NLP has a lot to offer in the field of education and training, and in the right hands this could have been an outstanding book. Unfortunately, these were all too obviously NOT the right hands.
My first doubts regarding the book were aroused by the cover blurb statement:
"For the first time NLP and Training methods are brought together in a well-researched, easy-to-read practical handbook."
Excuse me? "For the first time..."? I don't think so!
The Effective Delivery... wasn't published until 1997, which leaves it some way behind front runners such as "Training with NLP" (1994) and "The Excellent Trainer" (1996).
I was also unimpressed with the claim that the is "well-researched"? By whom? Apart from the sections on learning styles and humour, almost every single one of the references to scientific studies is mirrored in the bibliography of "The Learning Brain" (Eric Jensen, 1994). Is it pure coincidence that Garratt only acknowledges Jensen as his source in those cases where Jensen himself hasn't given a detailed reference?
Thirdly, I'm also extremely wary of anyone who claims to be concerned about people yet describes employees as HR (Human Resources!). This is a euphemism born in the same maternity ward as "down-sizing", "business process re-engineering" and the rest of the jargon of the early 90s designed to make it emotionally easier for managers to announce mass firings, sorry - major redundancy programmes.
To be quite blunt, the book seems to be based on the assumption that if you make enough of the "right noises" some of it is bound to make sense. Not exactly of the kind of 'elegant' solution that NLP is intended to produce, and certainly not a very impressive demonstration of the skills the book purports to teach.
Not surprisingly, then, the book frequently makes exactly the kind of mistakes that any experienced and skilled trainer (regardless of their knowledge of NLP) would avoid like the plague. For example:
- The intended audience for the book is never specified
- NLP jargon is almost always introduced without explanation. Indeed, on one notable occasion the author goes so far as to say, in so many words: 'You won't understand this but I'm going to tell you anyway'!
- The reader is frequently instructed to do things they obviously cannot do (e.g. an exercise that includes the instruction to "Use all the available NLP techniques..." when not one technique has yet been described)
- Many of the alleged explanations don't actually explain anything at all unless you already know enough NLP not to need the explanation.
As to the way that the book covers specific aspects of NLP:
- There is one brief reference to 'closure', but key skills like nested metaphors/nested loops are never mentioned, let alone explained
- On the subject of meta programs, 'convincer modes' are only mentioned as an afterthought (described as 'convincer patterns'), and 'convincer channels' aren't mentioned at all!
- The text regularly features examples of negative re-inforcement such as "This is actually harder than it sounds" ...
- ... and even the basic skill of framing instructions in the positive ("Do do abc") rather than the negative ("Don't do xyz") seems to be a skill too advanced to be included in this book. etc., etc.
One further criticism concerns the incredibly high rate of redundancy in the text. Apparently working on the basis of "tell them what you're going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you've told them", great chunks of the text are repeated both in the so-called "exercises" AND in the chapter summaries.
On an actual training course this approach makes sense. In a book, where the reader can backtrack whenever they want, and as often as they want, this simply means that the basic information accounts for as little as 50% of the total text - if that.
So my difficulty in recommending this book can be summed up quite simply:
If you are a trainer with little or no previous knowledge of NLP then this book is so poorly presented it is more likely to confuse than enlighten.
And if you already have a reasonable grounding in NLP, this text will tell you nothing you don't already know.
In the final analysis, when compared with an alternative, such as O'Connor and Seymour's excellent "Training with NLP" this book comes across as amateurish, and vastly overpriced (even in the cheaper paperback format).
Mr. Garrat's book contains a lot of good NLP techniques for gauging and reaching your clients and examples of how to use those techniques in a training environment. Your clients will get more out of every training session and retain more of what they've learned in the long run.
If you're a trainer and you want to do the best for your clients, then this is definitely a book for you. If you want an overall introduction to NLP for more general application, take a look for 'Mindworks', another excellent book...