Operating in the test stage reveals congruity or incongruity. If incongruity shows up, the process will loop back to the test. If congruity shows up, it exits. This model demonstrates the importance of continually applying resources to present state to achieve new outcome state. Success comes from repeatedly testing present states against desired outcomes; accessing and applying resources until the two states attain congruence.
The TOTE model presupposes that we can achieve behavioral excellence through having 1) a future goal in mind, 2) sensory and behavioral evidence that indicates the achieving of the goal, and 3) a range of operations, procedures or choices with which to accomplish reaching the goal.
16.13 Then NLP Enriched The TOTE Model And Created “Strategies”
The co-founders of NLP derive their strategy model from the TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) model of the cognitive psychologists Miller, Galanter, and Pribram who presented it as a more complete elaboration of the old S-R model. The TOTE provided the basic format for describing a specific sequence of behavior as it described a sequence of activities that consolidates into a functional unit of behavior that typically executes below the threshold of consciousness.
Designating this process a mental strategy, Dilts, Bandler, Grinder, and DeLozier (1980) articulated the NLP model with the template of the TOTE. As they did this they enriched and extended the TOTE to include the pieces of subjectivity that they had discovered: sensory rep system, submodalities, eye accessing cues, and linguistic predicates, etc. By these pieces one could learn to unpack an unconscious strategy, anchor the elements together, and reframe its meanings, and thereby design and install a strategy. They thought that this would provide a fully articulated model for modeling excellence.
NLP refined the TOTE model by specifying how we do our testing and operating in terms of rep system and submodalities.
NLP refined the TOTE model by specifying how we do our testing and operating in terms of rep system and submodalities. By stating that the test conditions and the operation stages took place actually through the rep system, they provided an even greater refinement to the model. In doing so, it offered more refined methods for working with a TOTE. For instance, a person could compare external/ internal visual remembered (Ve/Vi) to test something. “Does this spelling look like the way I remembered that it should look?” Or one could do it in the kinesthetic system (Ke/Ki) or in the auditory (Ae/Ai). The experience of congruence (which leads to exiting a program), and incongruence (which keeps us inside a program) also shows up as represented through one of the rep systems.
In this model, a test may take place between two internally stored or generated representations. Tests may involve tests of the intensity, size, color, etc., of a representation. A person may require that a certain sensation, sound, or sight reach a certain threshold value before it produces a sufficient signal to exit.
The goal of TOTE and rep system analysis inherently involves finding the most appropriate rep system for the TOTE steps that will lead to the outcome.
Further, since we generally prefer one rep system over another, rep system primacy reveals how we may use our most highly valued rep system in performing tests and operations, even when it doesn’t work well and so creates difficulties and limitations. This more refined model revealed that effectiveness often simply involves learning to match the appropriate rep system to the task (that is, visual rep system to spelling, auditory to music). In fact, the goal of TOTE and rep system analysis inherently involves finding the most appropriate rep system for the TOTE steps that will lead to the outcome. In this way, we can learn to use all of our rep system as resources for learning and performing.
We sort spelling strategies into visual ones and phonetic ones. A phonetic strategy goes: Ae? Ai/Ae. Yet since visual coding of the English language does not follow phonetic rules, people with visual strategy consistently perform much better in spelling. The sounding-out strategy works very well for oral reading presentations, but not for spelling. The visual strategy goes:
Figure 15:3 Spelling TOTE
(First, you hear the sound of a word by someone saying, “Spell ______.” Then you run the first test by constructing a Visually Remembered check. If it feels right for the second Test you then Exit by spelling the word out loud or writing it out. If it feels wrong, loop back to recall another visual image.)
16.13.0.116 Using “Strategy Analysis” To Track Down Where A Brain Goes
As a summary of strategies, Dilts, Bandler, Grinder, DeLozier (1980) wrote,
“All of our overt behavior is controlled by internal processing strategies. Each of you has a particular set of strategies for motivating yourself out of bed in the morning, for delegating job responsibilities to employees, for learning and teaching, for conducting business negotiations, and so on.” (p. 26).
We analyze a strategy by breaking its structure (the TOTE) into its components of representations and discovering its order (sequence) for that particular activity.
We analyze a strategy by breaking its struc ture (the TOTE) into its components of representations and discovering its order (sequence) for that particular activity. In doing this we “track” where a brain goes (representationally) to create its neurological experiences. The TOTE model informs us that in doing so we perform tests on input, operate on it, perhaps loop around in retesting, and eventually exit the “program.”
