Neuro-linguistic Programming - Associations, Certification and Practitioner Standards

Associations, Certification and Practitioner Standards

Since its beginnings in the 1970s, NLP has been taught in a variety of formats that involve the promotion of associations and the attainment of course certificates. Course lengths and style vary from institute to institute. In the 1990s, following attempts to put NLP on a regulated footing in the UK, other governments began certifying NLP courses and providers; for example, in Australia, a Graduate Certificate in Neuro-linguistic programming is accredited under the Australian Qualifications Framework. However, NLP continues to be an open field of training with no "official" best practice. With different authors, individual trainers and practitioners having developed their own methods, concepts and labels, often branding them as "NLP", the training standards and quality differ greatly. According to Peter Schütz, the length of training in Europe varies from 2–3 days for the hobbyist to 35–40 days over at least nine months to achieve a professional level of competence. He says the multiplicity and general lack of controls has led to difficulty discerning the comparative level of competence, skill and attitude in different NLP trainings and has resulted in NLP getting associated with "cults" like Scientology, and getting labeled in unfavorable political ways (nazilinguistic programming). In 2009, a British television presenter was able to register his pet cat as a member of the British Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming (BBNLP), which subsequently claimed that it existed only to provide benefits to its members, and not to certify credentials.

In 2001, neuro-linguistic psychotherapy, a derivative of NLP, was recognized by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy as an experimental constructivist form of psychotherapy.

Today, there are many competing organisations offering varying forms of NLP training and certification in what can be a lucrative business. The Guardian reported that in 2006 that a seven day course by Paul McKenna's company for 600 delegates produced £1m of revenue. Many variants of the practice are found in seminars, workshops, books and audio programs in the form of exercises and principles intended to influence behavioral and emotional change in self and others. There is great variation in the depth and breadth of training and standards of practitioners, and some disagreement between those in the field about which patterns are, or are not, actual "NLP".