A qualitative investigation into the experience of neuro-linguistic programming certification training among Japanese career consultants

Abstract

Although the application of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been reported worldwide, its scientific investigation is limited. Career consulting is one of the fields where NLP has been increasingly applied in Japan. This study explored why career consultants undertake NLP training, and what they find most useful to their practice. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with six career consultants, who had attended NLP certification training, revealed that they wanted to learn action-oriented NLP-based coaching skills in addition to their active-listening-based counselling skills. NLP provided frameworks to lead their clients' thoughts efficiently, deepened their understanding of the human mind, and developed their attitude to understand others and themselves. The NLP skills found most useful were reframing and the Disney strategy.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
A qualitative investigation into the experience of neuro-linguistic programming
certification training among Japanese career consultants
Kotera, Y. (2018). A qualitative investigation into the experience of neuro-linguistic
programming certification training among Japanese career consultants. British Journal of
Guidance and Counselling, 46(1), 39-50. doi: 10.1080/03069885.2017.1320781
Yasuhiro Kotera: Y.Kotera@derby.ac.uk, University of Derby, UK

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A qualitative investigation into the experience of neuro-linguistic programming
certification training among Japanese career consultants
Abstract
Although the application of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been reported
worldwide, its scientific investigation is limited. Career consulting is one of the fields
where NLP has been increasingly applied in Japan. This study explored why career
consultants undertake NLP training, and what they find most useful to their practice.
Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with six career consultants, who had
attended NLP certification training, revealed that they wanted to learn action-oriented
NLP-based coaching skills in addition to their active-listening-based counselling skills.
NLP provided frameworks to lead their clients’ thoughts efficiently, deepened their
understanding of the human mind, and developed their attitude to understand others and
themselves. The NLP skills found most useful were reframing and the Disney strategy.
Keywords: neuro-linguistic programming, career consulting, the Disney strategy,
reframing, Japan

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Introduction
NLP, a ‘model of human experience and communication’ (Bandler & Grinder, 1979, pp. i-ii), is
an applied psychology to analyse and reproduce excellent behaviours. It was developed by
Richard Bandler and John Grinder at University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1970 (Pishghadam
& Shayesteh, 2014; Wake & Leighton, 2014), through closely examining communication
patterns of psychotherapists such as Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, and Frederick Perls (Tosey
& Mathison, 2009). NLP is an approach based on creating a model that maps ‘tacit knowledge
into explicit knowledge’ (Bostic St. Clair & Grinder, 2001, p. 271) to study how excellent
individuals and organisations create their outstanding results (O'Connor & McDermott, 2001).
NLP explores the structure of subjective experience by considering the subject's neurological
processes (neuro), language (linguistic), and learned strategies (programming) (Dilts, Grinder,
Bandler & DeLozier, 1980). Since its introduction, the use of NLP has spread rapidly worldwide
(Karunaratne, 2010), and in a wide range of fields including psychotherapy, business, and
education (Tosey, Mathison & Michelli, 2005; Zastrow, Dotson & Koch, 1987). This trend is no
different in Japan. Since 2003, one of the original NLP organisations, the NLP Connection,
certified 1,725 practitioners, 1,321 master practitioners, 373 trainer associates, and 40 trainers
(C. Hall, personal communication, March 15, 2016), illustrating the growing popularity of NLP
in Japan.
Despite its wide applications, however, scientific research in NLP is still underdeveloped
(Dowlen, 1996; Pishghadam & Shayesteh, 2014; Thompson, Courtney & Dickson, 2002; Wake,
2011). A literature search using EBSCO yielded just 535 academic journal articles with the
words 'neuro-linguistic programming'; by comparison 'mindfulness' yielded 32,235 articles at the

