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The Meta Model and its ancillary body of questions is one of the greatest gifts ever given to the field of communication – in my humble opinion.   With these skills, we have the potential to take our connection with another to a whole new level.  At the same time, the emphasis within NLP on sensory acuity and the awareness of structure takes listening way beyond the obvious.  Combine both of them, and we can achieve communication par excellence.  Without them, we can have the recipe for conversational disaster.   And of course there are the points in between, where average mis- communication is a daily occurrence.  So what do we have to do, if we want to get better?  And how do we recognize what is happening now?

 Here are some thoughts put together, as a result of a conversation over a bottle of rather delightful Italian wine.  I’ll leave you guessing on the outcome!  I suspect you will find yourself rerunning some of your own scenarios as you read on.

 The Players

 The Sloppy Questioner results from a variety of causes.  He may not know what he wants to say, and is thinking on the hoof as the words come out his mouth.  He doesn’t realize that a question has the ability to precisely direct the listener’s attention.  He may not know what information he wants to access, or wants the listener to access.   He will be an ill disciplined thinker, unskilled in language construction, and is likely to assume a level of rapport and intuition which isn’t there.  He has some latent faith in telepathy doing the work for him   He faults lie in not paying attention to what he has been given - more in terms of tone and emphasis than content.  His antennae don’t register incongruence.  He responds in the moment, reacting to the information he has just been given.   He doesn’t have filters to detect patterns, because he hasn’t been able to hold data over a period of time.   At worst, he really isn’t interested in the answer and is just making noise to appear to be giving attention.

 The Precise Questioner knows the information he is going for.  He will have a clear outcome for the conversation or topic, although this may not be overt.  He may be seeking information to serve his own needs, or he may be charged to draw the attention of the other to new thinking and understanding.   His state is one of deep concentration and focus.  And he will have a commitment to pursue this outcome to its natural conclusion, or interim punctuation point.  He is deeply interested in the answers he is getting and weighs up and evaluates each response.  His attention is fully on the whole speaker and not just on her words.  He is delighted when a question makes its ‘mark’, causing the other to pause and search for the answer. 

 The Sloppy Listener is one who makes the fatal mistake of assuming that she understands the intention of the questioner.  It doesn’t cross her mind that the question was specifically crafted for a precise outcome.  She regards words as being merely words, which supply the story.   She doesn’t realise that there is useful information to be had just outside her awareness, and the questioner has detected its presence.   So she answers the question which she thinks the questioner ought to have asked, and like as not, this information is already familiar to her.  She is a mindreader, mentally lazy, and probably fixed in her understanding and appreciation of how things could be for her.  She rarely asks a question back to clarify for her own satisfaction what exactly the questioner was after.  Or it might be that outside of her awareness, she doesn’t want to be accountable for the answers the question might generate, so willfully misinterprets the question’s intentions.

 The Precise Listener values language and deeply values being given quality attention.    She is likely to relish exploring or at least not be averse to venturing into the unknown.  She will have noticed the ‘bump’ a good question gave her, nudging or knocking her to somewhere new.  She is predisposed to rewarding the Precise Questioner, really appreciating the consideration offered and doing her best to respond in kind.  She will take time to explore where the question takes her, and offer a considered answer.  The question may leave her uncomfortable, because she isn’t ready to explore that far, or she hadn’t realized that she had revealed this seam of enquiry.  However, she has the honesty to acknowledge its validity.  Even in irritation she is able to listen to her own internal voices!  She always has the option not to answer it – out loud at any rate.

 The Player’s Relationships

 Sloppy Questioner and Sloppy Listener:  Why do they bother?!  Neither is paying any real attention to the other.  They are like two people on the dance floor, both dancing their own dance, oblivious of the opportunity to dance together.  They may believe that they are in contact with each other, and are unable to read the signs to the contrary.  They may be choosing to remain disconnected, for a whole trenches of ecological reasons and secondary gains.  To actively say nothing is quite a skill!  Or they may have no experience of being held within quality communication, so have no means of calibration or ways to alter what they have.  Communication is not something they hold in high esteem, and see it as being highly over-rated. 

 This relationship is empty of new ideas.

 Precise Questioner and Sloppy Listener:  Here the running is all down to the questioner.  Whatever comes his way has to be taken seriously, no matter how carelessly it might have been offered.  He has to decide if the answer he’s received matches the target of his question.   His question may have precipitated a quantum leap of thinking and the response is coming from an unexpected corner of the unexplored territory.   Or else, the question may have triggered some associated thinking, of a different logical level or type, and still be valid to the pursuit of the outcome.  Or it could be her way of saying “You’ve got too close.  I’m not answering.”  Whatever the reply, the questioner needs to evaluate the levels of congruence, judge the match of energy with the words, weigh the response she has to her answer.   He needs to check if this was part of an overall pattern, or even a conscious or unconscious pattern disrupt to break rapport.   He then has a variety of options: rewording the original question, offering a relevancy check, asking a clarifying meta model question, or backing off.   He also has the option to let go of the outcome and retire voluntarily. 

 This relationship is by invitation only, and needs to be constantly reviewed.

 Sloppy Questioner and Precise Listener: This relationship can become decidedly fractious, since the questioner is going along his own sweet way, and the listener is holding him accountable to his words (although this may not be obvious to him). The source of irritation may come from a variety of sources.  She may not take kindly to his lack of attention and feels that he is discounting her thoughts.  His positive intention is not be at the forefront of her thinking!   She may feel that she has already answered that question, and suspects him of not listening.   She may be confused because she doesn’t know what he wants from the question – it may be so vague that any response would suffice; it may be ambiguous; it may appear superficial after the depth of what she had been offering; or vice versa, it may have been inappropriately penetrative, inadvertently.  If this happens more than once, this confusion can quickly become irritation and any rapport will rapidly dissipate. 

 Much will depend on her outcome for the conversation.  Does she want to be understood – by specifically answering the question he should have asked?  Does she want to improve his skills and coach him through clear feedback? Or will she conclude that he’s not interested and walk away.

 Whatever the final outcome, this is a relationship with a short shelf life.

 Precise Questioner and Precise Listener:  This is a relationship based on mutual respect and a shared sense of the importance of new knowledge and understanding.  As the relationship progresses, the rapport rises up the neurological levels, where words are not wasted and new meaning is tenderly held.  At its most heightened, separate from the two of them, a third entity emerges; that of a tangible idea or breakthrough in understanding.  This paradigm shift in thinking is so generative in terms of energy, purpose and motivation; it is the ultimate reward for both their efforts. 

 This relationship affords those moments of pure communication and is a joy to experience. 

 And Finally

 Of course, throughout the conversation, we are alternating as listener and questioner all the time.   Aspiring to have precision in both channels is a goal worth achieving. And of course this aspiration is directed internally for greater personal understanding as well as understanding with another.  Giving this attention, keeping filters open, detecting incongruence and responding with the best question takes the elegance of communication to new levels.

 Worth working towards don’t you think?

  © 2005 Fran Burgess April 2005