STRATEGIES AND MODELING

Modeling as Strategy Elicitation
NLP Modeling can be thought of as multilevel strategy elicitation. Strategies are the basis of modeling.

Modeling is wider than strategy elicitation because modeling includes higher level experience such as beliefs, values, identity etc. However, even beliefs can be thought of as startegies as typically a belief can be modeled as being supported by internal pictures, dialogue etc.

Eliciting Strategies
Recall how we elicited strategies? Eliciting the basic TOTE strategy for the modeled skill is a great start to the modeling process.

Eye Accessing
Remember that eye accessing is directly related to strategies. Therefore modeling the model’s eye accessing cues can act as a proxy to the underlying mental processes.

Other Cues
Remember also that predicates, breathing, posture, rate and pitch of speech and other BMIRs can also act as proxies to underlying mental processes.

Shawn 

NLP Training in New York

Logical Levels and Modeling

When modeling in NLP we can use Logical Levels to structure the modeling as follows:

Modeling as Multiple Description
Remember, modeling is finding out how things work from multiple perspectives. If enough perspectives are considered then a model with requisite variety can be created. In NLP this is sometimes referred to as a “triple description”.

Another way of organizing these descriptions is through logical levels.

Logical Levels as Multiple Description

Environment
When and where precisely, does the model do the behavior?

If we are using logical levels to build a description, it is not sufficient to learn “I do this on the sports field”, or “I do this on the stage”. In order to gain a useful description of the model, i.e. the “difference that makes a difference” we need more specificity; everyone is doing what they do on the sports field, what makes our model unique?

“When do you do this?” “As I walk onto the stage I look at the audience and pick a face in the third row, when I begin to sing I make eye contact with that person” “When exactly do you make eye contact?” “As I sing my first note” “Exactly when you sing that note, or just before, or just after?” “Oh, a second before I begin to sing that note”.

Look for precision.

Behavior
What precisely is the model doing? Pay particular attention to:
• BMIRs
• Internal Representations
• TOTEs

Skills, capabilities
What specific skills and capabilities is the model displaying? What evidence do you have that they are displaying these?

What resources does the model believe they have when engaging in the behavior? How do they represent these resources (i.e. how do they know they have them)?

Beliefs and Values
What does the model believe when they are engaged in the behavior? How do they represent this (i.e. how do they know they believe this)?

What is important to them about engaging in the behavior? How do they represent these values (i.e. how do they know these things are important)?

Identity
What is the model’s identity? What do they see themselves (or feel themselves, or hear themselves, or say to themselves) as being? How do they represent this?

Beyond Identity
What is the model’s relationship to something larger, perhaps God, or society, or something more than themselves?

Shawn Carson

NLP Training in New York

Macro Modeling

MACRO MODELING
What is Macro Modeling?
Macro Modeling in NLP is modeling an entire skill, all at once.

Why Macro Modeling?
Macro Modeling allows us to grasp the entire skill set, all at once.

Macro Modeling in Practice
Because the skill we are modeling is likely complex, we must chunk down in some way to gain an understanding of the skill. As we are not chunking down the activities involved in the skill we have to chunk down in a different way. Other ways we can chunk down include:
• When and where does it take place?
• What are the BMIRs involved in the behavior?
• What strategies are being used?
• What beliefs and values are present?
• What meta programs are being used?
• What interactions with other people are present?
• What meta states are being used?

By exploring a number of these areas we can form a fuller model of the skill.

Shawn Carson
NLP Training in New York

Micro Modeling

MICRO MODELING
What is Micro Modeling?
We discussed above that a particular skill may be very complex, comprising many actions that take place over many hours or days.

Micro Modeling takes one specific aspect of the skill and models that, using basic modeling techniques.

Why use Micro Modeling?
Micro Modeling allows us to use very basic modeling techniques on a very simple process.

By viewing a skill as the sum of the individual actions, we may lose something of the wholeness, but at the same time it allows us to work on a manageable chunk, before putting the whole thing together.

How to use Micro Modeling
Micro Modeling can be done as follows:
• Ask about the skill;
• Pick a particular aspect of the skill that you want to focus on;
• Ask about that aspect;
• Pick a particular part of that aspect of the skill that you want to focus on;
• Ask about that part;
• Pick a particular segment of that part of that aspect of the skill;
• Continue until you have a small relatively self contained mini-skill, one that can be described in one TOTE;
• Apply modeling to that mini-skill.

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Proxy Modeling

A proxy is defined as something that approximates, i.e. acts as a proxy for, something else.

When we are modeling in NLP we can pay attention to the 'Behavioral Manifestations of Internal Representations' or BMIR's of the model. We can think of the model’s BMIRs as “proxies” for the underlying state of the model.

By adopting one or more of the BMIRs of the model, we can attempt to replicate a portion of their internal state, and experience in whole or part, the behavior or skill with this proxy state.

Implicit Modeling is an example of using physiology as a proxy for the model’s internal state.

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Implicit Modeling in NLP

Modeling in NLP refers to the process whereby we model another person's skills and behavior in order to increase our own abilities.

Implicit modeling involves copying another person's physiology, posture and so on in order to get an intuitive feel for how they do what they do.

Natural Implicit Modeling
Implicit modeling can be thought of as “copying”. If you have ever watched children after they have seen an exciting movie they will play at being the characters, mimicking the behaviors they have seen, including facial expressions, movement, language, words and phrases etc.

This is a natural human learning process, and is hard-wired into our brains; when we see an action performed our brains react as if we were actually doing it ourselves. This provides an initial “experience” of performing the action that the brain uses as a reference or model prior to actually do it.