Metaphorically, we can think of representations as the digits on a telephone that we push when we want to call someone.
Metaphorically, we can think of representations as the digits on a telephone that we push when we want to call someone. To reach our desired party, we have to punch in certain signals (the numbers) and do so in a certain sequence. Similarly, sequencing our internal representations leads to various outcomes depending on what signals we punch in and the order in which we do that. If we punch in a sequence of representational activity (seeing this, hear that, feeling this, etc.) that leads to accessing mental-emotional resources, then we have the structure of that experience.
By the same token, we mis-strategize inappropriate information. Other problems can arise in our strategies: we may develop inflexibility, overgeneralize our strategies, get stuck in them as in troublesome behaviors like phobic responses, losing temper, jumping to conclusions, or mis-strategize tune into inappropriate information in another rep system.
16.14 Mastering “The Strategies Model”
Tracking down where a brain goes to create its experiences presupposes numerous skills. Inasmuch as a strategy identifies where the brain goes, and how it responds along the way, to produce its results, to identify strategies we minimally need the ability to:
identify the strategy,
elicit the strategy, interrupt or alter the strategy, design new strategies or redesign old ones,
install the strategy, or utilize it in a different context.
These skills also presuppose awareness and sensitivity to the signs and cues that indicate the operation of a strategy. We need to be skillful in managing the strategy that we elicit via anchoring, reframing, pacing, etc. We need to be able to compare and analyze between strategies in order to improve their design.
When we unpack a strategy we start to make conscious the pieces that make it up.
When we unpack a strategy we start to make conscious the pieces that make it up. When a behavior has attained the status of a TOTE, its signal level lies below consciousness so that we no longer know explicitly the details of each step. It therefore requires much skill and practice to make these unconscious strategies explicit. Even the person displaying the strategy will not consciously know the steps. The NLP model entails applying the art of calibrating to accessing cues, sensory specific predicates, etc.
16.15 Strategy Elicitation
When we want the recipe for a delicious dish and how to cook, we need specific information about the elements, their amounts, the order, etc. The same holds with getting the structure of subjective experiences.
1) Establish a positive frame for rapport. “You do that very well, teach me how to do that.” “Suppose I lived your life for a day, how would I do this?”
2) Access the state.The person needs to associate fully and congruently with the skill or state. To fully elicit their strategy, take the person back to the place where the behavior naturally occurs. This lets the context, with its natural anchors (sitting at a keyboard) elicit the response.Or we can elicit the state by reproducing a portion of the context (tonality, gestures, play-acting, etc.).
3) Intensify the state. In elicitation, the more of the state we evoke, the better.
4) Explore the “how.” “How do you make this?” If the person has consciousness of their strategy, they will tell you. If not, expect them to demonstrate it. Eliciting involves good questioning techniques that evokes a person to carry out a task that requires the strategy.
“Have you ever experienced a time when you really felt motivated to do something? “When did that last occur when you felt really motivated?” “What does that feel like when you felt exceptionally creative?” “Have you ever gotten into a situation where you felt very creative?” Accessing questions involve a person recalling an experience. “What did it feel like? How did you do it? When do you feel best able to do it? What do you need to do it? What happens as you do it? When did that last occur?”
Such questions encourage a person to “go inside” to their memory banks and access their personal history. Doing this Trans-derivational Search (TDS) to our reference experiences not only serves as the way we all make sense of things and deal with stimuli, but also how we use such to re-create states and experience. We can also use this TDS process to assist someone to go back through “time” to recover the full experience.
5) Calibrate from an uptime state. Being fully alert and open to the person’s external cues enables us to calibrate to the state as we watch the person demonstrate the strategy. People typically demonstrate as they talk about problems, outcomes, or experiences (the mind-body systemic response). Our attentiveness to such “instant replays” enables us to note how they cycle through the sequence of representations that lead to their response.
6) Ask them to exaggerate. If we don’t get the strategy, invite the person to exaggerate some small portion of the strategy. Exaggerating one step in a strategy may also access other representations linked to it synesthetically.
7) Stay Meta to the content. Remember that strategies operate as purely formal structures.
In NLP we typically focus on eliciting excellence rather than pathology in human experience. We elicit resourceful experiences (creativity, motivation, remembering, decision, conviction, confidence, etc.). This is what you say:
“As you remember a time when you experienced all your full resources and potential as a person, go back to that occasion, now, so that you re-experience that event fully and completely.”
General and basic elicitation question include:
16.16 Trigger questions:
“How do you know when to begin the process of…?
