Okay, it was requested that someone with more Landmark experience comment.
My history: I read most of the criticism of Landmark on the web before becoming involved. The “seminar” that Nisan attended appears to have been an Introduction or Special Evening. Introductions are a free Landmark program run by “Introduction Leaders,” whereas a Special Evening may be run by a Forum Leader. Introductions are done in many venues, including homes, whereas a Special Evening will normally be done at a Landmark Center.
In the best Intros and Special Evenings, a Forum Leader will actually demonstrate the technology. It’s not merely a lecture about Landmark, it’s a demonstration.
I just completed the Introduction Leader Program, a seven-month training. The purpose of an Introduction isn’t exactly what Nisan stated. It is that the guest come away with something of value, and, in addition, that the guest was provided an opportunity to register into the Landmark Forum, having experienced enough to be able to make an informed choice . In the standard Introduction—which is based on a specific format, a script—there is a process run called the Possibility exercise. Being in the program, I was at Intro after Intro, and normally I did the exercise myself. The more I did that exercise, the more value I got from it. For example, my relationship with my small children was radically transformed, and they know it and they can tell me exactly how I changed. The shift was very simple, but it wasn’t going to happen anyway.
Landmark is indeed an ESOP, owned by Staff. Almost all the work of Landmark, however, is done by “people in the Assisting Program,” which is one of about fifty Landmark Programs providing training. The prerequisite for all Landmark programs is graduation from the Landmark Forum, which one accomplishes by not running away from it (some do), or, if one runs away, one has come back. Basically, be there or be square.
Introduction Leaders, Seminar Leaders, SELP Leaders, are not paid. Nobody gets a commission if someone signs up. The “payoff” is in the satisfaction of seeing a life transformed, and “transformation” isn’t centrally defined. But it’s palpable.
The work is not hard, but it can be challenging, because the foundations of knowledge and the genesis of identity are addressed. Some people don’t want those questioned. That’s okay, Landmark isn’t proposing a new standard by which people are to be judged, but, at the same time, what limits us is generally our identity, who we think we are. I should say, “what limited me.”
The paid staff consists of Forum Leaders, a handful of staffers at Landmark Centers, and at the corporate office in San Francisco. However, most Landmark Programs are run by Program Leaders, who are all volunteers. Only the two initial programs in the core Curriculum for Living are given by Forum Leaders. Forum Leaders are highly trained, and are faced with a task that used to be considered impossible: enduring transformation in three days.
I was at a Special Evening in Boston the other day, and a woman was brought to my registration table by a friend. “You have to talk with Abd,” he’d told her. Damn! I was there to try to finish up my “measures” to be “candidated” as an Introduction Leader, and this woman hadn’t decided she wanted to register, and that can be a lengthy conversation, taking up my table!
I recognized this, though, immediately as being caught in the “small game,” forgetting about the “big game,” which is about “reliably delivering that which makes a real difference for people in what they are actually facing and what they really care about … etc.” So I dropped my attitude immediately and listened to her. (And there went my numbers!)
She was a psychotherapist and she was saying that she was skeptical. She just couldn’t understand how the Forum could do in three days what years of therapy often failed to accomplish. I told her what I knew to say, pointing to what was becoming clear about her, and mentioned a Seminar Leader who was Assistant Director of Outpatient Psychiatry at a major local hospital. He walked up and joined the conversation, and he told her exactly the same as what I’d said. To boil it down, there was no way for her to answer that question, practically, without seeing it herself. What she could do was to look around, see all the people there telling their experiences, assess their credibility, etc., but no way to know, especially, how it worked.
I even told her that, though I have lots of ideas about how it works, I could write a book about how it works, I didn’t actually know how it works. Just that it works.
She registered. She had not brought any form of payment with her, so she signed a promise to pay—I had to get special permission from the Center Manager to accept that. Legally, Landmark could insist on payment, but, practically speaking, they won’t. I don’t know yet if she actually mailed in the check as she promised.
But I do know that if she does pay and attend, she is highly unlikely to ever regret it. I do read the stories of those who were not satisfied, on the web, but I’ve made many calls to lists of graduates, and dissatisfaction is rare. About 100,.000 people take the Forum each year, Landmark claims that 94% later say that the Forum resulted in a powerful and lasting transformation, so, do the math. I think they may have underestimated it.
However, a lot of people are there at the Forum, from the outset, to prove that it doesn’t work. (I heard a Forum Leader estimate “more than half.”) Some of those wake up, some don’t.
Lots of people don’t like what they call the “sales pressure,” but the reality of that is complex. (I’ve heard comments like, “Best thing I ever did, but I didn’t like the pressure to tell my friends and family.”)
I detested “pressure,” myself.… and then I dove into the most intense training in Landmark, the very center of what might be considered “pressure.” The Introduction Leader Program.
(By the way, I had a “personal policy” not to sign up immediately for anything. I pulled it out at my first Introduction. The effect? Well, that policy might make sense as a way of “avoiding domination,” but it also delayed my moving on to the rest of my life for about four months, until I finally got around to it. Once I knew that this work was likely to produce the promised results, further delay was stupid. But, hey, that was my identity! Can’t give that up!) To be sure, I wasn’t so impressed at that first introduction, but, by this time, I had lots of other evidence.)
