I am really thrilled today to welcome Lucas Burgueño from Spain. Lucas published regularly at www.Lucascoach.wordpress.com and can be contacted on facebook (this is the preferred method) or on twitter. You can aslo find information on his facebook company page.
Talking4Good (T4G): How did you come into contact with NLP?
Lucas: I was born a pre-mature baby, a month before my mother’s due date. Nevertheless, when I came out, my father readily knew that my big widely open eyes would not cease to look around my surroundings like an observant owl. When I was in Primary school, I wondered why some children played nice roles and others did not. I began to ask myself what it was that made a difference. As son as I turned 16, I started to think of ways on how to decrease pain and enhance joy at the same time. That paved the way for my first non-official certification in NLP. My mother, a doctor in Accupuncture, was attending workshops about alternative therapies in Spain, and I asked her if I could join in. It was called “Therapeutic Hypnosis”. Naturally, with a big smile, she agreed. Honestly I was a surprise to the rest of the participants, being the only adolescent in that class. <Laughs> There, I learnt how to induce deep trances through basic NLP skills, and soon I was able to get some innocent friends and relatives into trance, with positive results such as: giving up smoking (for at least some days), getting rid of negative emotional memories, etc. and that got the 17-year-old I was even more excited! After several months of relative successful practice, the amateur in me realized that hypnosis was not enough and that the infallible techniques that I had been taught were not as infallible. These questions led to more questions and surely more to learn. In order to fully develop myself I needed more effective tools to be able to enhance people’s lives. Eversince, I have not stopped yearning for more knowledge, skills improvement and the studying of more effective ways in serving others which leads us to where I am now – a member of Talent Institut, a scientific and academic institution, located in Spain and where we study and teach everything related to the technology of NLP, like influence and persuassion.
T4G: What NLP qualification do you have?
Lucas: After having done that first non-official Therapeutic Hypnosis course, it was soon followed by others “Therapeutic Hypnosis in NLP” and other courses about the application of NLP in different fields such as daily life and relationships. However, despite the many courses I had done at that time, my thirst for more rigorous and challenging answers was never quenched. That is how I arrived at Talent Institut, where I’ve now certified as a Licensed Practitioner in NLP and a Master practitioner of NLP. I also trained as a Coach following the International Coach Federation standards, while graduating with a Psychology Major in Spain.
T4G: Which NLP association would your qualifications be accredited by?
Lucas: Both Practitioner and Master Practitioner certifications are accredited by The Society of NLP.
T4G: What do you like best in NLP?
Lucas: What I like best in NLP is the way it was taught, conceived as a technology. As an engineer Xavier Pirla Llorens, my mentor/now colleague, has trained me to view NLP as something pretty structured through various experiments and hundreds of hours of time together. I realized that it was all about structures, how mental structures are built up, how they get connected and how they are kept on track. Once we have explored and modelled all that subjective experience, we can start thinking about influencing this structure to empower a person. This way of understanding NLP is what we enjoy calling “pure NLP” <Laughs>. Someone who try to mix different ideologies, spirituality and other matters with NLP is I think totally laudable. But when it comes to training people on NLP, I came to an understanding that this discipline is complex enough per se to start mixing it with other areas. What I appreciate about what we called “pure NLP” is its focus on the structure rather than its content. Because once structure is detected, one can deal with anything, whether it be politics, spirituality, sports, sex or education. The brain processes the information in different ways depending on the issue, the person and the context (plus many other factors). Modelling that in a precise manner, moulding it for each person and his or her goals is what I love the most about implementing NLP with my coaching clients. After years of training, practice and some incredible experiences… I don´t believe in foolproof recipes. So when I work as a Coach, with all the awareness and skills that NLP has given me, I see an entirely new world in each and every new client. An entire new world made of: beliefs, experiences, inner voices, meta-programs, values, identities, expectancies, images, analogies, simulations, submodalities, logic-linguistic patterns, sensations, anchors and associations, fallacies, triggers, resources, learnings, useful and useless strategies… etc.
T4G: How do you approach NLP Coaching?
