Chapter 19: Dipping into Modelling 307
✓ Assumptions or presuppositions: From what assumptions does your
subject operate? See Chapter 2 for more details.
✓ Beliefs and values: What beliefs do you notice in your subject – what
are the person’s key drivers? Chapter 3 helps you here.
✓ Emotional-state management: What can you discover about your
exemplar as regards this aspect, which we describe in Chapter 9.
✓ Metaphors and stories: What stories does your exemplar tell or respond
to? Chapter 17 guides you in this area.
✓ Meta programs: Can you spot meta programs in the person’s language:
for example, detail versus global, towards and away from, options and
procedures, internal and external focus? Chapter 8 has more about meta
programs.
✓ Perceptual positions: Does your exemplar take the different perceptual
positions explored in Chapter 7? Try stepping into three or four
perspectives yourself as the modeller.
✓ Strategies: Can you identify the strategies your subject adopts, and code
them as we explain in Chapter 12?
✓ Time: What is this person’s sense of time as explained by time-line work
in Chapter 13? Do they operate in the moment or are they good at planning?
✓ Visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic predicates: What do the language
patterns tell you about how this person communicates in this particular
context? We discuss these items in Chapter 6.
Your exemplar is going to be good at some things that you’re already
competent at yourself, so concentrate your investigation on areas that are
most unfamiliar to you, to save your time and energy.
Building your model
When you’ve gathered your data, you have all you need to build a model that
demonstrates the patterns you uncover in your exemplar. This structure is
the coherent description of the essential patterns, and demonstrates to other
people what they need to copy in their attempts to get the same results as
your exemplar.You can take an existing framework, such as the logical levels model, and be
willing to build the model in your own way, adding your unique knowledge to
it just as the modellers did in the earlier section ‘Discovering Modelling Case
Studies’.