Some thoughts on Quality, Labels, and Association
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The Fellowship of CORE NLP is an initiative of Angelique de Graaff and Paul Flier, two Dutch NLP Professionals who answered an invitation from within for associating with openness, integrity, and response-ability within the NLP community and society. Below they share some of their thoughts on quality, labels, and association.
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'Dear (future) NLP Practitioner,
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We share the belief that NLP’s founding fathers Richard Bandler, John Grinder, and Frank Pucelik co-created a powerful pathway to understand and change our conditioning and the structures of our experience. We express our deepest gratitude for the fruits of their efforts and their potential for the evolution of human awareness.
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As members of the NLP Leadership Summit (LS), we also express our appreciation for the LS’s initiatives to invite all NLP-seniors to associate freely and to strive toward mutual understanding and informed consent on quality issues that indeed need attention. We also welcome the first steps toward an internationally standardized NLP curriculum, based on the consent of LS-members. CORE NLP proposes that each item carrying at least 85% consensus could be fairly considered as standard content for any NLP (Master) Practitioner formats.
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We ourselves have been trained by all three founders of NLP. Two of these most senior within the field - Richard Bandler and John Grinder - are not part of the Leadership Summit. CORE NLP proposes any NLP (Master) Practitioner might also fairly incorporate fundamental elements of Frank Pucelik’s Meta, Richard Bandler’s Unconscious Learning and John Grinder´s New Code.
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We were long time members of the Dutch Association for NLP (NVNLP) and editors of the Dutch NLP Magazine INZICHT. Our experiences as NVNLP (board) members made us reach a joint conclusion: We could no longer endorse the current process of quality assurance, its associated label and the balloting of who may register as a member or NLP-Professional at the Dutch NLP-Association. And this conclusion inspired us to found CORE NLP.
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Regarding quality, CORE NLP propagates a more dynamic approach, modeling Scott Miller et al. Years of worldwide scientific research into success factors of personal change, they propose a simple and effective way to enhance quality in the therapeutic context, based on client feedback: Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT). Their research shows that such common factors as 'alliance' (rapport) and 'allegiance' to the method applied are of much greater influence than the method itself. This resonates strongly with CORE NLP’s vision that connecting to others is more important than the right curriculum or technical application. Our fellows are actively encouraged to incorporate and experiment with this model, which we refer to as FIT for Change (Feedback Informed Transformation), within their training and coaching contexts.
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Our enthusiasm and initiatives to transform the NVNLP into a Fellowship, experimenting with a more democratic decision making process and principles of Intentional Fellowship, fell on barren ground. It provided an invaluable learning experience. CORE NLP is our natural answer to the love for NLP and the contrasting experiences we are grateful to have received. CORE NLP will be open to explore possibilities for association on the level of soul, sensing and responding to what emerges, and to exchange, decide and implement ideas based on informed consent between fellows. Our label stands for a commitment to dynamic quality, to teach and coach by example and profess to lifelong learning. Welcome!´
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Angélique de Graaff
Paul Flier
