Graham has been posting a lot of good articles later, and this one on hypnosis and communication is also good.

Points -

Communicate to produce an outcome for the listener.

My addition to that would be a communication isn't about YOU, it's about the other person - even though the CONTENT of the communication is about what you want to communicate - the communication itself is about the other person (or room full of people, depending on the case).

As far as NLP itself - which I assume Graham is going to expand on - NLP seems to have more research successes behind it, in terms of behaviour change, than others.  A good "track record", so to speak. 

But for myself, I've experimented with NLP - gone over a period of time to two different therapists (30 sessions between the two) - and I personally was completely unreceptive.  My whole being rebelled, for whatever reason - still don't know why.