How can you pair the NLP meta model with eye accessing cues? Another great question fro a former NLP training student.
NLP eye accessing
Eye accessing is taught in the NLP Practitioner training and gives us a glimpse into how someone uses their brain. Most NLP training programs then teach T.O.T.E. (Test, Operate, Test, Exit), where you figure out the strategies involved when one uses their brain even further. From how someone selects a meal from a menu to how someone motivates themselves to go to the gym, but also how someone ends up not going to the gym and eating too much food instead. T.O.T.E. is a requirement to teach, but unfortunately many NLP training schools skip it, as many trainers have a hard time teaching it or demonstrating how to do it. In fact, while practicing this during my NLP teacher training, two of the five people I had been grouped up with suddenly had to go to the bathroom for exactly the time the exercise lasted. Another simple didn’t participate, and two more got it horribly wrong after quite a “messy” approach. In their defense, I was never well trained in it either, even with those NLP training companies that are famous, or have celebrity trainers.
Strategies
Having a great grasp of eye accessing is a requirement for developing a strategy using eye accessing. You must also be able to watch for eye accessing while simultaneously listening to what the person is saying.
Pairing the NLP meta model with eye accessing cues
Once this comes automatically to you, set a goal to apply the meta model to the strategy (even if it is just who, what, how), and use eye accessing to ask the right questions. This makes both the T.O.T.E. process and determining strategies much easier for someone who isn’t experienced enough to do it on eye accessing alone.
Example
For example, someone moves their eyes toward the “Visual Construct” direction:
What specifically did you just see?
Play with this
Eye accessing goes fast. The nice thing about using the meta model is that you can stop the process here and there to go back, test, and dig.
What you will also see by asking questions is that most of the time the strategy takes place in quick succession almost immediately after a question.
Praciticing
After a lot of practice allowing the Meta Model to be your initial training wheels after you just left the NLP training, you then start gaining competence to observe the strategy without the meta model, and while they are talking. I like to teach a combination of those in Global NLP.
Resources: NLP meta model with eye accessing cues
Book
Instant Influence and Charisma – Paul McKenna
Video
