Lately we’ve been receiving some great questions about modeling.  We plan to share our responses to these questions with you over a series of short articles.  We would greatly appreciate your comments and any relevant experience you might like to share with all of us.

Bill Perry, author of a blog on lucid dreaming and a fellow known for asking stimulating questions, posed the following to us:

“Is it possible to elicit a model for an ability and be able to effectively install it in someone else, without having to take that ability on myself?”

Our short answer: Yes and No.

Let’s ground our response in a simple example.  Imagine that you’re a music teacher who has just been tasked with teaching a class of beginning guitar students how to play the guitar. The only problem is that you’ve never actually played the guitar before, so you don’t already possess the “ability” to play the guitar. You have one week to prepare for the class that will last for a school semester. Is it possible to teach the class to play the guitar without actually already knowing how to play it?

The Guitar Teacher Who Had Never Played Guitar

This is a real-life example shared by our friend Ed Gifford. He was able to teach the class, which turned out to be the most popular music performance class in the district.  

Ed focused on what he did know and readily admitted to the class what he didn’t.  On the first day of class he said, “Looks like we’ll be learning together.  We’ll base this class on popular songs, songs that you’re familiar with. Each of you please bring in a song that you want to learn to play and sing along with.  I’ll transcribe it for you and I’ll stay a week ahead of you in the lessons, learning the mechanics of guitar along with you all.”  Ed was honestly admitting to the class what he didn’t know and what they could expect from him as a teacher.  This sounds a little dire. However, Ed was also a professional musician who was a choral director and had learned several instruments to a high level of performance proficiency. In other words, he knew how to learn to play an instrument.

When Ed started the class, he didn’t have the ability to play the guitar proficiently. Instead of dwelling on his lack of performance skill, he framed the task in terms of the abilities that he did possess — how to learn to play a new instrument and how to teach ear training and music performance to beginners — and he made sure he understood what the learners were motivated to learn.

What this example illustrates to us is that abilities are nearly always multifaceted existing amidst a constellation of other abilities. In our example,  what the students really wanted was to be able to play a small repertoire of personally relevant songs on the guitar. The ability is much greater than the physical act of simply playing guitar, it was more about learning how to play music on an instrument, which involves pitch recognition, transcription, music theory, time keeping, singing performance (in this case),  etc.  We realize that Ed could have failed at picking up the mechanics of guitar; that was clearly a risk.  He decided that he had enough of the supporting abilities to take the gamble.

Coaches are Experts at a Different Game

Another example of instructors who can’t necessarily perform the skill being taught to the level of the student is sports coaching.  In this case, the primary skill of the coach is to give meaningful feedback to the coachee, so that he/she can make small adjustments in his/her behavior to get the results expected. In order to be effective, the coach must be able to make and convey to the athlete many subtle kinesthetic distinctions about the skill as well as the fundamentals and intricacies of game strategy. There are coaches who love the sport they coach, are very skilled coaches/teachers, get great results with the team, but are not highly physically skilled players of the game (and maybe never were).

In thinking about Bill’s question, we found ourselves asking what it means to be a coach. To us, the world of coaching exists on a continuum. At one end, there are coaches who specialize in specific content areas; they tend to act more like consultants and advisors; they typically possess the skill at a high level.  At the other end, there are those who specialize almost exclusively in process — life coaches, for example. The work of this type of coach is focused on …

• Helping people discover what they want
• Co-creating a motivating action plan
• Providing feedback mechanisms so the client notices when he/she’s making progress or not.
• Brainstorming workarounds and co-create effective interventions
• Celebrating successes

This kind of coaching assumes that the client  brings their content expertise to table.  The coach focuses on the process of goal achievement and strategy refinement, not content transmission.

Most coaches fall somewhere in the middle of that continuum. They have good process/goal setting skills, and have enough content knowledge to make the necessary distinctions required to communicate effectively with their coachees.

The Game Changes as the Coachee Develops

In order to be a truly effective “coach,” we believe that one must vary the teaching approach according to the developmental needs of the coachee.

Robert Dilts’s book “From Coach to Awakener” addresses this issue very cleanly.  Dilts contends that the role of the “coach” changes according to the developmental needs of the learner at each neurological level: Environment = Guide/Caretaker, Skill = Coach, Capability =Teacher, Belief = Mentor, Identity = Sponsor, and Spirit = Awakener. Here’s an introduction to the idea from Dilts’s website: http://www.nlpu.com/coach.htm. The upshot of this idea is that a wide range of skills and roles are required of the coach along a coachee’s developmental pathway — the game changes.  It’s rare that any one “coach” can be effective in all of those roles for a given ability!