(motivation, deciding, learning)
“What lets you know you feel ready to…?”
16.17 Operation questions:
“What do you do first?
“What happens as you begin?”
“What do you do when you don’t feel sure that you have reached your goal?”
16.18 Test questions:
“What comparison do you make?
“How do you know when you have satisfied your criteria?”
16.19 Choice point questions:
“What lets you know you have finished?”
“What lets you know you should move on to something else?”
“What lets you know you have not succeeded at this?”
“How do you know you’ve ended your process?”
If we think about the learning strategy, then once we ask a person to think about a time or situation wherein they learned something extremely well with ease and competence, then we can ask the following:
16.20 Operations questions:
“What happens as you learn something?
“What do you do as you prepare to learn something?”
“What steps do you go through to learn something quickly?”
“What do you do when you don’t feel sure that you have met your criteria?”
16.21 Test questions:
“What demonstrates that you have successfully learned something quickly?”
“How do you know when you have learned something quickly?” “How do you test whether you have achieved your desired outcome?”
16.22 Decision Point questions:
“How do you know when you have successfully learned easily and effectively?”
“What lets you know that you have not yet finished learning something?”
“What lets you know that you feel ready to move on to something else?”
“When you don’t feel sure you have successfully learned something, what lets you know that?”
Suppose we want to track the brain-body (neuro-linguistics) of someone who completes a task generally considered unpleasant and discover their strategy. Begin by asking generally, “How do you get yourself to do an unpleasant task like cleaning the toilet, taking out the garbage, doing taxes, etc.” Then invite them to access that state. “Think of a time when you motivated yourself to do something that you didn’t want to do. How did you do that? What pictures, voices, and messages, etc., did you use to motivate yourself to do something you found unpleasant?”
One man I interviewed would look at the situation externally and make a constructed image of seeing himself carrying out the proposed behavior and then quickly fast-forward the movie to the end where he sees the desired results. He would get a positive feeling of muscle tension and increasing warmth as he watched this internal movie. He would then hear a voice saying, “Just do it” in a matter-of-fact tonality. When he heard that voice, he would simply rise and execute the behavior.
Ve → Vc … Vc –m– K+ → Adt → Exit
Let’s track down your brain activity as it codes and creates a sense of anxiety, stress, and de-motivation about getting up for work. One man said, “I tell myself that I can rest for a few more minutes, and I do. As time passes, my picture of arriving at work late gets bigger and closer and brighter. It stays the same picture, but when it becomes big enough, I have to get out of bed to stop the bad feelings.”
Ad → Vi/Vi/Vi/ → K → Exit
16.23 Unpacking Strategies As They Flash By
To identify each step we must either increase our abilities to observe rapid and minute behavioral changes or slow the process down by asking good questions.
One problem involved in unpacking strategies that we want to model, modify, or utilize—they zoom by! So how can we identify the appropriate steps in the sequence if they go so fast? This holds especially true for those that have achieved the status of an unconscious TOTE. To identify each step we must either increase our abilities to observe rapid and minute behavioral changes or slow the process down by asking good questions. “What happened first that allowed you to respond so creatively in that situation?” “What do you do first when you motivate yourself?” Keep asking until you find the initial external stimulus that triggers the strategy. “What happens just before that?”
1) Unpack strategies in terms of predicates. We tend to reveal our preferred rep system (seeing, hearing, feeling, etc) in the kind of language predicates we use. These predicate words are adjectives, verbs, adverbs and other descriptive words that identify what we assert (or predicate). We can also listen for predicate combinations indicating synesthesia patterns. “That looks uncomfortable” (V-K). “It sounds like colorful place” (A-V). “Don’t look at me with that tone of voice” (V-A). “It sounded frightening” (A-K). By going Meta to this content we can note its form and structure.
2) Unpack strategies in terms of accessing cues. Most of our communication takes place on th
e unconscious level. We are usually unaware of the vast majority of representations that pass through our neurological systems as we cycle through our strategies. Yet all behavior indicates our internal neurological processes and therefore carries information about them. We are able to decode this form of communication as we gather information.
3) Unpack by asking logical questions. Does the strategy make logical sense? If a person seems to jump steps in the process, ask backing-up questions to get to the beginning of the strategy. “What happened first that allowed you to feel motivated in that situation?” Back up. “What did you do before that?” “What stimulated that?” Eventually we find the initial external stimulus that triggered the strategy and thus the step-by-step process.
4) Unpack using the Strategy Notational System.
The User's Manual for the Brain Volume I Page 40