Geoff and June: The New Head Assistants - In Their Own Words

This year NLP LIFE TRAINING is having a big change around with the way it organises the assistants and Head Assistants.  The Assistants at our trainings give their time freely to ensure that the trainings with Richard, John and Kathleen go smoothly and without a hitch.

 

One of the things that this means is that there has to be an organisational structure feeding up and down from delegate to trainer and back again.

 

With so many talented Assistants in the room, NLP LIFE TRAINING decided that there should be more of an opportunity for different assistants interested in taking on the job to act as Head Assistants.  This will enable the assistants to raise their profiles and extend their experience and skills.

 

Our first new Head Assistants are a well known team in the corporate and training world: June O'Driscoll and Geoff Rolls.

 

Here, in their own words, they discuss their experience in NLP, the role of Head assistant, and their previous experience in the training environment.

 

June: I first experienced the magic of NLP in 2006.  I had a flying phobia and after 15 minutes on stage with Richard, all that changed.  For the first time in my life when thinking about flying in a plane I felt excited and was looking forward to the experience.  It was life changing.

 

The day after I finished my practitioner course, I used the fast phobia cure to assist my best friend to get over her spider phobia.  That was so cool I decided I wanted to learn more.

 

In 2006 I also completed the Master Practitioner Course twice, started assisting and then did the Trainer Training with Geoff, it was a good year.   Since then I have done all sorts of training with Richard, John and Kathleen, including Persuasion Engineering  with John in the UK. 

 

In my everyday life, I now have my own business and I train NLP, Personal Development Courses, Hypnotherapy and Reiki, for various organizations and individuals. I am a business coach and mentor assisting individuals in their  personal development. I also work as a mentor for a community interest company, assisting young mums who are out of work to develop their skills, in order to be more self sufficient.

 

Before I started training NLP, I had extensive experience in the corporate sector.  I was a Senior Manager and Accountant, managing professional teams in various airports, at different locations. My role included coaching, mentoring, training and developing my managers and staff both in their technical abilities and soft skills, I loved it.

 

I was responsible for supporting all the systems you see around an airport that are computerized. 

 

Geoff: I started learning about NLP in 2001.  Previously I'd learned about hypnosis back in the very early 1990s when I was one of the people who went on stage with Paul McKenna.  It got me interested in self-hypnosis.  My background at the time was in food retail both in stores and in the head office environment.  Also I have been responsible for innovating and developing training and development programmes for a business of over 80,000 people.

 

I did my first Practitioner in 2004 and I went on to do the Master Practitioner and the Trainer Training - which is where June and I first met.

 

I've since also done Persuasion Engineering in Orlando, and I've been assisting since 2006.

 

I have my own business in which I focus on building capability through flexibility through NLP, coaching, training and development.  I work with large businesses all the way through to one man bands, as well as with individuals looking to improve the quality of their communication.

 

I'm also a Touch For Health Kinesiology instructor.  I sometimes blend in Kinesiology when I'm working with clients, teaching them techniques to look after themselves so that they will be even better at what they do.

 

My other interests include education and I have worked with the Young Enterprise scheme as a Company Adviser for the last five years.  That's a government-backed scheme that supports students learning about business and enterprise. I'm also the Vice-Chairman for the board of governors for a  large secondary school in Surrey.

 

 

June: Geoff and I deliver training courses together regularly, so we are very used to working with each other.  We are hoping to bring that to our roles as Head Assistants.

 

We will both be working with Kathleen to decide the team to ensure we have the best team available to make the delegates’ learning experience a good one

 

Geoff:   We are really going to focus on the training team and help Kathleen.  We are all the time going to ensure that we've got the customer in mind.  And of course, the customer in mind happens to be lots of different customers.  As well as the delegates themselves it's also very much the other assistants in the team.  It's Bernardo Moya and the NLP Life Team, and last but by no means least, it's the trainers: Richard Bandler, John La Valle and Kathleen La Valle.  We will be making sure that we are getting the message across about NLP, and making sure that what's going on in the room is congruent with where the trainers want it to be going.

 

Setting the team up of course takes action on a regular basis.  The thing is that managing people, developing people, getting team players to work together is not like managing cans of beans, you know they have feelings, they have things going on with them, they have peaks and troughs.

 

Because we have been assisting for a few years, we are well aware of the people we work with, and are also aware of the other people who want to come in and help.  There are also people from the past who may want to come back in.  We want to make sure that we've got the right mix of people who are doing it for the right reasons - to enrich the lives of those who have come here to have their lives changed.

 

So, we'll be working with whoever's there, seeking guidance from Richard, Kathleen and John, and also learning about some of their other models, I suppose, about how to share information in the most appropriate way.

 

June I am really pleased that I will be doing this with Geoff, because we already know how well we work together.  We know how each other works and we pull each other up when we need to.

 

We are very fortunate that we are able to feed back to each other about anything.  The nice thing is that it's all done in the nicest way.

 

I know that we are following in the shoes of Steve and Tina who are brilliant at what they do.  We want to come from the same integrity model. It's all about the delegates, Richard, the training team, Kathleen, and John and the assistants.  It's about making it all go smoothly.  It's about making sure that everyone is having a pleasurable time - especially making sure that the assistants are appreciated.  They take very valuable time out from work to be with us, so we want to be sure that they are happy with how things go.