Nick Kemp Discusses the Professional Benefits of ANLP
ALAN:Ok, so now this is a little bit of contentious issue but I want to ask it.
NICK: Fire away.
ALAN: I’m sorry, I did warn you Nick that I wanted to ask this question. So you’ve left the SNLP haven’t you? I just want to know why. I am sure that there are other people who do want to know why.
NICK: Sure. Well the simple reason why is, I was approached by ANLP about two years ago, in fact I did an interview for Karen Moxon for www.NLPmp3.com.
ALAN: Ok.
NICK: Which has a whole bunch of different free interviews with different trainers’ right across the whole spectrum of NLP. So you’ve got Steve Andreas there, you’ve got Doug O’Brien there, you’ve got Tom McKay, Sue Knight, Bandlers there, McKenna’s there, Michael Neil’s there. They’re all grouped there and it’s all free information.
ALAN: That’s cool.
NICK: And I interviewed Karen Moxon and I didn’t really know very much about ANLP except that they were considered to be like the devil back in the 1990’s. It always made me curious to know why they would be so bothered. But basically I thought that they had good things to say. They had a code of ethics. They advocate CPD. They had a professional set of standards and after a number of different conversations at that time, we agreed that people who would do Trainings in NLP through my old organisation where I was co-training with another society member but also the ANLP membership so they would have both sets of memberships
ALAN: Ok.
NICK: Two years went by and this was all merrily happening and then I got an email from …
ALAN: Blank, blank, blank.
NICK: The President of the Society of NLP and you have to remember that the Society of NLP is owned by a number of different individuals, it’s not just Richard Bandler, it’s not just one person, so there’s other people there as well.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: And he said I wish you well, but now you are aligned with ANLP, we can no longer recommend you as been a part of the Society
of NLP. To which I said well it really doesn’t make any fundamental difference to me either way because I’m not really teaching NLP, but
it does give me the pleasure to finally present the one quote in correspondence which I’ve always wanted to do in my 50 years of being on the
planet, which is a Groucho quote, which is
‘Please accept my resignation. I would not want to belong to any business or company that would have me as a member’.
ALAN: Right. Ok.
NICK: Or any club actually that would have me as a member. So the thing to remember is with a lot of these organisations. It doesn’t really amount to, from my point of view, anything substantial. Whether you are part of (a) Facebook Page (b) NLP Society (c) Organisation X, unless you are actually developing your own skills and using your own skills it doesn’t really make any tangible difference.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: And also the thing to remember is that there is no agreed definition or set of standards or regulatory body for a lot of these different industries. That includes hypnotherapy as well as NLP. Good luck to the lads and other people. I think, you know, people can make their own minds up over the quality of what they see and what they experience as to what’s the best way for them.
ALAN: Right. I see.
NICK: I set up the Association for Provocative Therapy to avoid some of the craziness that’s happened in other industries. And you know we do have a code of ethics and standards and the other reason for really going with the Association for NLP is that when I started working professionally, the people who I would be working alongside, who are psychotherapists, asked the question ‘Well you’re a member of such and such an NLP organisation, what is it’s professional code of conduct? What ethical standards does it have’? And I was having to go ‘Well, they’re very nice people.
ALAN: Yes.
NICK: And at that time I thought they do have a point here. There should be some kind of behavioural standards and professional duty of care, especially if you are working with clients and this is really what I fed back in my communications and you know we parted on very amicable terms.
ALAN: Right. Yeah.
NICK: From my point of view it’s important that if you are part of a professional body, they do have a code of conduct and standards.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: So that’s basically it.
ALAN: Ok. Well I’d love to let you off the hook Nick but I’m sorry I’ve got some more questions that I want you to answer.
NICK: Sure, ask away.
ALAN: Well look let’s be honest. I mean I follow your Blog with a certain degree of glee and delight and you do a great job of stirring up a lot of NLPers on line. I mean, is this deliberate provocation? Is it like a marketing ploy? What’s all that about?
NICK: Well I think the important thing for me is and bearing in mind I come from, before I even got involved in NLP, I was involved in personal development and I’ve taught meditation and I used to have the same kind of thing and actually have at times, sort of like Christians and Evangelists accuse me of being the devil. Because I would be saying read your own books and explore the origins of a lot of these different things and use your own brain and think things for yourself. For all I have ever done, is to suggest that people engage brain and think for themselves! LOL
ALAN: Right.
