Modelling is The Heart of NLP

By: Joseph O'Connor and Ian McDermott

In our last article we looked at the neurological levels of learning - environment, behaviour, capability, beliefs and values and identity.

NLP began in the early 1970's. The Behaviourist psychology of the time was about action and reaction, stimulus-response, the interaction between environment and behaviour. There were also many value-based psychological systems, stressing beliefs, and self -actualisation. What was missing was the capability level - the How To. NLP provided step by step procedures to make excellence learnable. How are talented people able to do what they do? NLP demystifies talent.

NLP began asModelling - finding out how outstanding communicators got their results and then teaching those means to others. Modelling success, it gives techniques and tools; analysing the structure of our experience makes it understandable for others.

NLP now has many explicit models in many different fields, particularly education and business.

How do you learn a skill?

Here is the traditional way of thinking about learning. As you read it think about your experience of learning a skill such as riding a bicycle or driving a car.

Learning a skill goes through four stages.

    1. Unconscious Incompetence: In this state, not only can you not do it, you have never tried. You did not even know that you didn't know.
    2. Conscious Incompetence: You know enough to know you are not very good. This stage is uncomfortable, but it is also the stage when you are learning the most.
    3. Conscious Competence: You have the skill, but it still takes a lot of your attention.
    4. Unconscious Competence: when you do it easily without thinking. It has become streamlined and habitual, and is taken over by the unconscious part of your mind. Beyond this stage is Mastery
    At the heart of this model is the two steps where you are conscious of what you do, you pay attention to it. You analyse the pieces first before putting them together. NLP has explored accelerated learning - where you can by-pass many of the conscious steps and stages. You learn to do something and only later learn how you are doing it. NLP training uses accelerated learning methods. We will say more about accelerated learning in future articles.

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