Living Well NLP

What do NLP techniques, applications, and models have in common? What makes them NLP?

Not a core theory of how the mind works. NLP doesn’t have one.

Not field of application. NLP gets used for therapy, business, sales, seduction, negotiation, writing, sports, education, personal coaching, and more.

Not origins or developers. Lots of people developed and expanded NLP. Many NLP models (including the first formal NLP pattern, the Meta-Model) got imported into NLP from other disciplines or modeled from experts in other fields.

Given that, what makes a model or technique an NLP model or technique?

If you’re like most NLP Practitioners I talk with, your training included a lot of elicitation, and little or no NLP modeling.

That’s unfortunate, because modeling is the core skill of NLP. In fact, Richard Bandler and John Grinder used it to create Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP’s rich array of techniques, models, and applications got developed and refined using modeling.

How ironic that NLPers so rarely learn NLP’s core skill and strategy. But fortunately…

This is an NLP modeling, research, and development blog. In a previous post I defined NLP modeling. In future articles, I’ll write about my process for modeling, and reveal modeling tips and tricks. Today, I discuss how NLP and modeling relate.

What is NLP?

When most people talk about NLP, they mean:

1. NLP techniques, such as anchoring, pacing and leading, and the Fast Phobia Cure;
2. NLP applications, such as applying rapport skills to sales; and/or
3. NLP models, such as timelines and eye access cues.

However, I and most NLP developers regard another aspect of NLP as more important:

1. NLP modeling, NLP’s process for figuring out the specifics of how someone does a skill in enough detail that other people can achieve similar results.

Version 1.0

Definition of NLP modeling

NLP modeling is a methodology for turning a skill that one person can do into a “recipe” that other people can follow to achieve similar results.

For instance, Richard Bandler famously developed the NLP Fast Phobia Cure by modeling people who used to have phobias, but had gotten over them. Many of NLP’s therapeutic techniques were modeled from successful therapists — most famously Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson.

An NLP “recipe” for a skill is called a model.

When you studied NLP, did you learn about “the” kinesthetic modality?

The standard NLP model lumps all “feelings” together as one kinesthetic modality, with one set of accessing cues. These cues include belly breathing, slow speech, use of kinesthetic words and phases (such as “touching base,” “off-balance,” and “warm”), and eye accesses to the (usually) lower right.

This model is simple and easy to learn and use. It’s also obviously inaccurate. Dizziness is not the same kind of “feeling” as happiness, hunger, or warm velvet rubbing across your skin.

That wouldn’t matter to NLPers if kinesthetics all functioned identically when communicating or doing change work. But in fact, subtle distinctions between kinds of kinesthetics often determine whether an intervention will work for a particular person.