Customer Reviews

Networking for Success: The Nlp Approach to a Key Business and Social Skill

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The author writes clearly and simply. She gives numerous reflective questions and illustrates her points with examples. She considers networking as "The creation, development and use of personal contacts for mutual benefit or for the benefit of others." So networking skills are basically communication and goal-setting skills. Goal-oriented and well-organised personalities are probably doing much of the networking described already. The contribution of NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) lies in helping us to be more aware of the internal mental processes and the impactful use of language. Chapters 6 to 9 on Communication Skills and rapport building are the most valuable parts of the book. For example, in active Listening, there are 5 stages involved in conversations: hearing, listening, understanding, acknowledging and responding. We are also taught many different kinds of Questioning: closed, open, leading, multiple, hypothetical and 3-level questioning (about facts, feelings and values)...(pp.148ff). The author touched on 4 learning styles: activists, reflectors, theorists and pragmatists. Different types of intelligence and what helps memory are also briefly mentioned. For those who don't have any background in NLP , this is a good introduction to its application without any technical jargon.

With a subtitle like "The NLP Approach to a Key Business and Social Skill" you'd probably expect this book would include a substantial helping of NLP tips, techniques, etc. in the text.
But you'd be wrong.
Indeed, there's so little NLP in this book that it's hard to see why it was mentioned at all unless in the hope of boosting sales to the unwary.

So, if you're looking for a book on the NLP approach to networking then hold on to your money - this most definitely isn't it.

The bibliography, for example, features 40 titles under 16 headings. Only four books are mentioned under "General Neuro-Linguistic Programming" - half of which are, not exactly surprisingly, by Ms Harris herself. The rest of the NLP-related books, six in all, are grouped under a single heading - "Language".

What we actually have here is a rather pedestrian description of the various aspects of networking (with people, not computers) including various more or less related items, and a few references to NLP.
And I do mean "few". Unless you already have a reasonable grasp of the basics of NLP, this book will do very little to change your situation.
This is all the more regrettable given that Ms Harris is described on the back cover as the "Chair of the Association for Neuro-Linguistic Programming". (Her term of office actually ran out only a month or two after the book was published.)

To give you a flavour of the content, check this passage on page 193, where - for no observable reason - the author is trying to identify parallels between NLP and something called Action Profiling (no, I've never heard of it, either):

"To summarise, Action Profiling teaches that PMG patterns express the individual's true self, are relatively unchanging in adulthood and have a compulsive nature, in that people express their personality through repeating their PMG patterns. NLP, too, takes this view, that people cannot help representing their inherent behaviour patterns, however hard they try. This means that, in networking, once you become aware of people's patterns, you have a sample of their "true self" and can then act on this information accordingly."

This confused piece of reasoning raises a number of troubling questions:

1. Even if this comparison were true - which it isn't - why introduce Action Profiling into a book on NLP and networking?

2. What on earth is meant here by "true self" and "inherent behaviour patterns"? Does the author understand the precise meaning of the word "inherent" ('an essential or permanent attribute')? And where, in the whole of NLP is there anything that says that each person has some kind of unchanging and unchangeable "true" self?

3. If we can "become aware of people's patterns ... a sample of their 'true self' " can we really treat this as something that is "relatively unchanging in adulthod" and then "act on this information accordingly", apparently as some kind of one-off operation?

After all, why, if this were true, would we need to frequently calibrate and recalibrate the people we are communicating with?
Are we merely paying lip-service when we talk about people adopting different meta programs in different contexts?
What happens NLP's key concept of creating and having choices if this "true self" is "relatively unchanging in adulthood"?
How can a major portion of NLP be concerned with change and self-development it we are aren't really open to change in the first place?

To be blunt, this is bad psychology and bad NLP. And if this is a true reflection of the author's best understanding of the subject, no wonder the she can find so little to say about NLP.