Introducing NLP: Psychological skills for understanding & influencing people

While the concept of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) was first introduced by Richard Bandler & John Grinder in their seminal work, Frogs into Princes, Introducing NLP by O'Connor & Seymour remains one of the most highly recommended books on the topic, and this is why I'm adding it to my Social Engineering collection. While controversial, and often debunked as a pseudo-science, I feel that gaining an understanding of NLP can help you to better understand the way that you communicate with people, both through words and actions. This book was also the book that introduced me to the concept of 'modeling success'. Simply put, these days when I have a goal, I identify people or businesses who have achieved a similar goal, analyse the steps they took to get there and reverse-engineer a strategy for myself. To simplify it further, I believe the idea that you need to spend 10,000 hours to become a master at something is somewhat antiquated when you consider that most people who spend 10,000 hours on something have probably written a blog article entitled "The top 5 things you need to know be successful at X"

Though some of NLP’s advocates (including certain magicians) make great claims as to its power to control others, the truth is that it’s much more effective for your own self-improvement. The books by Richard Bandler and John Grinder may be the bedrock of NLP, but Introducing NLP is the place to go for not just a primer on the concepts, but also enough in-depth knowledge to put the key ones into practice. Also recommended: NLP: The New Technology of Achievement edited by Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner.