Building a credible body of work

I’m pleased to confirm that Provocative Change Works (PCW) is now an insurable stand alone model with Balen Insurance who specialise in health insurance. There has been a lot of work behind the scenes to make this possible and in order to get formal approval we’ve had to meet a number of stipulations. Its a major step forward for PCW and further reminds me that we are a long way away from many modalities that don’t always have policies to assist with proper duty of care towards clients. I’m mindful of a big responsibility to ensure all PCW practitioners work with excellent skills and with proper professional duty of care. That means a serious investment in learning and staying up to date with the model. I am encouraged in recent times by a number of students who invest the same amount of time as I originally did with Frank Farrelly. I must have spent hours learning from him, and this time investment was key in creating Provocative Change Works.

Accidents waiting to happen?

Over the last 25 years, I have had the opportunity to attend many trainings and explore a number of modalities. This experience has been invaluable in developing the PCW model, but its also highlighted to me that many approaches although well meaning, can be accidents waiting to happen as there’s not great attention to client duty of care.

When I attended my early NLP courses often the sales teams would book people on trainings who sometimes in my view really should not be there for a variety of reasons. Some were assured of phobia cures with the trainers as if the training was going to be some mass healing event. It was not uncommon for attendees to have really problematic emotional reactions to being in the training room. Yes, that can always happen, BUT the percentage was often much higher than I would expect and when you have a training with hundreds of people this kind of problem is greatly amplified.

In PCW we are there to provoke change in clients and as Frank Farrelly once said

“Throw away your professional dignity in the service of the client”

This means having excellent state control when working with clients and with students as you never know what might happen!

The importance of CPD in PCW and proper quality control

In PCW certifications need to reflect an understanding of the model and the ability to use the model in real life. People may have a good understanding, but they are not able to work conversationally in real life. In some approaches practitioners never actually see any clients and trainers never train anyone, so its all a theoretical exercise and a bit daft.

When I was involved in NLP it was not uncommon for people to collect certificates like scout badges, with no CPD and never using the skills in real life situations. I remember assisting on some courses where many in the assisting team had dozens of certificates, but couldn’t work using the skills in a real life situation. Many had trained in “communication excellence” and “persuasion” but couldn’t make a living and failed to see the incongruity of what they presented to the outside world and the reality of their real life experience. I can recal one master trainer who had spent thousands of pounds on trainings and materials, but was constantly struggling to make basic decisions in life including generating paying clients and workshop attendees!

The lesson in all of this is that if you really want to develop skills, that requires ongoing continual professional development. Of course each person has to balance their ability to invest the time to make this happen, but there are no “unconscious installation” shortcuts. My time with Frank Farrelly taught me huge amounts and he was more interested in helping people than winning a popularity contest. We are all constantly learning and after 22 years developing PCW, I feel I am just warming up!

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