The three families
- Deletions: information is missing — "they rejected the proposal" (who, exactly, rejected what, on what grounds?)
- Distortions: inference presented as fact — "he resents me" (how do you know?), mind-reading, cause-effect ("she makes me anxious")
- Generalisations: universals and rules — "I always freeze in interviews" (always? every interview?)
What questioning well looks like
Raw Meta Model questioning feels like interrogation; skilled questioning feels like interest. The difference is pacing, rapport and intent — you challenge a generalisation to recover specificity the speaker needs, not to win. "Always?" asked with genuine curiosity opens a problem; asked with smugness it closes the conversation.
Where it is used
Coaching and interviews (recovering actual criteria), sales and negotiation (what does "too expensive" specifically mean?), self-work (auditing your own absolutist sentences), and management (meetings run on deletions). It pairs naturally with clean language — our journal piece compares the two models directly.
Practice, not study
The Meta Model is a listening reflex, which means it is built through live drilling: hear a sentence, classify the violation, ask the recovery question, repeat until automatic. That drilling — with feedback — is core curriculum in Spirit of NLP.