NLP Modeling, finding the structure of excellence | NLP MentorNLP Mentor

NLP Modeling to discover the patterns of excellence

NLP Modeling is the process of recreating excellence. We can model any human behavior by mastering the
beliefs, the physiology and the specific thought processes (that is the strategies) that underlie the skill or
behavior.

[showmyadsrt]It is about achieving an outcome by studying how someone else goes about it.

When Richard Bandler and John Grinder modeled the strategies of Virginia Satir, they were trying to achieve
what many others before them had attempted. They wanted to duplicate her extraordinary results in family
therapy.

What Bandler and Grinder did differently was to find the thinking strategies she was using, rather than merely
copy behaviors. The biggest problem interviewing experts is that skills are usually unconscious. We can not
explain how we walk, talk or write for instance. What makes you a successful parent or golfer? The expert’s own
theories explain their success. These theories can include irrelevant habits and superstitions such as sportsmen
and their lucky socks.

John Grinder on Modeling

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NLP Modeling involves transferring what an expert thinks they know and what they unconsciously know. It
involves being able to produce the outcome and transferring the behavior to others.

The use of modeling in NLP does not just involve extraordinary skills. For example, you could model how
someone keeps her desk clean. We can use the same key questions to find out how someone keeps himself
depressed, or becomes frustrated.

There are three phases to modeling

1. Observing the model

This involves fully imagining yourself in someone else’s reality by using what NLP calls a second position
shift.
The focus is on “what” the person does (behavior and physiology), “how” they do it (internal thinking
strategies) and “why” they do it (supporting beliefs and assumptions).
We obtain the “what” from direct observation. The “how” and “why” is gained by asking quality questions.
Deep trance identification is a powerful tool to accomplish this part of the process. It involves using
unconscious clues to generate more information than can be obtained logically.
NLP modeling components
The NLP Techniques, skills and Presuppositions enable success in modeling. These involve observing the
model’s:
Representational Systems
NLP Strategies
Physiological components (like states and body postures)
Meta Programs, beliefs and values
Reference structures – the necessary background knowledge

2. Find the difference that makes the difference

Traditional learning adds pieces of a skill one bit at a time until we have them all. The drawback to this
method is we don’t know which bits are essential. By contrast modeling which is the basis of accelerated
learning, gets all the elements and then subtracts to find what is necessary. 
By systematically taking out elements of the model’s behavior, we can find what pieces are essential. If the
process still works without that element, it is not relevant.
The important questions are:
What are the behavioral patterns of the successful person?
How does she achieve her results?
What did she do that is different from a person who is not successful?
What is the difference that makes the difference?
When you have all the pieces, you can refine and sequence the model.
3. Design a method to teach the skill
Until you have all the relevant pieces of a skill and the necessary sequence, you cannot teach it effectively.
We currently teach many skills with extra background information and pieces muddying the waters.
Rehearsal of the natural sequence of the skill is important. If you tried to make a cake by putting it in the
oven before mixing the ingredients together, it would be yucky. Yet we think we can teach separate
elements of skills out of sequence and out of context and succeed.

NLP Modeling is a powerful process that can accelerate learning of skills. Strong modeling practices are the basis
of good NLP training.

Futher Reading: NLP Going Meta: Advanced Modelling using Meta Levels by L. Michael Hall

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NLP Going Meta: Advanced Modelling using Meta Levels | NLP MentorNLP Mentor

NLP Going Meta: Advanced Modeling using Meta Levels – Summary

By L. Michael Hall

NLP Going Meta integrates the Meta States model into the modeling process by considering
logical levels. This is an advanced book about modeling which beginners would find difficult.
It considers Modeling from the perspective of changing unwanted behaviors.

Check out Nlp Going Meta: NLP Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels at Amazon

The central NLP Modeling attitude asks, “Teach me how to do that – if I were you for the day,
what would I need to do to fill in for you?” It asks questions about process.

NLP itself is the byproduct of modeling Milton Erickson, Fritz Perls – Inspiration for the Meta
Model and Virginia Satir – Family Therapy. It codifies their patterns and procedures (among
other things). Richard Bandler and John Grinder made the components of human subjectivity explicit as
Representational Systems. The sequencing of the elements is the strategy model.

How an expert does what she does

We process and learn by:

mapping out the territory, generating internal sights, sounds, sensations (representations)
mapping linguistically when we say words about those first level representations
Using submodalities to frame our representations
Using meta level phenomena such as beliefs, values, criteria, frames, metaphors, presuppositions and
narrative

Map Building

We don’t operate on the world directly but via our mental maps. In the physical world, there are events, forces
and impacts. In the world of ideas, there is only news of difference.

Our maps are our model of how things work, what things mean and what’s out there. We respond to our world
in terms of our maps. Information feeds back to update our maps and/or take different actions.

Strategies

Strategies are a formal description of what we do in our head and nervous system to generate a particular
behavior. Strategies exist inside our maps and are a first approximation of a model.

At the micro level, we have thoughts and beliefs. At a macro level, we have skills and communication.
Identifying a person’s strategies can increase our effectiveness in communicating and persuading.

Purpose and Intention

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The expert’s purpose and intention organizes the particular skill. It is usually not in their conscious awareness. It
provides the big “why”.

NLP generally has a polarity response to “why”, preferring to concentrate on the “how”. This kind of “why” is
important in understanding their overall motivation for acquiring and maintaining the skill.

