NLP Benefits - Dean Bennett
The Benefits of NLP - Discussion between Michael Beale and Dean Bennett, September 2007.
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http://www.ppimk.com/nlp-podcast/dean.mp3
Michael: Would you please begin by introducing yourself?
Dean: My name is Dean Bennett. I work for myself freelance as a learning and development consultant, which means I either work directly with corporates or as an associate with various other consultancies, providing expertise to them.
Michael: Is that in the UK or wider?
Dean: I work across the UK, in Europe, in Asia and into the States as well.
Michael: And what do you do?
Dean: Generally I am focusing on personal performance, right through time management to visioning the future, understanding yourself and where you are going, interpersonal skill, communications, influencing, through to networking and building communities, and then taking that into the context of either management, leadership or understanding wider organizational cultures.
Michael: What sort of companies do you work with?
Dean: I work with Atos Consulting, who are a French-based company that bought out the KPMG consulting arm after the Sarbanes-Oxley rules came in, with Acteva a healthcare supplier; I have a history of having been employed by Barclays Bank and also right down to an individual in Essex who is a hypno-therapist.
Michael: What experience with NLP do you have?
Dean: An interesting question. If I think about it in hindsight, my experience with NLP has probably been a large part of my life. Generally the skills, the tools, the models have always been around and for me NLP pulls those together into a structure.
More formally I first came across NLP about 18 or 19 years ago, at a couple of sessions at a place called Ruffy Park. It was about two and a half years ago when I really started looking more seriously at it. And since then I have gone through Practitioner and Master Practitioner - my formal qualifications.
Michael: How do you think NLP has helped you, with particular regard to your existing career, or the career you had at that time, building on that career, or enabling you to do different things?
Dean: I think it has worked in a series of ways, Michael, and it's worked in the sense of giving me a framework. One of the things I like about NLP is that it provides a structural framework, to work from rather than to work to. It gives some kind of structure, some kind of logic, a way of hanging other things off it. It also helps in the sense of a common language.
Michael: I'm interested in that. How does a common language help?
Dean: In most professions or areas, having a jargon can short-cut a lot of understanding and conversations, and also pin things down a bit more. So the fact that you have things like the meta model and presuppositions which mean very specific things in NLP. A lot of our language is slightly complex for a language-based system, but it does have specific meanings in that context so talking to other practitioners is an easy way of sharing concepts and ideas and moving things on more quickly without having to explain everything in detail every time.
Michael: You talked about structure and common language, is there anything else?
Dean: Well there is a useful set of tools for understanding how individuals deal with themselves, and think about themselves, and also how you interact with other people. So fundamentally, it provides a good solid foundation for the kind of work that I do. I can bring in other influencing techniques and match them with it. So the actual tools are very powerful. At another level you've got a formal, recognized qualification or accreditation, and that means something in the marketplace I work in, because now it's so widely known.
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Dean Bennett on the benefits of NLP
Dean Bennett interview
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