NICK: Now a lot, and this means really training with a variety of different people, learning from a variety of different sources, not accepting everything you hear as being completely verbatim and really sort of making your own decisions and thinking for yourself. So when people talk about people being the devil, the very nature of that statement pre supposes that there are just two polar opposites. It’s either this or it’s this.
ALAN: Yes.
NICK: So it’s a very black and white kind of thing. Now where I probably provoked or sort of nudged the most with people, are those people who really take themselves way too seriously. Who try to sensor everything for their own commercial interest. Or just who are a little bit anal about the whole thing. So I think when people stop asking questions and stop sort of thinking ‘Well hang on a minute’ that Emperor has no clothes and I want you to make that statement and then everything is a lot more realistic.
ALAN: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
NICK: So yes, I mean, what’s interesting is I don’t really make, I’ll say what I think, you know. In the same way I’ll have clients, I had a client who came to see me who was absolutely convinced that they were being stalked. Totally convinced by this. And I said, well, the first thing you should do, and if you really believe that, and you have evidence for it, then you should go to the police and make sure that that is taken care of.
ALAN: Yeah.
NICK: But the more I talk to them, the more they kept shifting their story and what it is that they said, and it was mostly that they’re managing this and managing that, so they have a whole set of beliefs, bless them they’re fine, but it’s not actually based on any standard information.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: Now as soon as you work with private clients you find that you have a whole range of all different types of people. You have pathological liars, compulsive liars, anger issues, and in that persons mind you could hook them up to a lie detector machine and they would pass. Because they are totally convinced in their mind that what they believe is actually true.
ALAN: Yeah.
NICK: Of course, whether it is or not, substantively or independently is a whole different ball game.
ALAN: Sure.
NICK: So if people, my interest is in provoking people to think for themselves then I am happy to agree to disagree. I have a very good relationship with Frank Farrelly, Austin, Doug O’Brien and Steve Andreas and, for the most part I have very very similar thoughts with Steve. On other occasions he will use his wonderful phrase, having read one of my articles and say ‘I was seriously under-whelmed by what you were talking about’.
ALAN: How rude.
NICK: I take no offence from that. I take great pleasure that he’s interested enough to debate it openly and to say what he thinks.
ALAN: Yes.
NICK: The difference is where people won’t have that kind of discussion. Or you have this kind of, as we’re talking, Alistair Campbell being interviewed about the Iraq enquiry downstairs and very similar to the Peter Mandelson camp following type mindset. Everything is just kind of spun only for effect in a particular way.
ALAN: Right. I’m kind of drawing thin on time but there are still a couple more questions that I want to quickly fire back to you.
NICK: Sure.
ALAN: I’m just going to gun through this. You’ve pretty much answered my next question but just in case there is anything that you’ve missed out. Which is who do you rate in terms of Trainers today and why?
NICK: Ok. Well the trainers today, that I rate and why. Well Steve Andreas definitely from having seen him train, having read his books and having had interactions with him, he is totally congruent throughout all ways in which he communicates. He is interested in skills. He’s not trying to proclaim himself as the latest incarnation of the Messiah on the planet and he has got a good sense of humour and a warm heart.
ALAN: Alright.
NICK: Frank Farrelly for similar reasons. Andrew T Austin because he is doing interesting stuff generating new work and challenging and asking questions. Doug O’Brien because he’s the nicest guy in the world and also because he is very precise, has good insights and good skills. Danni Belieu, who I’ve just come across and who I’m co-training with in America I’m very excited by, because the bits I’ve seen of her, she seems to have an excellent manner and also great sort of precision.
ALAN: Didn’t she ….. what’s she developed? I can’t remember what the name of it is.
NICK: She comes from the Ericsonian background. If you go to, I think its realpeoplepress.com you’ll have a clip of her work and she was excellent. Oh and Dave Dobson, sadly dead now he produced his other than conscious way of working. Very skilled guy. You can find his cds in shops again. All of these people have two or three things. Great precision, great sense of humour, warmth and empathy. They speak their minds. They’re not just out to rake in money or generate huge groups of followers.
ALAN: Yeah.
NICK: They’re doing interesting stuff.
ALAN: Right. Ok. Alright I guess my final question, well its like a two-part question really but effectively, with regards to the event itself now, from PT training, what kind of thing can somebody expect from a Provocative Therapy Training and also what specifically can people expect from the workshop that we’re putting on, which is an Introduction to Provocative Therapy and also Provocative Change Works?
