Clean Language Demonstration-April 2011 filmed by nlpworldwide.com

NOTE: Below is a downloadable double-annotated transcript of the session and further analysis.

This response of groups to a demonstration of Symbolic Modelling is not an isolated incident. We have demonstrated to all kinds of groups in a variety of countries and we have often noticed a pattern. During the demo we often pause to ask the group what they are attending to. Rarely does anyone suggest something that is high on our list. And if they do, we interpret it in different ways. Why is this? We believe many of the differences stem from how each facilitator calibrates whether what they are doing is working, or not.

This paper is not about the difference between Symbolic Modelling and other approaches. We are just as interested in the way different facilitators calibrate in Symbolic Modelling. Below is a transcript of the start of a session using Clean Language. As you read it you can wonder what on earth the facilitator was calibrating for. The client started by saying: “I want to integrate diversity without dispersing myself and diversify myself without losing focus. I want to find my balance.” The session continued:

Penny intervened at this point. Later the facilitator asked Penny: “What do you do with such a resistant client? How can you push through their resistance and let them know their role, and that the facilitator is in charge?”

The facilitator calibrated the client as “resistant”. Penny on the other hand calibrated the client as “exasperated” which is why she intervened.

The point of the transcript is to show how using Clean Language does not immunise the facilitator from missing signs that what they are doing is not working for the client. It also demonstrates how a facilitator can go on and on despite obvious not-working signals. We added this transcript to ensure that the debate around this subject is not about any particular modality or technique. All are subject to being misused if the facilitator is not calibrating the client’s reactions, from the client’s perspective.

Of course it is fine for us to pose such questions, but can we answer them for ourselves?

Definitions of calibrate

Over many years we have observed thousands of coaches, therapists and other kinds of facilitators working, and we are convinced that most facilitators pay attention to different things than we do.

Our dictionary gives three definitions for ‘calibrate’:

1. To mark (a gauge or instrument) with a standard scale of readings.
2. To correlate the readings of an instrument with those of a standard in order to check the instrument’s accuracy.
3. To adjust (experimental results) to take external factors into account or to allow comparison with other data.

A classic example of definition #2 is someone from the Office of Standards checking the weighing scales in a butcher’s shop. They bring along standard weights to see if the scales are working accurately. i.e. they compare the behaviour of the scales against a criterion. Note that every now and then the standard weights themselves need to be calibrated against another standard. This in turn will need to be calibrated … and so on. At some point someone has to say: This is accurate enough for our purposes.

Apparently the origin of the word calibrate comes from the Arabic for ‘mold,’ which itself may have been based on the Greek meaning a ‘shoemaker’s last’ – the device shaped like a human foot used to fashion a shoe.

In their Encyclopedia of NLP, Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier say “Calibration is the name given, in NLP, to the process of learning how to read another person’s responses in an ongoing interaction”.^[2] This involves correlating external behavioural cues to specific internal cognitive and emotional states. Pictures of Robert are used as an example of calibrating whether he is ‘satisfied’ or ‘dissatisfied’. Used in this way, calibrating an individual’s state is more sophisticated than those popular books that tell you how to read body language based on so-called ‘universal telltale signs’.

Our use of ‘calibrating’ is based on a metaphorical extension of the second dictionary definition above. We use the term in a similar way to its use in NLP although we are less interested in matching behaviour to specific internal states, and more interested in calibrating broad categories of states so we know what to do next. For example our REPROCess model involves calibrating when the client is experiencing a Resource, Explanation, Problem, Remedy, desired Outcome or Change, rather than any specific state within those categories. Calibrating individual states can be useful but only if you have calibrated the broad category accurately first. Of course every facilitator says they can recognise the difference between, say, Problems, Resources and desired Outcomes, and they can, but in real time, during hurly-burly of a session, plenty of first-hand evidence suggests the majority don’t.^[3]

We are particularly interested in the calibration that takes place from the very beginning of a session, before any changes have happened. This involves calibrating broad classes of states such as ‘preparing’ or ‘getting ready’ or ‘on the way to’. In the words of Ernest Rossi the client is laying the ground for “a period of creative inner work [and] a living experiential reality [of] re-synthesizing [their] inner world”. (p. 24, Symptom Path to Enlightenment). But how do we know the ground work will bear fruit? We can’t know for sure, but we can play the percentages.

Calibrating whether the behaviour of a client indicates that they are benefiting from the process or not, is a form of ongoing feedback loop to the facilitator. While it seems like the facilitator is calibrating the client, they are also calibrating their own effectiveness.

Considerations

Below are a number of aspects which we think have a bearing on calibrating what’s working. They are are more about raising questions than about giving definitive answers. For example:

Faster isn’t necessarily better – every natural system has a ‘too fast’ setting when the speed of change becomes counter-productive. (The same is true of ‘too slow’.)

