Rapport

22 nlp people
RApport 50
Competition
and collaboration
are constant
challenges when
building a viable
community
understand that more clearly if ANLP became a CIC, so that
conversion took place at the earliest opportunity.’
ANLP continues to be involved in the community. ‘We are part
of the Global Leadership Summit, which came out of discussion
at NLP Conference a few years ago. What has evolved from that
is the UK Leadership Forum which we now sit on with our peers
from INLPTA, the Professional Guild (PGNLP), ABNLP and ITA
as well as independent representatives. We explore challenges
within the NLP community in the UK. I think that’s a really
important way of building community.’
Competition and collaboration are constant challenges
when building a viable community. ‘The general public don’t
necessarily see NLP as the solution of choice or, indeed, as a
solution. NLP is in “competition” with psychotherapy and EFT,
Reiki, you name it. Our field will only thrive and grow when
people are willing to take collaborative ownership of it. ANLP
cannot tell practitioners what to do. It’s all about practicing NLP
to be perfectly honest. Running ANLP is about chunking up and
finding that commonality between various people. At the end
of the day the commonality that we all have is that we believe
in NLP. We want it to be a field, a field of knowledge, a field of
expertise that the rest of society can dip into and which doesn’t
belong to one person. We’re like a secret garden and we need
the signposts to get people into the garden. Once they’re in the
garden, we can differentiate ourselves and they can choose the
way they want the tomatoes, the lavender, the daffodils, the
seeds or the fully fledged trees. But we’ve got to get them in the
garden first.’
As Karen points out, ANLP can provide support services and
the members need to play their part in developing a viable
business. ‘We provide them with leverage as a member of a
professional organisation with a code of ethics, a complaints
process. We provide credibility and professionalism, but
members need to use their profile, put their logo and details
on to the ANLP site. Surveys tell us that only a small number of
members actually link from their website back to their profile
on our website. In 2016, we intend to encourage our members
to follow the basics of The NLP Professional and to build more
sustainable business.’
Three years ago, the Rapport editorial team took a decision
to produce the magazine as a PDF download. ‘We got hit with a
30 per cent increase in postal charges, at the same time as print
costs were going up and advertising was going down. That all
happened in the space of 12 months. So it was not sustainable
as it was. We did a survey which didn’t give us a clear result. I
thought we’d come up with a feasible alternative, which was,
increase the number of issues to 6 per year as pdfs and then
print all the editorial content as an annual. Three years down
the line we still get emails on a regular basis asking about the
printed issue of Rapport. Having done it for 10 years it was
starting to feel a little bit stale. I missed the printed issue. So we
ran a survey again and this time the answers were a lot more
clear cut.’
You are reading this issue and this article in print. Karen sees
this as the start of the next stage of Rapport’s development.
‘We’re taking another leap of faith. There are enough people
who are missing the printed issue that we have to find a way
of making this work. We don’t yet know how it is going to
work. The leap of faith is trusting that now we are going back
to the option of a printed issue, we’ll be able to pick up more
advertising, that print costs stay fairly stable, that we can find
a way of distributing the magazine, which we will have done by
the time this is being read.’
ANLP and Rapport are still developing and growing. Does
Karen see ANLP still being around in another 10 years? ‘I’m
planning on it being around and I’m looking at succession
planning to ensure that. Not that I’m planning on falling off
my perch just yet, I’m only 52. We have projects in the pipeline.
We’re working on mark 3 of the website. It has gone from one
ANLP can provide support services
and members need to play their part
page to over 300 pages and it’s really a case of, how do you
find your way? It is an interesting and an ongoing challenge to
present everybody with the page that they want from page one.
We’ve been working on another project for nearly three years
now, that I still believe will really help NLP with wider credibility.’
Karen has not lost her desire to learn and change, and has
been exploring her own potential and will be continuing to
develop that in 2016 and beyond. ‘I have learnt an awful lot
about the different archetypal energies that are out there and
how to work with them. So I have “come out” as a priestess
of the divine feminine. This year I’m doing my shamanic
practitioner course. I think there’s a lot of people that are of the
belief that things have to change in the world, and are changing
in the world. Thirty odd years ago when I was doing genetics
at university we didn’t know about things like cell memories.
But they are there. In the work I do, it’s incredibly important
to understand the different archetypal energies that are out
there and how one deals with them. From my perspective, it’s
incredibly important to be able to elevate above what’s going
on, in the mire, and take a different perspective on it.’
And so another leap of faith begins. I hope to interview Karen
for issue 100 of Rapport!