Is NLP useless?
“NLP is useless,” claim some opponents. This ungracious judgment overlaps with several other points of criticism that are also meant to document how questionable NLP is. Useless because it does not use scientifically validated methods, useless because it makes promises that it cannot keep, useless because it is offered by charlatans who only have their own financial gain in mind.
This biased stance of “NLP is useless” is, as so often, a distortion of the facts and a narrowing down to a few aspects, as has already been shown in the treatment of the other points of criticism. In fact, the failure of individual NLP practitioners is then used as “evidence” for such theses: some do not achieve their goals despite motivation and organization techniques, others do not become great communicators even with conversation formats. The focus on such cases is, however, akin to attempting to disprove a fact by demonstrating the opposite. The argumentation here usually presupposes a certain outcome, which is then to be confirmed: NLP is useless, and therefore especially the evidence that supports this position is considered (and not that which contradicts it). From this perspective, it is interesting that the critics get away with it; if someone were to deny the possibility of peak performance in any other field by referring to a less gifted control group, this argumentation would hardly be accepted as particularly serious.
Conversely, the cases in which the circumstances are anything but subpar are often conveniently overlooked: responsible, competent trainers seem to exist just as little as success stories in which NLP has played any kind of productive role.
Moreover, the entire basis of this accusation is already questionable: NLP consists of copying patterns and strategies from those who have been extraordinarily successful in their fields of activity and making largely dormant potentials usable. In a criticism that starts from the inefficiency of NLP, it is already in need of explanation, because the tools of NLP have obviously worked very well in the hands of the respective first users.
