Cognitive LGAT dissonance

November 13, 2007 2:26 AM

What drives people to sign up for LGAT?

I know a friend of a friend and a coworker who have signed up and/or expressed interest in the Landmark Forum and a Lifespring offshoot, respectively. My first impression of these programs was that they both were kind of creepy and borderline scammy, but the FoF and coworker both seem like very level-headed people who could sense something fishy when it comes their way. Admittedly though, I don't know either of them beyond the casual acquantance level (and thus cannot get a good handle on either their interest in joining or whether they are the level-headed folk they come off as). I'm willing to accept that I'm the crazy, judgmental one.

Earlier threads discuss how to get people away from LGAT, or say no if approached to join. I have no desire to do the former, and don't think the latter will be a problem. I'm just curious - if you knew someone or went to LGAT yourself, what convinced them or you to do it, particularly they/you were a successful, twenty-something professional?

posted by universal_qlc to society & culture (14 comments total)

A sense of adventure. A sense that you can be more successful / have more fun / be happier than you are currently being.

I did a bunch of Landmark trainings in the early 1990's. The MLMish recruitment pitches were incredibly annoying, but they only took up about 25% of the time. (Okay, maybe 20%.) The rest of the stuff was great, at my levels.

My 30-year roommate at the time had never been in a relationship. He did the Forum and about a month got involved with his first girlfriend. That's just one example, but I saw many cases where the Forum was literally life-changing in a very big and very positive way.

Plus, it is fun. It's amazing to be there and watch along as a 25 year-old realizes that she can (for example) talk to the father who walked out before she was born, and then actually does it.

I still use the skills and concepts taught there, and routinely wish that annoying people I have to deal with could go through the Forum so they could be less annoying and more practical. They'd be happier and the people they interact with would be happier, too.

But yes, at least at the Forum it's all tied up with this annoying hard sell to get all your friends / family / coworkers to come do the Forum. I don't know, maybe that's the only way they can keep the seats full. It's a shame, because there really is a lot of stuff of great value there, but the recruiting stuff keeps people (at least me) away from recommending it anymore.
posted by alms at 4:01 AM on November 13, 2007

"at my levels" ==> "at many levels".
posted by alms at 4:02 AM on November 13, 2007

There are several old Landmark threads -- but at least for the "pro" side Alms manages to sum up the argument very succinctly. As for the "con"...
posted by MattD at 5:54 AM on November 13, 2007

I'm not saying Landmark is (or isn't) cult-like, but I think it's fairly well-established in research that highly intelligent people are just as if not more susceptible to joining cults, so the "level-headedness" of your acquaintances wouldn't, I think, rule out their being interested in any particular group.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 6:26 AM on November 13, 2007

The person that persuaded me to go to the Forum lied to me. He said it was a business-oriented management seminar. And he paid for it. However, I'm not sure if these are common techniques (lying to & paying for others). This was at least five years ago--if it had been today I would've done my research before agreeing. But there's more info out there nowadays and I'm more 'net savvy now than I was then.

(BTW, I left the Forum early and never attended any other Landmark event.)
posted by mullacc at 6:47 AM on November 13, 2007

mullacc, I'm sorry your friend lied to you. Back when I was involved, it was standard that one of the first things they did in the program was ask if anyone was there due to lies or coercion, and gave them a chance to leave (with a full refund if they'd paid.) I hope they still do that, and I hope that's when you left.

Basically I would echo what alms said above. Aside from the heavy-sell recruitment drives, there's actually some really valuable material in the courses. I think their recruitment style used to make some sense back in the days when this sort of program was very new and unusual and people didn't understand it. But these days, ideas that in fact got started with programs like Landmark Forum (or "est," the previous version of it), Lifespring, and other "encounter group" programs, are now all over TV shows like Oprah, Dr. Phil, etc.

(I've seen some signs on their website that Landmark may be starting to wake up to this now. I saw recently their website was offering audio programs for sale, and seemed to have much more information than it used to.)