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time of the study. Indeed, Witkowski (2010) noted in his criticism of NLP that while its founders
conducted field observations, experiments, and theoretical deductions, they ignored empirical
verification, critical to social psychology (Cialdini, 1980; Mortensen & Cialdini, 2010). This
weakness was echoed by Sturt et al. (2012) who in their systematic review reported that there
was insufficient evidence of the significant effects of NLP interventions on health-related
outcomes because of the relatively poor quality and limited quantity of research. Thus,
unsurprisingly, research in NLP training is limited. EBSCO searches using the words ‘NLP
training’ and ‘neuro-linguistic programming training’ yielded 69 academic articles. Most of
those articles, however, were about non-NLP training (e.g. mental health training) using NLP
skills. The few studies that have examined the effects of NLP training have focused on: mental
health (Sahebalzamani, 2014), self-efficacy and problem solving (Zamini, Nasab, & Hashemi,
2009), and communication skills (Günenç, Devebakan, & Doğan, 2015). None of these studies
explored the experience of NLP training.
Career Consulting in Japan
Career consulting is a relatively new concept in Japanese society. Traditionally, Japanese
companies had a lifetime employment approach, where employees worked at the same company
until retirement. However, toward the end of the twentieth century, after the economic bubble
burst, Japan has been characterised by significant socioeconomic changes, as well as
diversification of individual value systems and career paths. The Japanese Ministry of Health,
Labour and Welfare (MHLW) has pointed out that the existence of external and internal changes.
The external changes include the rapid development of technology, which changes what is
required for the same job more quickly and frequently, and the influence of Western employment

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trends, whereby employees change their jobs more frequently. Gender equality is another notable
external change (e.g. the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in 1986, and the Child-Care
Leave Law in 1992). There have been more jobs for women; their working career has been
getting longer; and their life-work patterns have become diversified. The internal changes relate
to a change in workers' values, from being an obedient company employee to creating one's own
career independently (MHLW, 2007a). Companies started to review their model of traditional
lifetime employment, and individuals started to think of their own career, rather than rely on the
company's decisions (Watanabe-Muraoka, Michitani, & Okada, 2009). For example, one of the
largest consumer electronics firms in Japan, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Co. Ltd., changed the
traditional lifetime employment in order to adapt to the needs of more diversified workforce
(Senmatsu, 1999). Such shift from 'career in organisations' to 'career out of organisations'
requires individuals to be better equipped with competencies in career development (Watanabe-
Muraoka, 2007). The MHLW (2007b) survey reported that about 70% of full-time employees
would like to plan their career development on their own.
Because of these changes, workers have increasingly recognised the need for support in
their career development (Watanabe-Muraoka, Michitani, & Okada, 2009). Career education in
Japan is implemented from elementary to high school (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology, 2004), and career development support (e.g. internship, career
guidance, individual counselling) has been introduced in more than 70% of the universities
(Japan Student Services Organization, 2006). A qualification for a career consultant was
developed in 2002, and the number of qualified career consultants has been increasing in recent
years (2006: 43,000; 2008: 53,000; 2012: 81,000; Asano, 2013). In April 2016, this qualification
was recognised nationally, and accredited by the government. These movements illustrate that

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the importance of career consulting in Japanese society will continue to increase in the future.
Career consulting is defined as a consultation and support to help clients design their
professional life such that it is appropriate for them, and undertake job training to develop their
professional competencies effectively (MHLW, 2007a). Thus, career consultants provide
information, and offer psychological support to help clients achieve their ideal professional life
(MHLW, 2007a). In the field of career guidance, personal responsibility for one's own career has
been increasing recently. This has stimulated the need for more individual-oriented approaches
such as life-design approaches (Savickas, 2010) or integral approaches (Zunker, 2002). 'Private
logic' (Savickas, 2009) - how an individual constructs meaning and identity in their career
subjectively - is central to today's career guidance. Therefore the focus tends to be on narrative
truth rather than factual truth (West, 1996). For example in Japan, the job-card system was
introduced by the government in 2008; it is a training programme to work through a set of
worksheets to help individuals make their own career plans by deepening an understanding of
themselves (MHLW, 2015). NLP also explores subjective experience, hence it could provide
another avenue for development of the field of career guidance (Reid & West, 2011).
As certified NLP trainers, my colleagues and I have noticed that there have been more
and more career consultants attending NLP certification training in recent years. These
participants have often reported that this training was extremely helpful to their practice.
However, to date no study has explored the experience of NLP training among Japanese career
consultants.
Method
Design
The study entailed thematic analysis of in-depth qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted

