Using the Meta Model
Start with yourself
Start by using the Meta Model on you own internal dialogue. Notice the patterns you use. Notice how you create your internal reality with the words you say to yourself. As you start to become more attentive to your internal dialogue, it will become a useful resource rather than a distraction or a limitation.
The Meta Model will give you an internal clarity that will help you to be more effective and successful communicator, with yourself and others.
If you are not clear in your own mind about what you are saying aloud, then how will other people understand you? Notice your habitual patterns. You may then start to correct yourself and phrase your statements and questions in clearer, more resourceful ways.
Use the Meta Model questions with rapport
Without rapport the Meta Model can become Meta Mayhem and Meta Muddle.
Meta Model clarification questions can be heard as intrusive, aggressive and challenging, especially if you start asking questions such as, “What exactly do you mean?’ without softening you voice tones or framing the question with softeners such as, “I’m curious…” or “I’m wondering…”
Using Meta Model patterns in not a crime. Everyone uses them all the time. (Everyone? All the time?) We delete information when we speak because we assume a shared context and therefore shared assumptions of shared knowledge.
Ask Meta Model clarification questions when you need to, not because you can. They are not an end in themselves, they are a means to achieve you outcome or help others to achieve their outcome.
The charts below are the types of Deletions, Distortions and Generalizations and questions to recover missing or distorted information.
* It is not necessary to know the linguistic names or categories, but it is useful to have some examples of how to recover the information to clarify communication.
