If a management team wants to assess where they are now, and where they want to get to – or indeed if they want to draw a line under past failures and set some new objectives – the S.C.O.R.E. model provides a ready-made format. It’s best done with an independent facilitator who can guide the process without having an emotional stake in the content.

Most managers are not interested in the intricacies of NLP, but just want something that helps them to move forward. The S.C.O.R.E. model is well suited to the task because it is relatively jargon-free.

You don’t even have to make the concept of a timeline explicit – just arrange four flip charts in a line to represent Causes, Symptoms, Outcomes and Effects, with another flip off to one side for Resources, and you have an implicit timeline. As the team members move from one flip to another to record the information they get from each stage, they will unconsciously internalise the idea of progress along a timeline even if it’s never explicitly mentioned.

You may also welcome some ideas on how to prevent a team problem-solving format that starts with examining ‘symptoms’ from turning into a morale-sapping whinge fest? Your introduction will set the tone for the rest of the session, so emphasise the desired end result of clarifying the desired outcome and identifying the positive consequences. The more you know about the values of the team, the more you can encourage their ‘towards’ motivation. If it’s a particularly ‘away from’ team, you can emphasise the consequences of not focusing on the desired outcomes and effects.

You can encourage a positive mindset before the session even starts, by asking participants in their invitation to come in with examples of what is already working well in the organisation or team.