NLP and Corporate Consulting: Q & A with Alan Weiss

When I first read Alan Weiss's book How to Establish a Unique Brand in the Consulting Profession: Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner, I was certain that he was using NLP distinctions in his writing, and in his choice of advice. While he certainly embodies some of the attitude that is associated with NLP, he has some rough words for the way NLP consultants have been taking NLP to the business world. As someone who does a good deal of business consulting, I find his advice quite worthwhile. We did a brief email interview on NLP and organizational consulting. - NLPSchedule.com

Part two of this interview is titled Building a Successful NLP Consulting Practice.

1.) What is your opinion of the way you've seen consultants taking NLP to a business audience?

Weiss: It's too often presented as an infallible approach and a comprehensive Technique, rather than another tool in a consultant or manager's Toolkit. I find it's often almost "cult like" in its presentation.

2) You've made a case against marketing around methodology and in favor of marketing around results. Yet, a large portion of people consulting with NLP do exactly the reverse. How would you recommend repositioning yourself as a consultant marketing a methodology towards marketing results?

Weiss: NLP is worthless if it doesn't create results in the marketplace. Work backwards. How is the client better off after you leave? NLP people seem to fall in love with their own methodology and get lost in the morass of HR and training, rather than appealing to executives and line buyers with a quality communications tool to improve selection, sales, recommendations, etc.

3) A lot of the consulting practices that I see using NLP begin as people doing individual therapy and/or coaching, who then approach companies assuming that the same skills carry over. What suggestions do you have for someone making this kind of a shift in their business?

Weiss: People in the coaching, counseling, and therapy fields have some important transitions to make. Individual results aren't alone sufficient, unless they, in turn, contribute to organizational results. Moreover, the interactions, other performers, and dynamics are much more complex. Consequently, the consultant has to consider the environment, relationships, and culture. This may be heresy, but NLP is often not an appropriate intervention and, when implemented and practiced poorly appears to be transparently manipulative, insincere, and foolish. You can't be a "one trick pony" in organizational consulting, and NLP can't be a solution seeking a problem.

4) Can you provide some examples you've seen of consultants using NLP both in effective and ineffective ways in business settings, and give some responses to those?

Weiss:
Ineffective: A classroom setting where NLP was THE way to improve communication, and was positioned, in my perception, as merely an emulation of the other person's behaviors. It was entirely selfish in its intent. I found it to be manipulative and, actually, ineffective.

Effective: In a coaching situation, the practitioner helped a manager to overcome inadvertent intimidation and the ensuing dampening of feedback by adapting slightly differing behaviors given the other performers and other environments. The point was to make other people more comfortable and honest in their responses, not to merely ingratiate oneself.

5) Also, you mentioned that there are roles for people in the coaching and therapy fields to contribute in business settings. Can you elaborate on how one might reposition themselves from a therapist/coach to a business coach/consultant?

Weiss: First, the mentality has to change from "I don't deserve to charge too much for helping people" to "I'm providing tremendous value for which I should be fairly compensated. Second, you must realize that you are now in the marketing business, and must aggressively promote your value (If you don't blow your own horn, there is no music). Third, you must pursue buyers and not be satisfied with low level people, human resources staff, etc. There have been many therapists in my mentoring program, and probably the best way to transition is to get a coach or mentor who knows the corporate market but also has a background in psychology. There's nothing wrong with being a "corporate therapist," but it is a difficult, though lucrative, transition.

6) Can you elaborate on what things you have seen that you think NLP could bring to the business community, and hasn't done so yet? What opportunities aren't NLP consultants tapping?

Weiss: Dealing in a crisis situation; dealing with the media; providing feedback, particularly in performance evaluations; increasing the effectiveness of meetings.

7) I run a consulting firm. We can point to significant revenue gains to be had for initiating projects, and after projects are completed, we can always justify the investment with data proving many times the value. I don't point out in my marketing that I frequently use NLP methods in both the IA work, and in various interpersonal tasks. I'd like to expand the range of tasks companies hire me to perform into more organizational and interpersonal areas. What advice would you give someone in this situation?

Weiss: Citing NLP clearly doesn't add to the value proposition, so why mention it? It's simply a methodology, which delivers results, but has no separate, intrinsic value. You don't want to expand tasks. You want to expand the value proposition to embrace additional areas. Focus on the impact, both organizational and person for the buyer, which you provide. Logic makes people think, emotion makes them act. NLP is not itself a value proposition, so keep it in the background.