CLEANING UP IMPRECISION

Living life in language as we do is simultaneously a tremendous benefit and value and a challenge and a problem. The central problem that mostly challenges us is the lack of precision. And so many aspects of our language creates and encourages this lack of precision. Further, the problem is deeper than just our words. Not only are our languages not precise, but so also the way we think and reason—that also is not precise. Living in vague and fluffy language, we start to take on those traits in our reasoning and thinking. Consequently, the linguistic maps we construct for moving through life provides us some very poor and inadequate “maps” when navigating the seas of experience.

How then do we clean up our language? There are two models in NLP that work wonders for this: The Meta-Model of Language and the Representation Model. While this is true, there are many, many NLP trainers who don’t know this. That’s why many simply do not even teach the Meta-Model. They don’t present it and they don’t use it in their own communications.

The Meta-Model. The genius of NLP’s Meta-Model of Language is that it enables us to question to challenge a person’s linguistic structures to get inside the person’s mental model of the world to get more precise information. As such it provides a powerful tool for cleaning up our language. What was discovered from the extraordinary conversation skills of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir in the early days of NLP became the original eleven distinctions and then in 1997 at Richard Bandler’s bidding, I added more from Korzybski, Ellis, and Erickson. Today the extended Meta-Model has 22 linguistic distinctions and corresponding questions for creating clarity and precision. These are in the book, Communication Magic (2001).

Recently a young lady said the following when I asked her about her specific wealth creation plan. What is your plan?

“I just want to be a success in my career and help people, because contributing in that way really fulfills my purpose.”

Well, that’s imprecise—to say the least! I commented: “So you want to be successful in helping people, and can you tell me what you will be doing to help people that will be a contribution?”

“My contribution will change their lives, that’s what I’ll be doing.”

Now I’m guessing that her answered sounded specific to her in her head, but what was said on the outside was fluffy, vague, and imprecise. So I tried again. “Okay, so changing lives is the contribution that you’ll be making. And what kind of change will you be facilitating— remedial change or generative? Will it be change of behavior and performance, of person for developmental change or will it be transformation change of a new direction or paradigm?”

“Yes, that’s what I want to do and then I’ll be successful in my wealth creation.”

Obviously I was not getting through. Using the Meta-Model to diagnose this conversation, she was using unspecified verbs and nouns and lots of nominalizations (success, contribution, purpose, change, help). And apparently she was not even aware of her over-generalized language. “What will be your speciality in working with change, what will your clients change? What will they change from? What will they change to?”

“The changes that they need to make so that they can be more successful, that’s the kind.”

Having gotten no where with her, I commended to her. “In spite of all of your answers I still do not have a clue as to what you are talking about. If you want to communicate your thoughts so that I understand you or others understand you, you will need to change your imprecise language. You’ll have to make your verbs more specific and detail what your nominalizations mean. Right now your language strikes me as so vague, indefinite; it is sloppy and fluffy.”

Speaking generally or in a global fashion at best can present the big idea and create inspiration for it, but because the language is vague, it lacks precision. The Meta-Model enables us to clean up our fluffy imprecise language by directing us to question for specificity: who specifically are you talking about? What do you mean specifically by the X? When did that happen specifically?

Yes you can drive people crazy with this. And some people can get really frustrated because making what they’re talking about specific may be a skill they have not yet learned. In that case, the “specifically what do you mean?” can keep underscoring an incompetency and they will say the questions make them feel dumb! Of course, they are creating that state to the stimulus of the questions, yet without the ability to detail things, they will genuinely not know that. Be careful.

The Representational Model. In addition to the Meta-Model of Language, the Representational Model of specific sights, sounds, sensations, smells, and tastes also helps with the clarity of specificity. These sensory representations give more specificity. They are often called the VAK which is shorthand for vision, auditory, and kinesthetic. The skill of using these distinctions begins with the ability to representationally track a person’s words to a movie that you play in your mind. When a word or idea is presented and I cannot represent it in my mind, that’s when to get more specific information. Ask for details that will enable you to complete the mental movie. Doing this fills in the mental movie much like a screenplay writer fills in the details of a video-shot so that the producer and director knows when the set is set up and ready to go.

To speak in this way is to speak descriptively rather than evaluatively. That is the foundation for being a professional communicator. To not be able to recognize that distinction or make that distinction is to not be able to be professional as a communicator, but sloppy speaker. Ready to begin to clean up your fluffy and/or sloppy language habits? Try these foundational NLP models. If you want to become a professional communicator, get NLP practitioner training. You can find the content of it in the books, User’s Manual of the Brain – Volume I the Practitioner level; Volume II the Master Practitioner level. For the highest quality of training – use a Neuro- Semantic Trainer!