Customer Reviews

NLP for Managers: How to Achieve Excellence at Work

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Even though Dr. Alder has written a variety of books on subjects involving the impact of our perception and self-representation, this book leaves me with the impression that he might not have a thorough understanding of the subject matter at hand.

He includes a wide variety of terms under the NLP umbrella, that are at most remotely related to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Borrowing heavily from other sources to enhance the scope of subjects covered in his book, he leaves the reader with a quite distorted impression of what NLP might be.

This book is a far cry from the original works on NLP writter by the likes of Robert Dilts. If you want to find out more about NLP and ways to apply its principles and practices in a workplace environment, take a look at Sue Knight's "NLP at Work: The Difference that makes a difference in business".

When going back to the original sources, you'll find that NLP originated as a means for self-improvement. While Alder, touches on this subject, he is, however, too focused on presenting NLP as a powerful means of manipulation.

In the hands of a wise manager or other practitioner, this aspect can be extremely helpful, assuming it is used and applied responsibly. I have seen and experienced a variety of cases, though in which this knowledge and these techniques were primarily used for manipulative efforts.

Such abuse in the long term can result in a bad reputation for NLP, which would be undeserved. A lot of other NLP authors place a much stronger focus on the self-improvement aspect, and also tend to favor a win-win strategy, rather than the win-lose goals that are stated in this book between the lines.

There's no explicit mention of win-lose as a goal, but it becomes apparent when going through the book. Overall, reading this book was a learning experience, unfortunately not in terms of the how-to in a workplace environment, but rather as a reminder of how differently the subject matter of NLP can be presented.

At the time of this review, this title was out-of-print; maybe the publisher will do us a favor and leave it at that.

To cut straight to the chase, the title of this book is NOT strictly accurate.

Bits of the book are about mainstream NLP; chunks of the book are about things the author says are NLP but which you won't find in any other NLP book or course (the "four-stage success cycle", "life content", etc.); and the rest deals with things which you'll find in most bog standard management books, but which have nothing to do with NLP (SWOT, brainstorming, etc.).

I also wonder whether simply peppering a text with labels and phrases like "CEO", "project" and "organisational strategy" is sufficient to turn a loose collection of ideas into a book "for managers"?

Although I've read several of this author's books, I'm still not convinced that he really understands NLP to any great extent.

For example, the chapter on "reframing" mostly deals with pure "framing" - that is to say, it deals with change the external viewpoint rather than exploring internal interpretation, and is so confused, and confusing, that I really wasn't sure what the author was trying to say.

There is a section that allegedly deals with Robert Dilt's "neurological levels" model yet actually only describes the plain "logical levels" model. The author seems blissfully unaware that the model is neither logical nor about "levels", and as a consequence resorts to such vacuous statements as "The spiritual level This is the deepest neurological level ..."

The term "neurological" refers to the function and structure of the brain. In what sense, I wonder, does the author think that the "deepest" function and structure of the human brain is the bit which deals with spiritual matters? And just what does the author mean by "deepest" in this context, given that "spiritual" is supposedly the "highest" logical level in Dilts' model!

To be blunt, there's an awful lot in this book that one could find fault with, and very, very little to commend. If you're specifically looking for a book on the use of NLP in business I'd recommend David Molden's "Managing with the Power of NLP" or Andrew Bradbury's "Develop Your NLP Skills".

This book is nothing but a total lemon-tinted clunker.