Making complex decisions rapidly
How do humans sum up a complex situation and rapidly decide what action to take?
Setting up Clean Space
Attending more to the artistic aspects of Clean Space whihc contribute to the overall aim of encouraging conditions for creative emergence.
The point of pointing
A new metaphor for the perspective I take when symbolic modelling:
What do you know about Symbolic Modelling?
15 questions to assess the degree to which.participants have acquired our model of facilitating.
The chaotic nature of the reorganisation process
Does emergent change always create a desired rather than a less desired result?
What is self-modelling?
A process whereby a person constructs a model of the way their system operates and in so doing provides feedback to the system from which it can learn.
Anchoring symbols in time/space
Investigating the ‘anchor’ metaphor in relation to a client’s inner landscape.
Forward to ‘Imagine your life in full color’
How Clean Language helped Debbie Happy Cohen write her book.
Leading the witness
Implications for Clean Language of Elizabeth Loftus’s classic research.
A Clean framework for change
A fully-formed stand-alone clean coaching process we used up to 2010.
The Clean Community
The clean community is a ‘community of practice’. Such communities are created by people gravitating to like-minded people who have a passion for something they do, the desire to learn how to do it better, and the motivation to interact regularly.
Tracking where clients perceive from
An important question-to-self when modelling symbolically is: Where is the client perceiving from?. Tracking changes to the ‘point of perception’ is a sophisticated skill.
Not making decisions for the client
The third of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators.
What facilitators tend to do too early
The second of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators.
Questions I frequently ask facilitators
The first of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators
Foreword to ‘The NLP Professional’
My reflections on being professional.
Clean evaluative interviewing
Using Symbolic Modelling and Clean Language as a research method to gather information through interviews about how coachees evaluate being coached.
Aristotle got there first
Examining the equivalence between Aristotle’s 4 causes and our 4 modelling processes.
Symbolic Modelling Lite
Introduces the ‘lite’ version of our general method. Published as Chapter 4 of Innovations in NLP.
The illusion of validity
Thoughts on Daniel Kahneman’s research into when confidence trumps the evidence.
Pathological altruism
When the zeal to heal can end up hurting
Metaphors we think with
Five experiments about how metaphors influence the way that we reason.
Self-nudge
Part 1 reviews theories about how we make (or take) decisions. Part 2 is a practical process for how to ‘nudge’ ourselves to beneficial behaviours.
Has biological progress had too much to drink?
Is increasing complexity of life just random motion away from simple beginnings?
Evolution’s arrow
Is there a direction to the evolution and the future of humanity?
Addicts, maps and sharp syntax
Penny Tompkins’ thoughts on Clean Language’s use with addictions.
How DO you know?
Modelling criteria: the principles, values or standard by which something may be judged or decided.
Analysing transcripts
How to model the pattern of facilitator/interviewer decisions from a session transcript.
Do your Clean Space instructions have wiggle room?
Reflections on subtle differences in some Clean Space instructions.
Off-piste interventions in Clean Space
When a client wondered about the source of a space.
The role of identifying
Experienced Clean facilitators make maximal use of just four fundamental modelling processes.
When science and spirituality have a beer
Video of a Symbolic Modelling session in English & French, and annotated transcript with seven Indicators of a binding patten.
Calibrating whether what you are doing is working or not
How facilitators calibrate when “it’s working” and when it’s not. Definitions, considerations, assumptions and an annotated transcript.
Benchmarking intangibles
Preface to Michael Hall’s book, Benchmarking Intangibles: The art of measuring quality
Metaphor as mistake
How ‘mistakes’ can be an accidental authentic acts of symbolising.
The Other Therapeutic Relationship
As well as ‘the’ therapeutic relationship between client and facilitator, the relationship between the client and themselves is just as important.
Theoretical underpinnings of Symbolic Modelling
The third draft of a summary of the theories behind the practice of Symbolic Modelling
If it is easy it is meant to be – or is it?
Does the value of something achieved / produced / created depend on hard / easy it was to achieve / produce / create?
What if there is no change?
How likely is it that a client will need to go beyond or outside the Symbolic Modelling Lite process?
Stochastic Tinkering
What drives most innovation, both of knowledge and technology? Making use of Nassim Nicholas Taleb ideas.
Metaphors of Movement & Symbolic Modelling
Discussions with Andrew Austin and Steve Andreas with comments by several others
Verbal dynamics
Early example of teaching through embodied cognition.
Am I visualizing a spatial model?
How I model a client’s metaphor landscape during a session.
Joining up the work of David Grove
How to combine the three main phases of David Grove’s work. Published in Acuity.
Balancing brain hemispheres
A neurological explanation for two of the stranger aspects of Clean Language.
Mutual gaze
The neurology activated when sharing a client’s inner landscape from their perspective.
Ent-sprechen says it all
We do not ask clean questions so they are ‘answered’, in the traditional meaning of that word. We ask them to envoke Ent-sprechen:
Metaphor, the body, and healing
Working with physical symptoms. the body as metaphor and a case study. Published in The CAPA Quarterly, 2011.
The selfish metaphor
The role of metaphor in shaping our ideas about evolution
Desired outcome thinking
Our definition and the difference with solution thinking
Survival of the sickest – Part 2
If natural ‘selection’ is a ‘filter’, how does the system filter changes?
Survival of the sickest – Part 1
Comments on Sharon Moalem’s Survival of the Sickest: The surprising connections between disease and longevity.
Monkey see, monkey don’t
New reserach show how we learn not to act like someone when they fail.
Why are so many of the safest humans in history scared of their own shadow?
Five comments on Dan Gardner conclusion to Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear.
