The Art and Science of Effectively Creating Value
Venue: Sensory Systems, Glasgow
Dates: 14th – 17 Jan 2016 contact
Before modern humans there were no values in the world. That is, values, as we humans experience and understand them. While many animals clearly experience pleasure and pain and develop preferences for experiences, other animals and things, they do no exhibit the additional experience of “Value” that are prevalent in everyday human experience. They are not motivated, or respond to punishment or reward in relation to values. They do not crave “value” in life. Only humans do this. Value then is a major defining feature of being human.
In recent times values have come to dominate much of our life. Values are very important, they contribute greatly to the quality of our lives. Valuing helps us relate effectively and efficiently with the world, we learn to know what we like, making it easier to attain and sustain. Values add a different level of experience that in itself can be enjoyed and appreciated; we learn to like what we like. Beyond that we learn to value things in themselves, independent of our liking, from food and wine through to music and art, from individuals to qualities such as loving and support, beauty and self-sacrifice. Valuing and values add greatly to our experience of the world. They become “things” that we experience as very important parts of our world.
Values are also one of the greatest threats to our quality of life and to the survival of our species.
Political and economic values are used to dictate world policy and practice, whether, for example, it is forcing democracy onto other political systems, imposing economic austerity (even when there is a questionable case for it in practice).
Economic values place rich and poor against each other often in fear rather than helping each other. Religious values create conflicts between and increasingly within religions with increasing numbers of people killing and being killed for and from their religious values.
People used to be recognised as valued members of the tribe or society in recognition of important contributions. Now working to create and maintain positions of fame, political and economic power have become much more important than what is actually usefully done in the position. Celebrity has become such a high value that you can now just be famous for doing nothing other than being famous!
Our consumer society has elevated the value of “things” way beyond previous levels. We “collect value” and “consume value”. We become addicted to what we value. We “de-value” the natural world as we exploit resources to feed this consumerism. As a species our numbers escalate as our value to the planet decreases. Evidently our current values are not sustainable.
Our ability to create value often results in the creation of “false” values, based on mistakes, illusions and delusions. These are dangerous as they will never be useful for effectively living in the real world.
Too often we impose or try to impose our values onto others. This is part of socialisation of children but it often goes too far or is not done well. It is often inappropriately applied to adults and is abusive.
The experience of life itself can become impoverished as we seek these additional values, if we cannot find it in this world we create others beyond; in fantasy and hoped for realities; and in doing so sustain the unsustainable!
Often we feel that we are the powerless victims of a dominating world. We feel helpless that we cannot change the whole world and so we do nothing. We can though change ourselves and help those around us to change and in doing so we change a little part of the world and the whole world is changed a little. In doing so we can additionally value our own contribution as well as the changes.
How then have we created this dominating influence of value in our lives?
How can we create more useful values and ways of valuing to enhance our everyday life?
In doing so how can we create a better world for ourselves and others, one that works for everybody?
How can we create values that are truly worth valuing?
Ultimately how can we develop as a species of value?
This workshop will introduce some of the latest exploration and modelling of “value” by John McWhirter, creator of DBM® and one of the worlds’ leading, and most prolific, behavioural modellers.
John will guide the group through a sequence of experiential exercises that will greatly expand the groups understanding, knowledge and skill in how values are created, organised and experienced.
Building on this he will then guide the group to investigate the value of values, to identify which are truly worth experiencing for enhancing the quality of life in the real world, which are limiting and which are dangerous.
From this understanding they group will then explore how to change values, from modifying (re-modelling values) through resolving and dissolving conflicting values, to developing and creating new values.
Finally the group will explore how to continue developing value and values that develop us as a species of value on this planet.
Syllabus will include the following:
Experiencing Values and “Experiencing the Experience of Values”: Levels of Experience
Performing Values: Valuing and being valued.
Understanding Values: Your own values and those of other people; how they are structured and how they function. Reality based values and “false” values.
