NLP
Using Modelling and NLP
to improve Human Potential
By Andy Coote
D
r. Wyatt Woodsmall is one of NLP’s deep thinkers, a master what we are doing within INLPTA.”
modeller, founder of INLPTA and Honorary Fellow of ANLP Before his Master Practitioner course, Wyatt spent two weeks on a
and a highly respected elder statesman of NLP. Andy Coote modelling course with John Grinder in California and that’s where he
talked to him in June as he was completing his 38th Trainer Training in met Tony Robbins. “Coming from a business background, I had done
London. Wyatt has clear views on the way in which NLP has developed some consulting and coaching. NLP was useful for that. I became
and is developing and they clearly come from a desire to see people most interested in NLP because of the focus on modelling, especially
performing better. His passion for developing human potential shines for performance enhancement.”
through the conversation. Wyatt went back to his job as a civilian employee for the
Around 30 years ago in New York City, Wyatt read Frogs into Princes Department of the Army and was able to convince a two star
and was ‘blown away’ by it. He recalls “Bandler and Grinder were saying General, who was looking at ways they could improve training
things I’d been saying all my life”. He did his 24 day Practitioner training performance, that they should form a group to look at the potential
with the New York Training Institute for NLP (http://www.nlpcenter. for modelling technology. “Our first project was the ‘Pistol’ model.
com/index.php) run by Anné Linden and Frank Stass MD, who had Tony (Robbins) wrote up his version of it in Unlimited Power. We had
done courses with Bandler, Grinder and Erickson. a team of 10 people. Tony and I taught the course and improved
“That was the heyday of NLP,” Wyatt tells me. These days, he suggests the number of people qualified as expert marksman level, reduced
“NLP is increasingly being been taught training time by 50% and reduced ammunition expenditure by about
as a series of techniques and it 50%.”
is dying a death of gradual Further projects followed and “my main interest has been modelling
assimilation into other areas. and business. I consider myself one of the few professional modellers
People are incorporating in NLP – one of the few people to get paid to do it.” Wyatt and
the techniques and they Marilyne (Wyatt’s wife) worked with the US Olympic diving team for
don’t know where they over 12 extremely successful years. “I’m privileged to have worked
have come from. The with many remarkable people including Greg Louganis (http://www.
real power of NLP louganis.com) double Olympic Gold Medal winner and the greatest
is in the generative diver in the history of diving and Ron O’Brien who was Head Coach
approach where you of the US National Diving Teams between 1967 and 1996 including
understand the leading teams at seven consecutive Olympic Games.”
principles underlying Recently the Woodsmalls modelled Michel Thomas, a master
why it works. That’s teacher “The Michel Thomas method for rapid language learning led
to a book and has become part of how I teach
Most trainings
people the learning process.”
“Most trainings are based on someone’s
are based on
theory of what works. Modelling allows you to
base those theories on what proven performers
someone’s theory
actually do at a detailed level. In sales, for
example, you have a small number of elite
of what works salesmen. If you can discover what the, usually,
10% actually do that is different and decisive
you can begin to design ways of transferring those skills to the others.
Modelling is a critical process for business and should be the front end
of all trainings - based on what happens in the real-world.”
“Only 5% of what is modelled is relevant, so if you copied
everything you’d be wasting 95% of your time. You’re looking for
what the experts do that the non-experts don’t and what the non-
experts do that the experts don’t; for what is essential to the conduct
of the skill rather than just idiosyncratic to the person.”
There is a transfer of some of the skills into the modeller, however,
10 | Autumn 2009 - rapport
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