The Practice Group
All of Nigel’s other reports:
2004 NLP reports
2003 NLP reports
Nigel & Jenny Heath:-
Address: Jinglewood House Ltd, Lyndhurst Road, Landford. Wiltshire
SP5 2AS
Nigel’s report of the March 2010 meeting
Marian Way
“Clean modelling”
of Unconscious Competence
In a change to the advertised programme, due to illness, March saw us relying on
the great talent that exists within NLP-
Clean Language
is great for modelling and also helps people access deeply
The first thing for Marian to check out was how much the group knew about Clean Language. It transpired to be ‘not a lot’! Marian gave a quick overview and a brief introduction to David Grove. If you want to find out more there’s loads of info here. (Why are we playing with Clean Language in an NLP practice group? Go here to find out).
In two hours, or 1½ as it usually becomes by the time we add in a break and my introduction,
there’s not time to do many exercises. Marian is well versed in running sessions
and therefore chose a small chunk for us to play with. As we were going to be modelling
‘exemplars’ she began by checking if we had any in the group. Asking us to think
about something we were good at, and then choosing a small chunk of that for our
modellers to work with. Jenny is good at spelling and shared her ability to proof
read as a small chunk of this skill. I offered pruning Bonsai trees, Diana is good
at dancing and chose, how to pick up the rhythm of the music. Richard is good at
mental arithmetic. The plan was to split into smaller groups and using ‘Clean’ questions,
as supplied by Marian, to model our exemplars. The dancing group was quite large,
as was the spelling group. I was in a group of four and we chose something other
than Bonsai trees to model. There may have been other groups too, if so I’m sorry
to miss you out but I’m sure you had just as much fun as the rest of us. In my group
Neil said he was really good at tiling, though he had never been taught (walls, floors
etc, no job too small, phone for competitive quote) so we modelled his ‘unconscious
skill’ in tiling. By the time we had had about 10 -
Marian soon put a stop to that, after all she had other plans for what was left of the evening. Back into our groups now to build on what we had learned. Marian wanted us to ‘draw’ or otherwise set out the ‘model’ we had elicited from our exemplar. This was the point at which we became most painfully aware of our ‘conscious incompetence’ as we discovered just how little we had extracted, how near or far it was from the ‘truth’, how much we had added in our own interpretation, filled in gaps in knowledge by ourselves and generally missed the point of what our exemplar had been saying. This was also the moment for the exemplars to discover what it was they did so well that they were mostly unaware of, it being an ‘unconscious competence’. I’ve done a bit of this ‘clean’ stuff and was duly gratified when Neil told me he had learned a lot about his ‘model’ for tiling. I thought I would be able to use the diagram wot I drew for my report, but he liked it so much he took it home to share with his wife! The dancing group found it difficult, when asked, to explain just what it was Diana did, she however had gleaned some new information and was happy to share this with us in the ‘wash up’. Richard was keen to expound his model too, but Marian persuaded others to explain what they thought he did, which was mostly accurate though sounded awfully complicated to me. I’ll stick with my trusty calculator. We never heard about speling, and Jenny’s skill.
We had time in my small group to discuss the use of modelling. As the model, if your modellers do it well, there is a useful learning in discovering what it is you do well, without knowing at a conscious level how you do it. Having had your model ‘exposed’ for others to understand often makes it work even better. I suppose this is the same as having to teach someone something making it clearer for the teacher.
As the modeller. It’s always a good idea to choose a skill you would like to acquire or improve. Tiling wasn’t ‘it’ for all of us in my group, however the ‘exercise’ of our modelling skills and flexing of our ‘clean’ muscles had a quaint charm and usefulness all of its own. Of course once, as modeller, you have elicited the inner strategy, plumbed the depths of the values and beliefs that support it, and worked out the sequence of the steps involved, then you have to check out your own model of how you do it. Choose those bits from the ‘exemplar’s’ model to incorporate into yours and test it, oh and then test it some more.
When Richard Bandler decided to ‘model’ Fritz Perls he took on everything he had seen, heard and intuited. So he mimicked the stance, the German accent and facial expressions along with the words and voice tone, body language etc. Later he discovered he could leave out certain bits, e.g. the German accent, and still replicate the results Fritz Perls achieved.
Marian would of course have got to this, but not in a short evening. To get your ‘clean’ modelling skills up to scratch you’ll need to practice. Fortunately you can do this very inexpensively by joining Marian’s Clean group in Stubbington. Mouse on over here to find out how you can join up or read Marian’s message below.
I’ve just realised there are not enough pictures in this report so have included
some more from my welcome poster for the evening. On the left you will see the typical
NLP-
Thank you Marian not only for providing us with a thought provoking and interesting
evening but also for doing it at short notice. Here’s the final word from Marian:-
“Thank you for coming to the evening and for your wholehearted participation. I hope
you enjoyed it and gained something useful from the evening. I realised afterwards
that I didn't give very much information on how to find out more / join the practice
group etc, so here are some things you can do to learn more”:
Take a training -
Come along to our Clean Language practice group It's open to beginners and you would be most welcome. We meet on the third Monday of each month at Crofton Community Centre in Stubbington, near Fareham. Our next meeting is March 15th. Your first meeting is free. Details are here. Please email me marian@apricotisland.com if you would like to receive information about each meeting (an invitation beforehand and a report afterwards).
Download a free audio recording of a 20-
Read a short article explaining Clean Language.
Get a wealth of information about Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling at http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk
I hope there is something here that's of interest to you, and that I will see you
again soon.
Marian
Way