Here's one of the tricky things, though. Programs like these, that promise things like "enlightenment in a weekend," can provide a great peak experience - but the degree to which that provides lasting change in your life is all up to you. Lots of people come out of the Forum eager to make big changes in their lives - but the ones who try to change too much too abruptly often become the more spectacular burnouts, or alienate the most people with their overweening enthusiasm.

Also - the material of the Landmark Forum can actually be found elsewhere in other forms. I remember one of the leaders once saying quite clearly that you could get most of the same ideas from Zen Buddhism. (And in fact, I've been studying Buddhism a little bit recently and indeed I see many similarities in talks about relating to others and relating to one's own mind and difficulties.) I've read that the Forum's ideas are also drawn frequently from certain existential philosophers like Heidegger (though I've not read him myself).
posted by dnash at 7:15 AM on November 13, 2007

you pay $400+ for the forum, as do more than a hundred other people. However, no one's getting paid except the forum leader. All the small groups are led by committed volunteers. This is the fishiest part.

(You can rationalize MLM and exhilarating cultish self-awareness exercises til the cows come home, but the fact that proceeding along the landmark path involves ever more expensive and time-consuming courses, and the commitment to spend weekends chaperoning new recruits through exhausting 3 day forum cycles? BE CAREFUL.)
posted by chelseagirl at 9:09 AM on November 13, 2007

I have no idea what LGAT is, but I know many people who've done Landmark Forum.

I went to one of the sessions your friend who just finished the first 3 workshop invites you to at the end, the one where everyone stands up and says how wonderful it all was before they section off the guests into little rooms to tell you how great it will be, and you can get a discount if you sign up today (I planned ahead and left all my money and credit cards at home). It struck me as something that would be absolutely worth the time and money for some people, who wouldn't come across anything where they could make a change in their life otherwise, but not for me (and I wouldn't have been tempted even if I brought my wallet). The concept of going to more "advanced" workshops that cost increasingly ridiculous amounts of money is very scammy -- as is the concept that dropping all this cash will somehow show your personal commitment to change, etc.

The sad thing is that I've seen some people go through these increasing cost series of workshops with several different companies. It's as if they get a boost out of the workshops that never translates to their daily lives -- I think the workshop companies encourage this. You will make much more money if people feel that they need the $1000 workshop, after they take the $300 workshop. One of these companies eventually get to $10,000 workshop/seminars that last for 10 days. For 10k, there are a lot of other choices you could make if you want to spend that much on personal development.
posted by yohko at 9:21 AM on November 13, 2007

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that LGAT stands for Large Group Awareness Training. That page has some explanations of pressure/release and how it is used in these groups
posted by yohko at 9:29 AM on November 13, 2007

Back when I was involved, it was standard that one of the first things they did in the program was ask if anyone was there due to lies or coercion, and gave them a chance to leave (with a full refund if they'd paid.)

How would I have known I was lied to at the beginning of the program? I trusted my friend enough to give it a shot and stayed through one and a half days. I'm not going to engage in any arguments with Landmark apologists, so I'll just say that I do not have a positive opinion of that organization and did not enjoy my experience.
posted by mullacc at 9:48 AM on November 13, 2007

Oh come on guys! If it smells like a scam....
posted by Mr. Gunn at 11:46 AM on November 13, 2007

Well, thanks for the information, it's some good insight to have. In other news, the coworker started recruiting around the office today, and some of my other colleagues sound interested. So uh, I'm just....gonna...lay low for bit...
posted by universal_qlc at 8:00 PM on November 13, 2007

If you are religious there are very similar groups run by churches without the hefty price - but they still have the MLM style recruiting. The Catholics have Antioch for teens and another aimed at young adults.
Certainly the results are in the same vein as what alms recounted.
posted by bystander at 9:36 PM on November 13, 2007

However, no one's getting paid except the forum leader.

Not really true. They do have a number of staffed centers around the world that do have paid staff. When I was around, the Chicago center had about six or seven full time paid staff.

