Richard Lindesay wrote a great post years ago about the "Professional Trainer". Unfortunately, it's no longer online.
Per Richard:
There is a curious phenomenon which I often see which I call "The Professional Trainer". The main outcome for these types of people is that they want to train people in something. They want to fill up their training events, and their focus in on training rather than being really good at the thing they're training in.
So true. Especially in the field of NLP. Everyday, new websites crop up on the internet, pushing NLP as "the magic bullet that can solve anything in your life."
A rapid glance at the content of the site reveals that the author is 1. a fresh student of the field, or 2. anxious to get on the training circuit without first mastering the craft.
Richard then goes on:
Imagine this in other contexts. A young guy decides that he wants to be a professional trainer, and decides that his thing he'll train in is cooking. So he goes to a five day cooking course and takes good notes, especially around how to train others in cooking. He then goes off and sets up a cooking course not only teaching people how to cook, but teaching them to teach how to cook. So his graduates go out there with their five days of knowledge and start their own cooking courses teaching others how to cook and how to teach how to cook. Sounds ridiculous in this context, as of course there would be no level of skill and expertise in any of those teaching, so the quality would get lower and lower until one day the people start thinking "Wow, I'm not going to restaurants anymore, cooking has such a bad reputation".
No wonder the field of NLP gets such a bad reputation.
Deservedly so.
90% of the material anyone will encounter about the field is being peddled by:
- Professional NLP trainers who make their living by teaching NLP.
- People who have no clue what they're talking about.
Make sure you separate the wheat from the chaff.
