Complex Meta Programs

I have always found Tad James to be one of the clearest writers in the field of NLP and recently I reread his wonderful book, Timeline Therapy and the Basis of Personality. In Chapter 14, he gives a fine description of what he calls complex meta programs. These are in addition to the four basic meta programs which emerged out of Jung’s work on human archetypes and which are used in the Myers Briggs personality testing system. Below, an elicitation question is given for each of the complex meta programs. Just using the questions on yourself or with other people is enough to help you understand how people work in different ways, but for fuller understanding of the ideas presented here, I highly recommend getting a copy of the original book. The questions here are phrased for the workplace, but you can easily tailor them into other areas of life.
Tad James believes that the four most important complex meta programs are:

• Direction Filter (1)
• Frame of Reference Sort (3)
• Relationship Filter (12)
• Attention Direction (16)

1. Direction Filter
“What do you want in a job?”
This expresses the type of motivation and could be Towards (moving towards desirable things like money), Away (moving away from undesirable things like poverty), or somewhere in between these extremes.
2. Modal Operator Filter (Reason Filter)
“Why did you choose your current job?”
Answers can reflect Possibility (they look for new opportunities), Necessity (they do what needs to be done), or Both.
3. Frame of Reference Filter
“How do you know when you’ve done a good job?”
Possibilities are Internal Frame of Reference, External Frame of Reference, Balanced, Internal with an External Check, and External with an Internal Check.
4. Convincer Representational Filter
“How do you know when someone else is good at what they do?”
Possibilities include See it, Hear it, Deal with them, and Read about it.
5. Convincer Demonstration Filter
“How does someone have to demonstrate competency to you before you’re convinced?”
Possibilities are Automatic, Number of Times, Period of Time, and Consistent.
6. Management Direction Filter
There are three questions which can determine how effective a person would be as a manager. As with all these questions, the original book offers much more information and is highly recommended.
a) Do you know what you need to do to increase your chances for success on a job?
b) Do you know what someone else needs to do to increase his/her chances?
c) Do you find it easy or not to easy to tell him/her?
Possibilities include:
Self & Others (answered yes, yes, yes)
Self Only (answered yes, no, yes/no)
Others Only (answered no, yes, yes/no)
Self but not Others (yes, yes, no)
7. Action Filter
“When you come into a situation, do you usually act quickly after sizing it up, or do you a detailed study of all the consequences and then act?” Possibilities for this filter are Active, Reflective, Both, or Inactive.
8. Affiliation Filter
“Tell me about a work situation in which you were the happiest (a one-time event).” The person is likely to be one of: Independent Player, Team Player, or Management Player.
9. The Work Preference Filter
This is best elicited through more general questions about a person’s previous experiences. It indicates a person’s preference for working with Things, Systems, or People.
10. Primary Interest Filter
“Tell me about your favourite restaurant.” People will talk about People, Place, Things, Activity, or Information.
11. Chunk Size Filter
“If we were going to do a project together, would you want to know the big picture first, or would you want to get the details of what we’re going to do first?”
You will generally find that people fall into one of Specific, Global, Specific to Global, or Global to Specific. Of course, people may change from one context of their life to another.
12. Relationship Filter (Matching/Mismatching)
“What is the relationship between what you are doing this year, and what you did last year?” A Matcher will tend to notice similarities. A Mismatcher will tend to notice differences.
13. Emotional Stress Filter
“Tell me about a work situation (a one-time event) that gave you trouble.”
Notice if the person is Dissociated (no access to Kinesthetic), Associated (access to Kinesthetic), or Choice (first accesses Kinesthetic and then comes out of the feelings).
14. Time Filter
This is usually best elicited by observation, but you could potentially use a question like “Do you have your attention on the Past, Present, or Future? Or are you not concerned with time (Atemporal)”
15. Modal Operator Sequence
This is how a person motivates himself/herself. This is best discovered by observing words used over time. Notice which modal operators they use including I can’t, I should, I have to, I mustn’t etc.
16. Attention Direction
There is no specific question – simply observe. Is the person paying more attention to Self or to Others.
17. Goal Filter
There is no specific question. Just look at the person’s goals and see if they are aiming for Perfection or for Optimization.
18. Comparison Filter
“How are you doing on your job? How do you know?”
e.g. Quantitative (numbers) vs. Qualitative (good, bad, etc.) vs. Nature of comparison (comparing to others, to self in past, etc.)
19. Knowledge Filter
“When you decide you can do something, from where do you get that knowledge?”
20. Completion Filter
“If we were going to do a project together, would you be more interested in the startup phase, where you were generating the energy for the BEGINNING of the project, or in the MIDDLE of the project, where you were involved in the maintenance of the project, or in the END, where you were involved in shutting it down?”
“Is there a part of the project that you’d rather not be involved in?”
21. Closure Filter
“Once you have started receiving information that has, for example, four steps, how important is it to you that you receive all four pieces?”

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Have fun exploring these questions and meta programs with yourself and other people!