I remember as a child, I would watch the old westerns, cowboys and Indians (not very PC these days!) my friends and I would play for hours creeping through the woods.

Now you may remember some time, some occasion from your own childhood when you pretended to be somebody else. Perhaps you had been to see a movie and wanted to be the hero or heroine. Maybe it was a baseball player, tennis player, or some other sports star. Maybe it was a pop star, a movie star. Maybe it was a teacher or someone else at school you admired. I don’t know, but I do know that we have all had these experiences.

And what I’d like you to do is to pick an experience, now, like that, when you admired a person, and wanted to be them, and pretended to be them. Some person who was or is your hero! Remember what it feels like, now, really step back into this experience. Feel what it feels like to have that child-like curiosity now, about how things are done, and that child-like belief that you can be another person, that child-like openness to becoming another person, for a time.

And as you’re remembering and feeling that, begin to remember, to see what you saw, when you looked at your hero, with that child-like gaze. It wasn’t necessary to really understand now exactly what they are doing, just looking softly at them and noticing how they stand, and how they are moving, and how they are breathing. Seeing their face and their expression.

And remember what it was like as you find yourself becoming your hero, seeing out of their eyes, feeling what they are feeling, having the skills that they have, believing we can do anything and everything our hero can do..

Implicit modeling uses this principle as the first step to learning a skill.

Implicit modeling relies on the fact that BMIRs reflect the underlying state. While it is not necessarily true that adopting BMIRs will exactly replicate the state, there is a link between the two. Adopting the BMIRs of the skilled person while attempting their skill may offer us some intuitive feel for the skill.

The Nerk-Nerk State
The Nerk-Nerk state is a state of pure sensory observation, uncolored by beliefs, values and other “filters”. It is of course a theoretical state impossible to achieve in practice. However, we can consider the possibility of such a state.

Implicit Modeling in Practice
Here is the process for Implicit Modeling:
• Pick a subject who you would like to copy.
• Ask them to perform the specific skill that you are seeking to model. If the skill is complex, pick one aspect and use the principles of micro-modeling.
• Adopt the Nerk-Nerk state.
• As you watch them perform the skill, take in everything they are doing at the same time. Do not seek to focus on their eye-accessing, or specific behaviors. Just watch them.
• Adopt their posture, facial expression, tone, breathing, on a ‘global’ basis.
• Perform the behavior while “in their state” as reflected in the BMIRs.
• Become aware of what you learn, about performing the skill.
• Now, as yourself, attempt to perform the skill.
• Notice differences between the experiences.

In order to do Implicit Modeling we should copy posture and other BMIRs without judgement as to what they mean.

Modeling and the TOTE Model

What is the TOTE Model?

Trigger/Test
Decide when to run the Strategy

Operate
Do something, either internally such as make a picture in our mind, or in the outside world

Test
Compare the current state with the desired state

Exit
If the current state matches the desired state, stop, otherwise return to ‘operate’

This is the basic model for running a strategy, where a strategy is a method of achieving some outcome.

In Modeling, we seek to replicate the skill that a person has in achieving some outcome, so the TOTE model forms the fundamental basis of Modeling.

Multiple TOTES
In order to achieve a particular outcome, it may only be necessary to do one simple task, in a very small period of time. Think about bowling for example. The bowler picks up the ball, takes her position, moves forward to the lane and releases the ball. The skill is in doing that one pattern very consistently.

Other skills require multiple actions over extended periods of time. Think about painting a picture. It demands that we pick a medium and materials, a subject, sketch rafts, perhaps prepare and select specific materials for each element of the composition, then actually prepare the work possibly over many hours and days, reviewing and making modifications as we go.

For this reason the TOTE model can be overly simplistic. One way to add sophistication to the TOTE model is to treat a skill as a series of short self contained actions, so for example bowling may be described as one, two or three TOTES, whereas painting a picture may be dozens or hundreds of separate TOTEs.

Shawn Carson

NLP Training in New York

NLP Modeling

NLP was originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder based upon "modeling" of three famous therapists, Fritz Perls the developer of Gestalt Therapy, Virginia Satir, one of the pioneers of family therapy, and Milton Erickson, the father of modern hypnosis. 

The process by which these three giants of modern therapy were modeled in many ways showed NLP in a microcosm. For this reason, John Grinder has defined NLP as being "the modeling of excellence".

Of course, it is also true that through modeling our clients, we can assist them in the change process. In the posts that follow, we will explore some of the modeling techniques that NLP uses. However, in this post we will give an overview of the NLP modeling process.

As with much of NLP, NLP Modeling describes a natural process, namely how we learn to “do” a new skill. Whether we learned how to ride a bicycle by playing with our friends, learned fishing with our grandfather, or learned to play softball at school, we naturally went through the modeling process.

NLP Modeling makes the processes, which we naturally use to learn a new skill, explicit. This allows us to model people we admire to take on their skills, more easily share our skills with other, and practice our NLP skills at the same time!

What is Modeling?
In NLP, Modeling is defined as taking one person’s “skill” and breaking it down in such a way that it can be learned by another person.

Modeling includes the NLP concept of ‘elegance’ which is defined as achieving the desired result in as few steps as possible. Hence, Modeling includes identifying which steps are essential to the process and which steps are not. The superfluous steps can then be deleted from the process.

We can think of modeling as describing a skill in multiple ways. The juxtaposition of the various descriptions gives us the requisite richness in the model.