Lucas: You’re ready? Let’s “Go for it!”. I use NLP in the Coaching process in 3 main stages. 1) The 1st Stage-Exploratory session: NLP enhances my capacity, precision and speed in order to explore what my potential client really wants (“exploratory session” is a free session where we partner with the potential client in order to see what his goals are, explore them and become pretty sure that Coaching can be truly useful). As a Coach you want to be aware of your unconscious biases, automatic processes and your map of the world in order to let it out of the room while you are performing your profession. This is the only way to fully embrace a potential client´s way of constructing and seeing “reality”, to became the non-judging explorator scout, highly qualified for the first expedition. 2) The 2nd Stage: once the client has decided on the NLP coaching process, NLP starts to play its main role in 3 critical ways:
+ Emotional: As coach it’s important to develop optimized perceptivity through training in “Up time” states.
+ Cognition: First as an NLP Coach, and second through the competence “Direct communication”, the client becomes more and more mindful about beliefs or automatic (unconscious) processes s/he is operating in her/his cognition.
+ Behavioral: Through NLP we can install and implement strategies in order to program successful behaviours. To me if the process of Coaching does not materialize in observable results in the life of the client, but only in his/her cognitions, we might be missing something important.
3) Last is our 3rd stage, the conclusion of the coaching program: or I would call this the consequence of an effective Coaching process <laughs>, the actual goal, that we as Coaches pursue, the autonomy of the client, and that´s how we lead into… the consolidation of the implicit and personalized NLP training that each and every single client, unconsciously, obtains from the NLP coaching process. Any qualified Master-Practitioner of NLP is supposed to not only know the models and feel pretty familiar with them, but also to “play” and be able to use them to impact/serve others. One of the skills that we presuppose to a Master-Practitioner is the ability to install successful strategies. We can discover NLP applications here again, helping the client consciuously and unconsciously, to discover and develop his own personal strategies to success. As my Coaching school likes to name them “Best Practices”. What I mean is that the client becomes so familiar with the methodology of Coaching (of course assisted by the proper NLP implementation) that If s/he chooses so, s/he might be able to implement it, autonomously, in her/his life –and only her/his life, not others’ lives. Then, in my opinion we can say that the Coach has done a optimum job!
T4G: What opportunity do you have to meet with other NLP practitioners?
Lucas: I have the chance to be in close contact with Master Trainer Xavier Pirla Llorens, and the exemplary Trainer Joan Argelich, due to our collaboration at Talent Institut, and of course, with the great number of alumni from around the world that Talent certifies every month I can say that my family of NLP practitioners grows and grows every year. Without forgetting the NLP folks I network with through my coaching community.
T4G: What would be your next step with NLP?
Lucas: I am currently studying temporary in Ohio, nor that far from Florida and I am planning to certify as a Trainer with The Society of NLP, in Orlando. Really looking forward to meeting the co-creator of NLP Richard Bandler, and also to meet the big John LaValle.
T4G: How is NLP present in your country?
Lucas: In Spain NLP is present in different ways, different textures and different qualities. Different ways: sales, education, coaching, therapy… since NLP is understood as a metadiscipline I have many colleagues working with NLP in several and very different fields. Also due to my collaboration with Talent Institut I have the pleasure to know through our alumni very different professionals interested in NLP: doctors, psychologists, trainers for companies, motivational speakers, teachers, actors, engineers, of course coaches, informatics, human resources pesonal, CEOs… Different textures: most of the improvements and advances in the field of NLP are first published in English. Translation to Spanish, if done by a non-NLP profesional, tends to include misunderstanding on key concepts. This contributes to feeding some of the stereotypes that NLP suffers in Spain and worldwide, like lack of rigor and “just tv-tacky-show material”. And last, different qualities, linked to different NLP training approach, some not always officical. Fortunately this is changing, and I have been very fortunate to work with Xavier Pirla Llorens, the first Spanish Trainer, awarded with the Master-Trainer of NLP recognition.
T4G: A last comment to conclude?
Lucas: Two important things. You can´t feel the touch of “Ms. NLP”. You can´t have a drink with “Mr. Coaching”. But the NLP technology, properly implemented, by a tangible professional that you can see, touch and hear, can change the way you feel the world forever. As some reputed psychological theories say “In the end, it’s all about the appraisal”. How do we interpret (or re-interpret) the situation? What resources do we have (or think we have) to embrace it? And from the actual (perceived) possibilities what can we create? I guess the answer… is for everyone to find.
© 2011 Florence Dambricourt – https://talking4good.com/
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