Imagine every morning on a venture towards the office you get into your car, you're driving along and all of a sudden, out of nowhere comes a car behind you, beeping and screaming to get out of it's way. Imagine it bumped into you and kept beeping until it knocked you out of the way. Imagine it continued like this until you reached work when the CEO came up to you and gave you a swift thump in the belly followed by grabbing you by the throat and threatening you if you don't get the Rogers account done today. Imagine to influence others you had to physically coerce them to make sure they got the job done.

Thankfully, that's not the way it's done in the corporate marketplace. Businesses succeed and thrive because of the success of communication. Once an idea is created, the ability of the company to communicate that idea successfully inside the company and outside the company, will determine their profitability. Effective communication provides a smooth foundation from which a company can grow and develop successfully.

What, however is effective communication? The concept is so broad ranging, that it is really situation specific and the attainment of it is outside the reaches of any one theory or system. There are however a number of factors that must be taken into account.

Communication is ultimately done by people. People's motivation and drive, ability to cope with stress and emotional control will determine to what degree they communicate clearly and powerfully to others. Then there are particular patterns with regard to peoples personalities and thinking styles which effect the method of communication which is most effective in each particular situation. There are certain ways of using language in precise ways which get more effective results than others. It has been estimated that general managers for example spend upward of 80% of their time engaged in verbal communication. Such a statistic only confirms the importance of further investigation into dealing with these areas.

Often these elements are covered in individual training programs known as 'soft skills training'. Finally, however, most managers and executives are beginning to focus more on these areas which excellent results. For years, it was known that good customer service was a big plus for a business but it is only now, through following the trend of the most successful companies that people are realizing the need for effective communication inside and outside of the company. The viability of such initiatives concerning communication improvements in corporations together with the greater understanding for a need for satisfied and motivated staff in every area of the business is fostering a progression towards training in the communication skills and personnel development areas.

One approach which explores the different areas surrounding communication, motivation and emotional state management is a field known as NLP. Despite having a off-putting name (NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming), it's approach is quite simple to learn and easy to apply.

NLP is basically the study of how the mind works, how language works and how we affect ourselves and other people. It is an educational tool, which explores HOW we think and HOW we behave and discovers the most effective patterns of communication, behavior and thinking of the most successful people.

At present, NLP is being used extensively by millions worldwide in business, sales, health, therapy, education and their personal lives for personal enhancement and improvement. Such big names as Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Greg Norman and Andre Agassi to name but a few have used NLP to improve their performance. It is used popularly by many Fortune 100 companies in the US but to date, has not successfully entered the Irish Market till now.

The Irish Institute of NLP has been set up by Owen Fitzpatrick and Brian Colbert with the aim of educating Ireland successfully in the set of tools and skills known as NLP. From studying NLP extensively from it's co-creator > Dr Richard Bandler, becoming Master Practitioners and Licensed Trainers, they gained the permission to train licensed NLP courses from the worldwide Society of NLP.

NLP is an attitude and methodology, which originated in the 1970's, when > Richard Bandlerand John Grinder discovered the patterns of the most successful communicators and human change experts. From this outgrew a technology and a system of understanding excellence in any area. Science Digest has described NLP as "the most important synthesis of information to emerge in the human communication area".

There are about as many explanations of NLP as there are applications. Owen Fitzpatrick, who is also a Psychologist, explains it like this:

"The world we live in works because of communication. Those excellent at communication are the most successful in life. Yet, despite this, we are never trained from an early age into how to become more effective at communication or how to influence in essential ways for success. NLP is the study of effective communication, thinking and behaviour. IT provides people with an ability to become free. Free from stress, free from inertia, free from overall negative feelings. It also teaches people how to become smarter. Smarter in terms of their way to solve problems, smarter in dealing with stressful situations and smarter in their communication."

One example of how NLP helps people in such ways is through explaining how words can be the key motivators in any situation. We all have one word which effects us more than others when we talk about something we want to do. For example some people will use more proactive words than others 'I will do the account.' And some more reactive 'The account will be done.'. This gives you key understandings about people which can be used in task delegation. Furthermore some people will be more motivated when they 'need' to get something done while others when they 'must' get it done. There are lots of different examples of how to use such patterns in effectively influencing people.

Since we don't have to go around physically coercing people we know and don't know to do things for us, it all comes down to how effective we are at communicating to them. Such a technology as NLP provides many simple tools and effective strategies for understanding others and communicating with them so that we can smoothly succeed or at least have better odds in our favour.