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with six qualified career consultants who had attended NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner
certification training (NLP-PCT and NLP-MPCT) at least one year prior to the start of the
research (five women and one man; age range was 31-52 years, M = 44.8, SD = 7.9). On
average, the participants had completed NLP-MPCT 2.8 years prior to data collection. To be a
qualified career consultant in Japan, you need to complete 140 hours of training or its equivalent
work experience, and a written exam, which are approved by the MHLW. The 140-hour training
includes the social impact of career consulting, basic knowledge on how to conduct career
consulting, required skills, and advocacy of career consulting. The basic knowledge includes
career-development theories, counselling theories, mental health, labour market and laws; and
required skills cover counselling skills such as rapport-building and active-listening (Asano,
2013). The six career consultants all had had at least four years of career consulting practice
experience before undertaking the training. NLP-PCTs train the participants to internalise and
integrate NLP in their thinking and behaviour, and NLP-MPCTs primarily focus on the influence
they have on others (Hall, 1983).
Training
Both the NLP-PCT and NLP-MPCT training are usually provided for 10 days over two to three
months. NLP-PCT aims to enable participants to ‘demonstrate a fundamental ability to utilise the
basic concepts, skills, processes/techniques and patterns of NLP’ (Hall, 1983) by covering eight
areas of NLP: representational systems, rapport-building, anchoring, language patterns, outcome
framing, sub-modalities, strategies, and trance. After completing the NLP-PCT, participants are
allowed to move onto an NLP-MPCT training where they develop those skills further to conduct
purposeful multi-level communication and customised interventions, build and utilise states of
consciousness and physiology, and make conscious shifts in perspective, state and behaviour

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(Hall, 1983). All the skills taught in the training entail theoretical understanding, demonstration
by the trainer, and practice. In the course of the training, participants are required to produce five
reports for reflection (Yamazaki, 2004, 2005).
Participants
In order to gather rich and varied data through in-depth semi-structured interviews, a small
number of participants were chosen. Three NLP trainers in Japan were requested to approach
experienced and qualified career consultants, who had completed certification training. Of the 10
career consultants who were approached, six agreed to have an hour-long interview on Skype. I
conducted these interviews and introduced myself as a psychology researcher to limit biased
responses. Two of the consultants mainly worked at job centres, four at universities, and all
worked partly at companies, where the majority of consultants are employed (Asano, 2013).
Another reason for limiting the sample size to six was that a point of saturation was reached after
the six interviews were conducted, and it was felt that interviewing more participants would not
necessarily add anything to the overall story (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
Procedure and analysis
The Psychology Ethics Committee at the University of Derby approved this study. The questions
in the interview schedule were based on the Helpful Aspects of Therapy Questionnaire (HAT:
Llewelyn, 1988), which has been employed in numerous studies that examine the efficacy of
training (e.g. Smith, 2011). The HAT built upon the questionnaire used by Bloch, Reibstein,
Crouch, Holroyd, and Themen (1979) to measure therapeutic factors in group psychotherapy
(Llewelyn, 1988). These questions were particularly useful for this study as they were simple and
information could be solicited less intrusively. Also they allowed the interviewees to focus on
the helpful events in the process of change (Elliott, 2012).

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The interviews were conducted via Skype, and transcribed. The advantages of online
interviews are that they are economical, geographically flexible, and user-friendly, while the
challenges are potential time-lag or other technical problems, which could break the flow of
conversation, and ethical issues (Saumure & Given, 2010). Each interview explored topics such
as reasons why they decided to undertake NLP training, and whether and how NLP skills and
concepts were useful to their practice. During the interviews, a meta-model, an NLP verbal
model, was utilised to explore the deep structure of experience and to avoid misunderstandings
between the interviewer and the interviewees (Bandler & Grinder, 1979).
To analyse the data, I subjected the data to thematic analysis because the analysis was not
limited to any existing theoretical framework, and thematic analysis was appropriate for
exploring this underdeveloped area (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Thematic analysis segments,
categorises, summarises, and reconstructs the data in order to capture the important concepts and
patterns of experience within the data. Thematic analysis produces a description of patterns of
experience, and the common themes within them (Givens, 2008). The procedure described by
Braun and Clarke (2006) was followed. In order to create an investigator triangulation for
transparency and coherency (Hales, 2010), a psychology researcher who was familiar with NLP
training and a non-NLP-trained researcher reviewed the data extracts of each theme identified by
me, and they reached an agreement on all themes. They also examined the translation from
Japanese to English.
The steps in the thematic analysis were as follows:
1. Familiarisation
The interviews were transcribed to permit initial interpretation, which is key to qualitative data
analysis (Bird, 2005). After transcribing, all the scripts were read and re-read in order to search

