Lorraine Warne from Advance Coaching Consultants (and September's JCI Cambridge speaker) explains what NLP is and what it means for business:

When I was young I would scribble away at making up stories and dreaming  of being one of the characters in the 'Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe'.  Now I can combine my daydreaming in writing with one of my big passions in life which is part of my work called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)  Yup I  know it's a really weird name and John Grinder and Richard Bandler the founders of NLP are the first to admit that back in the 70's when they were completing their research at University they were not the sharpest marketers in the land. 

I personally love NLP (loved it that much I am now qualified to train 7 day personal development and communication skill courses using NLP tools and techniques) because it gives you the results that you want.  The tools and techniques can allow you to decrease frustration, anger, guilt and increase things that are useful to you such as motivation, confidence and self-belief, so that you can be happy.  Since I began my own training - many moons ago now - I have changed and evolved and now have a great social, health and work balance, just as you can have too.  In fact we all can.  How cool would that be?

The JCI Cambridge workshop presented by Kevin Bullock (brilliant by the way for those of you that couldn't make it) explained what makes a good leader.  He said the 3 key areas of effective leadership are; communication, emotional intelligence and high expectations.  In the 7 day workshop all these areas are covered and then practiced.  It really brought it home to me how special NLP was.  It embodies these three things and when you work in your own context and needs, it really comes alive when you begin to apply it to your own situation.  He also said about changing habits that don't work for you... Yes I thought - because in NLP that's what we work on.  We can change habits that don't work for you to habits that do... I wanted to shout out 'Yes!'  and stopped myself just in time - didn't want to get thrown out or banned ;-)

It's all linked with happiness.  I was lucky enough last week to be working with one of the top Leadership Coaches at the Institute of Directors at the Pall Mall building in London last week.  Ooohhh by the way it's a beautiful building and has a fantastic bar in the basement.  Not that I get excited going there because of the bar of course... hehe.  Anyway, Peter was telling me about how important it is to find happiness first and then success will happen naturally.  There is a professor at Harvard University; Tal Ben-Shahar. He runs the most popular course at Harvard - a positive psychology course for businessmen/women on how to be happy in business - always over-subscribed.  The book is called  "HAPPIER" .  Let me know what you think of it if you get chance to read it.

I'm off to the Glasto Festival on the 23rd^th June.  I'm so excited and can't wait to see all those amazing bands there.  So this weekend I'll be buying lots of wet wipes , and searching for me ol' rain coat and wellies ...  just in case.  Well must go and tara for now.  Have a fun and positive rest of the month.