Michael Breen Interview
Michael Breen is one of the UK’s leading authorities on Neuro Linguistic Programing. He is a man of great presence with an incredible ability to discover and innovate. He is well known for his work with Richard Bandler and Paul McKenna revolutionising the design and delivery of NLP training in the UK.
His vast experience of applying the techniques of NLP to business have enabled him to develop a set of unique programmes designed to enable you to get the most out of your work life....
The Interview with Michael Breen
Damien: So Michael, tell me what exactly is NLP?
Michael: NLP is not a thing, it is a set of ideas and techniques and approaches that people find useful. NLP is a set of heuristics, rules of thumb, empirically derived, that allow you to look at human behavior in a useful way. NLP looks at how behaviors are created, maintained and changed. This is how NLP can lead to change in an individual, a group, or a business. The hardest thing for people to get is that NLP is not one thing. The real thing to learn with NLP is that it is not an academic research subject, it is not about complication. NLP is quite straightforward, the tricky thing to learn in NLP are to get the attitudes, the methodologies, into your behavior so you can do them effortlessly. It is an attitude to ongoing learning. NLP is the discipline of disciplines; it is a discipline that studies how to learn and change human behavior. NLP is about excellence, it not about best practice, excellence is not about what everyone else is doing rather it is about excelling. If you want to exceed in any area NLP certainly has the tools to help but you will not get there by copying the tools of yesterday.
Damien: How has the implementation of the principles of NLP personally affected your life?
Michael: NLP has had many affects, at the simplest level it has shown me how to understand and operationalise the relationship between goals motivation and achievement and just this alone has had a powerful affect on my life. I have been going at it for over 20 years and when I reflect on the main impact in my work and in my personal life the greatest impact of NLP has been that I now have no worries. I do not have the time, the interest, the inclination or the need to worry. This has freed me to be on the lookout for the unknown, and what is unknown that is worth knowing.
Damien: You've been fortunate to not only train with Dr. Richard Bandler (one of the founders of NLP) but you've also worked along side him. How has he influenced your work?
Michael: In the early days I was taught how to work with language in a very superficial manner, NLP was then a very programmed approach, for instance if a client asked a certain question then you say a certain phrase. It wasn’t until I worked with Richard that I began to appreciate the power of language in order to both be able to really comprehend what was happening inside someone’s head, what must be so if what they say is so, what can’t be there, and how to work with that to change their mind. It was with Richard that I learnt about the magic of changing one’s mind with intent for both fun and profit. Curiously enough when I learnt to change my own mind more effectively I discovered I got better results as a persuader. I have learnt to change my own mind by applying the Meta Model to my own thinking processes. Learning how to change my own mind has helped me to change other people’s minds. I admire Richard’s constant questioning, his seeking and finding connections between things that do not seem connected at first glance.
Damien: You were the first to run a NLP Practitioner course specifically designed for business. What inspired you to do this?
Michael: When I started to work with NLP to some of my clients and noticing the effect it was having on them I thought it would be a good idea to take NLP as far as I could take it. The decision to become an NLP trainer was one of pursuing my learning. I was having a conversation with Richard Bandler in 1995 and somebody had told him about some of the things I had done with some of my clients. Richard asked me if I was teaching some of that stuff. I said I wasn’t and he said why not and so the NLP Business Practitioner course was born.
Damien: So how is this course different from what other people are teaching?
Michael: What I am teaching on that course are a handful of tools derived from NLP and a few other sources which allow you to contextualize the NLP material in such a way that the entire lot is open and available to you but more importantly the cognitive tools that I teach and the way that I have organized the Meta Model and the way that I teach it allow you to become far more intuitive but not in any sort of mystical way. I am talking about understanding in terms of how logic works, and inference works, to be able to know what must be behind somebody’s statements and what can’t be there. This will enable you to ask much better questions, come up with better processes, trouble shoot, direct, supervise, coach, and manage far more effectively. I have been teaching this course for a long time now and I know that the tools really work. On this course I teach the patterns that lie behind techniques, so what happens is that people take those patterns and come up with their own approaches. I think that is far more valuable to an individual than just copying someone else’s approach or taking the output of somebody’s programming. I teach people how to think, how to see and how to communicate in such a way that they will never feel stuck again.