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for patterns (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
2. Generating initial codes
Coding was then conducted to help organise the data into meaningful groups (Tuckett, 2005),
and as many codes as possible were created (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Twenty-four initial codes
were produced: understanding the human mind, reframing, positive thinking, sponsorship,
pacing, coaching ability, the Disney strategy, goal setting, the NLP Parts Party, resources, people
are always doing their best, specificity, position change, self-control, SCORE model,
neurological model, million model, we all have different maps, anchoring, sub-modality,
timeline, positive feedback, re-imprinting, and flexibility.
3. Searching for themes
Next, the codes were sorted into potential themes. The mind-map method was employed with the
purpose of viewing all the codes at the same time, and moving and connecting them freely
(Braun & Clarke, 2006). The 24 codes were grouped into three themes: Understanding the
human mind, flexibility and specificity.
4. Reviewing themes
Themes were refined by reviewing all the coded data extracts and themes for coherency and
accuracy (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
The data were organised into three types, addressing: (a) The purpose of undertaking the
NLP training, (b) helpful NLP skills and (c) what it was about NLP they found most useful to
their practice. The theme ‘Specificity’ was connected to the purpose of undertaking the NLP

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training, ‘Flexibility’ was changed into ‘Reframing’ in order to describe the helpful NLP skills
more specifically and ‘Understanding the human mind’ was connected to what it was about NLP
that they found most useful.
5. Defining and naming themes
Next, the essence and the range of data captured by each theme were identified (Braun & Clarke,
2006). The data extracts of ‘Specificity’ were reviewed, and it was found that they referred to the
need for coaching skills. The participants perceived the active-listening-based counselling skills
they had learned during their career consulting training were not sufficient to conduct effective
sessions. This perception had made them look for additional skills to enhance their practice. The
data extracts of ‘Reframing’ were reviewed, and it was found that there was another specific
NLP skill that the participants mentioned as particularly useful: the Disney strategy. The data
extracts of ‘Understanding the human mind’ were reviewed, and it was found that not only
information-based understanding, but also an attitude to understand people was a key aspect for
them. This resonates with the participants’ emphasis on another NLP concept, namely
sponsorship.
Results
Theme 1: The purpose of undertaking the NLP training.
All of the participants reported that they had undertaken the NLP training in order to enhance
their career consulting practice. They desired to learn additional skills other than their active-
listening-based counselling skills, which they had already learned in their career consulting
training. Although they acknowledged the importance of active-listening skills, they felt that
active-listening skills alone were not enough to conduct effective career consulting sessions.

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Participant 1: I’ve experienced many cases where active-listening alone didn’t produce
good outcomes. .... In my experience, it is very important to suggest something to clients.
Participant 2: It is important to actively ask them questions to give the session a sense of
direction. In counselling they say ‘the answer is within you’, and I agree with that, but at
the same time, it would be great to have a specific framework to think through. NLP
provides such a framework.
Participant 6: Acceptance, active-listening, and empathy are the basics of good listening
in career consulting, but these, at the same time, are the limitation of current career
consulting. ... You need some coaching skills additionally. By the time clients see you in
a session, they already have thought as much as they can within their thinking framework.
NLP provides me with coaching skills, which help my clients go beyond their thinking
framework.
A number of participants discussed coaching and counselling skills. Participant 6 mentioned
‘coaching skills’. Coaching skills were compared with counselling skills: while counselling was
described as 'listen’ to clients, coaching was described as 'actively ask them questions'.
Participants referred to the difference between those skills in relation to specific frameworks that
they used to help clients think about the options available to them.
Participant 3: Often my clients have time limits in their job-hunting, and being stuck is