Expert Performers Aren’t Always the Best Coaches 

In our experience,  it’s not necessarily true that being an expert in an area automatically qualifies you as a coach/teacher/instructor.  In fact, performing an ability and teaching others how to perform it are very different skill sets. You’ve probably encountered a freshly minted Ph.D. (in an area other than education) at college or work who was required to teach you something. If you were lucky, you got paired with a natural teacher. If not, you experienced first hand that content expertise doesn’t necessarily equal coaching/teaching expertise.

Expert performers are not often accustomed to taking a “meta-cognitive” position and explaining what they’re doing while they do it. If fact, they’re usually not conscious of the details of their performance because they’ve long since “automated” and chained together those behavioral sequences. Without prompting from a modeler, many experts would find it nearly impossible to describe out loud how they do what they do.

Our Conclusion?

It’s not necessary to be able to demonstrate a skill at an ultra high level of proficiency in order to teach/coach it effectively. So, those who can’t do (up to a certain standard), may be able to teach! However, it’s vital that the instructor has the requisite skills to teach at the required neurological level, which may be much more complex than simply possessing the ability.

I.  An Exercise to Find Your Essence Metaphor

(Presented in our own words with a deep bow to David Gordon)

• Find a partner.  One of you will be the Guide and the other will be the Explorer.

• The Guide asks the Explorer: “When you think of your life at its very best, what object can stand as a symbol for this wonderful essence state?”

• The Explorer should answer the question with the words, “The symbol for my most essential life is a/the __________.”

Example response: The symbol for my most essential life is a skeleton key.

• The Guide should carefully record the object (symbol) in writing/drawing.

• In order to tease out some of the important entailments of the Explorer’s essence symbol, the Guide might ask these and similar questions:

• • When you contemplate this object, what do you see, hear or feel?

• • • Example: I possess an ancient and important key that opens many doors for me.

• • What does it mean to have this object fully and completely?

• • • Example: It means I can go to many secret places and understand what lies behind closed doors.

• • How does this object work to make your life better?

• • • Example: It feels like I can take my questions about life into the most unusual and wonderful places.

• (Optional) If the Explorer has a particularly resourceful response as he/she describes the object, you might use your submodality language patterns to increase the vividness of the object and its powers even more and provide an anchor for the enhanced representation.

• When complete, exchange roles and repeat.

II.  An Exercise to Find Your Life Metaphor

(Presented in our own words with a deep bow to David Gordon)

• Find a partner.  One of you will be the Guide and the other will be the Explorer.

• The Guide should ask the Explorer: “When you think of your life as you have lived it all these years, what is your life like?”

• The Explorer should give him/herself permission to answer the question with the words, “My life is like __________” with a slightly melodramatic with a broad gesture, moving his/her right hand boldly from the waist to the sky (upper right).

• Example response: My life is like a tapestry.

• The Guide should carefully record the metaphor.

• In order to tease out some of the important entailments of the Explorer’s life metaphor, the Guide might ask these and similar questions:

• • When you step into this metaphor, what do you see, hear and feel?

• • • Example: I am in the tower of a castle working at a loom next to a window.

• • Does any part of the metaphor change?

• • • Example: Yes, there is a picture on the tapestry and it is about three-quarters complete.

• • What happens in terms of the metaphor when things go “wrong?”

• • • Example: It feels like things are coming apart at the edges, like loose threads.

• (Optional)  Again, if the Explorer has a particularly strong metaphor, you might use your submodality language patterns to increase the vividness of the metaphor and provide an anchor for the enhanced representation.

• When complete, exchange roles and repeat the exercise for the other partner.

III.  A Metaphorical Anchor Collapse

(Presented in our own words with a deep bow to David Gordon)

• Find a partner.  One of you will be the Guide and the other will be the Explorer.

• The Guide should ask the Explorer: “What is your everyday life metaphor?”

• The Explorer should answer the question with the words, “My life is like __________,” with a slightly melodramatic, broad gesture, moving his/her right hand boldly from the waist to the sky (upper right).

• • Example response: My life is like a tapestry.

• The Guide should carefully record the metaphor.

• The Guide should ask the Explorer, “What is your Essence Object?”

