Report of December 5th meeting.
Curly Martin:-
Spiral Dynamics in Life Coaching.

For me the spirit of NLP is noticing what works well and adapting it to my own "model of the world". Curly is doing just this with the Clare Graves "Spiral Dynamics", adapting and using what is useful in her field of life coaching.
Graves' model is based on many years research studying the value sytems (Note 1) of individuals and groups and plotting the changing values based on personal growth and evolution and the effect this has on cultural or society groups. Graves corelated the changing values of individuals moving from birth to adulthood with the value systems of "primitive" groups to more "sophisticated" groups. In an effort to make this evolutionary process non-hierarchical (is this possible?) he gave a colour code to each of the levels he identified. It is possible to treat Spiral Dynamics as another set of "Meta-programmes" (Note 2) as a useful tool to further understand others' "model of the world." For me this is what Curly is developing and she has been working to devise a questionnaire that helps to identify personal colour coding for her coaching clients.
We began the evening by choosing an animal that represented who we were, and Curly asked us to make that animal's noise to two other people in the group. (Slight consternation here on my part as I've never heard a Chameleon talk! :-) However I probably went a little red in the face, green around the gills and felt decidely blue) Then we settled down to enjoy a metaphor in which Curly "characterised" the Graves colours. We then filled in the questionnaire she is developing to help identify personal colour coding in the Graves Model.
I hope the "feedback" from the group was useful here for you Curly, as questionnaires are tricky things to get "right".
Then followed a brief overview of the colours that Curly feels are open to "coaching". Due to audience participartion this "brief" overview took us to the break.
After our refreshment we plunged into a group exercise to identify the "colour coding" of three potential "clients". In the group I was playing with we enlarged our discussion to wondering whether the values and behaviours could be "context" related and that it was possible for someone to be several colours at once. (When I took another look at my questionnaire results they certainly bore this out!) We also played with NLP puns. Well this was the last meeting before Xmas!
We regrouped and compared results. (Did we all remember to have fun whilst we were doing this?)
Curly asked us to consider the colour coding of our chosen "animal" as a possible insight to our unconscious patterns. You may remember I was a dumb Chameleon! Go on then you pick the colour!
Spookily our time had elapsed, so we settled down to listen to the end of the story, whilst we wondered, and its good to wonder, whether we had found our own nuggett of gold in the evening.
Thank you Curly for sharing your "developmental" work with us. I hope the evening was productive for you and look forward to your analysis of our questionnaires as a group.
Did anyone else spot the "pro" Trainer at work here? Bootifully done!
The learnings for me were:-
1) Every NLP or other technique is only useful if you make it your own.
2) Spiral Dynamics becomes easier to understand the more people show me their understanding of it.
3) Like Myers Briggs, Belbin, and Meta- programmes, here is another attempt to clarify "models" of the world. For me, knowing how I operate in Default mode gives me a place to start being more flexible from, on my own journey of self discovery.
EDITORS NOTE.
Much of this understanding came from continued discussion with Jenny. I am aware that often these evenings start an interesting chain of thought that is worthy of further meetings on a smaller scale. Our bed is too small to invite many of you to join us for this sort of further enquiry, :-) but maybe next year we should work towards smaller groups meeting informally to explore the issues raised in our main meetings. Let me know if you are interested in this, either attending or hosting.
I hope the notes below help to "Jargon" bust for NLP virgins.
Note 1:- Values are those things we spend time and money on, supported by our Beliefs of what is right and wrong. Both can change over time; sometimes we resist this.
Note 2:- Meta-programmes are a set of continuums on which we each have a preffered position. e.g. Are you a "big picture" person or do you prefer "detail"? Are you motivated by "people" or by "things"? Are you motivated "towards" or motivated "away from"? Usually we operate from a position somewhere near the middle of each continuum, sometimes we are at an extreme end. Our flexibility of movement can also be different for each programme. All part of our unique individuality

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