Frank Pucelik, somehow forgotten when the history of NLP was being recorded, more recently has been remembered and acknowledged by Grinder, though there is more to be told. Richard Bandler asked him to leave and he went East doing amazing work with addicts and damaged people. A heart man not a head man, not an academic with complex words to confuse, bamboozle and control.

You kind of don't notice Frank come into the room, then he's telling a story to make us laugh. Frank is larger than life with bags of charisma, and the ability to transform himself from psychiatric patient, to melting 3 year old on the memory of the smell of wet wool.

It's a surprise to discover he's just normal height and an ordinary man of his time and generation. A charismatic and inspirational teacher. But he is also a Vietnam veteran, which has a special meaning.

"Americans found themselves fighting a war, not against the bad guys, but anyone and everyone. The children smiled at you in the day, and would kill you at night."

He says, "We damaged people were looking for anything, anyone, to put ourselves back together."  For 30 years he's been out of the picture ranging across the Ukraine, from Moscow and developing NLP institutions all over, especially dealing with drug addiction, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He has some harrowing stories, particularly the damaged men who came home. PTSD, unheard of and certainly not provided for.

Frank Pucelik with ChrisTrainers

This is how Frank deals with Veterans, an increasing number of returned soldiers.
 

Listening to a Vietnam Veteran

If you want a Vet to open up about his bad feelings, you ask him to talk to you about fun times, when he was laughing like crazy. Get them to talk about when the guy shot his soup or killed his mattress. They can laugh about those things, they can open up about those things. Once they get opened, once they start to have some other feelings, you say: "OK, OK, maybe the next session tell me some more of the fun stuff". And after 4, 5, 6, 7 times of telling you fun stuff they'll start to open the door a little bit about some of the not-so-fun stuff.

At that moment the counsellor must hold still while the person is talking about those things. So when they start to open that up - just sit and listen. Passive, positive calibration (see below). Don't move, don't move toward him, and when they finish: "Thank you, thank you, I very much appreciate that.  It was a privilege that you were willing to do that.  Thank you, and now let's talk about something else."  Full interview here

Back to top

Ben Zander is first and foremost a Musician, conductor and consultant to major corporations, where he uses the model of the orchestra for his leadership training seminars.

Zander works through music.  The greatest of all the arts and communications. Music is such a special part of the brain that even when brain cells are destroyed, through accident, stroke or Alzheimer's, a way back can be found through musics.  If the little girl drew what God looks like, perhaps that is what God sounds like.

Catch the audience, start with a story. Zander begins his TED talk, with the two shoe salesmen who went to an African country. One wired back, "no opportunity here, no one wears shoes". The other wired back excitedly, "Fantastic opportunity, no one wears shoes!".  How you view your life opportunity.

Back to top

So his family encouraged intellectual development. Everton's loss is our gain. A bit drastic of fate to choose this method to change his direction.

But don't just read this news, take it as a jumping-off point, go listen to Ben Zander and Ken Robinson at the TED talks. They're only 15 minutes, and there are many laughs along the way, so how could it be educational?

As Robinson says, "Children don't need to be helped to learn. You don't teach your kids to speak, writing comes much later. Teaching is an art form."

Harvard has discovered what any good primary teacher could have told, that a child is a learning organism, born with a vast voracious appetite for learning.

The longer they are in school, the less creative they become.

Back to top

Ben Zander is a consultant to many FTSE companies and one of the most sought after speakers in the world. He gave the opening Keynote address at the World Economic Forum in Davos. But first and foremost he is a conductor. These extracts are from his TED talk, but better than read about it here, go to TED and listen. He may provide leadership for training and TED, but his mission is for everyone to love classical music. 

"So I'm not going to go on until every single person in this room, downstairs and in Aspen, and everybody else looking, will come to love and understand classical music. So that's what we're going to do.

"Now, you notice that there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that this is going to work if you look at my face, right?"

It's one of the characteristics of a leader, that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading, to realise whatever he's dreaming. Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, "I have a dream .... of course, I'm not sure they'll be up to it."

"And what you're going to see is one-buttock playing. Because for me, to join the B to the E, I have to stop thinking about every single note along the way, and start thinking about the long, long line from B to E. This is about vision. This is about the long line."

(This is what is so wrong with phonics for reading, thinking about every single letter rather than the story.  Phonics has greater relevance for spelling.  Later.) (Please note the use of male pronoun throughout.) Ed

Zander again, after playing Chopin and asking people to think of a special person in their life, he gave them permission to let their minds drift with the music.

"Now you may be wondering, you may be wondering why I'm clapping. Well, I did this at a school in Boston with about 70 seventh graders, 12-year-olds. And I did exactly what I did with you, and I told them and explained the whole thing. And at the end, they went crazy, clapping. They were clapping, I was clapping. They were clapping.

Finally, I said, "Why am I clapping?" And one of the little kids said, "Because we were listening."

"Now, I had an amazing experience. I was 45 years old, I'd been conducting for 20 years, and I suddenly had a realisation.  The conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound. My picture appears on the front of the CD but the conductor doesn't make a sound."

He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.  Did you know you had the power? Think of someone you've known who you've influenced, because they admired what you did. Or you opened a door. In the book there is a chapter called "There was this teacher....."

Back to top