What’s stopping you from using Clean Language?
Teaching a group of facilitators to use Clean Language this week, I asked what might stop them from applying what they learned.
“It’s really hard to listen really attentively, so that you hear their exact words, and notice metaphors, and at the same time decide which Clean Language question to ask next and what to ask it about, AND pay attention to the rest of the group at the same time. It’s like juggling too many balls!” they told me.
In addition, several participants were concerned that they couldn’t do all of that AND remain authentic, fully themselves, fully experiencing their emotions in the moment, fully sharing what mattered. To do that was professionally, as well as personally, important to them.
These two impediments are blocking people who clearly share ‘Clean’ values from sharing the power of Clean Language with the groups they work with. They deserve a considered response beyond, “Don’t worry, it’ll come with practice!”
Staying authentic
Let’s first consider the apparent challenge of staying authentic when you are ‘constrained’ by the Clean Language questions. these questions are designed to minimise the amount of ‘you’ that goes into the question, so as to open as much space as possible for others.
Whenever someone starts to do something different, it will initially feel unfamiliar. A new shirt, a new office chair, a new kind of lunch… they will all, initially, feel ‘not you’. Is that the same as inauthentic? NO!!!
Remember a time when you updated the language you used – perhaps with the intention to be more inclusive. Initially you had to consciously think about it, and maybe stumbled over your words occasionally. Was that the same as inauthentic? NO!!!
Developing Clean skills usually makes people more aware of their own ‘stuff’ than they were before. When they are asked Clean Language questions, as part of practice sessions or in private reflection, they learn about their own assumptions, their own opinions, their own emotions, their own triggers, their own metaphors, their own patterns.
They become better able to distinguish between their own ‘stuff’ and everyone else’s.
That awareness will be unfamiliar, and it may not be comfortable. But it is ‘authentic’. It is you.
And once you are aware of all of that, you become more able to share it. You’ll even have compelling metaphors for some of it, making it even easier for others to grasp.
The fact you’ll be asking some Clean Language questions as part of your work doesn’t mean you can’t share your stuff. It just means that you separate that sharing from the Clean Language questions.
Juggling listening, questions and and group awareness
The juggling problem is of a different character. That feeling of overload is just part of learning a new skill.
A useful metaphor that emerged from this group was that of learning to drive a car. For almost everyone, this skill starts off feeling impossibly difficult: mirrors, steering, gears, brakes… but after a certain amount of practice, it becomes automatic – and super useful, an easy way of getting from A to B.
And learning to use Clean Language is like that. Hard at first, but super useful once you’ve got the knack.
Once they’ve got it down pat, experienced Clean facilitators find that Clean Language makes their life easier than before.
For example, hypnotist and hypnosis trainer Igor Ledochowski says it makes life easier across the board. “I don’t have to spend hours ahead of time preparing the perfect set of stories and metaphors. I can let the live moment bring it out and just deal with what’s there in front of me.”
And what could be easier than that?
What else might stop you from using Clean Language? Please comment below!
Copied form old judyrees.co.uk
Jan Nehyba
25 May 2023
This is a great topic. Thanks for it.
For me, the challenge is the tension between “rapport” (or working alliance between the client and me) and “Clean questions” (or sequences of the CL questions).
If someone says to me: “Don’t ask me these stupid questions,” and I admittedly can say WWYLTHH to that? But if it’s repeated, it’s a for me “clue” that the basal working alliance with me is being “disrupted”. I believe that if I want to minimize myself in the Clean Language process, I must first establish a basal rapport between myself and the client. I am the one who “holds the space” for the others to develop their relationship with the topic within the Clean session. Without the foundational rapport, this space could not exist.
So to use Clean Language in a session, I need to first have a rapport with the other person. I don’t think it’s a paradox that we must establish rapport first to destroy it and give space to the Clean Session. Instead, rapport is something that is “under” cleanness, something that “holds” cleanness.
Or is it not? I don’t really know… 🙂
James Lawley
28 May 2023
Thanks for the example Jan.
I think it is important to distinguish between Clean Language and the small set of questions David Grove identified which I call “classically Clean” i.e. clean in many – but not all – contexts.
In my opinion your example of asking ‘And what would you like to have happen?’ when a client has said “Don’t ask me these stupid questions,” is not Clean since it ignores the client’s request and the logic of the statement.
I suggest a more conversational but still Clean reply would be something like “Okay. What you like to talk about?” This honours the client’s request and is a question that is hopefully less likely to be regarded as “stupid”.
When the client naturally accesses the metaphorical domain of their experience, you can try to introduce some of the classically Clean questions and calibrate how they are received.
I don’t see any inherent incompatibility between Clean Language and “basal rapport”.
I really appreciate your continued interest in exploring how Clean works in practice.
Judy Rees
25 May 2023
Thanks for this Jan. There’s more about this kind of response in another recent post here: https://judyrees.substack.com/p/why-some-people-get-angry-when-you-ask-them-clean-language-questions
Your comment has me wondering, “What kind of rapport is that rapport?” I think David Grove used to say that the idea was for the facilitator to get into rapport with the client’s information, rather than the client. But to get there, one definitely needs some kind of ‘working alliance’.
That’s especially true in a one-on-one context. In a group, to what extent is what’s needed ‘rapport’? For me, it’s closer to ‘consent to a working alliance’.
Jonas Höglund
26 May 2023
Great topic!
Working in Swedish, I obviously have to use different words. It feels like the symbol-like metaphors are harder to elicit. Instead the clients often try to explain the feeling with more emotions and just increasing the number of words in the answer. Maybe it’s a language/social structure thing.
So the next question has a loooong string of words that all contain metaphors and I just have to pick one and it’s hard.
Judy Rees
26 May 2023
Thanks for this Jonas. The issue of people not “going into metaphor” is certainly not unique to Swedish. There’s a blog post here that might help: https://judyrees.substack.com/p/hard-nudge-someone-go-metaphor And of course you don’t need explicit, symbol-style metaphors to use Clean Language. All language is metaphorical, all the time!