Day 2

Day 2 – June 10^th 2007

{I was hoping that I would be able to write all this up after each day. However, with the attention needed for each day and the questions to answer for the following day there wasn’t time or energy left to complete this blog. So, I’ll put together each day from my notes that I wrote each day – both the content and my thoughts as we progressed through the whole 8 days. Not ideal but better than missing out on what I am learning.}

I decided that today I would cycle to the course. I live in Chiswick and this course is happening in Gospel Oak, north London. My cycle computer told me that is 16km, just a shade under 10 miles. It was very refreshing to cycle thorough west London and Regent’s Park and it allowed me time to prepare for today.

Given that we looked at mind mapping yesterday I am going to take all my notes for the course as mind maps and get back into that process again. I used to use mind maps for client notes and now I am reminded of it I’ll take it up again.

We began with breathing exercises. Wyatt and Tom said that the secret of talking for days on end as a trainer was the skill to breathe easily. We were asked to place one hand on our stomach area and feel the diaphragm as it works its bellows like action and allows us to breath in and out, starting at a count of 7. That is seven seconds to breathe in and seven to breath out. The we moved onto singing – single notes followed by a simple scale. We were encouraged to open our mouths as wide as possible – which made me yawn and to which Tom encouraged us all to do inorder to stretch and relax our jaws.

The next session was to split into two groups and begin to go through the list of Practitioner questions that are in our manual. We began with 21 questions. At the close of yesterday Tom had suggested that we choose a group leader and split up the questions so that we do a few each. We didn’t actually get around to that so Wyatt took us through them. Like all new groups we were a bit wary of ourselves and each other – some of us knew a great deal and others were new. Some, like me have a great deal of experience but we don’t have the language and others have just been trained by Tom and so are deep in INLPTA content.

After this we were asked to form again and talk about our 5 most important learnings from yesterday, Day 1. After thinking I came up with:

Learning that:

Group dynamics are important for me.

My outcome needs to be personal and specific and its now confirmed for me.

That it’s great to be reacquainted with mind mapping

I can be more relaxed and still teach from that place.

 

A member of the group said how he had learned that it’s OK to be different.

 

We got back together at 11.30ish

“Wake up! Said the old Mage” – said Wyatt jumping off his chair and standing firmly in the centre of the group. His story continued.

This episode was about keeping up, running after the teacher though what seems to be undergrowth with no obvious paths. We must “know where we are” so that we can take the appropriate direction. How we find that direction is by asking the right question. But which question ? Our small hero, I think of him as small, is presented with four dragons each of which is tamed by asking a single type of question:

Why is it here ?

What is it doing now ?

How can it look like that ?

The fourth dragon didn’t seem to respond to any question. After being told to “Do something” lest the dragon cause more disturbance our hero stands on his head, What If ?, and the dragon, like the other three, shrinks and is tamed.

 

Then we moved to an open frame, a place to ask any questions of Tom and Wyatt:-

A question was asked about outcomes for our students. My map here gets a little vague but the issue moved into finding out relevancy for the student as well as an evidence procedure for its achievement. That as we saw yesterday we need to look at both our outcomes and evidence as well as those of our students. Added to that is the possibility that we might be asked to teach to student who have been sent and our not necessarily there of their own accord. Therefore we have to engage the student and using our rapport skills pace and lead them.

A question was asked about movement. Both Wyatt and Tom stand very still in their space and use their hands sparingly. Some hand and arm movements remind me of a Catholic priest at an altar – shades of my Altar Boy past although I am pleased to say that these days I am an Ex-catholic. We were told that Platform Skills would come in the next session. That movement must be intentional and that walking around all the time is distracting to the students.

A last question was asked about our presentations. There will be a design model we were told and that we would get feedback on our presentation style in the next module. We can choose both the topic and the content. What is most important is to understand and explain the principles behind the topics being presented.

At the moment there is no standard INLPTA Training Manual although this may be developed in the future – hence we can create our own individual programme.

At just before 12 noon this bought us to Training Design and the 4-MAT model. This is described in many places on the web so I’ll only give a summary here. 4MAT grew out of the work done by Kolb on learning styles which was then developed into a teaching philosophy.

The Kolb styles lead to the following:

Question	Thinking	Response
WHY?	Give me a reason for learning this.	Motivation
WHAT?	Give me the data / information that I need to learn this.	Expert tuition
HOW?	I need to experience this to learn about it.	Coaching
WHAT IF..?	I need to take this into the world and make it work.	Mentoring

 

In order to ensure that you meet all the needs of the learners in ones group then all four styles have to addressed in some fashion.

