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Love and Understanding
A Lesson in Modelling
Being open to the modelling process makes for instant opportunities to learn significant new things; not just through happenstance, but actively in a focussed enquiring manner. Having a commitment to discovering patterns, identifying core structure and then the delight in testing it on yourself and then with others is a truly magical process of creation and the birth of a new way of seeing something.
This is the story of such an experience. And it serves two purposes. One, hopefully, is to present you with a new model which you can use and apply to your own thinking practices. And two is to offer you a live example of the modelling process in action, so that budding modellers can lean against it for support in their own modelling journey.
- IDENTIFY YOUR DESIRED BEHAVIOUR
I started off with no specific behaviour in mind that I wanted to model. However I constantly run a filter, or more accurately, a selector, for anything that relates for me to the process of modelling. This makes for fairly constant sorting wherever I am, what I’m reading or watching, or whoever I’m with.
- FIND YOUR EXEMPLAR
This particular journey kicked off when we did a day’s modelling of David Gordon’s at The Northern School of NLP. I came in with the desire to understand more about how he went about modelling. I was familiar with his Array framework, and knew his Stepping In Array. (click here), but hadn’t really appreciated the gold mine it was to become.
- GATHERING DATA
It was when he said casually that in the processes of gathering the elements of experience from an exemplar, there was usually some key elements which caused the whole experience to fit into place for him. The remaining elements were additional details. This set the klaxon going off in my head – Up periscopes! Up periscopes!
This took me to wondering what the key elements were for him, in his Stepping In Array, since this behaviour is fundamental to his modelling approach.
NOTE: When David is gathering the information, he ‘steps in’ to the information he’s given to see if it fits and what appears to be missing. This way he knows where to put his attention and what to ask next. As you can see from the Array, he will go on until he is able to have the same experience as his exemplar. Why? To achieve understanding which “gives us choices, new experiences and allows the world to open up”.
- DETECTING PATTERNS
Happily for me, I could ask my exemplar outright. What did he consider were the key elements in his Stepping In Array? His answer was music to my ears!
“You had it easy!”, I hear you cry. “You’ve had the pattern handed to you on a plate!” In my defence, I had stepped in to the array myself, and drawn on my notes from previous workshops, which led me to be certain about at least two out of three of his elements.
His answer was:
- the Sustaining Emotion: Love,
- the Criterion: How does it work?,
- the Supporting Belief: All experience has structure.
Stepping In to his answer, I wanted to explore further his use of the word Love, and for him it encompassed Openness, Cherishing, Deep Appreciation, Deep Respectfulness. The other two are fundamental to the principles of NLP.
- IDENTIFYING CORE STRUCTURE
This is the point in the process when David and I parted. As he says himself, “When you are with your exemplar, your allegiance is with the exemplar. When you are on your own, your allegiance is to your model.”
I took his elements and found myself seeking the states which encapsulated all three components. This led to the identification of the three legs of my embryonic model.
- Love/Deep Acceptance stayed as it was
- Curiosity = How does it work
- Certainty = All experience has structure.
- TESTING AND REFINING
I was now off! I realised that for me, these were the ingredients to attaining UNDERSTANDING. I began to apply them to things I was struggling with. I then blurred the stages in the process by pestering others to try on my thinking to see what they felt. I even offered it to the twenty or so people who turned up to one of our Introduction Days.
This was a really creative process, since at each stage I made modifications to my thinking. It confirmed that there were definitely connective links between each component, and that each one influenced the other in a truly remarkable way.
I then added two other elements to the model, which are now so obvious it makes me blush that they weren’t there from the start; namely:
- An expressed Outome
- An Ecology check
- DEVISING TRANSFER METHOD
I started off working on key questions which would generate these states in an integrated manner, so that at the end of the process the explorer would have reached a new level of insight, and an altered response to the issue in hand. I played around initially with three questions to generate Love, then three for Curiosity and finally three for Certainty. Then I decided to mix them rather like stacking anchors. I then opted to go for stacking each at increasing logical levels of What, How, Why.
I also drew on a previous exercise I had devised for Gilligan’s Sponsorship States. It involves the metaphor of a mixing desk, with either sliders which can go up or down a scale, or dials which can increase or decrease as they click round clockwise or anticlockwise. By moving the sliders or dials, the intensity of each element can be evaluated.
The first of these exercises is published as the June Exercises of the Month, for you to try on as well.
