Monday, June 26, 2006

NLP: Frames, Communication and Thinking

Hi,

I am doing something completely new in yesterday's NLP Practitioner Business Excellence Module.

I used the whole class to simulate and induce argument, confusion and frustration without anyone knowing in advance.

I do this to illustrate and to make participants aware of one of the core concepts of NLP and Thinking - Frames. I can simply tell you those 14 Frames without doing this simulation. But you will not be aware of their importance. One can easily think that this is just another NLP skills.

My intention is to faciliate at least part of our class to a higher level of awareness when one actually go through the process of argument, confusion and frustration. I think I had done the job as some of our classmates come to me after the class to express their deeper understanding.

Then what is a Frame?

Everybody unconsciously uses his/her own frame to see the world. He /she see only what is inside their frame and then draws his/her conclusion. This is so natural that we normally don't aware of the process.

Frame is Beliefs/Values/Rules/Attitudes that guides our attention and perception. Frames limit our perceptions. We will not see anything outside our frames. When 2 or more people discuss, we all just see what we saw without seeing what others' seeing. Argument is the usual consequence.

But when someone consciously adding more frames to the discussion, we see more through the added frames. I usually do this during our classes so that all the discussion can be happened smoothly. Today, I intentionally not to do so.

When more people express their own views (through their own frames) without adding of new frames, confusion kicks in. If no intervention is initiated, we all frustrated. This happens everyday, everywhere.

This also happens in our heads. We can only see things within our frame. This limited the information which causes confusion and then frustration. We are stuck. Then we give up thinking about that topic.

The best way to be not stuck is having no frame. But this is impossible. Frames reduce the amount of information we need to handle. We can't live without frames. Our Belief/Value/Rule/ Attitude create and shape our frames.

What can we do?

We can unstuck our communication and thinking simply by adding more frames, so that we can see more. Paradox? Yes. If there is no frame, we see everything. But we can't do so. If we have only 1 frame, we see the least. More frames, more we can see!!!

"How will she feel when you do this?" is a frame you can add. But this is not a good frame. It is a Content Frame. It has content (She, Feel, You, Do...). A Content Frame can make us seeing more, but it itself can also delete, distort and generalize our perception.

The 14 Frames I introduced today are Context Frame. They have no or least amount of content. For example, the Outcome Frame - "What is the purpose of doing this?" 'What do you want to achieve by doing this?" or the Contrast Frame - "What are the differences between doing X & Y?"

These frames guide others (in communication) and ourselves (in thinking) to see more in more directions. This is our second way to achieve higher awareness apart from our 6x6 Points of View I mentioned in Module 2 this year.

Many of our GA noticed I had changed the programe quite a lot this year. I had mentioned earlier this year that I will shift the whole NLP Practitioner Program to another level, a level of how we think. I had promised myself that if I can't do so, it's then be the right time for me to stop teaching NLP. If I can't have this breakthrough, it simply tells me that I am too stuck.

BTW, I said earlier in this message that there are 4 core concepts of NLP (Traditional NLP). The 2 apparent ones are Filters and Strategies. the 2 less obvious ones are Frames and Meta-Model.

I will write more about the above four concepts later.

Keith