Robustness and Fragility – Part 4
NN Taleb identifies the three ‘villains’ that make companies Black Swan prone. How do they apply to individuals?
Robustness and Fragility – Part 3
“After the crisis, people asked me what we should be doing. The logical conclusion is to stay as far away as possible from certain exposures that make you Black Swan prone.” NN Taleb.
Robustness and Fragility – Part 2
“There is an environment that creates Black Swan problems; a man made environment that I call ‘extremistan’ … where the exception plays a very large role”. NN Taleb.
Robustness and Fragility – Part 1
“The problem with technology is that when it works, it is better; when it does not work, it is far worse.” NN Taleb
Contraindications for Symbolic Modelling
Are certain client populations not suited to Symbolic Modelling?
Clients who dismiss their metaphors as fantasy
How to work with someone who can develop rich metaphors for their desired outcomes but later dismisses them as only fantasy.
Fear of who I would be
‘A victim’ is a perspective on a situation which can develop into a perspective on life. The question is, do we also have the choice to be other-than-a-victim?
A New Year’s gift
A ‘thought experiment’ to appreciate more or to be more grateful for someone or something in your life.
The dieter’s paradox
A new study which concludes that weight-conscious individuals are likely to believe in “negative calories”. But do they really?
Thinking is simulation
Cognitive scientists believe the brain simulates experience from the past in order to make sense of the world today, how does that influences who we think are?
Fleeting sensations and embodied cognition
If bodily states infiltrate cognition so often, why are we so seldom aware of this phenomenon?
Real or symbolic, does our brain care?
My thoughts on ‘This Is Your Brain on Metaphors’ by Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Neurology and Neurosurgery.
Slow hunches and the adjacent possible
If ‘eureka moments’ are very, very rare how do we progress? Rather than leaps it seems we take the next “adjacent possible” step.
What did Improv ever do for us?
The cross-overs between improvisational theatre and facilitating a Symbolic Modelling session.
‘If only God would give us a sign’
The vital role of clients’ meta-comments (verbal or nonverbal expressions refering to what has just been experienced) in Symbolic Modelling. Published in ‘Acuity’.
Modelling the written word
How to model text with a clean and metaphor perspective.
Huh? – Shifting frames
We examine what happens when someone is asked a question within one frame and their answer appears to come from a completely different frame.
Modelling Robert Dilts modelling
This report describes both the product of our modelling ‘Selecting what is essential’ and the process by which we arrived at our model.
Appendix to Modelling Robert Dilts modelling
Source material for the modelling project.
Modelling how to act from what you know to be true
How to act from what you know to be true when you don’t know how to, or you’re frightened of the consequences
Cognitive dissonance and creative tension
What is cognitive dissonance? How does it relate to self-deception, double binds and the creative process?
Clean Space revisited
With the benefit of hindsight and seven years of experience and experimenting, we thought it was time to revisit our first 2003 model.
Embodied Schema
A window into the organisation of a person’s subjective world and a doorway into precise Clean Language.
Accepting Acceptance
What difference does it makes to the potential for change when people truly accept their current reality from an authentic, deep and cellular state of being?
Attending to Salience
What we pay attention to in a client session that: (1) guides our line of questioning, and (2) gives the session its sense of directional flow.
Vectoring and systemic outcome orientation
How excellent facilitators and therapists know how to navigate elegantly through a client’s information.
Maximising Serendipity: A systemic approach to change
A six-stage model of how to benefit by utilising unexpexted, unpredictable and random events.
Black Swan Logic
Exploring how ideas from The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb relate to working cleanly.
Coaching in the moment
A model of Vivian Gladwell’s method of in-the-moment directing of trainee improvisational clowns, adapted for developing Symbolic Modelling skills.
The neurobiology of space
Quotes from, and comments on, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel
Outcome Orientation
How desired outcomes can act as “dynamic reference points” for each and every thing the therapist does and says.
Iteration, Iteration, Iteration
Explains why this special kind of nonlinear process is so important in therapy and coaching – and life.
Proximity and Meaning
The significance of adjacency, next to-ness, how to recognise it and how to work with it for ourselves and our clients.
Modelling Conflict
How to think about and model the systemic nature of this kind of relationship
Coaching with Metaphor
Together metaphor and Clean Language are ideal for working with out-of-the-ordinary problems and high-level goals. Published in Cutting Edge Coaching Techniques Handbook
Using Symbolic Modelling as a research and interview tool
Reviews how Clean Language has been used in research and interviewing and details the Minewater Project as an example
How to do a modelling project
A summary of our 25 years experience conducting full-scale modelling projects.
Modelling: Top-down and Bottom-up
Examines two types of modelling and lists some principles for applying bottom-up modelling
Thinking Networks II
Part 1 of how to think about the emergence of networks,, what they look like, and how they evolve.
What is Therapeutic Modelling?
The similarities and differences between therapeutic and product modelling. Published in ReSource 8
Becausation
Using Aristotle’s four causes and a Cognitive Linguist metaphorical perspective to model causation.
Paying attention to what they’re paying attention
How we came up with our ‘Perceiver, Perceived, Relationship between, in a Context’ model – and its multiple uses.
Coaching for P.R.O.’s
How to recognise and respond with Clean Language to a client’s Problem, Remedy or a desired Outcome. Published in ‘Coach the Coach’.
The Ethics of Change Work
John Grinder discusses what’s ethical in NLP and what’s not. We add our comments from a ‘clean’ perspective.
When ‘Where’ Matters
Once a space becomes psychoactive a person is ‘living in their metaphor’. A joined-up model of how David Grove’s work invokes the psychoactivity of spatial relations in therapeutic and in other settings.
When the Remedy is the Problem
How attempts at solving a problem can perpetuate or exacerbate that problem or create another problem.