Only for people of a certain development

I started this blog about a month ago, with a number of objectives. To offer ideas and techniques that can make a difference to the readers, for the pleasure of writing, and finally to attract people onto our courses.

For the last few weeks I’ve been questioning if I’m going about this the right way. I was thinking to be eligible for our trainings there are a number of criteria you need to meet.

You need a certain degree of emotional stability. Our trainings are to teach NLP, rather than to give therapy – though our students to have plenty of opportunities to resolve issues during the courses.

You need a certain degree of mental maturity. NLP isn’t magic. The use of it depends on certain cognitive skills that not everyone has developed.

Finally you need to be able to be able to pay. We offer discounts and exchanges in certain cases, but we are a business and we won’t stay around for long if that’s all we do. If you are a charity, or working on a voluntary basis then you’re the kind of person we will be more flexible with.

Now, the most profitable sector for us is businesses. Ideally big ones who can send a long stream of people on our courses. If I was to write for a business I might be better to adopt a more business like style.

I could include more figures, include jargon culled from my targets, and pull out examples relevant to their situation. There would be lots of articles on ‘maximising team motivation’ ‘6 steps to leveraging customer loyalty in a changing market’

But so far you won’t find many of these articles. Once I noticed they weren’t there I began to wonder why….I mean I could write them, I have the skills, the experience and al the resources I need. So why doesn’t this blog read like a business journal?

It’s because the people I’m writing for have a certain level of mental development. They appreciate that the objective measurable parameters that are required by business, and they also appreciate that there is much more to success than that.

The people who I’m writing for know that being able to work with differences in style, and differences in mindset can make a huge difference to success. It's one of the qualities of the most successful leaders. Some of these people will be working at different levels within the kinds of businesses that we provide training and coaching for.

Having a sense of the value of difference means that they can enjoy that I’m writing in the way I like to naturally. It is my capacity to foster an appreciation of difference rather than a resistance to it that they will value in my coaching and training.

What we do in our trainings is not get people to conform to some norm of ‘effective’ behaviour. Rather we help people to adapt their unique skills and innate capacities to be more effective by being more themselves, and do the same with others. That is something that I consider a ‘higher’ level of development. It’s also something that has a profoundly right sense to it. Right beyond simplistically defined rules.

So the people who are concerned mostly with conformity, and procedure will skim past this blog, or possibly be offended by it. The ones who recognise the value of being more present, more integrated in their work will find areas of attraction, points of resonance.

The conformers could probably do with our training most of all. Certainly the ones who have reached limits of their ability by trying to fit themselves and others into overly fixed structures or hierarchies. When we make presentations, in personal interviews we make sure we speak their language. If we didn’t we couldn’t communicate or motivate them, and we do.

So this blog is a message to people frustrated by opportunities that rigid thinking passes by. People who are pained by the gaps between values and action I'm writing written for the people who perceive the suffering that comes from trying to reduce human issues to mechanical, financial ones, and who recognise that more humanity in the workplace can make it more successful as well as more pleasurable.

If you are one of those people keep browsing. As I go along I'll include more tools you can use in different areas, with overbearing bosses, with intercultural conflict and misaligned communication. You’d probably enjoy our trainings, and know people who could use them to take that next step in their development.

Want to contribute to wisdom and compassion in the workplace and in the world? You are part of a network of people working overtly, or covertly for a more compassionate, sustainable world. There's something a little subversive here. Not subversive in a conflictual or destructive way. Rather we share an interest in being creatively subversive to make things better.

You have allies here. Now what can we do to help?