitioners should take all reasonable steps to be aware of current law affecting the work of the practitioner.

6.2. Social context

6.2.1. Practitioners will take all reasonable steps to take account of the client’s social context

7. Consultative support

7.1. Practitioners should have regular consultative support.

7.2. Consultative support refers to a formal arrangement, which enables practitioners to discuss their client services regularly with one or more people who have an understanding of consulting and consultative support. Its purpose is to ensure the efficacy of the practitioner-client relationship. It is a confidential relationship.

7.3. The volume of consultative support should be in proportion to the volume of work undertaken and the experience of the practitioner.

7.4. Whenever possible, the discussion of cases within consultative support should take place without revealing the personal identity of the client.

8. Confidentiality: Clients, colleagues and others

8.1. Confidentiality is a means of providing the client with safety and privacy. For this reason any limitation on the degree of confidentiality offered is likely to diminish the usefulness of the service provided.

8.2. Practitioners treat with confidence personal information about clients, whether obtained directly or indirectly or by inference. Such information includes name, address, biographical details, and other descriptions of the client’s life and circumstances that might result in identification of the client.

8.3. Practitioners should work within the current agreement with their client about confidentiality.

8.4. Exceptional circumstances may arise which give the practitioner good grounds for believing that the client will cause serious physical harm to others or themselves, or have harm caused to him/her. In such circumstances, the client’s consent to a change in the agreement about confidentiality should be sought whenever possible unless there are also good grounds for believing the client is no longer able to take responsibility for his/her own actions. Whenever possible, the decision to break confidentiality agreed between a practitioner and client should be made only after consultation with another experienced practitioner.

8.5. Any breaking of confidentiality should be minimised both by restricting the information conveyed to that which is pertinent to the immediate situation and to those persons who can provide the help required by the client. The ethical considerations involve balancing between acting in the best interests of the client and in ways which enable clients to resume taking responsibility for their actions, a very high priority for practitioners, and the practitioner’s responsibilities to the wider community (see 6.1 and 8.3).

8.6. Practitioners should take all reasonable steps to communicate clearly the extent of the confidentiality they are offering to clients. This should normally be made clear in information prior to consultancy or initial contracting.

8.7. If practitioners include consultations with colleagues and others within the confidential relationship, this should be stated to the client at the beginning of the consultation.

8.8. Care must be taken to ensure that personally identifiable information is not transmitted through overlapping networks of confidential relationships. For this reason, it is good practice to avoid identifying specific clients in consultative support and other consultations, unless there are sound reasons for doing so (see also 2.4.5 and 8.2).

8.9. Any agreement between the practitioner and client about confidentiality may be reviewed and changed by joint negotiations.

8.10. Agreements about confidentiality continue after the client’s death unless there are overriding legal or ethical considerations.

8.11. Practitioners hold different views about whether or not a client expressing serious suicidal intentions forms sufficient grounds for breaking confidentiality. Practitioners should consider their own views and practice and communicate them to clients and any significant others where appropriate (see also 5.2).

8.12. Special care is required when writing about specific situations for case studies, reports or publication. It is important that the author either has the client’s informed consent, or effectively disguises the client’s identity.

9. Confidentiality in the legal process

9.1. Generally speaking, there are no legal duty to give information spontaneously or on request until instructed to do so by a court. Refusal to answer police questions is not an offence, although lying could be. In general terms, the only circumstances in which the police can require an answer about a client, and when refusal to answer would be an offence, relate to the prevention of terrorism. It is good practice to ask police personnel to clarify their legal right to an answer before refusing to give one.

9.2. There is no legal obligation to answer a solicitor’s inquiry or to make a statement for the purpose of legal proceedings, unless ordered to do so by a court.

9.3. There is no legal obligation to attend court at the request of parties involved in a case, or at the request of their lawyers, until a witness summons or subpoena is issued to require attendance to answer questions or produce documents.

9.4. Once in the witness box, there is a duty to answer questions when instructed to do so by the court. Refusal to answer could be punished as contempt of court unless there are legal grounds for not doing so. (It has been held that communications between the practitioner and client during an attempt at reconciliation in matrimonial cases are privileged and thus do not require disclosure unless the client waives this privilege. This does not seem to apply to other kinds of cases).

9.5. The police have powers to seize confidential files if they have obtained an appropriate warrant. Obstructing the police from taking them in these circumstances may be an offence.

9.6. Practitioners should seek legal advice and/or contact this Association if they are in any doubt about their legal rights and obligations before acting in ways which conflict with their agreement with clients who are directly affected.

10. Advertising / Public statements

10.1. Announcements of professional services should be accurate in every particular.

10.2. Practitioners should distinguish between membership of this Association and accredited practitioner status in their public statements. In particular, the former should not be used to imply the latter.

10.3. Practitioners should not display an affiliation with an organisation in a manner that falsely implies the sponsorship or verification of that organisation.

11. Research

11.1. The use of personally identifiable material gained from clients or by the observation of client interactions should be used only after the client has given consent, usually in writing, and care has been taken to ensure that consent was given freely.

11.2. Practitioners conducting research should use their data accurately and restrict their conclusions to that compatible with their methodology.

12. Resolving conflicts between ethical priorities

12.1. Practitioners will, from time to time, find themselves caught between conflicting ethical principles. In these circumstances, they are urged to consider the particular situation in which they find themselves and to discuss the situation with other experienced practitioners. Even after conscientious consideration of the salient issues, some ethical dilemmas cannot be resolved easily or wholly satisfactorily.

12.2. Ethical issues may arise which have not yet been given full consideration. The Standards & Ethics Committee of this Association is interested in hearing of the ethical difficulties of NLP Practitioners as this helps to inform discussion regarding good practice.

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