- ENABLING ANOTHER TO ACQUIRE IT
I’ve offered both exercises to various people and each time I am gaining a deeper understanding of the strength of this Understanding Model, and the range of contexts it can be applied to. What is really interesting is that each person puts their own slant onto it, whilst achieving the ultimate goal of greater Understanding.
- EVALUATING
There are lots of possibilities for additional exercises emerging from this, either as standalone or as part of other processes.
Already some people have chosen to go for Deep Appreciation as a more accessible reference experience.
This Understanding Model can be applied to People, Situations, Issues, Instances as well Personal Traits.
The pleasure of this Understanding Model is in the emerging relationships between each of the three elements, within the context of a determined Goal. The Curiosity seems to drive the moment and provide motivation in the present. The Certainty seems to steady the Curiosity and allow for the period of Not Knowing to last as long as it needs to. And the Deep Appreciation/Love seems to underpin the whole process by acknowledging the enduring uniqueness of self and other, in the greater scheme of things. This sustains the through-time motivation, should Curiosity and Certainty falter.
The Understanding Model highlights the significance of the variables of context, issue and personality.
- For some they realise that they have been battling with the issue or problem, and making it into an adversary. So the idea of bringing into the equation a Deep Appreciation was initially alien and then a breakthrough.
- For others, the doubt that the lack of understanding was inducing, knocked much of their Certainty into touch. Here, they had to shift the level of their attention, either chunking up or down, to re-connect with what they do feel Certain about.
- The Curiosity was the most obvious element to be most easily addressed. Much depended on for how long the confusion had been going on. If it had been too long, in their minds, Curiosity had become blunted due to the lack of return on its investment.
- Finally the fourth element of the Goal brought focus to the process, which for some had been absent. In these cases, the outcome of understanding was being asked to be attained within a vacuum, within no declared target in mind.
Some have suggested that this is similar to Gilligan’s Tender, Fierce, Playful. Similar possibly, but not the same as. Gilligan’s model serves in the delivery of an intended action. The Understanding Model serves in the process prior to this – understanding possibly what action to take.
I am aware that this model has emerged from one Modeller. However, we had the tremendous opportunity yet again to model another world class modeller, John McWhirter. John too has a compulsion to make sense of the world he perceives – be it why a patch of garden is burnt and the rest isn’t, or why the word Filter is used when Selector is more functionally accurate for him. For John, his certainty is that “The world is whole and all the pieces fit within this system.” His drive is to find out “How the pieces fit (since they will and do)” and whilst he did not express a sustaining emotion, anyone who has seen him in action with someone can feel the love and connection he has with that person in that moment. Now this last piece may be shoe-horning and does require confirming – or not.
FINALLY – THE BIGGER PICTURE
A robust model needs to be a fractal and be able to be applied at all logical levels. During my early explorations of the elements I was drawn to the key elements of NLP. Working on the assumption that Love, Curiosity, Certainty generate understanding, I sought to apply it to what we teach within the NLP Syllabus.
The Goal of NLP is to discover how we and others tick, to discover the structure that lies behind our behaviours.
Curiosity is immediately addressed – although possibly overlooked by some in the glare of the technique headlights – in Bandler’s quote that NLP is fundamentally an Attitude of Curiosity, a Sense of Adventure, and a Desire to Learn.
Certainty could be considered as being provided by the NLP Presuppositions, the seven to twelve plus of them, depending on who you read. These NLP Presuppositions form the basis of NLP thinking and the starting point for exploration.
BUT WHERE IS LOVE OR DEEP APPRECIATION?
It is not there! Certainly not explicitly. It is left to the nature of the Trainer if this element is overtly or unintentionally contained within the description offered. It is not part of any recognised syllabus, and there has no established focus. No wonder NLP is ripe for the manipulative taking. The Absence of Love or Deep Appreciation + Powerful Skills leads naturally to manipulation.
Steve Gilligan and then Robert Dilts in their promotion of Sponsorship has begun to address this balance. This is too important just to have as an optional extra within the syllabus. There is an increasingly interested audience within the mainstream of communication, who are prepared to give NLP a second chance. If we are to present a credible and enduring model of communication and therapy, we need to commit ourselves to including in a practical, unsentimental way, this fundamental element Love and Deep Appreciation. It has been missing for too long.
Fran Burgess
22 June 2005
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