Chapter 19: Dipping into Modelling 301
The Reluctant Exemplar
One of the biggest challenges when modelling an expert is that experts
aren’t consciously aware of what they do: they are unconsciously competent
and hence you need to spend time just being with them. The problem can
be compounded when your exemplar isn’t interested in being modelled or
doesn’t want any intrusion in their work? Penny Tompkins and James Lawley
faced this dilemma when they set out to model New Zealand therapist David
Grove, originator of Clean Language (check out Chapter 18 for more details).
Grove’s early work was in the area of trauma, where he had exceptional
results working with a client base that included Vietnam war veterans and
adults who suffered severe childhood abuse. From the 1980s until his death
in 2008, his work went through a number of innovations covering four major
themes: Clean Language, Metaphor, Clean Space, and Emergent Knowledge.
Says Penny: ‘We realised how valuable David’s ideas would be outside the
therapeutic field, yet there was nothing written about that. At first, David was
reluctant to be modelled.’
When Penny approached him with the idea of being an exemplar he replied, ‘I
don’t care what you do, but I don’t want you to ask me any questions, I don’t
want to know you’re in the room.’ Luckily this restriction didn’t alter Penny
and James’s determination to go ahead with the project. The only question
was, ‘How?’
One of the mysteries of NLP is the lack of description about how the
originators, Bandler and Grinder, modelled the first experts from which NLP
was born. To figure this problem out for themselves, Penny and James took
the first five books that were the result of the modelling of Bandler, Grinder,
and others, and ‘reverse engineered’ what they most likely did to arrive at
these models. Through trial and error, Penny and James created their own
model for modelling for which David Grove was to be the first exemplar.
Thus began a painstaking period while they tried to figure out how to model
David when he was in the UK only periodically. The project took them four
years and involved attending David’s therapeutic retreats as participants,
getting hold of recordings of David’s early work, and spending hours and
hours going through transcripts of sessions. As a result of their modelling,
Penny and James developed Symbolic Modelling, an approach that enhances
an NLP practitioner’s ability to work with people’s metaphors, at the symbolic
level. (Flip to Chapter 18 for more on Clean Language and Penny and James’s
work.)
Their work resulted in the influential book Metaphors in Mind. Over the years,
David Grove’s attitude changed, and in the foreword to their book he praised
‘Penny’s tenacious “won’t take no for an answer” style’. He went on to say,
‘My life continues to be enriched by your ongoing interactions.’