In the trainings we offer, we are very interested in helping adults have success at influencing young people and to do so in fun, easy ways.  One of the most challenging aspects of parenting, or even coaching young people is their changing reactions to questions as they move towards and into their teens.  The simple "How was your day?" question which once started sharing about all the things that happened, and usually more than we want to know, is reduced to "fine", or "okay".  As young people move towards their own private identity, the goal of these responses is to shut us down and keep us out of their business, and it works.  If we press, we begin to feel rude, as they have answered our question, and they certainly think we are being rude.

While it really won't work very often for the "how was your day?" question I find we can get much more information by using "implied" questions.  Implied questions are statements about your own inner state of curiousity which invites someone to help you fulfill your need for information.  For example: "I wonder what you would think about ............" If this is delivered with a tone of voice that communicates pondering, then it will often get a response.  Another form is "I am curious about........."  You notice that both of these sentence forms are statements, and it is important to end the statement with a question tonality at the end.  It works best to just lay it out there as a statement to the universe about your state of mind.

Some others I have used are:

• I am really curious about what you will do for a living when you are older.
• I have been thinking a lot about whether or not you will want to go to college.
• Sometimes I just think about the type of person you will fall for.
• I think it will be interesting to see how you decorate your own home.
• I would like to know what you think about your teachers.
• I wonder which of your subjects is easiest, and which ones challenge you.

The form of the implied statement is an "I statement" about what is in your mind, which invites a comment from others.  One of the most powerful aspects of this approach is that it leads the listener to think about what you have shared, even if they don't respond.  The earlier statements lead the listener to think about his or her future, and the teachers and subjects.

The implied question can also be very influential when paired with references to the bond you have with someone else, or to a strength of the person.  For example:

• I wonder sometimes if you have any idea how great you are.
• I wonder when you will realize that you are liked by a lot of people.
• I don't think you know how much you are loved.  
• I don't think you get how good you are at .............

Now that I have shared this, I wonder how often you will think about how to use implied questions to open up dialogue with others.

I was very blessed early in my career to work with H. Stephen Glenn, and one of the most important things he taught me was the "EIAG Process".  He pointed out that an individual's perception is the key to their attitudes, motivation, and behavior.  Therefore, in order to deal with any behavior, it was important to understand the belief behind any behavior.  Also, if you wanted people to learn and apply, the teaching and learning process needed to tie content to someone's existing perceptions.  To do that, he taught the EIAG Process.

The process works fairly simply.  The first thing that occurs is any experience that has potential for learning.  It can be a lesson in a classroom, or it can be any situation that occurs and is followed by a conversation.  So the E in the EIAG process is Experience.

Once the experience is occurring and/or has occurred, you tie the experience to perception by first asking questions that challenge a listener to "Identify" those aspects of the experience which are important to him or her.  These are "What questions" like:

• What happened?
• What are you feeling?
• What did you see?
• What was important?

These questions help connect with the experience and identify the impact.

After this, the next goal is to help the person "Analyze" the significance of the experiences he or she has just identified.   To to this, you would ask "What" and "Why" questions like:

• Why was that significant?
• What caused that to happen?
• What is meaningful about it?
• What made that important?

These questions further build a perception of meaning in the moment about the experience.  However, people, especially young people often have trouble generalizing and applying learning across contexts.  In order to help with that, we ask "Generalizing questions" like:

• How can you use this?
• How is this valuable to you?
• In what way will this affect what you do in the future?
• What wisdom did you gain from this?
• What did you learn from this whole thing?

So, at the end of the process, we have helped someone identify what happened that might be useful or significant for them, helped them analyze the specific usefulness or significance, and invited them to think about how this learning would be usefule on a more global scale.  I invite you to try this with any of your students, children, or anyone else in your environment.  It does work. 

I have been reading Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation: How to Harness the Power of Hypnosis to Ignite Effortless and Lasting Change. While I have always realized Richard Bandler was a genius, I have usually found books difficult to read.  This one, while it still has some challenges, has some gems that have really led me to pause and think about the work we do with children and others whose lives have been affected by trauma.

