[Neurons] 2019 Neurons #49 DISTINGUISHING SENSORY FROM EVALUATIVE INFORMATION

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2019 Neurons #49

November 4, 2019

How to be a 

Professional Communicator #4

 

THE FOURTH DISTINCTION

OF A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATOR

 

 

Bateson (1972)

              "... therapy is an attempt to change a patient's
meta-communicative habits.  Before therapy, the patient thinks and operates
in terms of a certain set of rules for the making and understanding of
messages.  After successful therapy, he operates in terms of a different set
of such rules. ... In the process of therapy, there must have been
communication at a level meta to these rules.  There must have been
communication about a change in rules." (p. 191).

     

 

Distinction #4: DISTINGUISHING SENSORY AND EVALUATIVE DATA 

When I took my first NLP training, the refrain which was repeated over and
over urged us to go to sensory-awareness and distinguish it from information
that is evaluative:

"If you're going to be a professional communicator, you have to distinguish
sensory based information and evaluative based information."

 

As my first introduction to the Meta-Model, this taught me to sort out the
inner mapping of a meaning-maker and to ask precision questions.  It taught
me how to meet a person at his or her map of the world-at her bus stop (to
use Shelle Rose Charvet's metaphor).  This is where all effective
communication begins, that is, with sensory-based data.  The first
information comes from your "senses" (i.e., seeing, hearing, feeling,
smelling, and tasting).  That is the information to representationally track
to your mental movie screen.  You can now track directly from the sensory
level and make an inner movie which re-presents that information.  This was
the NLP stroke of genius-we think first of all in the sensory languages
(images, sounds, sensations, etc.) over which we can become aware of and
then manage.  (Bateson noted this in his Preface in the first NLP book.)

 

All of this, however, is very different from evaluative data which comes
after sensory representations.  From the sensory, you next evaluate that
information.  You put it into categories, you compare it with other
information, you estimate its value using various criteria.  In evaluating,
you infer (legitimately or illegitimately) as you draw various conclusions.
You "abstract" from one level to another level as you draw conclusions, make
generalizations, make decisions, invent beliefs, set intentions, etc.  And
you do all of this in lightning quick speed.

 

How can you tell when you, or someone else, has jumped from the sensory
level to an evaluative level?  Easy.  If the words you use do not refer to
things you can put on a table (e.g., chair, dog, green grass), they are not
sensory referents.  Because you cannot put the referents on the table (e.g.,
"good, bad, brilliant, disappointing, rude, nice, mean, beautiful") these
evaluations (evaluative words) are entities of the mind.  They exist solely
in the inside-world of mind.  Now you are literally thinking hypnotically.

 

You can reverse the process by creating evaluative language from sensory
language.  You can turn evaluative language back into sensory-based
language.  The NLP tool to do this is the Meta-Model by which you can regain
specificity, precision, and empirical clarity.  Use the linguistic
distinctions to bring high level evaluations down so you can put them on
your representational screen.  Use the precision questions to make the
conversation sensory specific.

 

This can be most challenging.  In fact, most people are easily seduced by
evaluative language so that they cannot make the sensory/evaluative
distinction.  Someone says, "He's mean.  He blasted that waiter."  And we're
off hallucinating as we invent meanings about what those non-specific words
mean (to us).  Actually, there is no "meanness," no "rudeness," no
"kindness," no "hurtful," "healing," in the sensory world.  These words are
from the evaluative world.  You have to ask, "What do you mean when you use
this word?"  "How do you know that it is this X?"  "If I could see or hear
what you are referring to, what would I see and hear?"

 

The key to running your own brain is recognizing the distinction.  "Am I
speaking in sensory-based or evaluative language?"  If you say that someone
is defensive, hypocritical, incongruent, loving, sensitive, intuitive, etc.,
then be sure to recognize that you are not speaking with precision.  You are
not in the sensory-world.  You are in an abstract evaluative world-your
internal "hypnotic" world of your meanings.  To return to earth, ask
Meta-Model questions.   If you don't, the words will seduce you into a
narrative of mis-understandings.

 

Without making this sensory/evaluative distinction you will never be a
professional communicator.  Unknowingly, you will be imposing your judgments
on others.  Even with the best of intentions of trying to understand others,
you will not be seeing them at all, but a distortion of them.  Your
judgments and evaluations can come out in subtle ways making it nearly
impossible for effective communications.  

 

Turn this around.  The kindest and most compassionate thing you can do with
your loved ones is to thoroughly learn this sensory/evaluative distinction.
Then you will know when you are evaluating, can take ownership of what
you're doing, and then create space for the other person.  You are operating
by a set of rules and the only way to discover that and/or change that, as
Bateson noted in the opening quotation, is at the meta-level.  To your
excellence in effective communication!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   look for the special offer

 

Author of the stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

http://www.neurosemantics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/NLP-Secrets-2_sml2.
png

 

 

 

 

 

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