Damien: Having personally experienced your NLP training, I have to say that you have an extraordinary ability to engage and captivate audiences through story telling. How did you develop this gift?
Michael: I am so tempting to follow that up with……..well Damien that reminds me of a story but it would be too cheap so I will tell you an anecdote instead. When I was young I wanted to an actor and so I trained extensively in the theatre. By the age of 23 I discovered that there were only a few things I wanted to get out of the theatre and I was not going to be spending much time doing them. My family owned businesses and I recognized at that early stage that I was not cut out to be somebody else’s employee and I decided that I would only pursue things that I would gladly pursue as hobbies for my business. That I would never allow myself to get into a rut, or the rut of I’ll do it because I have done it. That I would go with my heart essentially.
Sometimes if I am in a flippant mood I would say that I was looking for a way to be paid for being me. In the course of doing that as you might imagine I have had a non-linear career path, and in the course of this I have been exposed to a lot of extra-ordinary, wondrous and weird and bizarre situations.
I have hung out with top politicians, celebrities, royalties, Tibetan Lamas lots of different people. I have got to see the big games and the little games. That has let me hook up with people from many backgrounds. By using anecdotes and stories and telling them in an engaging way it makes it possible for someone to really engage with me and the ideas I am presenting in a direct and emotional way.
Damien: What kind of challenges do you help your business consultancy clients overcome?
Michael: Part of what I do is problem solving, sometimes I advise, sometimes I coach, and sometimes I act as a resource. If you want to talk problems a new director of human resources in a global consultancy going through a re-branding and a re-positioning of their organisation, they are going through a major cultural change as well. He has no idea how to pull together such a big programme that was going to go across three years. I helped him with that.
I have helped in anything from finding the right psychological help for a director of an organisation that was an alcoholic to designing and delivering training projects helping property developers radically increase their profits. I’m a senior executive coach that works to improve performance. I get various jobs done at a range of levels. I’m the kind of guy you can parachute in and get the job done.
Damien: How can NLP tools and principles make a difference in an the entrepreneurial business environment?
Michael: One of the major things that NLP will do is make you pay attention in a whole different way, there is stuff that you do not know carries meaning and information in it and when you start paying attention to it the world the world changes. The collected body of wisdom on motivation and persuasion alone will keep the entrepreneur happy and productive and increasing in their profitability for years to come.
Damien: What advice would you give to someone considering training in NLP, apart from doing one of your courses?
Michael: Because NLP is so many things, you could train in two different programmes and they will be universes apart. Before you get involved in any NLP training have a really good think around where you are heading, and what you want to do, around what you think you need to be able to do differently once you have done some form of training. Clarify where you are going before you make that decision.
Damien: What memorable mistakes, if any, have you made in business? What did you learn from them and how can they be avoided?
Michael: Mistakes are how we learn; mistakes are a part of the learning process. It is called trail and error. The mistakes I have made are legion but you know the funny thing is a lot of the biggest mistakes I have made I did not realize were mistakes until much later. Cock ups there have been loads but that is not what we are talking about. Other things that I thought at the time were mistakes was actually the universe messing with me in a form of creativity that actually turned out to be the best things that ever happened to me. That is the thing to get about mistakes; it is the long view that counts, it is not about how you feel about something you have done. The word mistake is itself a mistake. There are only activities that we engage in and there are just results. Sometimes we do not like the results but they are just results.
Damien: Are there any other thoughts, insights, or advice for aspiring small business people that you would like to add?
Michael: Cherish your naiveté, use it to try all the things that need to be tried, do not let other people get in your way. Go full blast at the world. Do not be reasonable and have perfect plans, make an offer to the world and see what comes back. You will find your way.
His vast experience of applying the techniques of NLP to business have enabled him to develop a set of unique programmes designed to enable you to get the most out of your work life....
