New Delhi [India], June 03: Rajiv Sharma, programme director of corporate-training firm NLP Limited, has been ranked India’s top Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trainer and coach by Global Gurus, an international organisation that has published rankings of trainers, speakers and thought leaders since 2007. The body has also placed Sharma fifth on its global NLP thought-leaders list, according to the company.
A Dubai-based business consultant and NLP trainer, Sharma applies Neuro-Linguistic Programming concepts to building business and sales teams, working with corporate clients on performance, communication and leadership alongside his personal-development programmes. The company says he brings about 35 years of experience and has, through its programmes, trained and coached more than 850,000 professionals from 57 countries.
Global Gurus compiles annual rankings across categories such as leadership, coaching, sales and NLP. By its own published methodology, the rankings are determined partly through public online voting, with public opinion accounting for about 30 per cent of its stated criteria, alongside factors such as the originality and impact of a contributor’s ideas and their published work. The placement, therefore, reflects a combination of public nomination and the organisation’s own assessment rather than an independent audit.
NLP is a communication and personal-development approach developed in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. It asserts a connection between neurological processes, language and learned behaviour, holding that such patterns can be altered to achieve specific goals. Sharma says the method helps individuals overcome limiting beliefs, build confidence and sustain performance. Much of the mainstream scientific literature, however, treats NLP as lacking robust empirical support, and several academic reviews have described it as pseudoscientific — a debate that continues between practitioners and researchers in the field.
According to practitioners, NLP is applied in business to areas such as sales conversations and objection handling, negotiation, leadership and team communication, customer-experience training, recruitment and interviewing, conflict resolution, and presentation and public-speaking skills. In personal life, its proponents say it is used for goal-setting, managing limiting beliefs and self-talk, building confidence, addressing fears and phobias, improving relationships and rapport, stress and emotional regulation, and habit change. The strength of evidence for these applications remains contested in academic literature.
Central to NLP Limited’s offering is what the Rajiv Sharma calls the MARK Model — an acronym for Mindset, Action, Repetition and Knowledge — which it describes as a structured approach to personal mastery that works at the level of core beliefs rather than surface behaviour. The framework underpins the firm’s Personal Mastery programme, which it says has drawn participants from across India, the Gulf region and other markets. The company also offers NLP practitioner certification, ICF coaching-preparation courses and leadership-development sessions, delivered both in person and online.
Sharma holds certification from the International Coach Federation (ICF), the company said. Commenting on the recognition, he said the firm’s work over more than two decades has centred on helping people in India and elsewhere access the discipline of self-mastery through NLP, and described the listing as a reflection of clients who had trusted the process and “done the work”.
For readers and editors seeking independent indicators of the firm’s standing, NLP Limited maintains a public profile on Google, where its training programmes carry customer reviews and ratings that can be consulted directly. Such third-party reviews offer a verifiable, if informal, reference point separate from the company’s own claims and from voting-based industry lists.
India is among the faster-growing markets for personal-development and coaching services, driven by demand from professionals, entrepreneurs and younger leaders seeking structured frameworks for self-leadership. Industry observers note that the sector is still working to distinguish rigorously delivered, results-oriented practice from less substantiated offerings as it expands.