NICK: Ok. Well there are two elements. Firstly, any provocative training therapy is going to be based around three main principles. We are going to be doing a lot of exercises so you get to adopt these different positions and get to see that doing that is very different to observing somebody doing that.
ALAN: Yeah.
NICK: A lot of people, who if you look, if you search out Provocative Therapy on Youtube you’ll see a whole bunch of different exercises and me working with clients and on the surface some of it seems very very simple, but remember this is all done on the flight, all done conversationally in the moment. So it’s a bit like stand-up comedy. You know maybe where you are going to go to in some respects. You’ll be doing different exercises (I’m alright for time by the way now) we’ll be doing explanation, an opportunity for questions. We’ll be able to explain from the perspective of people who have come from an NLP background. I can explain in the context of that if that’s useful.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: With the Provocative Change Works stuff, I’ll also be explaining how you can incorporate Ericsonian approaches with the Provocative approaches.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: It’s what I use mostly with clients. And also I’ll be teaching some of the exercises and approaches that I’ve used with clients which are absolutely stand-out success with a whole bunch of different conditions.
ALAN: Excellent.
NICK: Which will guarantee that some of these things will flatten certain problems.
ALAN: Wonderful.
NICK: I’ll be teaching that as well. People who attend the full workshop will get a set of the Provocative Icon Set which you can’t buy. You can only get if you attend an ANPT workshop.
ALAN: Right. Ok. And the Friday evening event is going to be more of a demonstration of the work itself is it not?
NICK: Yes. The Friday evening is going to be more demonstration, so we are going to be doing stuff.
ALAN: Yes.
NICK: For those who are coming along, bring your neuroses, anxieties, whatever with you.
ALAN: Wow.
NICK: And we will be demonstrating different principles.
ALAN: Ok.
NICK: We’ll do that on the Saturday as well but this is really just showing how this works in terms of a live interaction.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: It’s a lot of fun. It’s like I said when I was training in Poland last year, and I’m going to be there this year, before I go to New York, it’s very much about how you can respond in a given situation and have huge flexibility of working and in a very good natured, warm hearted way produce very useful outcomes for the client.
ALAN: Excellent. And I think the only final thing that maybe you did mention and maybe you didn’t was the inclusion of membership to the Association.
NICK: Well it’s going to be actual associate membership.
ALAN: Associate membership? Right yes.
NICK: There are no certifications in provocative therapy, because Frank and I were very keen that we don’t go down the slightly crazy route of people going to a workshop, sitting in a large room for a number of days, receiving a piece of paper which will then magically reframe, shall we say in NLP speak, from certification to qualification. In some cases certification that has the word Master on it (as in I’ve got now an academic masters)… even though I was only sitting at the back of the room.
ALAN: Yeah absolutely.
NICK: It’s not congruent sort of in my view which goes very much towards misrepresentation. So the PT with AFPT people who are full members will have done an extensive amount of training and will have had supervision and will be able to demonstrate understanding and ability to use skills to a certain level.
ALAN: Right.
NICK: The Association for Provocative Therapy to be an Associate Member. Well as long as you’re not completely nuts then that’s pretty much an easier option and anybody who comes to the London workshops will get a signed Associate Member Certificate.
ALAN: Fantastic. Ok. Well that pretty much wraps it up for me Nick, I don’t know if there is anything further that you want to say. Where can we find you online? I know we sort of interact on Facebook a lot but ..
NICK: The best place to find me is to start off is if you go to www.nickkemp.com. From that site are all my other sites, so there's the associationforprovocativetherapy.com, provocativetherapy.info, the work I'm doing with Doug O'Brien storiesfromtheoutsideinn.com, nickkemptraining.com, nlpmp3.com, human-alchemy.com and a whole bunch of other sites as well.
ALAN: You’re a busy man.
NICK: London is going to be, I promise those of you who are listening to this, if you really want to learn some skills which are completely different from what you’ve learnt before, which will absolutely revolutionise the way you interact or work with clients, come to the London event.
ALAN: Excellent. Yes I mean I’ll be honest with you. I’ve wanted to get these skills for a really long time so I’m really looking forward to, obviously the opportunity of meeting you and getting the skills I’ll be honest more than anything. Well thank you so much for your time Nick it’s been great to talk to you and yeah, see you at the end of February.
NICK: See you at the end of February.
ALAN: Yeah cheers Nick.
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