If you don't get the result you want, do something different next time - Growing interest of Serbian businessmen, athletes and artists in NLP programmes

Nelson Mandela, Anthony Hopkins, Andre Agassi, David Beckham and many other successful and popular people around the world have their private NLP coaches. As eKapija learns, the interest of numerous celebrities and businessmen in Serbia in Neuro-Linguistic Programming is growing as well.

In the 1970s, mathematician Richard Bandler and John Grinder, a linguist and psychologist, started researching what it is that top professionals do to be successful. They simply observed them, listened to what they were saying, recorded and registered all their moves, the way in which they communicated and, in the end, summed up the things they all had in common. This idea was later accepted by other scientists who have developed it to perfection. That is how NLP was created.

NLP has been brought to Serbia by Slavica Squire who left the position of sales director in Germany and came to show clients in our country "how to discover and develop their own personal ingenuity and live a more satisfying life".

- When I was introduced to the NLP methodology for the first time, which was at the time when I was still a sales manager, I was delighted. I managed to increase the sales by 110% by using NLP and I soon became the sales director. While building my career in the sales, I kept learning about NLP and later started organizing trainings at my company. Then I wondered if people in Serbia had already heard about NLP. I started surfing the Internet for information. I saw that one book was translated into Serbian, but there was nothing about NLP trainings in the country. One day I made the decision and told my husband that I was going to resign from the position of sales director and open the first NLP Institute in Serbia. I first arranged a meeting with the Director of Metalac in Gornji Milanovac. That is where I organized the first trainings in 2004. At the time, I was constantly traveling from Milanovac to Stuttgart and back – says Slavica.

(Slavica Squire)

Since recommendation is the best form of marketing and advertising, the number of Slavica's clients was rapidly growing and she formed the first NLP Institute in Serbia on February 14, 2006. Celebrating a small jubilee, the fifth anniversary of successful work, she is now looking for a new and bigger space and announces new trainings and new guest lectures by NLP experts from all around the world.

- This year, guests in Belgrade will again be renowned NLP trainers from all around the world: Tom Best, Bernd Isert, Arline Davis, Lukas Derks. Bernd Isert is the owner of the largest NLP institution in Germany, with the headquarters in Berlin. Mr. Derks has invented a phenomenal method that blends NLP with imaginary constellations and named it "social panorama".

Over the next five years, NLP Institute plans to introduce exclusive NLP programmes for management, leadership and sales.

As our interlocutor says, what is the most important is to use NLP ethically because only then does it have an excellent efficiency.

During her five-year work, Slavica Squire has educated few hundred students, some of whom have earned international NLP Trainer and NLP Coach licenses at NLP Institute.

- In these five years, I produced a total of 12 NLP trainers, five of whom are from the first group I have ever worked with. NLP Institute is a member of the International Association for NLP (IANLP) so that all certificates are internationally acknowledged. We also formed the first coaching academy in Serbia within our NLP Institute, back in 2008. I am the Vice President of the European Coaching Association (ECA) and that is why the process of acquiring the title of NLP Business Coach at our institute is very long and demanding - says Slavica Squire.

She explained the difference between a trainer and a coach for the readers of eKapija.

- A coach is able to work one on one, while a trainer works with a group. An NLP trainer learns how a group functions, studies the group dynamics, internal relations, and learns how to present the same contents to different types of people. A coach has to know how to support an individual in his or her personal development. We can compare that to a cab driver who must learn where you are and where you want to go in order to bring you there.

Key lies in good communication

(a detail from an NLP training)

- It is essential that people learn to communicate productively, that is, to learn to recognize how they function and how other people function. They can learn how to strategically manage their communication in order to achieve good results with different people. We are often unable to achieve certain result even with the people who are closest to us, which is why it is good that we understand how people function. Another thing is communication with the inner self. The essence of NLP lies in the harmonization of conscious intentions with unconscious processes. For example, when you have butterflies in your stomach, your conscious intention is to do something very good, to make a good impression, while unconscious processes are completely opposite. What is necessary is to make unconscious processes a support to conscious intentions.

By using NLP, people start thinking positively about themselves, others, job, and life in general.

M.K.