 

Another way to see this is:

 

 

Bernice McCarthy then developed the teaching roles as described above. We then had a fun exercise taking one minute to describe a specific activity in each of the above quadrants. I took writing and not very successfully managed to go through each quadrant. Susi Strang-Wood then invited us to take a meta position and do the quadrants in a kind of musical presentation. This was no words but vocal sounds to illustrate each of the quadrants:

Motivator –Ethel Merman “There’s no business like show business” energy

Expert – Military band or German “Um Pah”

Coach – Salsa / Jazz like sound.

Facilitator – Big Band sound.

Well that was my interpretation !

 

There is also a link in with the brain and left and right hemisphere thinking. All activities of the quadrants use both sides of the brain and so learning is enhanced:

	PERFORM	ENGAGE
R	PERFORM	CONNECT	R
L	REFINE	ATTEND	L
	PRACTICE	SHARE
R	EXTEND	IMAGE	R
L	PRACTICE	INFORM	L

 

 

It was also suggested that NLP has gone in three separate directions of “Doing”, “Thinking” and “Feeling” and that any change must generate to the other sectors:-

 

 

 

 

 

This brought us to lunch……………

 

 

We began the afternoon session with some “energy” work. Our physical energy is what will keep us going through out the training days. Our energy can be conserved and utilised efficiently by:

Stillness – our breathing will enable this and help us to conserve our energy so that we can train for long periods without running out.

Focus – keeping our attention on the programme and ourselves.

Attention – knowing where we are in the programme.

Variety – by changing the level and type of energy that we use for each topic and / or outcome we can keep ourselves resourced.

 

Susi Strang then took us thorough a series of exercise to show us how we can affect the energy levels of others simply by focussing our attention on them. This could be a single person or the whole group and similarly we can receive energy from them.

This concept could get very flaky and yet when attention is focussed and directed the recipient can notice a change. I wonder if there is an issue in that rather that “directing energy” what we actually doing is changing the balance of the existing energies around us. Do fish have any concept of the water in which they live – I guess not and yet in the same way we have no concept of the air in which we live. I would like to think that if we did understand that air is more than just what we breathe, it’s a – dare I say – matrix that we all share. In this matrix we are embedded along with all the radio waves, light waves and heaven knows what else. So the concept of affecting another person by manipulating this matrix seems less far-fetched to me. Anyway, there were responses…….

 

We then went on to Storyboarding – this is a process developed from the film industry. Scripts are sketched up until the entire film is produced in the same way that a comic book is – frames on a page showing the story; who is in the scene, what the camera will be attempting to create et c.

We were given an exercise where instead of pictures, although these were not ruled out, ideas on a topic were brainstormed out. One idea was given one piece of post-it note. All the ideas were then stuck on one free wall and on another was marked out the four quadrants from above. Each idea on a post-it note was then to be discussed and evaluated as to which quadrant it fitted best. This would show up where there might be gaps and also where there might be an imbalance ie loads in the WHY quadrant and few in the WHAT and loads in the WHAT IF. This would leave the HOW empty and a need for more attention to the WHAT quadrant.

It was suggested that this process can be used for specific tasks and topics as well as an overview for whole programmes. The benefit of the post-it note is that it could be moved around again and again until the best or most comfortable place was found for that idea.

Our group found that what worked best for us was to brainstorm as much as we could before we even contemplated the quadrants. In this way we seem to cover a great deal of material which was augmented when the quadrants were then employed. The ability to move ideas around was very helpful.

 

We then moved on to the best way to present Flip Charts. One of the, many, problems with Power-Point presentations (and indeed using Over Head projectors as was pointed out to me later) is that they are there and gone. Well presented flip charts provide anchors in a visual form. Their information remains in the view of the students over the course of the training and helps in the learning and review process. They can also provide a anchor for learning when a programme reconvenes after a break and be a comfort and support for the students.

Important points for good flip charts are:

They must be visible and legible

Contain only what you want the students to learn

Only use colours that can be seen at a distance – outline pale colours.

They must be a logical explication, clarification or explanation of the topic under discussion

 

We then went on to some useful resources such as:

Pens – Edding or Newland

Paper – 3M produce some like giant post-it notes

Static Paper from www.imusthave1.com

A Google search will also bring up many ideas.

 

We then had an integration piece to link together the whole day – a trance induction with ambient music and lead from both Tom and Wyatt. This brought us to the end of day two, although by this time I was losing track that this was Sunday. I remember that Susi had said earlier in the energy work that by the end of the 8 days we would probably feel like a month had gone by……….I can well believe it.