But yes, if you take the Forum at a city without a staffed center, the leader might be the only paid person. And though I was called a "Landmark apologist" above, here's where I show why I think my opinion is pretty balanced, because it was during my volunteering that I eventually soured on the company as a company. I was training with them to be a "course supervisor," a position that's sort of second in command to the actual leader. The supervisor is in charge of all the logistics of the course and so forth. It's a volunteer position but in my opinion requires full time hours. It's one thing to have volunteers who are there just for a day or a few hours to help make sure the water pitchers stay full or to bring the microphone around the room, but when you get to the kind of time and effort commitment involved in some of the jobs, then they really should be hiring and paying people.

the fact that proceeding along the landmark path involves ever more expensive and time-consuming courses, and the commitment to spend weekends chaperoning new recruits through exhausting 3 day forum cycles?

Not true. The courses do not get more and more expensive or time-consuming. The Landmark Forum currently costs between $485-$550. The Advanced course is $850. The final piece of the main curriculum, the Self-Expression course, is only $220. And that's it. There is nothing else you "have" to take to have all their basic curriculum. I know many people who didn't even do that much. The only other courses most people involved actually take are the 10-week seminar series, which are $110 each. There are a few other courses, but you don't have to take any of them. The only one that's highly expensive is the year-long Wisdom Unlimited - which only a small handful of people ever actually did when I was there, and I never saw anyone ever pressed into it. (In fact, the very existence of the course was so low-key most people just going to the weekly seminars probably hadn't heard of it at all.)

As for the "spending weekends chaperoning others" part - you're speaking of the Introduction Leaders training, I think. Again, this is not something that's in any way required. In fact you have to apply for it and be accepted. The "weekends" of it are only four weekends over a year, and those are spent in classroom training, not working to enroll others. But yes, it is folks from this training program that are in the little classrooms for guests during other seminars and events. And - I've said this before in other threads on the topic - you're right, they're some really hard sell folks, and I do not recommend going as a guest to a seminar if you are invited.

If you have a friend who's done the Forum and invites you to go as a guest with them - politely decline for whatever reason. Instead, make your friend do the work to explain to you what value they got in the course. If they fall into the jargon of the program and you don't follow what they're saying, have them stop, go back and explain again in other words. (Actually this would probably be a good service to your friend, to help them be integrating what they got from the course into their actual lives - which is a step many graduates there actually never quite get to, no matter what they think.)

The reason I say this is, the guest seminars are indeed staffed with volunteer/trainees who are there with the goal of getting you to sign up. Now, this sounds bad, and I find most people experience it as far too hard-sell, borderline cultish and creepy. It's a difficult situation. Try for a moment to think of it this way: suppose you found some magic thing that was the key to having a perfectly happy life. (Ignore for the moment whether Landmark's courses do that or not.) If you found such a thing, would you want to share it with everybody? I think most people would. So wouldn't it be great, from that position, to share it with more and more people so more people could be happy - thus the rising tally of people you've given it too would be a cause for celebration. I'm simply trying to show the mindset from the perspective of those involved. Because yes, the folks in the guest events are indeed tracked by how many people they successfully sign up for the Forum. From that mindset, this isn't hard-sell, it's just sharing happiness and opening up better communication between fellow humans. See?

But yes - from outside the group, it's extremely easy to see the tracking of enrollments as just a hard-sell numbers game. And even within the training program those folks are in, it often feels like the "sharing possibility" part gets lost in the emphasis on numbers, numbers, numbers. So they get a bit pushy and overzealous. The result, in my opinion (and, I should mention, I did in fact participate in that Introduction Leader Training) - is a bad environment for actually selling the product of the course. People see the "selling" and not the potential of the material to be valuable.

That's not what got me to go. I took it because my father had done it years ago (when it was still called "est"), and I'd seen growing up how it had helped make him a pretty remarkable man in many ways. And then at a point in my life when I was pretty low and lost, my brother (who had recently taken it himself), sat me down to talk about my life, where was I headed, and what if this could help get me redirected where I wanted to go? It was an amazing talk, free from the "jargon" of the programs, with no pushy volunteers present, just my brother caring about me. SoI walked into the Landmark Forum with pretty much zero experience of the actual company, and as a result I think I got the benefits of the material without too many preconceived notions or concerns.
posted by dnash at 8:28 AM on November 14, 2007