A Pragmatic Guide To Communication & Change.pdf - NLP Info Centre

produce miscommunication and misunderstanding become, instead, tools for even
deeper and more profound communication. The more astute we become at seeing,
hearing, and feeling the total messages being sent, the better able we will be to perceive
what is really meant. This awareness will also enable us to better use our own channels
of communication to express what we need and want, not only to others, but also within
ourselves.
This book is a presentation of various models of human behavior. These models can be
extremely useful as tools when used to understand, predict, and shape the human
interactions we call communication. But these models can also be very limiting if we
forget that they are not actually reality. We must keep in mind the idea stated so well by
Edward T. Hall:
All theoretical models are incomplete. By definition, they are abstractions and therefore
leave things out. What they leave out is as important as, if not more important than, what
they do not, because it is what is left out that gives structure and form to the system. (p.
14) Beyond Culture
CHAPTER II
THE COMMUNICATION CATEGORIES MODEL
Sorcerers say that we are inside a bubble. It is a bubble into which we are placed
at the moment of our birth. At first the bubble is open, but then it begins to close
until it has sealed us in. That bubble is our perception. We live inside that bubble
all of our lives. And what we witness on its round walls is our own reflection.
Don Juan, from Carl.. Castaneda, Tales of Power
Representational Systems
Perception is an exciting area of study in the field of psychology. As discussed in the
previous chapter, because neurological input forms the building blocks of our models of
the world, there are many different ways to describe the process we call perception. What
follows is based on the neurological model presented in Chapter 1.
There are five primary ways humans experience the world. Barring neurological
damage, we can see, feel, hear, smell,
28
It is important when you are learning the basic principles of effective communication to
drop the assumption that you already know what words such as those listed above mean.
Your "knowing" is based on your own model of the world which is also subject to the
processes of generalization, deletion, and distortion, as well as to neurological, social, and
individual constraints. Rather than presuming that your understanding of these words is
the same as the speaker's, it is often advisable to ask for his own definitions. This may
keep you from becoming trapped by your own model of the world. By more fully
understanding what the speaker is saying, you are more likely to gain rapport and be more
influential in your communication with him. Specific techniques for asking for a person's
definitions of these words as well as some linguistic clues for when more information is
needed are given in Chapter III.
Summary
... we are looking for pragmatic redundancies; we know that they will not be
simple, static magnitudes or qualities, but patterns analogous to the
mathematical concept of function.... (p. 41)