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detrimental. NLP, however, made me see my approach from different perspectives, and
gave me a variety of different approaches to deal with diverse problems.
Participant 5: With counselling skills alone, it takes a long time to help clients get good
results. … Counselling skills alone may work for clients who are eager to get a job. ... But
my clients are NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and hikikomoris
(acute social withdrawals). Such an approach doesn’t work for them. ... If I wait until they
say or do something spontaneously, it will take forever.
These comments brought up an important issue for career consulting: time limit. As illustrated
above, career consultants were aware of the need for their clients to get support and advice
immediately.
Theme 2: Helpful NLP skills
Participants found two key NLP skills particularly useful to their practice: Reframing and
the Disney strategy.
Reframing
Reframing is a skill to change the meaning of an experience by changing the conceptual
viewpoint of a situation into another (O'Connor & McDermott, 2001; Watzlawick, Weakland, &
Fisch, 1974). The participants reported it was the most useful NLP skill to their practice.
Participant 2: Many of my clients have rigid internal rules such as ‘I’m not worthy

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because I don’t have this qualification’ or ‘A successful applicant should be like this’.
These rules stop them from thinking about their ideal outcomes. ... One of the NLP
reframing skills, as-if frame, is very useful. I ask them to think about their future, as if
those rules don’t exist. … Reframing is also useful for myself.
Participant 4: Some of my clients are hikikomoris. They only see what they don’t have.
Reframing helps them start thinking about what they do have instead.
These comments related to reframing of their personal characteristics as positive; contents
reframing (Bandler & Grinder, 1983).
Participant 5: Sometimes your career may seem stuck. But NLP’s view of ‘everything is
a resource’ enables my clients to think about their career hopefully instead of
hopelessly.
Participant 3: In my experience, often what stops clients moving forward is fear of
encountering something negative. In such situations, it is helpful to think from different
perspectives. I cognitively knew that all the resources are useful in some context (one of
the NLP presuppositions), but NLP gives me ways to feel it.
Participant 6: One of my clients had been rejected several times. She had started to fear
job interviews, and see interviewers as her enemies. We used reframing to help her see
interviews as a place where interviewers search for their work partners, instead of judge

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her critically. After this session, she had a job interview and came back to me saying
that she had a good conversation rather than an interview, which is a good sign.
These comments implied that context reframing, which considers a context where one presently,
negatively perceived quality would be positive (Bandler & Grinder, 1983), is also useful in
career consulting.
The Disney strategy
The Disney strategy was developed by an NLP trainer, Robert Dilts, from his analysis of Walt
Disney’s thinking strategy (Dilts, 1998). When creating a plan, Disney's team explored it from a
number of different perceptual positions: the dreamer, the realist and the spoiler. Dilts made this
into an NLP skill, naming it ‘the Disney strategy’. The career consultants also found this skill
useful. They used this skill to assist their clients in creating plans for their career and job-
hunting.
Participant 2: My clients are mainly high school or university students. I found the
dreamer position particularly useful, where they think about their goal as if anything is
possible. ... This exercise helps them imagine what might be possible.
Participant 4: My clients are often in a younger generation. They are just excited to hear
the name ‘Disney’. ... The balance of these three positions is crucially important, and
students (Participant 4's clients) learn so through practising this skill.

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Theme 3: NLP gives people an attitude of understanding
The consultants found the most useful aspect of NLP to their practice was that it helped
them see people, including themselves, with an attitude of understanding.
Participant 1: NLP helped me deepen my understanding of people’s minds. ... This
understanding made me stop my automatic self-criticism.
Participant 3: NLP gave me a variety of skills to get out from that (‘stuckness’), and
understanding of why we get stuck, and how we can move forward. … I began to be able
to think how I feel what I feel, which helps me find solutions to my problems. … This
stops my automatic self-criticism. Now I’m able to think what’s causing my problems
without criticising myself. … In my practice, I use counselling skills ... but I didn’t know
why these skills were important, or how they worked.... NLP enables me to think (instead
of react) especially when these skills are not working for my client, and alter my
behaviour accordingly.
Participant 5: I was able to understand why sponsorship was necessary to have great
sessions. I deepened my understanding of the human mind a lot.
These statements described not only that they have gained more understanding about the human
mind, but also that they have developed the attitude to understand their clients and themselves. In
NLP this is called sponsorship, which was also mentioned by the participants.