The Interview with Michael Breen
Damien: So Michael, tell me what exactly is NLP?
Michael: NLP is not a thing, it is a set of ideas and techniques and approaches that people find useful. NLP is a set of heuristics, rules of thumb, empirically derived, that allow you to look at human behavior in a useful way. NLP looks at how behaviors are created, maintained and changed. This is how NLP can lead to change in an individual, a group, or a business. The hardest thing for people to get is that NLP is not one thing. The real thing to learn with NLP is that it is not an academic research subject, it is not about complication. NLP is quite straightforward, the tricky thing to learn in NLP are to get the attitudes, the methodologies, into your behavior so you can do them effortlessly. It is an attitude to ongoing learning. NLP is the discipline of disciplines; it is a discipline that studies how to learn and change human behavior. NLP is about excellence, it not about best practice, excellence is not about what everyone else is doing rather it is about excelling. If you want to exceed in any area NLP certainly has the tools to help but you will not get there by copying the tools of yesterday.
Damien: How has the implementation of the principles of NLP personally affected your life?
Michael: NLP has had many affects, at the simplest level it has shown me how to understand and operationalise the relationship between goals motivation and achievement and just this alone has had a powerful affect on my life. I have been going at it for over 20 years and when I reflect on the main impact in my work and in my personal life the greatest impact of NLP has been that I now have no worries. I do not have the time, the interest, the inclination or the need to worry. This has freed me to be on the lookout for the unknown, and what is unknown that is worth knowing.
Damien: You've been fortunate to not only train with Dr. Richard Bandler (one of the founders of NLP) but you've also worked along side him. How has he influenced your work?
Michael: In the early days I was taught how to work with language in a very superficial manner, NLP was then a very programmed approach, for instance if a client asked a certain question then you say a certain phrase. It wasn’t until I worked with Richard that I began to appreciate the power of language in order to both be able to really comprehend what was happening inside someone’s head, what must be so if what they say is so, what can’t be there, and how to work with that to change their mind. It was with Richard that I learnt about the magic of changing one’s mind with intent for both fun and profit. Curiously enough when I learnt to change my own mind more effectively I discovered I got better results as a persuader. I have learnt to change my own mind by applying the Meta Model to my own thinking processes. Learning how to change my own mind has helped me to change other people’s minds. I admire Richard’s constant questioning, his seeking and finding connections between things that do not seem connected at first glance.
Damien: You were the first to run a NLP Practitioner course specifically designed for business. What inspired you to do this?
Michael: When I started to work with NLP to some of my clients and noticing the effect it was having on them I thought it would be a good idea to take NLP as far as I could take it. The decision to become an NLP trainer was one of pursuing my learning. I was having a conversation with Richard Bandler in 1995 and somebody had told him about some of the things I had done with some of my clients. Richard asked me if I was teaching some of that stuff. I said I wasn’t and he said why not and so the NLP Business Practitioner course was born.
Damien: So how is this course different from what other people are teaching?
Michael: What I am teaching on that course are a handful of tools derived from NLP and a few other sources which allow you to contextualize the NLP material in such a way that the entire lot is open and available to you but more importantly the cognitive tools that I teach and the way that I have organized the Meta Model and the way that I teach it allow you to become far more intuitive but not in any sort of mystical way. I am talking about understanding in terms of how logic works, and inference works, to be able to know what must be behind somebody’s statements and what can’t be there. This will enable you to ask much better questions, come up with better processes, trouble shoot, direct, supervise, coach, and manage far more effectively. I have been teaching this course for a long time now and I know that the tools really work. On this course I teach the patterns that lie behind techniques, so what happens is that people take those patterns and come up with their own approaches. I think that is far more valuable to an individual than just copying someone else’s approach or taking the output of somebody’s programming. I teach people how to think, how to see and how to communicate in such a way that they will never feel stuck again.
Damien: Having personally experienced your NLP training, I have to say that you have an extraordinary ability to engage and captivate audiences through story telling. How did you develop this gift?