Modelling Values: Experiential, Mythical, Metaphoric, Magical, Formal Values
Values, Motivation and Attaining: Achieving, Affiliating, Positioning And Effect, Affect, Impact
Organising Values: Detail, Scope, Connection; Grouping, Classifying and other ways of organising including Hierarchies and Heterarchies
Creating Values: How values are created. How to create new values. Levels of Creativity
Investigating Values: That, What, How, Why, That
Questioning Values: Elements of the Fractal Language Model
Stating Values: Elements of the Fractal Language Model
Communicating Values: Listening Skills, Comprehension Skills, Emit, Transmit, Communicate Model, Communication Skills, Communication Systems Model, Feedforward, Feedback and Noise.
Value Conflict Creation and Resolution: Types of Conflict and Conflict Creation and Resolution. Resolving, Solving, and Dissolving Conflicts.
Changing Values: Pre-Modelling, Re-Modelling, Post Modelling and New Modelling.
If man could once be reasonable enough to know that he is not a creature of reason, but only a reasoning creature, he might avoid making himself more prisons.
D. H. Lawrence
Developmental Behavioural Modelling DBM®
As humans we are born with less built in instincts than other species. This gives us a survival advantage, we are not limited to behaviours that fitted a previous environment, and we learn about our current environment and in learning adapt to it or adapt it to us.
This means that the unknown is a bigger issue for us. The more effectively we ‘go into the unknown’ the more effectively we will be able to explore the world. Effective exploring will supply the experience required for accurate understanding of our world and a practical basis for meeting our needs.
All of us build our understanding of the world around us based on our experience. We continue to create and change this understanding throughout our lives. We call this understanding that each of us creates our ‘model’ of the world. By a model we mean “an organised dynamic representation of our world”. We do not respond to the world as it is. We respond to how we have made sense of it, how it is “meaningful” to us. We then respond to new things based on what we already “know”. Instincts build in responses for animals but human beings need to learn how to respond in our cultures, organisations, countries and families. This learning, the building of a model, is a process of Modelling.
We build and use models; our clients build and use models. As professional we are more likely to build formal models (including theories) to extend our informal or “naturalistic” modelling.
Both informal understanding and the formal understanding of science are models (and theories) built through the process of modelling. No matter what the epistemology underlying a theory both the epistemology and the theory require to be created in the first place.
Developmental Behavioural Modelling DBM® is the formal studying of the complete range of modelling. This includes the structure and function of models, how models are formally and informally constructed and applied.
Developmental Behavioural Modelling DBM® is a new field that offers a unique set of skills. The uniqueness lies in that it operates at a deeper level than the usual techniques and ready-made answers and solutions. DBM® is a methodology not a fixed method. It offers a set of behavioural modelling skills to apply in any situation. DBM® modelling skills are used to identify the specific needs of the situation and to create answers that fit the particular circumstances rather than applying a pre-packaged solution. This makes DBM® a very practical approach. It also means that there is a greater need for skills and appropriate models.
Over thirty five years of development in practical applications in Social Services, Education, Psychotherapy and Business have gone into the development of DBM® . John McWhirter, the developer and Master Trainer of NLP, has drawn upon the most effective approaches in therapy, education and business together with skills and approaches of Neuro-linguistic Programming, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, Gestalt therapy, General Semantics, all within a framework developed from the work of Gregory Bateson, Cybernetics and Systems theory. The result is a constantly developing field that provides a revolutionary approach to understanding human behaviour, learning and development.
Art and Science
Art and Science are two of the main areas of human creativity. They are often perceived as very separate; sometimes considered opposites or non-compatible. Unfortunately this can be quite a limiting way to consider them. Instead if we integrate the artistic and the scientific it is possible to gain considerably more than the sum of the parts. The great benefit of modelling is to identify the best in Art and Science and how best to combine them in all areas of human activity. In this workshop we will be exploring the integration of Art and Science in relation to effective coaching and supervising.
Trainer: John McWhirter
John has over 35 years’ experience of working with children, adults, families, communities and organisations. He has explored and developed models for 35 years creating over 800 models in Developmental Behavioural Modelling; a new field committed to the exploration and development of all things related to models and modelling. He was personally certified by Richard Bandler in 1990 as a Master Trainer of NLP. He is the creator of Re-Modelled NLP. He is the designer and main trainer in the DBM® Masters degree at the University of Valencia, Spain. He is based in Glasgow, Scotland where he is Director of Sensory Systems Training and coordinates research, development, and training and a private practice as a therapist and consultant.