“Pressure” is actually one half of a spectrum; the other half could be called “disinterest,” “not caring,” or “not taking a stand for people.” When a conversation is perceived as “pressure,” it indicates that something was missing, it was an unskillful conversation. And these conversations, in general, in Landmark, are commonly undertaken by people who are not perfect, they are developing skills, they are being trained. (And the Introduction Leader body is training for becoming Seminar Leaders or Forum Leaders.)
There are many issues brought up in this thread, but I’ll leave this here.
Just to complete my description of my participation in Landmark, I’m actually pretty new. I know people who have been doing this work since the early est days, i.e., the 1970s. However, I just took the Landmark Forum in March, 2011. I then took the Forum in Action Seminar (a free seminar is included in the Forum tuition; but because I chose to do my seminar in Boston—that psychiatrist was leading it—my “free seminar” cost me about $500 for transportation. Ouch!
I’d signed up for the Advanced Course at the closing of the Forum, taking advantage of the incentive provided. I put it off as long as I could, because it was expensive. See, I’d never paid for training of any kind (I was on a full scholarship to Cal Tech, for example, and I was a teacher in about everything else....) But the money showed up and I moved up the dates, then I registered in the Self Expression and Leadership Program which completes the Curriculum for Living. From there on, for the most part, I wasn’t paying for anything. I was a coach in the next SELP session, and the next step for me was the Introduction Leader Program.
The reputation of the ILP is that is the most difficult, the most challenging, and the most rewarding of all the Landmark Programs. It was. I’m not going to be an Introduction Leader, which is of little concern to me, because I can “play the big game” without that badge. We were told that we would be unrecognizable after the program, and it was so. People who had known me a long time literally did not recognize me. Where it really counts, though, with my children, well, my daughters now tell me every day how “awesome” I am. Maybe that’s because I tell them the same.
This isn’t what I was like before. I didn’t even talk to them every day. (I’m divorced from their adoptive mother, live up the street, but wasn’t talking to them on days when I wasn’t seeing them. Out of a Possibility Exercise in a Home Introduction, looking at a situation where I wasn’t doing something I’d said I’d do with my 11-year-old, I came up with a “Missing” of “reliable relatedness” and realized that I could call them every day, and started it up. Their mom wasn’t completely thrilled at first, but she let go, and the results have been spectacular. So simple, just showing up for them steadily. Yet so powerful, at their age.
Okay, it was requested that someone with more Landmark experience comment.
My history: I read most of the criticism of Landmark on the web before becoming involved. The “seminar” that Nisan attended appears to have been an Introduction or Special Evening. Introductions are a free Landmark program run by “Introduction Leaders,” whereas a Special Evening may be run by a Forum Leader. Introductions are done in many venues, including homes, whereas a Special Evening will normally be done at a Landmark Center.
In the best Intros and Special Evenings, a Forum Leader will actually demonstrate the technology. It’s not merely a lecture about Landmark, it’s a demonstration.
I just completed the Introduction Leader Program, a seven-month training. The purpose of an Introduction isn’t exactly what Nisan stated. It is that the guest come away with something of value, and, in addition, that the guest was provided an opportunity to register into the Landmark Forum, having experienced enough to be able to make an informed choice . In the standard Introduction—which is based on a specific format, a script—there is a process run called the Possibility exercise. Being in the program, I was at Intro after Intro, and normally I did the exercise myself. The more I did that exercise, the more value I got from it. For example, my relationship with my small children was radically transformed, and they know it and they can tell me exactly how I changed. The shift was very simple, but it wasn’t going to happen anyway.
Landmark is indeed an ESOP, owned by Staff. Almost all the work of Landmark, however, is done by “people in the Assisting Program,” which is one of about fifty Landmark Programs providing training. The prerequisite for all Landmark programs is graduation from the Landmark Forum, which one accomplishes by not running away from it (some do), or, if one runs away, one has come back. Basically, be there or be square.
Introduction Leaders, Seminar Leaders, SELP Leaders, are not paid. Nobody gets a commission if someone signs up. The “payoff” is in the satisfaction of seeing a life transformed, and “transformation” isn’t centrally defined. But it’s palpable.
The work is not hard, but it can be challenging, because the foundations of knowledge and the genesis of identity are addressed. Some people don’t want those questioned. That’s okay, Landmark isn’t proposing a new standard by which people are to be judged, but, at the same time, what limits us is generally our identity, who we think we are. I should say, “what limited me.”
The paid staff consists of Forum Leaders, a handful of staffers at Landmark Centers, and at the corporate office in San Francisco. However, most Landmark Programs are run by Program Leaders, who are all volunteers. Only the two initial programs in the core Curriculum for Living are given by Forum Leaders. Forum Leaders are highly trained, and are faced with a task that used to be considered impossible: enduring transformation in three days.
