NLP for Moderating Excellence, 2009

Kathryn Slater reviews the NLP for Excellence in Moderating Skills course held in London at the end of Arpil, 2009.

AQR's NLP for Excellence in Moderating Skills course was, well, excellent. The venue was brilliant in its baroque oddness and Tina and Joanna, who led the day, were engaging and inspiring. The course itself was immaculately structured, the content varied and immediately usable in my day-to-day work.

The day was a hands-on workshop which showcased and demonstrated the practical use of NLP modelling. This led to heightened self-awareness as a moderator and helped us understand and relate better to those who we interact with professionally, both our clients and those who attend our groups.

The highlight for me came at the very beginning when Tina and Joanna introduced us to a piece of research called "The Excellence Project". This involved researching researchers and answering the question "what makes a good moderator?".

I've always wanted to know a bit more about what other moderators do. Tina and Joanna – by using a mix of video of moderators moderating, "live" moderation from Geoff Bayley, plus paired and group moderating exercises where we tried various new techniques on each other – brought to life and defined the spectrum of different moderating styles out there.

By taking on board what we'd learnt, we could place ourselves and others in the spectrum, begin to understand our strengths, our weaknesses and equip ourselves with qualitative tools to "stretch" and adapt our own individual style.

I left the course feeling a renewed sense of pride in my work and the next day bravely tried some of the new questioning techniques I had learnt with satisfying results. The course unveiled new depths to moderating for me and the self awareness it helped me start building has given me the room and the ideas to be more creative in my job. I think I must have been NLP-ed – and I recommend others try it.

Kathryn Slater

Kat has worked for Essential Research for just over two years where she began her career as a qualitative researcher, specialising in media and communications research. Since joining Essential, Kat has headed up development of the company’s online research techniques, won an award at the Research 2008 Awards for her presentation at the MRS conference and is currently completing her CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing.