- Associate the person into the strategy - either provide a context where they can demonstrate it right now if appropriate, or associate them into a past time when they were using the strategy. Whatever you do, keep them associated in the strategy by using present-tense language. This allows you to filter out the parts of any memory strategy the person may be using to think about a past experience of the strategy. When they are associated into the strategy, their accessing cues will be those for the strategy, not those for remembering it.
- Ask them to take you through their strategy step by step. Use all the possibilities clues to map their strategy - lateral eye movements, postures, gestures, body language and accessing cues, direct verbal answers and predicates.
- Distinguish between sequential steps and simultaneous steps. Sequential steps are separated by "then", simultaneous steps by "and".
- Pay attention to the process of the strategy. Do not get drawn into what the strategy is being used to do. That is content and irrelevent to the strategy. The strategy is like a train - the trucks can carry anything.
- Use TOTE questions to find the strategy details - the cue, operations, tests and exit point. Identify the critical submodalities involved.
First ask the outcome, "What are you trying to achieve by doing this?"
Next ask for the cue that begins the strategy, "What is the first step in this process?"
Keep asking for the next steps: "And what did you do next?"
Ask how one person moves from one step to the next: "What do you pay attention to as you go through these steps?"
Ask for the exit point: "What lets you know when you have achieved your outcome?"
The exit point is normally determined by a critical submodality reaching a threshold level. So when the mental picture becomes bright enough, or the feeling becomes strong enough, then the person knows they've achieved their outcome.
- Help the person by backtracking constantly. Run through the steps you have so far and to remind them, keep asking, "And then...?"
- When you have elicited the strategy, try it out for yourself. Does it make sense?
- Take the person through the completed strategy. Does it make sense to them? Are they congruent that this is how they do the task?