I was at a Special Evening in Boston the other day, and a woman was brought to my registration table by a friend. “You have to talk with Abd,” he’d told her. Damn! I was there to try to finish up my “measures” to be “candidated” as an Introduction Leader, and this woman hadn’t decided she wanted to register, and that can be a lengthy conversation, taking up my table!
I recognized this, though, immediately as being caught in the “small game,” forgetting about the “big game,” which is about “reliably delivering that which makes a real difference for people in what they are actually facing and what they really care about … etc.” So I dropped my attitude immediately and listened to her. (And there went my numbers!)
She was a psychotherapist and she was saying that she was skeptical. She just couldn’t understand how the Forum could do in three days what years of therapy often failed to accomplish. I told her what I knew to say, pointing to what was becoming clear about her, and mentioned a Seminar Leader who was Assistant Director of Outpatient Psychiatry at a major local hospital. He walked up and joined the conversation, and he told her exactly the same as what I’d said. To boil it down, there was no way for her to answer that question, practically, without seeing it herself. What she could do was to look around, see all the people there telling their experiences, assess their credibility, etc., but no way to know, especially, how it worked.
I even told her that, though I have lots of ideas about how it works, I could write a book about how it works, I didn’t actually know how it works. Just that it works.
She registered. She had not brought any form of payment with her, so she signed a promise to pay—I had to get special permission from the Center Manager to accept that. Legally, Landmark could insist on payment, but, practically speaking, they won’t. I don’t know yet if she actually mailed in the check as she promised.
But I do know that if she does pay and attend, she is highly unlikely to ever regret it. I do read the stories of those who were not satisfied, on the web, but I’ve made many calls to lists of graduates, and dissatisfaction is rare. About 100,.000 people take the Forum each year, Landmark claims that 94% later say that the Forum resulted in a powerful and lasting transformation, so, do the math. I think they may have underestimated it.
However, a lot of people are there at the Forum, from the outset, to prove that it doesn’t work. (I heard a Forum Leader estimate “more than half.”) Some of those wake up, some don’t.
Lots of people don’t like what they call the “sales pressure,” but the reality of that is complex. (I’ve heard comments like, “Best thing I ever did, but I didn’t like the pressure to tell my friends and family.”)
I detested “pressure,” myself.… and then I dove into the most intense training in Landmark, the very center of what might be considered “pressure.” The Introduction Leader Program.
(By the way, I had a “personal policy” not to sign up immediately for anything. I pulled it out at my first Introduction. The effect? Well, that policy might make sense as a way of “avoiding domination,” but it also delayed my moving on to the rest of my life for about four months, until I finally got around to it. Once I knew that this work was likely to produce the promised results, further delay was stupid. But, hey, that was my identity! Can’t give that up!) To be sure, I wasn’t so impressed at that first introduction, but, by this time, I had lots of other evidence.)
“Pressure” is actually one half of a spectrum; the other half could be called “disinterest,” “not caring,” or “not taking a stand for people.” When a conversation is perceived as “pressure,” it indicates that something was missing, it was an unskillful conversation. And these conversations, in general, in Landmark, are commonly undertaken by people who are not perfect, they are developing skills, they are being trained. (And the Introduction Leader body is training for becoming Seminar Leaders or Forum Leaders.)
There are many issues brought up in this thread, but I’ll leave this here.
Just to complete my description of my participation in Landmark, I’m actually pretty new. I know people who have been doing this work since the early est days, i.e., the 1970s. However, I just took the Landmark Forum in March, 2011. I then took the Forum in Action Seminar (a free seminar is included in the Forum tuition; but because I chose to do my seminar in Boston—that psychiatrist was leading it—my “free seminar” cost me about $500 for transportation. Ouch!
I’d signed up for the Advanced Course at the closing of the Forum, taking advantage of the incentive provided. I put it off as long as I could, because it was expensive. See, I’d never paid for training of any kind (I was on a full scholarship to Cal Tech, for example, and I was a teacher in about everything else....) But the money showed up and I moved up the dates, then I registered in the Self Expression and Leadership Program which completes the Curriculum for Living. From there on, for the most part, I wasn’t paying for anything. I was a coach in the next SELP session, and the next step for me was the Introduction Leader Program.
The reputation of the ILP is that is the most difficult, the most challenging, and the most rewarding of all the Landmark Programs. It was. I’m not going to be an Introduction Leader, which is of little concern to me, because I can “play the big game” without that badge. We were told that we would be unrecognizable after the program, and it was so. People who had known me a long time literally did not recognize me. Where it really counts, though, with my children, well, my daughters now tell me every day how “awesome” I am. Maybe that’s because I tell them the same.
This isn’t what I was like before. I didn’t even talk to them every day. (I’m divorced from their adoptive mother, live up the street, but wasn’t talking to them on days when I wasn’t seeing them. Out of a Possibility Exercise in a Home Introduction, looking at a situation where I wasn’t doing something I’d said I’d do with my 11-year-old, I came up with a “Missing” of “reliable relatedness” and realized that I could call them every day, and started it up. Their mom wasn’t completely thrilled at first, but she let go, and the results have been spectacular. So simple, just showing up for them steadily. Yet so powerful, at their age.