• • Example response: A skeleton key

• The Guide should record the object.

• The Guide should take five minutes to construct a simple story about the Life Metaphor which in some way combines with the Essence Object to produce a wonderful effect.

• • Example Story:  One day Mike was in the castle tower working at his loom on a tapestry.  He had begun to worry about what the picture would be when the tapestry was completed.  The worry expressed itself as a loose thread at the bottom of the tapestry.  Very carefully, Mike began to tug at the loose thread.  Suddenly, just like a run in a silk stocking, an ornate skeleton key appeared from the bottom to the top of the whole tapestry!

• The Guide tells the story to the Explorer and both notice the effect of the combination.

• When complete, exchange roles and repeat.

Nancy Kline, who wrote the important book Time to Think, teaches her readers about “Incisive Questions^TM“.  She says that “Advisors who know how to generate Incisive Questions^TM to free their client’s mind from untrue limiting assumptions hold a key to creating the best (coaching) plan (for them)…Our thinking, feeling, decision-making and action are driven by assumptions.  The good ideas and feelings come from true liberating assumptions.  The bad ones come from untrue limiting assumptions.”

So, one sequence of questions (presented by Kline) for breaking through is this:

1. What am I assuming that is limiting my thinking here?
2. What am I assuming that is most limiting my thinking here?
3. Is that assumption true?
4. What is a liberating true alternative to the limiting assumption?
5. If I knew (insert true alternative), what would I think or feel or do?

Let’s take this set of questions, which seem pretty cut-and-dried in written words, and see if we can discover the real juice that makes them work by the numbers.  Suppose we are working on the question of our flagging motivation on an important project:

1. This first question calls for a little brainstorming.  Let’s make a list of assumptions that might be limiting:
   1. I’ve forgotten the benefits of completing the project.
   2. I’m bored with the problem.
   3. I’m just too tired.

1. Let’s pick the assumption that seems most limiting now-b. I’m bored with the problem.
2. No, that’s not really true.
3. Actually, I am outraged with the problem.  I find it impossible to believe that people have to put up with this problem when there is a possible solution.
4. Finally, the Incisive Question^TM:  If I knew I am outraged with the problem, what would I think or feel or do?

Suddenly there are numerous new possibilities: (1) I might opt to turn my outrage at the problem into compassion for its victims, (2) I might gather colleagues who share my concern to discover the actual cause(s) of the problem, or (3) I might take the first steps to find sources of funding to solve the problem.

Kline’s 5-step process for creating an Incisive Question^TM can help anyone to make breakthroughs and traverse the sometimes frightening distance between negative and positive thinking.  It is an important reminder to me that often our questions are more important than our answers.  I urge you to give this process a try in any area of your life where you need a nudge to get going again.

The following tale was told to us (a small class of behavioral modelers) by David Gordon, a splended writer, story weaver, and explorer of human potential. David shared this story when we asked him how he felt when he sat down to learn about another’s special abilities. My pal Mike Bown and I tell our version (misremembered and mutated) of David’s tale before each modeling session we conduct in order to help open “sacred space.” 

Grand Canyon Satori

Every year, my family took a two-week holiday that commenced the weekend following the last day of school. Early that Saturday morning my mother and father would have us load up our Ford station wagon with luggage, pillows, and books. Just before we left, we’d fill up the big burlap-coated water bottle (an old evaporative cooler) that we hung out the window. Our car wasn’t air conditioned in those days.

While each of these trips provided a series of great bonding experiences with the family, the summer of ‘62 delivered that and a whole lot more. Our destination was the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which was about 18 hours by car from where we lived. It was a long, hot journey! I remember the smell of wet burlap and the occasional odd cool sensation on my face as the hot wind rushed through the slightly open back windows depositing water droplets on us from the sack hanging just outside the car.

This was all background noise for my busy mind. I was looking down at my brand new red high-top Converse tennis shoes. It was a family tradition to buy all the kids a new pair of shoes for graduation from each school grade. Finally, I had mine — the pair I had been dreaming about all year! This trip seemed especially long, because I was impatiently anticipating the next rest stop throughout the journey. You see, a kid with brand new red high-top Converse tennis shoes can practically fly when he sets to running. And that’s just what I did each time we stopped for a rest, which wasn’t frequently enough for me!

