Chapter 19: Dipping into Modelling 305
Keep your modelling simple at first: the more clearly defined the skill that you
want to replicate and the more accessible your exemplar, the easier you are
going to find your task. Trying to model Picasso or a very private celebrity is
going to be extremely tough, even though some keen NLP modellers have
done exceptional work on modelling public figures.
Consider one specific desired behaviour or skill the exemplar has that you
want to replicate. You don’t want to capture all the person’s behaviours.You’re surrounded by people who can do things that you can’t do so well.
Often somebody in your close network has valuable expertise that you can
tap into, even within your family. While attending her NLP Master Practitioner
programme, Rachel was chosen as an exemplar for five separate modelling
projects by fellow students who were keen to model different aspects of her
approach to business and health. They were intrigued at how she had set up
a successful business as well as changing her career at various points from a
chef to an events manager to become an independent health and fitness
guru and author with a strong brand and exuberant personality. Some were
interested in specific behaviour changes such as her success in giving up
smoking and weight loss.‘It was actually humbling to be chosen by my peers as an exemplar. Just the
fact of being modelled made me pay closer attention to things that I now take
for granted in how I carry out my business,’ she says. The act of modelling
has potential benefits for the exemplars as well as other people, because you
can make people consciously aware of their experience and changes they
may make.Finding a modelling method you can work with
Modelling is about finding out, at a deep level, how exemplars experience
their world that enables them to do what they do so successfully, and about
creating an understanding of what they’re thinking, feeling, and behaving
in any one moment. You’re trying to get inside someone’s head and need to
acquire the most appropriate tool for the job. Inevitably, the quality of the
information-gathering tool that you adopt has a crucial effect on the process.This aspect raises the fundamental chicken and egg question in modelling.
Do you create the structure for your model first or does that develop later?
Our view is that having some framework or hypothesis as a beginner in
modelling is helpful, as is letting go of the model if appropriate. For this
reason, Robert Dilts’s clear and practical logical levels structure (which we