We can consider these questions from a number of time-frames (from longest to shortest):

At the time the client may not be in a position to assess whether the therapy/coaching was effective and efficient. So how long after do you wait to enquire, and how many times do you sample? We read of a client who changed his assessment three times in the 10 years following therapy. It went from “fantastic”, to “I wish I never gone”, to “I’m glad I did it and there would have been a better way to do it”

The calibration that seems to have less said about it than any of the others is the last one. Before a change has happened, how do we know that what we are doing is likely to be valuable for the client?

Also, at what scale do we calibrate?

A participant undertaking an NLP Master Practitioner modelling project wanted to know how international-level orienteers managed to stay on course so well. He had thought they created a sophisticated 3D mental map of the landscape. Instead he discovered something much simpler, they checked their map much more frequently than less-accomplished orienteers. That meant when they got off course, which was rare, they could easily retrace their steps to the point of departure and continue in a better direction.

Despite the fact that navigating a client’s mental landscape is more complicated than orientating a physical landscape – it can change without warning and you don’t have a map – we think there is a lesson to be learned from expert orienteers. How often do we consider whether the client is on course? How frequently do we check whether what we are doing is working?

Eugene Gendlin was the first person we know to shine light on this topic. In the 1960s Gendlin engaged in research at the University of Chicago to figure out why some therapy sessions more successful than others. He spent a long time trying to discern consistent patterns in therapists’ behaviour but he kept drawing a blank.

Gendlin made what we consider to be a brilliant methodological shift. He started to study what clients did. He discovered that clients who got the most from therapy experienced a “felt sense” and, if given the space and time found descriptive words that resonated with the felt sense. Usually there followed a “felt shift”, and the person would begin to be able to move beyond their stuck-ness. Gendlin went on develop, Focusing, a simple methodology that facilitates people to engage in these kinds of inner acts.

In outcome-orientated approaches the client’s desired outcome will form part of the calibration, but in spite of what evidence-based therapies say, it can’t be the whole deal. Why not? Because:

What do we do when the client can’t specify a desired outcome?

How do we know it’s working when the client’s outcome can’t be achieved during the session (which is most of the time)?

A well-specified TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) will tell us if we have arrived at the destination, it doesn’t tell us if we’re heading in a useful direction. Edward de Bono has said “It may be necessary to go south for a while in order to journey north”, but how long do you travel south before you conclude you’re going in the wrong direction?

The specificity of the client’s evidence for achieving their desired outcome is an important factor. For example, with a straightforward phobia success is usually very clear. When the outcome is something like ‘fulfilling my life’s purpose’, it is not obvious how anyone would know until the client is on their deathbed.

Often simple remedies are easier to calibrate than desired outcomes. It’s not difficult to know if a burst pipe has been fixed. It takes much more skill to know if a water-system is working efficiently and is well-maintained – especially if that is being measured over the life-cycle of the system (c.f. Peter Senge, et. al. A Necessary Revolution).

Top-down or bottom-up approaches  will use qualitatively different ways of calibrating; think of sailing when you can see the destination, compared to sailing blind. To avoid getting locked into top-down criteria Nassim Nicholas Taleb recommends “stochastic tinkering”.

There is a sweet and oft told story:

There is no doubt the boy made a difference to the starfish he threw back in the ocean, but was it a valuable difference? And valuable for whom? What natural process was he interfering in? What were the consequences for other species and the rest of the environment? How often has humankind, on a global or individual level, thought it was helping only to realise later it had made matters worse?

In addition, it seems to us that calibrating what’s working is closely related to three topics we have previously covered at the Developing Group: Vectoring; Attending to salience; and Scaling.

If you are of a mind to undertake a self-exploration, these questions should help:

Of course you can ask these question of yourself too much. The resulting self-doubt can render even the best facilitator ineffective.

Assumptions

Given that there is so little research available on this topic, we realise we have made a large number of assumptions. Below is a list of the ones we are aware of.

Everyone is calibrating against some internal criteria.^[5]

Calibrating involves two aspects:

And remember, a single black swan can turn all previous evidence on its head.

Calibrating needs to be dynamic; it has to change depending on:

Calibration is a meta-assessment. Calibrating whether it’s working or not is a level above vectoring. It asks:

And based on that assessment:

It is insufficient to only calibrate the client:

– Being in a good state (They may feel good, temporarily, but that may not be evidence that anything has changed for the better).

– Catharting (“Affect does not equal effect” – as they say at the Findhorn spiritual community)

– Having an insight (“Information does not equal transformation” – Findhorn again)

– Being congruent (Dilemmas/conflicts are sometimes as good as it gets).