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Participant 4: In job-hunting, students’ minds are vulnerable. They hear their peers got a
job, while they failed. They start to doubt themselves. But sponsorship messages help
them regain their morale and get mentally ready for their next job application.
Participant 5: It is imperative to have sponsorship when I see my clients. … Sponsorship
is not only a must when I see my clients, but also when I see any relationship, including
one with myself.
These statements depicted the importance of maintaining a belief in oneself.
Discussion
Three themes emerged from the analysis of interviews with six qualified career consultants after
completion of twenty-day NLP certification training. They were the purpose of undertaking the
NLP training (Theme 1), helpful NLP skills (Theme 2), and NLP gives people an attitude of
understanding (Theme 3). Each theme will be discussed in turn.
Theme 1 highlighted the career consultants’ learning needs for additional skills to their
active-listening-based counselling skills, which they had already learned in their career
consulting training. Active-listening is ‘a state of mind that involves paying full and careful
attention to the other person, avoiding premature judgment, reflecting understanding, clarifying
information, summarising, and sharing’ (Michael & Hoppe, 2006, p. 6), and based on
unconditional respect for a client, and a belief in the client’s abilities to grow, achieve, and know
themselves (Hokkaido Government, 2002). In the skills pyramid model of career counselling
(Ali & Graham, 1996), active-listening skills are the foundation, which understanding and
interpretative skills are built upon. Active-listening skills are especially important in

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contemporary career guidance where the life-design approaches are needed, as opposed to
vocational matching paradigms of the early-twentieth century and development paradigms of the
mid-twentieth century (Savickas, 2010). For example, attentive-listening is central in narrative
approaches where career consultants attend to clients' subjective experiences and meaning-
making (Reid & West, 2011) by just ‘being’ in the situation (Hansen & Amundson, 2009).
Whilst acknowledging the importance of active-listening, the consultants emphasised the need
for a more active approach: coaching.
Coaching is 'a collaborative process of facilitating a client's ability to self-direct learning
and growth' (Stober & Parry, 2005, p. 14). Many of the assumptions of current coaching practice
have come from NLP (McDermott & Jago, 2006), and NLP-based approach has been frequently
applied in the growing coaching industry (Association for Coaching, 2006). As the consultants
comparatively described coaching and counselling, one of the main differences between these
two sets of skills is that coaching often employs more results- and action-focused skills, thus the
pace is faster than counselling (Bluckert, 2005). This was expressed by the analogy that
counsellors work by sitting down, whereas coaches work by standing up (Nevis, 1987).
The need for coaching skills illustrated a contextual challenge of career consulting. While
counselling often takes place for a long time (Albee, 1992), clients in career consulting seek to
be employed as soon as possible. Although brief counselling has been applied in the field of
career guidance in the last few decades, the timeframe for this counselling, one to twenty
sessions (Dryden & Feltham, 1992), can be still long for career clients. In addition, this
counselling is not recommended for a working-class population (Dryden & Feltham, 1992),
which is often seen in career consulting. Based on the participants' comments, the current career
consulting programmes may benefit with the inclusion of NLP-based coaching skills for

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producing more capable career consultants.
Theme 2 identified two specific NLP skills that the consultants found most useful to their
practice: reframing and the Disney strategy. The consultants use two types of reframing to
support their clients: contents reframing and context reframing. Contents reframing enables their
clients to perceive their personal characteristics positively. It is understandable the consultants
found it useful, because the meaning clients bring to their career behaviour and decisions is
crucial in career guidance (Savickas, 2005). In narrative approaches, for example, reviewing
their life context and identity to make sense of their experiences is key (McMahon & Watson,
2013). Context reframing helps clients take a different perspective to their context. A similar
process can be seen in SocioDynamic Counselling (Peavy, 2008), where selves are re-organised
in relation to the contexts. In sum, the consultants’ uses of reframing were motivational (Valach
& Young, 2002) and meaningful for helping clients find their narrative truth (Reid & West,
2011). That may explain why they found reframing particularly useful.
The consultants reported the Disney strategy was also most useful to their practice. In the
Disney strategy, clients create the three positions in the room, and physically move to each
position, in order to access one mode of thinking at a time for five to ten minutes. In the dreamer
position, the clients hold their head and eyes up and dream as if nothing was impossible. Next,
the clients move to the realist position, and turn their face and eyes straight ahead, in order to
make plans by considering the steps needed to achieve their dreams. Lastly, in the spoiler
position, the clients keep their eyes down and tilt their head down, and look for any gaps in their
dreams and plans, and between them. If the clients think their plans are unrealistic, they may
return to the realist position to revise the plans so they are more realistic (Dilts, 1996). Using this
skill, the consultants are able to help clients dream, plan, and review their career.

