[Neurons] 2016 Neurons #41 Robert Dilts' Contributions to NLP

Sun Sep 4 19:27:58 EDT 2016

From: L. Michael Hall

2016 "Neurons" Meta Reflections - #41

September 5, 2016

Reflections about NLP #7

ROBERT DILTS'

CONTRIBUTIONS TO NLP

In thinking about the persons who have been major contributors to NLP, as we
know it today, as significant as the original contributions of Bandler,
Grinder, and Pucelik are the contributions of Robert Dilts.  What Robert has
contributed has extensively shaped the very contours of NLP.  Coming into
the second group at Santa Cruz in 1975 and studying from John Grinder and
Gregory Bateson directly, Robert began immediately writing about NLP.   Now
I knew that he began writing soon, but until I began looking over the
materials, I forgot or did not know that his first writings were in late
1975!

In 1975 Robert wrote his first "Application" of NLP when he put together
"The Meta-Model and the Socratic Method of Philosophical Inquiry."   This
paper is now in the book, Applications of NLP (1983).  In fact, Robert was
the first to put forth the Meta-Model in the ordered list that we recognize
today.  By contrast the Meta-Model distinctions, which are in the first two
books, The Structure of Magic (1975/ 1976), are all over the place.  Robert
organized the distinctions and put eleven distinctions them in two
categories in 1975.

     Information Gathering
Setting and Identifying Limits

1) Deletions
5) Universal Quantifiers

2) Unspecified Referential Index                                     6)
Modal Operators

3) Unspecified Verbs
7) Complex Equivalence

4) Nominalizations
8) Presuppositions

9) Cause-Effect

10) Mind-Reading

11) Lost Performative

This is a great example of the character of so many of Robert's key
contributions-his ability to collect, organize, and put things in an easy to
remember format.  The next year, 1976, he wrote a paper on "Neuro-Linguistic
Programming" (now in the book, Roots of NLP (1983) and which eventually
became the book, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Volume I (1980).  This
academic paper framed NLP as an epistemology based on systems or cybernetic
principles.  There he extensively used Bateson's work and extensively quoted
him (see pages 22-27).  Here also he presented the Meta-Model in an
organized way (as above) and added the twelveth distinction: 12) Comparative
Deletions.  He also created another category and put three of the linguistic
distinctions in it-semantic ill-formedness: cause-effect, mind-reading, lost
performative.

Robert wrote that "NLP is an outcome oriented discipline"1 and then detailed
Present state and Desired State which he later called "the NLP algorithm for
change" (in the paper, Meta-Model Live, p. 31-32).  Between these two
spaces, he put resources as "a transition mechanism."  Later he wrote, "so
present state desired state is the overlay" (p. 33).  From that he later
created the SCORE Model which is today a staple for anyone trained in NLP.

Further, he was the person who came up with the first set of criteria for a
well-formed outcome.  Compare his six criteria in 1980 with the 18 that we
have today in Meta-Coaching.

1) The outcome must be stated in positive terms.

2) The outcome must be testable and demonstratable in sensory experience.

3) The desired state must be initiated and maintained by the client.

4) The outcome must be explicitly and appropriately contextualized.

5) The desired state must preserve any positive by-products of the present
state.

6) The desired state must be ecologically sound.

It was Robert who put together the first list of NLP Presuppositions.  I am
often asked who put it together, and I had always guessed that it was
Robert.  Now I have evidence.  It is in his "Applications of NLP in Family
Therapy and Interpersonal Negotiation" (1980).  There he provided a list of
nine of the presuppositions with commentary about each of them: 

1) The map is not the territory.  

2) Mind and body are part of the same system and affect each other.

3) Individual skills are a function of the development and sequencing of
representational systems.

4) The meaning of any communication is the response it elicits, regardless
of the intent of the communicator.

5) Human beings are capable of one-trial learning.

6) Individuals have all the resources they need to achieve their desired
outcomes.

7) Behavior is geared toward adaptation: People make the best choices
available to them at any point in time, underlying every behavior is a
positive intent.

8) There is no substitute in communications for clean, active, open, sensory
channels to know what response you are eliciting at any moment in time.

9) The element in a system that has the most flexibility will be the
controlling, or catalytic, element in that system.

In the collection of his early papers (1975-1981) which are now in two books
(Roots and Applications) Robert wrote about his modeling of NLP in such
diverse realms as Business, Sales, the Socratic Method, Education, Family
Therapy, Creative Writing, and Health.  Thereafter he was commissioned to
put together NLP: Volume I - The Study of the Structure of Subjectivity
(1980) and in the years that followed, Robert has turned out 30 or 40 more
books including the massive Encyclopedia of NLP.  If Robert Dilts did
nothing else than write and extend the literature of NLP, his contributions
as a scholar would have been massive and extensive.  But he did more.
Unlike the other founders, Robert has always made himself available for
appearances at Conferences and Congresses.

Then in 1997 he along with his significant partners (Suzi Smith, Tim
Hallboam, Judith DeLozier) put together the Visionary Leadership Conference
which brought together 200 NLP Trainers and Leaders during the middle of the
Bandler lawsuit.  Three years later, he sponsored The Millennial Project to
bring people together, and this year (2016) he hosted the 40th Birthday of
NLP during his summer trainings in Santa Cruz.

Robert, from the beginning has modeled a great many experiences.  At the
beginning he started with Socratic Questioning, sales, creative writing,
cancer surviving, healing strategies, strategies of genius (Einstein,
Disney, Freud, etc.), leadership, etc.  All of this makes him one of the
most significant contributors of NLP, and he is still at it to this day.
Recently he modeled Steve Jobs which I heard about at the training he did
during the "40th Anniversary of NLP" at Santa Cruz.  That material is now in
his latest book, Next Generation Entrepreneurs, Success Factor Modeling,
Vol. I (2015).

Notes:

1. Robert Dilts also wrote, "NLP is highly outcome-oriented" (Application of
NLP in Family Therapy, p. 35).

Neuro-Semantic News

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

               Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

               Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

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