Inside and Outside Modelling
Professional Leader Magazine Issues 36
Wyatt Woodsmall Interview Chapter 3
Chapter Three examines the distinction between Inside and Outside Modelling and why each produces different kinds of insight. Dr Wyatt Woodsmall explains how Inside Modelling helps you understand and reproduce your own internal processes, while Outside Modelling enables you to decompose another person’s expertise so it can be transferred. The conversation also introduces phenomenology, structuralism and Ken Wilber’s methodological perspectives, showing how you can analyse both experience and structure more precisely to capture excellence, improve learning and reproduce high performance across teams.
© Nicholas Hill Academy Ltd, England, UK, 2015-2026
6 Minute Read
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In Conversation with Wyatt Woodsmall
Nicholas Christian Hill
Nicholas Christian Hill FCMI FIoL FIC Managing Director, Nicholas Hill Academy Ltd Leadership and Management Master Trainer Founding Editor, Professional Leader Magazine
Dr Wyatt Woodsmall
Certified Master Modeller Co-Creator, Advanced Behavioural Modelling Co-Founder, International NLP Trainers Association Co-Author, Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality
Issue 36 Chapter Guide
Issue Contents
Wyatt Woodsmall Interview Chapters
Wyatt Woodsmall Interview Chapter 3
Conversation Focus
Inside and Outside Modelling
6 Pages
Study human experience and create frameworks for excellence by modelling your own performance and that of others.
Chapter Transcript
Nicholas Christian Hill
That resonates strongly with what I have seen over the years. There is often an unspoken assumption that expertise automatically translates into the ability to teach and train, but in practice, we see a very different story. Some of the most capable managers I have worked with struggle when training their teams, whereas others who are less exceptional are far better at developing people. While subject knowledge and teaching or training skills are not mutually exclusive, one doesn’t automatically produce the other. Expertise and instructional skills fall into different domains of competence. The challenge for the modeller lies in the handover. It suggests that modelling is not just about eliciting strategy but also about shaping it so that it is treated as a practical tool for learners in the workplace. Therefore, this discipline is divided into two areas, comprising Inside and Outside Modelling. As an expert in this field, Wyatt, please explain the differences between the two types, starting with Inside Modelling.
Wyatt Woodsmall
Okay, Nicholas. Excellent question. I created these terms. When my wife, Marilyne, and I started, there was very little written on modelling. There was considerable confusion, so we first sought to clarify the meaning of modelling. We initially worked with John Grinder, then with Richard Bandler, and most recently with Frank Pucelik. In modelling, there are two approaches. You can model from what we call the inside and then figure out how you do what you do. Therefore, you are modelling yourself. However, you must be able to reproduce your results. Outside Modelling is about finding an expert and then decomposing exactly what they can do, but you may never be able to do it yourself. In fact, most of my work is Outside Modelling.
Nicholas Christian Hill
That distinction helps, because in practice those two approaches often get blurred as you mentioned earlier. Some people assume that if they can reflect on their own success, they are modelling, when in reality they are often just rationalising. Inside Modelling requires a level of self-awareness that many people have not yet developed. Outside Modelling, by contrast, holds that excellence can be analysed and then replicated. From a leadership perspective, that idea seems more realistic because managers need to understand how a top performer does what they do so they can reproduce those results across the rest of the team. Tell us about some of the work you did with Olympic athletes.
Wyatt Woodsmall
My wife, Marilyne, and I modelled the US Olympic divers, including people like Greg Louganis. There is no way in the world that I am going to get on the diving board, jump off, and do a ‘three-and-a-half’ somersault dive. Therefore, we do Outside Modelling with these athletes. John Grinder is a champion of Inside Modelling, whereas in most of the business world, it is not required. However, you need to train others to do it. That is why I do Outside Modelling. Others have proposed names. Robert Dilts called this implicit and explicit modelling. There is a deeper basis to it, and I only became aware of it about ten years ago.
Nicholas Christian Hill
That example makes the distinction very tangible. Leaders are rarely expected to replicate the technical brilliance of their top performers, just as you are not expected to throw yourself off a diving board! However, a leader must understand what enables that level of performance and then create conditions that enable others to reproduce it. I have seen managers model star performers, only to fail dramatically because they didn’t know how to elicit the internal strategy. The real leverage lies in the ability to decode patterns and then adapt them to suit the learner. Please share with us the ‘deeper basis’ of modelling.
Wyatt Woodsmall
One of my mentors is a gentleman named Ken Wilber, who is probably one of the smartest people on the planet. In his work, he uses the title ‘Integral Methodological Pluralism’. He says that when you study anything, you study it from eight different methodological perspectives. He has four quadrants, with access from top to bottom that moves from the individual to the collective. Then there is access from left to right, which goes from the inside to the outside. In modelling human beings, we examine what is occurring within the individual. There are two approaches, or methodologies, for studying human experience. One is phenomenology, the other structuralism.
Nicholas Christian Hill
Those terms will appear abstract for most people, so we must be pragmatic. I often hear managers talk about experience on the one hand and theory on the other. Sometimes we focus on how something feels from the inside, and at other times we try to break it down into components that can be understood and taught. Both approaches lead to very different conclusions; please explain the difference between phenomenology and structuralism.
Wyatt Woodsmall
Phenomenology explores the person’s experience in any activity, such as meditation. It focuses on the internal experiences, so this would be Inside Modelling. Structuralism, on the other hand, focuses on the structures underlying that experience and proposes a way to decompose what is going on.
Nicholas Christian Hill
Okay. Let’s review what we have discussed so far. Using your words, modelling is capturing, encoding, replicating, and transferring expertise. Inside Modelling involves modelling yourself. Therefore, you need to become consciously aware of your own internal processes (cognition), internal states (emotions, attention, and consciousness), and external behaviour (visible physical movement). The method of Inside Modelling involves replicating everything functional in your unconsciousness for each of these three areas, so that you can teach other people your strategies. Outside Modelling, on the other hand, is concerned with capturing, encoding, replicating, and transferring someone else’s expertise so that you can utilise their strategies yourself or teach them to others. The modeller’s task, in this context, is to help the person become conscious of their internal processes, internal states, and external behaviour so that the modeller can document them strategically. Am I right?
Wyatt Woodsmall
Yes, that is a good summary. Now, phenomenology will never give you structuralism, and structuralism will never give you phenomenology. You can meditate forever, but you will never directly encounter the structures. You can encounter the structures, but you may never be able to meditate. Much of the confusion on these subjects stems from people pursuing different forms of structuralism. In other words, they have various ways of decomposing from the outside what is going on. They operate from different models. The models my wife, Marilyne, and I usually use are based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming and cover representational systems, physiology, emotions, and strategies. The phenomenological approach is what John Grinder uses. Then there is the structural approach, which I use. Both methods are valid. Furthermore, both will give you different information.
Nicholas Christian Hill
Right. Some behavioural modellers often mix these approaches without realising it, whether in athletics, as with the examples you provided or in business. Some of my clients reflect deeply on their experience between delivering training workshops. They report back, believing they have uncovered the structure behind their achievements, when in reality they are only operating at the level of personal insight. Others jump straight into breaking behaviour down into parts without ever evaluating their internal experience. These activities remain valid because they deepen self-awareness, which is a precursor to improvement. However, they are inadequate if people want to replicate their success or build on it. I agree that both approaches offer value and answer different questions. What interests me is how modelling embraces both approaches and helps achieve the objective of transferring performance to another person rather than simply describing it.