Part V: Integrating Your Learning
that modelling can lead you to, as several modellers we mention in this
chapter have found out. You gain the most from modelling when you’re
already comfortable with the fundamental concepts of NLP that we explain
in Part I and you’ll also find it helpful to get familiar with the logical-levels
model that we explain in Chapter 11.
Developing New Skills through Modelling
When most NLP Master Practitioner courses come towards a conclusion,
students are invited to engage in a modelling project that integrates their
knowledge of the previous months and years of learning about NLP. The
projects vary in their level of complexity and can range from modelling
someone who successfully gets themselves listed on an online dating website
to another who excels at running sales meetings.
NLP modelling is the ability to replicate fully the desirable competence of
another person by getting to the unconscious behaviours beneath that skill
and coding those behaviours into a model that you could teach to other
people, in order to replicate the results.
You can acquire new skills by going to class, reading books, listening to CDs,
or watching DVDs. These processes take time as you take the material, try
it out, adapt it, and incorporate it in your life. Modelling offers you a way to
accelerate your skills in leaps and bounds. At its heart, NLP is about
understanding what it is to be human – how people do what they do – and
from the outset the NLP developers adopted techniques of modelling human
behaviour in order to further their understanding and share it with others.
NLP attracts people who are interested in finding out about people. Your own
modelling of others begins with a deep desire to learn and be curious about
how other people function and get results. Richard Bandler and John Grinder
created the original Milton and Meta Models thanks to their fascination with
the communication skills of therapists. Other leaders in the NLP community –
including Robert Dilts, Judith DeLozier, Todd Epstein, David Gordon, Stephen
Gilligan, Tim Hallbom, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, Suzi Smith, and many others –
applied modelling principles from the comprehensive study of fields such as
leadership, genius, organisational development, creativity, health, wealth,
and relationships.
Modelling involves an exemplar – who’s competent in a particular field – and a
modeller – who studies the exemplar. Through a process of study and
observation, the modeller creates a model: an explanatory framework of how
the exemplar functions.
