Dianne Lowther

Dianne's favourite quotation comes from Hamlet:

"Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so"

If you were to describe the ideal NLP business trainer, you would probably focus on someone who had the key abilities to inspire, communicate and entertain people, all built upon a foundation of real business experience and acumen. If you did, you would be highlighting the talents and experience that have allowed Dianne Lowther, an extremely successful business manager, to become an extraordinary trainer and coach.

Driven by her mission to inspire and empower people, Dianne has helped numerous individuals to discover how they relate to themselves and others and to master the methods that will allow them to achieve their own brilliance.

With a background in psychology, Dianne began her career with the innovative retailer Next plc. Her experience in understanding, developing and motivating staff to deliver excellent customer service paved the way for Dianne to take on national responsibility for training at Interflora. At the same time, a natural interest in human development inspired her to explore the benefits of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Becoming a Practitioner, fifteen years ago, was only the beginning for Dianne - her enthusiasm for NLP inspired her to become a Master Practitioner and then a certified NLP Trainer.

As a leading training consultant in the nineties, Dianne worked with a wide range of top companies including British Airways, BBC, Microsoft and Mercedes Benz. Such was the impact and success of her work, in 1997 Dianne decided to set up “Brilliant Minds” Training & Development to bring the benefits of NLP to the business market. In those ten years she has worked with a wide variety of organisations including major Banks, High Street retailers, science and technology companies and Police Forces. We believe she is the only NLP Trainer in the UK to have run and NLP Practitioner training in-house for Police Officers. In the Brilliant Minds public course programme, Dianne regularly shares the platform with other inspiring trainers, all selected for their ability to complement her style and bring an added dimension to a training programme.

As well as being a leading trainer, Dianne is also an extremely popular one to one coach, with a warmth, honesty and natural ability to help people develop their own brilliance.

Behind Dianne’s success, lie her core philosophies:

• Everyone is brilliant at something
• There's always more to learn
• "There's no such thing as a difficult person - just a difficult situation"
• Training should always be a demonstration of the learning

Her favourite quotation comes from Hamlet: "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so"

Neil Garrett-Harris

With a personal mission "to serve", Neil has been developing his understanding and practical use of NLP since the mid 1980's. In that time, he has trained with many of the leaders in the field.

His working experience, whilst primarily in the public sector, includes the private sector as well. This has allowed him to recognise that there are differences between them at certain levels. However, viewed in a systemic way, there are far more similarities than is often acknowledged.

He believes passionately in the need to continually remind ourselves that "modelling" is at the core of NLP methodology, not the techniques which inevitably flow from that activity. Of course, the techniques are clearly powerful and useful. After all they are the results of people unpacking such effectiveness in their role models.

Neil's style is that of helping people develop the ability to 'fish for themselves'. He believes that the ability to model is a rigorous and flexible process through which endless possibilities and options are available to those willing to learn how to do it.

One other key priority Neil brings is that of commitment. He has worked for one particular Local Authority for over 20 years, in which time he has undertaken a variety of roles, in different parts of the organisation. He is currently working as an internal, organisational development consultant, as part of a team, who are one of the three finalists in a national "training team of the year" competition, where the other finalists are both from the private sector.

Peter Jefford

"Enjoying the process of learning is perhaps one of the most important experiences we can offer our young. This helps people to create a lifetime of fun, adventure and fulfilment for themselves.”

The process of personal change and growth has always been a fascination for Peter and has nourished his lifetime quest for learning. The desire to ‘seek and to find’ has been a major driving force in his life and has motivated him through both good times and tougher times. He began his professional career in technology research and development after gaining a Doctorate in engineering. As his career developed he became particularly curious about the relationship and apparent dichotomies between technical and management skills and the associated problems which can arise within organisations.

Two particularly positive and significant life changing events for Peter were first becoming a parent and then discovering the many facets of NLP. Both inspired new journeys of challenge and discovery which at times have been tough but also prove to be extremely fulfilling.

