Whether your field of excellence is in sport, sales, politics, stagecraft or any other aspect of life, the chances are there is somebody who does it better than you.

It can take years to develop a really great skill.

It can take hours to learn to reproduce it!

Think about it, the person who developed that skill first had nothing to go on, they made it up from scratch, or perhaps from a selection of (often conflicting) bits of advice, from a few good lessons and a lot of lessons that didn’t quite make sense or fit together.

One thing is for sure. The very best performers in most fields don’t make the very best coaches.  That’s because they often act instinctively and don’t even know how they do it themselves. Yet they are still perfect examples...  if you know how to learn from them.

What is NLP modelling?

For a moment, think about what children manage to learn before they go to school or nursery. Eating, sleeping, walking, talking, running, jumping, visuo-spatial analysis, reading other peoples moods, getting what they want...
The list is huge and includes the majority of the most complex things we do, and yet all of this is done before anybody has taught them how to learn.
In fact most of our behaviour and belief systems are firmly in place by the time we’re seven and don’t significantly change afterwards without intervention.

Children are instinctive modellers, they exhibit the qualities of wonder and exuberant curiosity without thought of the consequences or expectations of their learning. They have a talent to learn at phenomenal rates given the appropriate supportive conditions.

Only when we send them to school and children are indoctrinated into instructional learning, where the knowledge imparted to them has already been selected, edited and taken (largely) out of context, do they change the way they learn...  and slow down!

NLP Modelling is accelerated learning.  NLP Modelling is the ability to fully replicate a desirable skill or behaviour that another person has into two discrete parts

1) The full unconscious set of behaviours that perform the skill

2) The coding of such behaviours into a teachable / learnable format

You will notice that there is no mention of understanding in NLP modelling. Understanding is a conscious process and one which can take a very long time.
Very few of the highly skilled athletes, politicians, actors or salespeople with whom I have worked really understand what makes them so good...  that’s because it’s all unconscious and modelling is about replicating that same unconscious behaviour.