Meta States

The failure of some NLP Techniques comes from trying to work with Meta level experience using primary state
technology. You cannot anchor a Meta state the same way you link a primary state. You need a Meta
mechanism such as language, symbols or metaphor. Language primarily drives Meta states.

Meta States are the leverage points in the experts processing system. A Meta State is one state referencing
another. Meta States can be complex. Our expectations about ourselves control both our perceptions and
behavior. They operate both sequentially and simultaneously. How do you feel about that? What is the meaning
about the meaning?

As humans, we are amazing. We can think about our thinking (reflexive thinking). We have expectations that
can create self-fulfilling prophecies (for good or bad). We can say things like I feel spectacular, dumb or useless
which don’t relate to feeling at all. We can even reflect about our reflections – loving love or fearing fear.

We have ideas, frames and beliefs about our abilities, about being a human self (identity), about meaning and
purpose (spiritual).

Gestalt Meta states

Beauty is a class word. What does it mean? It is about order and symmetry. What does the state of recognition
feel like? As we move up the levels of abstraction, we summarize, integrate and evaluate.

We respond to the perception of the whole structure. When we try to analyze the wholeness, the structure
disappears.

Emergence is an organized effect of the system itself. For example, the constant temperature of the thermostat
is an emergent thing. It has no existence apart from its organization within the system.

Meta Programs

Meta programs are our perceptual sorting devices. They evolve from habituated Meta States. They are how

we perceive stimuli
we pay attention to information
we input and process
reframe and sort

They are cognitive patterns that critically affect how we see ourselves, how we feel, what we value, which states
we access and how we speak and behave.

They are part of our “personality”. Personality refers to the characteristic ways a person behaves, responds. It is
the overall set of metaprograms, frames, content programs, strategies and our style of structuring information

They can exist overall as a life state or be subject to contextual markers. One of our most central Meta programs
is representational systems

Beliefs and Values

Beliefs can drive abilities behaviors and purposes i.e. they out frame. They have a frame of validation or
confirmation. What we believe doesn’t make it real, only subjectively. It actualizes in body, mind and behavior.

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Primary States

This is the level of conditional stimuli, and the Pavlovian anchoring of content. With primary states, any
“aboutness” refers to the external world. Primary states are not about ideas and concepts. Primary states are
things in the world. Meta states are references to earlier abstractions.

Primary states in modeling refer to behaviors (both micro and macro), capabilities in terms of genetic
predispositions and the immediate context.

Frames

Meta states show the critical importance of unconscious frames. We frame our messages and actions. What
meanings do we attach to stimuli?

Different Meta frames

1. meanings are ideas we hold in mind

2. beliefs are ideas we affirm and validate
3. values are ideas that are important
4. identity are our ideas about self
5. “aboutness” is ideas about other ideas
6. principles are our guidelines and essential to conclusions
7. decisions are our ideas we cut off from other choices
8. intentions are our motives, desires and wants
9. outcomes are our ideas about goals and ends
10. understandings are at mental support for our world
11. expectations are our anticipations
12. paradigms, models and schemas are more complex mappings
13. metaphor and non-linguistic symbols

Out framing

Out frames are higher-level frames about other frames. Experts will usually have different overall frames than
less skilled people. What Meta state or perception has been filtering out useful solutions? What overall Meta
perception could shift everything?

The Modeling Process

Modeling Presuppositions

Every behavior comes out of an internal structure.

Order, sequence, amount and timing are important.

Modeling Procedure

Modeling almost always begins with strategy work. You need to slow down the process by asking good
questions. Questions also directionalize the brain and install higher frames. An elicitation frequently works  as
an installation.

1. Listen to important words and synesthesias (combined representational systems). We literally describe
what we do.
2. Eye accessing cues – all behavior makes internal processes explicit.
3. Logical questions – the strategy makes sequential sense. What is the difference between someone who
has the skill and someone who doesn’t

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4. Use a notation to describe the strategy consistently – like musical notes describe a piece of music.

Meta Strategies

We are anchoring the frame or the context

Use context markers or cues as to which frame to use
Nominalizations and evaluations usually trigger the context
Framing involves setting a context or meaning to an interaction
de-framing involves pulling meanings apart
Reframing gives new meanings from different perspectives
pre-framing sets a frame prior to entering a context
out framing moves above all frames

Meta words are cues that the person is accessing a Meta state

of, about, regarding, in terms of, beyond, in light of

Use of the word self with a hyphen, for example self-confidence
Classification words
Use of quotes for example “and he said to me”
Using nested loops or stories

Logical Levels

Understanding logical levels enables us to

Distinguish description from evaluation
Take a more objective big picture view
Find the leverage points for learning and change (higher levels control lower levels)
Synthesize resources
Prevent fragmentation of different elements
Make generative changes (that affect the system as a whole)

There is a difference between list items (like the hierarchy of values) and those where an item is a member of
the higher class (logical levels). With lists of values, there is no logical set of relationships between them.

Strategy Installation process

1. Anchoring – wiring it to a contextual sequence

2. Instructions – vividly imagining going through the process.
3. Mental Rehearsal
4. Rehearsing synesthesia patterns – overlapping accessing cues
5. Game playing
6. Pattern interruption to divert

Various frames can install strategies, particularly out frames. A great example of an out frame is the miracle
pattern or “as if”. Another example is “this is just food; I refuse to allow it to mean status, prosperity or love”.

The majority of conversational reframes (Mind lines and Sleight of Mouth) operate as outframes.

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