Overcoming the challenges and discovering what is possible beyond existing boundaries, and ‘the illusion of certainty’, inspired Peter to make a major change in lifestyle in 1999 after a building a successful management career within a global ‘high technology’ corporation. This change in itself created new challenges and great uncertainty but resulted in an exciting journey of self-discovery and even included the self-build of a new family home. He established a successful management and telecommunications consulting business operating in various countries around the world before specialising in management development, coaching and training.

Peter trained over a period of three years as a Master Practitioner of NLP and Master Business Coach and now enjoys working with people in organisations, using his intuitive style and perceptive approach to coaching, training and facilitation. He became interested in the effects of personal stress within public and private sector organisations and as a result he developed a unique series of workshops on the management of stress and working effectively under pressure, demonstrating how the harmful effects of stress can be turned into much more positive results.

Peter repeated his NLP Master Practitioner training with Dianne and Neil, gaining a whole new perspective on how to use the understanding of language, modelling and other techniques of NLP when working with individuals and groups. This relationship led to the co-training of stress management workshops with Dianne and has resulted in an ongoing and exciting collaboration with Brilliant Minds!

Norman Wheatley

Norman Wheatley has a unique combination of experience and expertise in the field of creativity. During the last fifteen years he has run training programmes for many leading companies on idea generation, improving memory and creativity but before that he was in the business of using ideas in every day working life as a producer and broadcaster in TV and radio, both BBC and commercial. A top firm of accountants in Ireland wanted to differentiate the firm from others offering a similar service. Norman ran eight days of training, providing methods of coming up with ideas quickly and effectively.

For a three- day course, run all over the country on behalf of one of the major consulting firms, Norman included creativity within project management training. The company wanted the staff to run projects in a better way but also wanted them to get a new perspective on the projects they'd run many times before.

The Royal Navy submarine fleet is not perhaps the most obvious candidate for creativity training. They have very strict rules and therefore had more need than most to find new ways of operating within very tight constraints. Norman's course for them gave them ways of thinking of new working methods easily.

Norman has also run courses on time management, project management and presentation skills throughout Europe: France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Poland; as well as Kuwait and Nigeria.

He is a firm believer in the use of puzzles of all kinds as a way of keeping the brain active. "They keep you alert to seeing things differently, which is what is needed when it comes to creativity," he says. His expertise in creating baffling brain teasers has led him to provide puzzles for the games page in The Times on Saturday and for BBC 1's "Question Of Sport". He has also appeared on TV several times, winning the top daily prize on two popular quiz shows.

He has been a keen solver of cryptic crosswords for over 40 years and has won the prestigious Azed crossword in Observer and received a "Highly Commended" ranking in the Azed clue writing competition.

Norman has written over 200 songs and has produced and recorded three CDs of original material. He is a well known performer in Midlands folk clubs and festivals and he is just about to publish a booklet of his own humourous monologues.

Mike Priestley

Mike is a developer of sales and marketing people and has a wealth of experience in the selling field. He has developed and delivered training programmes across many disciplines, and specialised in the development of sales leadership, selling skills, and marketing programmes.

Mike's specialisation is getting sales managers, and sales people to understand the selling process, get closer to their customers, achieve higher revenue values, and higher average order values. He also works on selling skills to give sales people more and better options in tight negotiation situations. He teaches them winning techniques, and develops winning attitudes.

Mike learned about the challenges of making sales, with Pitney Bowes, and during his time with them he performed every role in the sales arena from basic sales person, through key account development, to sales manager and up to sales director. His last position for Pitney Bowes was as Director of Sales Training for their international division responsible for the training and development of over 700 sales people, and sales managers across every European country, Africa, and Australasia.

Mike was also involved in the establishment of one of the most successful telesales channels in the world, carrying out training and development for the salespeople and the sales managers. He also worked for a number of years as a senior marketing manager and during this time launched marketing campaigns, carried out product launches, and liaised across the world.

Mike holds an MBA with a specialisation in Strategic Marketing gained at the Chartered Institute of Marketing in Cookham in Berkshire, accredited by the University of Hull. He is an NLP Master Practitioner, NLP coach and one of less than thirty accredited facilitators of 'Clean Change' process worldwide.

Mike is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management; a member of the International Coach Federation; also a member of the Institute of Directors.