300 Part V: Integrating Your Learning
In Chapter 2, we introduce you to the essential NLP presupposition that ‘the
map is not the territory’. Like all humans, you have your mental maps and
modelling seeks to understand those maps. NLP modelling enables you to
find the deep structure underlying a successful person’s behaviour, so that
you can then make your processing explicit to other people and allow them
to get the opportunity to replicate the exemplar’s successes. Modelling
attempts to make conscious what’s happening at a deeper unconscious level.
NLP distinguishes the deep structure of your experience from the surface
structure of your language. You can find more on this in Chapter 15.
Even within NLP, no agreement exists on the best way to dig down to the
deeper structure through modelling, and as you explore modelling in more
depth you find many approaches based on the preference of the modeller.
In this way, much of modelling is done on an intuitive basis rather than by a
well-documented and logical approach.
You glean much information from watching and listening to the exemplar in
action, of course, but if you don’t have easy access to your subject you also
discover plenty from documents and recordings.
Assume that what you see and hear on the surface in terms of someone’s
behaviour and words is only part of the story. Be patient and observe what
may be really going on for that person in terms of assumptions, beliefs, and
values.
If you’re modelling an entrepreneur, for example, you may notice the fiery
temper that someone like Alan Sugar demonstrates in the popular Apprentice
TV series. What you may not understand so easily is how to generate the
drive to create something from nothing, the enduring motivation, or the
mental strategies to negotiate a complicated deal. When you take two other
exemplars of successful entrepreneurs, and look at how they operate, you
can decide whether or not an attribute such as temper is an essential factor
for success, or just a characteristic that one exemplar has.
Discovering Modelling Case Studies
Some of the modelling undertaken by NLP leaders involves incredible
patience to understand complex skills and build the detailed behavioural
maps that benefit others. Many skills are made up of subsets of other skills.
For example, an experienced therapist can react appropriately in highly
sensitive situations and a business leader can make successful decisions
under pressure while maintaining rapport with a network of stakeholders.
Great salespeople do much more than get a contract signed. In this section,
we take a look at some informative case studies.
