The cover of the June 2019 issue of The Golf Business featured The North Berwick GC Managing Director Elaine McBride, who advocates for Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) as it relates to its approach to management. Here, she explains how the club staff learned about NLP – and why it led to positive results.
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques have long been used to help golfers improve their game, but North Berwick Golf Club General Manager Elaine McBride believes the golf industry as a whole would benefit from taking an NLP approach. for staff training.
Elaine first introduced NLP to the staff at the historic golf club as part of the management team training and the results were so transformative that she urged other golf clubs to consider a similar approach.
She said, “NLP techniques have been used by golf coaches for many years, not only to improve the game, but also as part of the psychology of golf.
“I am not aware that NLP training is widely used in the golf industry and I believe there is a gap in the industry for this type of training. It is very common in the public and private sectors and has been for many years. It would be good for the golf industry to “catch up” with other industries.
Elaine turned to EnjoyNLP, a company designed to provide tailor-made training for the club’s management team.
Elaine explained, “Many of the staff were a bit skeptical as they had never been exposed to NLP and had generally taken more ‘mainstream’ training courses in the past. The course itself was called Making Managers into Leaders, designed to include advanced skills in coaching, internal and external communication, customer service, and people management.
Amy Grant, North Berwick Golf Club Food and Beverage Event Planner (with Rickie Fowler)
“The structure of the training involved an individual ‘pre-coaching’ call to each staff member to determine their abilities, needs and questions. This allowed EnjoyNLP to create a more tailor-made course to meet the needs of the staff present and the results required by the club.
Intensive two-day training was delivered with full participation, followed by “post-coaching” calls with each team member to ensure all needs were met.
Elaine revealed, “The written comments provided by the team were very positive and allowed me to re-evaluate my own management style. It became evident that the emphasis on ‘managing’ the team during my first six months at the club had brought us to where we needed to be and that ‘leading’ was now necessary to achieve the club’s vision.
“This feedback from staff during the course made me realize that I had become too focused on management, in that I was making the decisions and telling them, rather than leading them and holding them accountable to feel involved. With any new role it’s natural to get heavily involved in the details and it made me realize that I didn’t quite strike the right balance.
Mary Lou Watkins, Golf and Membership Operations Manager, North Berwick Golf Club
“It turned out to be a very powerful achievement for me and as such I was able to change some of my own behaviors and share it with the team to make sure we were all committed to sailing our boat together. path. “
EnjoyNLP offered another one-day training program six months later to examine and reflect how team members had used their new knowledge, information and skills in the workplace.
Elaine said: “It was interesting that all of the team members had learned many different things from the course that had benefited them not only in a work environment, with their teams; but also in their personal life.
“It was very visible that, thanks to this program, the team had the capacity to have more confidence. The program gave them exposure to a range of powerful approaches that they have since applied successfully in the workplace. I would recommend this program to people looking for an opportunity to link their professional and personal development goals.
“The team can now observe many patterns of communication with colleagues, members and visitors, which helps them understand each other better. Plus, they all now use different methods to improve certain behaviors or thinking, including relationship building, NLP assumptions, reframing, and personal empowerment.
Elaine encourages other golf clubs to consider a similar training approach led by NLP; something that she said would benefit clubs and the golf industry as a whole.
“I would totally support other clubs to use NLP. You cannot put a price on the tangible benefits it brings. I understand that not all clubs will have a big training budget, but my personal opinion is that you can’t afford not to have one.
Naim Abbes, Director of Restaurant Operations, The North Berwick Golf Club
What is NLP?
Neuro
The nervous system (the mind), through which our experience is processed via the five senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and taste.
Linguistic
Language and other non-verbal communication systems eg hand gestures, physiology, through which our neural representations are encoded, ordered and given meaning. It includes: sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells, words (talking about oneself).
Programming
The ability to discover and use the programs we run (our communication with ourselves and others) in our neurological systems to achieve our specific and desired outcomes
In other words, NLP is all about using the language of the mind to consistently achieve our specific and desired results.
Elaine mcbride
The presuppositions of NLP
In NLP, we live and work under a number of practical assumptions – these are the presuppositions of NLP. Here’s a taste:
- Respect for the model of the other’s world
- Resistance in a client is a sign of a lack of relationship – there are no resistant clients, only inflexible communicators
- People are not their behaviors – accept the person, change the behavior
- Everyone does their best with the resources they have
- The map is not the territory – the words we use are not the event or element they represent (we are not behaviors, they are usually circumstantial)
- You are in control of your mind and therefore of your results
- People have all the resources they need to be successful and achieve desired results
- The sense of communication is the response you get
- All procedures should be designed to increase choice
- All procedures should increase integrity
- The law of variety required – the system or the person with the most flexibility will control the system.
The name Neuro-Linguistic Programming says exactly what it does: Through the use of language and body language, it enables practitioners to change the thoughts and feelings of themselves and those around them in ways predictable. It enables more effective communication of a message by ensuring that the “background music” is correct, that is, it allows people to move into receptive emotional states, as well as to do so. pass the raw data of the message.
NLP was originally designed to help in therapy, which is why it is regularly used to cure phobias, decrease anxiety, reduce stress, and overcome neuroses. However, the ability to identify the ways people think and feel, and to make ethical changes in those states, also makes it ideal for business.
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