Top-down modelling

In top-down modelling the modeller starts with a model and the data is organised within that
model. The modeller knows at the start what the structure of the model will be, even though he/she
doesn’t know the precise content of the individual client.

Once a model exists it can be used as a shortcut to save having to bottom-up model all the time:
models make life easier. That is their blessing and their curse. If you only top-down model, you risk
missing an idiosyncratic part of the client’s experience.

How close a model is to the ‘top’ or to the ‘bottom’ is relative. Our 'Framework for Change' method of
coaching is a top-down model, but it is closer to people’s experience than, say, most psychometric
models of personality. For example, ‘Problem’, ‘Remedy’ and ‘desired Outcome’ (the PRO model) are
categories that are closer to people’s everyday conceptions and descriptions than ‘introvert’,
‘extrovert’, or a Myers-Briggs ‘INTJ type'. Even young children know they experience problems and
desires but they have wait a lot longer to understand what it means to be introverted or extroverted.

The client starts a session not in ‘the here and now’ but [working] from an already constructed top-
down model such as ‘I am depressed’. Although this may be a very familiar story to them, they are
likely to know very little about how they do depressed. Often you can ask a client who has been
“anxious all my life”, ‘And when you are anxious, where are you anxious?” and they will look at you as
if you just asked them to explain quantum physics. Their knowledge of their experience is David Grove
calls “an undifferentiated information mass”.

Clean Space is a method which helps a client to deconstruct their model by spatial locating and
physicalising the components of their model. David Grove calls this “nailing their history to the floor”.

Bottom-up modelling

When bottom-up modelling you start from what the client actually says and does. The overall or
underlying logic of the client’s information is where you are heading. You should start with as few
preconceptions as possible. But you have to presuppose something. In Symbolic Modelling, if a client
is functioning in the world, then we assume they have a way to organise space, time, perspective and
hierarchy. But we do not presuppose what they way is.

The facilitator-modeller is in effective always asking ‘How does that happen?’ or ‘How does that work?’
or ‘How is this all put together?’. In Symbolic Modelling we rarely ask these questions out right, partly
because they assume so much, partly because the client rarely knows, and partly because they are
too complex. Better to use David Grove's Clean Language to slow the process down and let the detail
and idiosyncrasies reveal themselves bit by bit. This helps the client to take their model apart to get at
the components. Whereas most facilitator’s will deconstruct the problem, we prefer to start by
facilitating the client to deconstruct their desired outcome.

As facilitator, you are paying attention to what the client is paying attention to, and taking your lead
from the client’s information. The model emerges from the patterns in the data. As a bottom-up
modeller you have no idea at the start about how the model will look at the end.

The facilitator keeps taking in the in-the-moment descriptions, holds off long enough for patterns to
emerge, and builds their model of the client's model from what the client is actually saying and doing
right there in the room.

As facilitators, we keep returning to the bottom to put new pieces of information into the model (see
diagram above). When a new symbol arrives, the facilitator starts again at the bottom, and wonders,
‘How does it fit in, how can my model accommodate it or does my model need to change?’ Each time
there is new information presented the facilitator amends their model of the components and the
relationships to see if that changes the overall patterns.

We aim to build up a map of the spatial, temporal, functional and hierarchical relationships. All this is
generally in the background, and isn’t what the client is paying attention to. By modelling the
background, you get to the organisation that holds the experience together — and your model should
have a similar (isomorphic) structure to their experience, i.e. your model will be a metaphor of their
background knowledge.

Through the process the client constructs a new model-of-self from the bottom up. As this happens
they see new patterns and relationships. One indication that a client is self-modelling is when they
catch themselves doing their pattern in-the-moment.