We finally arrived at the Grand Canyon. This trip included a trail ride down the canyon on the back of a mule. Normally, this activity would have been quite entertaining; however, it didn’t sate my appetite for properly exercising my new shoes. When we reached the bottom of the canyon, the guides and my parents unpacked mules. We kids explored.

I headed straight for the river that lay before us. This was a magical place. The river was low and huge rocks stood high and half-dry above the waterline, forming a near-perfect path down the center of the river. The rocks were spaced in such a way that a kid with red high-top Converse tennis shoes could fly from rock to rock. And that’s just what I did. I leaped from rock to rock, picking up speed, watching my shoes launch from the rock I was on and land on the rock before me. Just as I became aware of my rhythmic hopping, I sensed the canyon walls narrowing, curving, and the river taking a gentle bend. I heard a muffled sound — sort of like static on a television with poor reception. As I rounded the bend, I was greeted by a powerful roar. I looked up and beheld a majestic waterfall. A steady blast of water surged from a fracture high up the canyon wall and sheets of water fell in a massive arc, exploding onto the rocks 20 meters in front of me. Rainbows were shooting from the spray. I stood motionless … in awe … at one with this natural wonder.

This is what it is like to model somebody. This is the waterfall I see in each person when they sit down to share their cherished abilities with me. They are the waterfall, you are the waterfall, I am the waterfall, we are the waterfall.

This weekend, I enjoyed a telephone visit with my old friend and mentor, Keith Fail. As usual, it was completely stimulating and helps to define the terms “Meaningful Conversation” for me. Keith is as bright as they come and always pursuing a new avenue of inquiry. It is no wonder that he discovers so much of value to share with the rest of us.

This day, Keith was interested in questioning the extent to which certain forms of training and/or coaching are effective in the use of sometimes frightening confrontation. Along with being an advanced Master Practitioner of NLP, Keith had long ago dived deeply into the transformative aspects of EST (Erhard Seminar Training). That he derived many exceptional learning experiences from that work was quite apparent to him. In many ways, the acknowledged confrontations built into that program helped to break down the false ego and encourage taking genuine personal responsibility for his/her life experience. As we discussed many aspects of this kind of training, including military boot camps, our questions turned more and more to when and how these extraordinary methods might be useful or even beneficial.

I remembered the time when we took our Great Dane in for Puppy Training at PetSmart. One of the specific lessons we covered was “meeting other dogs.” As you might imagine, this is a real concern for a Great Dane owner. As sweet as Dana is, she can be pretty intimidating to smaller dogs. And even at 9-months old, she was bigger than all her classmates. When a cute little Cocker puppy was introduced to her, Dana stretched out her front legs, arched her back and leaned down to the puppy, tail in the air. The trainer was delighted with this. “Oh, that’s called a ‘Puppy Bow’”, she said, “And that’s the way one dog signals to another that everything that follows is just for fun.” She went on to explain that we could safely let the dogs play together, even growl and fight because it would all be pretend after that magical Puppy Bow. “If they had not done that”, she added, “A real fight might occur. The Puppy Bow makes anything that follows just fun.”

What a wonderful example of the power of the wider frame. I began to wonder if there were human correlates to this animal courtesy. And, of course, there are.

When martial artists are in training, they follow a rigorous sequence of courtesy before a workout or even a serious match. There is the bow of acknowledgement to the opponent and often to the dojo space itself. And it means very much the same thing as the Puppy Bow. It announces that what follows will be mutually beneficial as practice toward mastery and that no serious harm is intended. Without this courtesy, what follows might be no better than a street brawl.

So what does all this mean about training and coaching? For me, and I believe for Keith as well, the framing around the change process is critical. For each of us, operating inside the frame of deep and mutual personal regard provides a deep ecology for the client or learner and a set of permissions to do all that we can do to help each other get our well-formed outcomes. Never forgetting that we operate inside that frame which specifically states, “Everything that follows is meant to help you and not to harm in any way.”

Not only was it a thoughtful weekend. It was a special way to renew my deep admiration for Keith. As he has mentored me over the years, he has more than once held up a mirror for me so that I might see my shortcoming. Sometimes it actually made me mad because I did not want to see how silly I looked. And always, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Keith was doing this for me and not for him. That is why he is such a great teacher and coach.

We often sign our email to each other with the word Namaste. It is from an Indian tradition that means, “The divine in me salutes the divine in you.” Given that wider frame, confrontation may be a perfectly appropriate technique that always eventually dissolves completely and beautifully in love.

–Mike Bown