The most powerful possesion that most people have are their beliefs.  Many of us really can't even tell the difference between our beliefs and reality, because we filter reality through our beliefs.  Our beliefs tell us what we, and others, can and can't do.  I titled this post the Power(s) of Believing because believing has both incredibly powerful positive and negative potential.

For a number of years now, the research has indicated that the experience of trauma, especially repetitive trauma creates lasting changes in the brain.  Taken at a surface level, this could be very discouraging to those who want to help children and others who have been abused and neglected.  If someone's brain has been changed, then what can be done.  I have seen this research lead people to just accept and accommodate to the problems caused by trauma, rather than work to heal the effects.  They have read the research and developed limiting beliefs, beliefs that people can't be helped.

Henry Ford once said "Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right..."  This is a very applicable statement for working with trauma survivors.  The power of believing we can't make a difference makes an incredible difference, in a negative direction.  There are many ways the lives of trauma survivors can be improved when those around them believe in their potentials.

The power of believing we can make a difference is even more powerful.  Trauma effects the brain, making measurable changes in brain function.  So does meditation, Tai Chi, being held, and any number of other experiences we can make available to a growing child, or even an adult client.  We need to be careful to read the research, know what the effects of trauma are, then work diligently to prove that those effects can be largely healed.  I have done this successfully, but haven't had the brain scans to prove it.

Neurolinguistic Programming began with this presupposition.  Richard Bandler and John Grinder sought out people with exceptional abilities, used a methodology they labelled "modeling" to codify what these people actually did, as opposed to what they thought they did.  This presupposition, along with another one "People can learn anything if you break the "chunk" sizes down small enough" allowed them to replicate excellence in many areas.

Modeling allows us to observe and interview people with excellent abilities and create a model of how they do it, then teach others how to do it.  This led, among other things, to the NLP "Strategies" model, in which we are able to identify how people do things now, such as make decisions, and then teach them a new process which was learned from excellent decision makers.  

One of the most frequent applications is to help people improve their abilities to learn.  One of my associates adopted a nonverbal autistic child who had been in Kindergarten in an institution for three years.  Using this presupposition, along with incredible love and the persistence of both herself and schools, has the boy going into mainstreamed sixth grade, doing age appropriate work.  She very consistently modelled how he learned, then found materials which would use those strengths, while stretching him to learn in new ways.  The only downside was the investment of thousands in learning materials that the schools didn't have and couldn't even legally use.

This has been my basis of learning for years, and has caused some stress in my life.  When I wanted to learn something, I intuitively sought out someone who did it well and asked that person, or those people to teach me.  It resulted in a wide variety of skills, but difficulties in convincing others that I had the skills, as they weren't learned in a university.  

One of the best applications of this approach, which predates NLP by thirty or so years is the work or Reuven Feuerstein with his theories and methodologies of cognitive modifiability.  Since the end of World War Two, he has been successfully mediating and improving cognitive abilities of children and actually improving IQ.  His latest book, Beyond Smarter, Mediated Learning and the Brain's Capacity for Change, from Teacher's College Press outlines how his process works for increasing a young person' ability to learn.  

This presupposition challenges us to think of possibilities in ways that most cultures inhibit.  We tend to develop beliefs in limitations, and, whether or not those beliefs are true, defend them.  This sabotages both global human development, and the success of the individual.

So, ask yourself what you would like to do that you haven't learned, find someone who is good at it, and stretch yourself.  It can be fun.  For my older readers, it also helps stall the onset of senility.

"To state a theorem and then to show examples of it is literally to teach backwards."  (E. Kim Nebeuts)

I have constantly felt, and often stated, that one of the greatest gifts of my life was to have H. Stephen Glenn as my first boss.  He was the developer of "Developing Capable Young People", one of my favorite training programs which was taught in fourteen countries. (http://www.capabilitiesinc.com/)

Steve taught me how to think about working with youth, and, for that matter, adults.  One of the tools he used to coach me, and taught to others was the "EIAG" process.  This process facilitates Inductive Learning.  This involves the process of learning by example -- where a system tries to induce a general rule from a set of observed instances. It also involves classification -- assigning, to a particular input, the name of a class to which it belongs. Classification is important to many problem solving tasks.

