Shades of Grey

There I was in W H Smith, browsing through the computer books. There are a surprising number of books on a very broad range of IT topics. Perusing a number of familiar styed yellow spines, I did a double-take when I saw NLP for dummies. NLP? I hadn’t heard of any programming or scripting tool known as NLP, although there are hundreds of TLAs in the sector and there is a new one every month.

Pulling out the book revealed all- it was about Neuro-linguistic programming, a powerful (and controversial) set of techniques for getting people to agree with you (amongst other uses). Obviously, it was misfiled, someone seeing the word “programming” & thinking “geek”. (Have you noticed there is a dummies book for even the most obscure thing these days? Although the De-Nationalise down to nine Regions for Dummies doesn’t appear to be on general release yet).

NLP gets called many things, some of the more negative ones being manipulation towards pre-ordained consensus and even brainwashing in the case of cults. It is rather manipulative at the best of times and when used in the Sales sphere it is bordering on the fraudulent by somewhat transparent deception and totally fabricated false empathy. See the reviewers comments on this book and read between the lines to see what I mean. When they refer to the “unfair advantage”, who is losing out, the competition or the victim?

I imagine the half a glass of water illustration on the cover of the dummies book is a subtle reference to the technique of reframing.

(Both images from Amazon, who also seem to have the cheapest prices for the two tomes.)