Michael: I am so tempting to follow that up with……..well Damien that reminds me of a story but it would be too cheap so I will tell you an anecdote instead. When I was young I wanted to an actor and so I trained extensively in the theatre. By the age of 23 I discovered that there were only a few things I wanted to get out of the theatre and I was not going to be spending much time doing them. My family owned businesses and I recognized at that early stage that I was not cut out to be somebody else’s employee and I decided that I would only pursue things that I would gladly pursue as hobbies for my business. That I would never allow myself to get into a rut, or the rut of I’ll do it because I have done it. That I would go with my heart essentially.
Sometimes if I am in a flippant mood I would say that I was looking for a way to be paid for being me. In the course of doing that as you might imagine I have had a non-linear career path, and in the course of this I have been exposed to a lot of extra-ordinary, wondrous and weird and bizarre situations.
I have hung out with top politicians, celebrities, royalties, Tibetan Lamas lots of different people. I have got to see the big games and the little games. That has let me hook up with people from many backgrounds. By using anecdotes and stories and telling them in an engaging way it makes it possible for someone to really engage with me and the ideas I am presenting in a direct and emotional way.
Damien: What kind of challenges do you help your business consultancy clients overcome?
Michael: Part of what I do is problem solving, sometimes I advise, sometimes I coach, and sometimes I act as a resource. If you want to talk problems a new director of human resources in a global consultancy going through a re-branding and a re-positioning of their organisation, they are going through a major cultural change as well. He has no idea how to pull together such a big programme that was going to go across three years. I helped him with that.
I have helped in anything from finding the right psychological help for a director of an organisation that was an alcoholic to designing and delivering training projects helping property developers radically increase their profits. I’m a senior executive coach that works to improve performance. I get various jobs done at a range of levels. I’m the kind of guy you can parachute in and get the job done.
Damien: How can NLP tools and principles make a difference in an the entrepreneurial business environment?
Michael: One of the major things that NLP will do is make you pay attention in a whole different way, there is stuff that you do not know carries meaning and information in it and when you start paying attention to it the world the world changes. The collected body of wisdom on motivation and persuasion alone will keep the entrepreneur happy and productive and increasing in their profitability for years to come.
Damien: What advice would you give to someone considering training in NLP, apart from doing one of your courses?
Michael: Because NLP is so many things, you could train in two different programmes and they will be universes apart. Before you get involved in any NLP training have a really good think around where you are heading, and what you want to do, around what you think you need to be able to do differently once you have done some form of training. Clarify where you are going before you make that decision.
Damien: What memorable mistakes, if any, have you made in business? What did you learn from them and how can they be avoided?
Michael: Mistakes are how we learn; mistakes are a part of the learning process. It is called trail and error. The mistakes I have made are legion but you know the funny thing is a lot of the biggest mistakes I have made I did not realize were mistakes until much later. Cock ups there have been loads but that is not what we are talking about. Other things that I thought at the time were mistakes was actually the universe messing with me in a form of creativity that actually turned out to be the best things that ever happened to me. That is the thing to get about mistakes; it is the long view that counts, it is not about how you feel about something you have done. The word mistake is itself a mistake. There are only activities that we engage in and there are just results. Sometimes we do not like the results but they are just results.
Damien: Are there any other thoughts, insights, or advice for aspiring small business people that you would like to add?
Michael: Cherish your naiveté, use it to try all the things that need to be tried, do not let other people get in your way. Go full blast at the world. Do not be reasonable and have perfect plans, make an offer to the world and see what comes back. You will find your way.
posted by Damien Senn at Wednesday, March 08, 2006
1 Comments:
i really enjoyed reading this interview. I have taken an introduction course to NLP which I find hugely interesting. And this relates perfectly as I am starting out with a small new business as a coach, especially the latter part of the interview about clarifying where you are going before you make that decision & mistakes, and cherish your naiveté and go full blast at the world - i couldn't agree more! It's all a learning curve, and one i'm thoroughly enjoying however challenging it becomes.
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