By responding to most experiences through a process of questioning which allows young people to draw conclusions and generalizations from those experiences is the easiest, most efficient way of creating learners that I know.  Steve often said our goal is not to teach, but rather to create learners.  Once people learn to learn, they can apply the skill anywhere.  Using the EIAG process frequently helps young people build in internal cognitive strategy for inductive learning and reasoning.  This is the process:

• Experience-either a naturally occurring experience, like a conflict with another or any daily experience, or an experience created in a learning environment.  Any experience, from role plays, lectures, simulations or group explorations can be the starting point of inductive learning.  I even use the process when discussing assessments, surveys, etc. with people.
• Identify-help the learner identify what was significant in the experience.  (What questions)
  • What did you like about it?
  • What didn't you like? 
  • What were three new things you might take away from the experience.
  • What was unique?
• Analyze-help the learner think critically about what they took away from the experience. (How questions)
  • How is what you liked about the experience useful to you?
  • How might even the things you didn't like have use if you think about it?
  • How might you use the three new things you identified in the experience?
  • How is that unique?
• Generalize-help the learner find potential applications in their lives for the what they have learned. (Where, when, and with whom questions)
  • Where might you apply what you have discovered from this?
  • When might that be useful?  
  • In what contexts will the new things you identified be useful?, In what relationships?
  • Who else in your life might benefit from what you have learned?

The lists of questions I have here are far from exhaustive, but I wanted to offer a process, and some example questions.  Play with it.  To learn more about this, and Developing Capable People, feel free to contact us.

One of the most important of the Presuppositions for me, especially in working with young people is "There is not such thing as failure, only feedback".  It is especially useful for young people who are struggling with motivation, self esteem, but it works for all of us.

When something doesn't go as we planned we tend to see that as failure. Depending on the seriousness of the situation we might then get angry, irritated, sad, depressed, worried, guilty or whatever.  None of this serves any useful purpose.  In fact, it can lead us to give up, exactly when we need to push on.  

But what happens if we see the situation as feedback rather than failure. A real life demonstration of how not to do something?  Instead of being wrong we've learned something. Instead of feeling bad we are free to form a new plan of action and try again.  Is this cosy, rosy-tinted 'positive thinking'?  Not exactly.

Edison identified about a 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb before he found a suitable material for the filament.  A number of best-selling books (i.e. million sellers plus film) were turned down by more than two dozen publishers before they were accepted for publication.  Then there was the poor talent scout at Decca records who rejected the Beatles as having no future in music! 

Perseverance is one of the most important traits we need to develop to overcome challenges, to maintain motivation and to succeed.  In several of our youth programs, this was kept on a poster in the room where we worked.  Whenever something didn't work, we would point to the poster, and ask what feedback we could gain from the experience, develop a new plan and go from there.

Try it, it is useful.

Yesterday a friend of mine was relating a conversation she had about her son to some service professionals.  She was talking about how he did in school, and how funny she found him.  Then someone made a comment about how he sounds like he would be good actor or comedian.  It was then that my friend brought up that he was nonverbal and autistic.  She related how the whole energy of the conversation shifted.  The others went from sharing openly as mothers to complimenting her on adopting such a child.

The last few posts have offered a number  of suggested questions to ask young people in your life.  The last questions were "What is important about ______?" and "What will that do for you?".  In an attempt to stay consistent with my suggestions and avoid why, I am asking what is important about these questions.  What will it do for young people and yourself if you use them?

I have introduced these questions before, and want to revisit them because I have found them to be the most important ones in my repertoire.  These questions replace "Why".  In our trainings, we encourage people to make their environments "NO WHY ZONES".  One might ask, "What is important about creating No Why Zones?"  Why is an unpredictable question.  We might get the same answer we would get if we were to have asked one the questions listed above, and that would be fine.  However, we risk getting defensive response, and where there are negative beliefs involved, why will often reinforce the belief.