Modeling

What modeling means in NLP

Modeling (often spelled modelling) is one of the originating ideas of NLP. Rather than beginning with a theory of personality, early NLP work tried to describe what effective communicators and therapists were already doing.

In practitioner literature, a model is not a statue of a person. It is a usable description: distinctions, sequences, language patterns, and conditions under which a skill shows up.

How it is used

A modelling project typically asks:

• What is the person doing, internally and externally, when the result happens?
• What do they pay attention to?
• What do they believe is possible in that context?
• Which steps are necessary, and which are incidental?

The aim is a description another person can try, not a celebrity biography.

Example

Instead of asking a calm public speaker to “be more confident”, a modeller might notice how they prepare, where they look, how they breathe, and what they say to themselves in the minute before speaking. Those details can be practised. They are still not a proof that the original speaker’s talent has been copied in full.

Related terms

Modeling sits behind much of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Skills such as rapport are often taught as modelled patterns. Presuppositions and representational systems are among the distinctions a modeller may listen for. The sequences they find are often named strategies.

Common misunderstanding

A named NLP technique is not automatically a faithful model of the person it is associated with. An exercise named after a famous person should not be treated as a documented account of that person’s actual thinking unless independent historical evidence says so.

Limits

Modeling is a practical research attitude. Whether a particular model is accurate, complete or transferable is a separate question and has to be judged case by case.