– Experiencing a change (Does the change make a valued difference? If not, so what? And who decides what is ‘valued’?)

– Getting what they want (If an ‘infertile’ couple does not have the child they want, was therapy a failure?)

– Praising the work (Eric Berne knew the dangers of being charmed by a client’s praise. He called the TA Game: ‘Gee Professor, you’re wonderful’).

– By their referral of others to you (Great but there can be a huge time lag, and how do you know in the meantime?)

It is also insufficient to only calibrate against:

– Your feelings (You might feel it’s going well or I’m lost/confused – but what’s happening for the client? That’s what counts).

– The ease/flow of the session (You might think if it’s easy it’s going well – but sometimes the opposite is true).

– Having seen something similar before (This client may be the one exception).

No matter how accurate your calibration signals, there will always be exceptions – clients who don’t fit your norms. We once had a demonstration subject who’s signal for ‘I am waiting for the next question’ was to look down in her lap. We completely mis-read the signal and thought that she was continuing to process. It wasn’t until the next day she revealed that she had been sitting waiting for us while we were sitting waiting for her!

Transcript annotated for calibrating

You can download a transcript of the 10-minute video’d demonstration mentioned above: SyM-Lite-calibrating-transcript-v7.pdf. It has been annoated in two ways:

An analysis of the transcript revealed that James asked 24 questions in total (excluding the Set Up and Set Down phases and the three repeating back the clients words without asking a question), of which:

3 x    Like to have happen?

6 x    Anything else?

4 x    What kind of?

4 x    Where/Whereabouts?

1 x    Inside/Outside?

1 x    When … What happens to …?

5 x    Then what happens?

James reflected after the self-modelling:

Modelling the information and calibrating the client are two closely interlinked processes. In this particular case I have put much less in the modelling column than is usual. I think the client played a big part in this (a) because it was a simple landscape with just a few symbols, (b) he gave very concise answers, and (c) he kept close to his original frame. Much of the time it was ‘obvious’ what to ask about next in order to keep the process flowing.

I think this transcript shows that the length and complexity of a session is sometimes down to the client distracting themselves, loosing the frame, talking for the sake of it, not being able to select for salience, and so on. When you add in that the facilitator can do all of these things too, it’s no wonder sessions get convoluted. And while facilitators need to learn to calibrate what is working and what isn’t – so do clients!

What we calibrate against

Below is a tentative first-pass at describing some of the factors we take into account when calibrating whether what we are doing is working or not.

In the notes for the May 2011 Developing Group we introduced Three principles of Symbolic Modelling. The third principle states:

We use the term ‘encouraging conditions’ to emphasize that we can’t make a client change, nor can a technique, and often a client is powerless to change themselves – until the conditions are right for them. Then the system re-synthesises of its own accord, often much to the surprise of the client and facilitator alike.

What are the conditions to be encouraged? And how do we know the client is experiencing them? To assist in answering these questions we have extracted the criteria being calibrated (not the client content being modelled) in the attached transcript:

Calibrations during the 6 SyM phases from attached 10-minute transcript

Set Up (Phase 1)

Identify desired Outcome (Phase 2)

Develop desired Outcome Landscape (Phase 3)

Explore effects of desired Outcome landscape (Phase 4)

Mature Changes (Phase 5)

Set Down (Phase 6)

The first thing to note is that the majority of the criteria are from the perspective that Ken Wilber calls “Zone #2 singular”: an interior (of an “I”) looked at from the outside, i.e. a third-person modelling of a first-person reality, from their perspective. The criteria marked with an * are from different perspectives.^[7]

We can summerise the above as calibrating whether the client is (or is not):

The client is at some level always embodying what’s happening. And when that becomes more overt and living-it-now it is often a prelude to a shift in the system (although embodying a memory of a trauma can be counterproductive).

The three criteria above lead to psychoactivity – The client responding unbidden to their own inner symbolic world, especially with curiosity, wonder and surprise.

Other criteria are that the client:

4. Goes with the flow. Although not specifically mentioned in this annotation, there is often a palpable moment when the client lets go of trying to control and
understand what is happening and “takes the hand-brake off” as one client put it. This is not a passive ‘do it to me’ but rather an active participation in the unknown.

5. Is identifying, developing and exploring the effects of their desired outcome landscape.

6. Engages in deeper than usual processing, jumping to a pattern level or making new connections that lead to a different engagement with or perspective on the material.

7. Meta-comments that they are deriving (potential) benefit from what’s happening (their nonverbals are often a kind of meta-comment too).

8. Indicates that a change or shift prompts:

As we have hinted, for every criteria we, or anyone defines, there will be contexts when the opposite applies.