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In Theme 3 participants described the way in which training helped them see people,
including themselves, as the most useful aspect of NLP to their practice. This attitude, called
sponsorship in NLP, relates to awakening potential within others by committing to support
something that is already within a person or group (Dilts & DeLozier, 2000). This concept is
usually taught at the end of an NLP-PCT, in order to emphasise that any skill would not be
effective without a therapist intending to have sponsorship for their clients (Dilts, 2003). Clients
in career consulting apply for jobs, and receive the results. Sometimes they receive good results;
other times not. It is hard for clients to maintain confidence in, and hope for their success after
several rejections. Therefore, a career consultant who sees their unique potential, and shows
commitment to their growth, can support clients significantly. In modern career guidance,
support at the identity level has been highlighted, as identity is considered as a meaning-making
anchor (Oyserman, Elmore, & Smith, 2012), and informs one's career choices (McMahon &
Watson, 2013). This may explain why sponsorship bears so much importance in their practice.
Additionally, participants were specifically asked if there is anything in the training that
was not useful. Five of the participants reported nothing; one participant reported a problem-
solving model, TOTE (test, operate, test, exit; Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 2013), did not
provide any specific intervention procedure.
Although the job-card system has been introduced in Japanese career guidance,
interviews with 16 companies reported the system has not been successful (Japan Institute for
Labour Policy and Training [JILPT], 2013). Given Japanese people’s collectivism, strengthening
a sense of self in clients may be useful (Banda, 2014). For example, an Adlerian psychological
approach could help (JILPT, 2016). However, what differentiates NLP from such approach is
that NLP is a methodology; NLP instructs the procedure of the skills specifically, in order for

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clients to experience their effects.
Conclusion
As the need for career support increases in Japan, its quality also needs to improve. This study
explored why numerous career consultants undertake NLP training, and aspects of NLP they find
useful to their practice. The findings suggest that career consultants felt that they could enhance
their practice by learning additional skills over and above the active-listening-based counselling
skills learned in their initial career consulting training. That was the primary reason why they had
decided to undertake NLP training. In the perspective of the career consultants in this study,
career consulting clients in Japan are pressured by a limited amount of time available, compared
with counselling. Therefore, career consultants desired to learn coaching skills to lead their
clients efficiently to be mentally ready for the next job application. NLP training provided such
skills.
Among the skills learned in the NLP training, career consultants found reframing and the
Disney strategy most useful. Reframing provides clients with different perspective on events, so
that clients can feel positive toward their next job application. The Disney strategy helps clients
create plans for their job-hunting. Career consultants reported NLP training deepened their
understanding of the human mind, and developed their attitude to understand their clients and
themselves more compassionately. This attitude is called sponsorship in NLP terms; commitment
to bring out clients’ potential to the fullest. It was reasonable that commitment such as
sponsorship was evaluated as very helpful in career consulting practice, since clients often faced
rejection from the jobs they have applied for.
These findings highlighted a number of areas that will be important for the developer of
career consulting training to consider for its future enhancement. For example, NLP-based

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coaching skills may be recommended as part of the training for career consultants.
There were three main limitations to this study. One was its small size, so the findings
might lack generalisability. Though the in-depth investigation was possible because of its scale,
further investigation with more participants would be valuable. Secondly, all the consultants who
participated have invested in NLP, thus their perception might have been biased in favour of
NLP. Thirdly, the findings are based on consultants’ experiences of NLP, and not that of the
clients. Exploring clients’ experiences and perceptions empirically would be worth considering
in future studies.

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