the surprises behind a person's words - for example, is the metaphorical team a football team, a Formula 1 team, or a quiz team? A 'team' - with all that the word implies - means different things to different people. When everyone in a group is Philip Harland (2009). The Power of Six: A Six Part Guide to Self Knowledge. Wayfinder Press. ISBN 978-0-9561607-0-6. OCLC 980603921. Wikidata Q113559904. Temporarily) leave your interpretations and assumptions outside the conversation and only guide the other’s attention; A former journalist and media executive, Judy has been working with Clean Language since2005 and has trained people from all over the world in its use.

Important: Don’t forget to focus completely on the person you’re speaking with. You don’t have to share your opinion nor give advice. Where possible, use his or her own words in your questions. Step 2: Speak more slowly and mimic the other person with people. When you use their language, they will feel supported, respected, and heard. They will also be motivated to improve their situation. Getting started with David Grove’s Clean Language Prior to the use of the term "clean language" David taught and practiced his methods in the context of healing complex trauma. [2] In the following years his workshop materials included such titles as "Metaphors to Heal by", "Resolving Traumatic Memories", "Healing the Wounded Child Within" and "In the Presence of the Past". [16] Doyle, N., Tosey, P. & Walker, C. (2010). "Systemic Modelling: Installing Coaching as a Catalyst for Organisational Learning". Organisations & People, Vol. 17. No. 4, Winter 2010. David practised his methods in the context of resolving a complex trauma. An example is the lesson material: Grove, David J: Panzer, Basil I. (1989). The following years, his workshop materials included titles such as: ‘Metaphors to Heal by’, ‘Resolving Traumatic Memories’, ‘Healing the Wounded Child Within’, and ‘In the Presence of the Past’

What next?

Clean Language techniques help to translate unconscious feelings into conscious awareness (for oneself and/or between people). The client’s actual words have a precise personal meaning that can be lost if the counselor tries to substitute words or add what is not there, leading to reduced rapport. A particular set of rules for asking certain very simple questions has been developed in a way that lets the client to go deeper into inner experience. That set of rules and questioning procedures was called “Clean Language.” Tosey, P., Lawley, J. & Meese, R. (2014). "Eliciting Metaphor through Clean Language: An Innovation in Qualitative Research". British Journal of Management, 25: 629–646. doi: 10.1111/1467-8551.12042 In this conversation the manager has simply asked clean questions and used the person’s own words – the manager added nothing else. By listening carefully, the manager learns valuable information about supporting and motivating this person. By being asked questions like this carefully for, say, 20 minutes, the person themselves is likely to have a far clearer personal view of their career too. The List of Clean Questions Clean Language questioning typically reveals a network of linked metaphors within a person's thinking, referred to as a metaphor landscape.

Another valuable way of utilising Clean Language is helping the client to develop a metaphor as a resource, quality or strength. a detailed record of all the techniques that David Grove developed with Carol, including his latest work on Emergent Knowledge Clean Language methodology is potentially a very relevant tool in the overall process of working towards positive change. Clean Language is a question technique designed by David Grove in the eighties. He has given it a path in a generosity framework. When observing conversations as a psychotherapist, he recognised that the way the question is phrased influenced a patient’s ability to answer. The ability to answer subsequently influenced the patient’s ability to develop solutions and understanding. When using Clean Language, you do the following: Clean questions are clean, simple and repetitive. The small iterations, repeated over and over are what make the questions powerful.Metaphors are often preceded by the word ‘like/as’. For instance: ‘He is as stubborn as a mule’ or: ‘This department is like a sinking ship.’ Is the person describing something they’re literally doing, or are they talking about what something is like? In a therapeutic context, Clean Language questions often use the ‘full 3-part syntax’ with the following format:

more like a quiz team member, placing a high value on knowing the facts. In this respect, Clean Language can help us to deal with different personality types, without requiring great knowledge of personality theory itself. Clean Language techniques are aligned closely with modern 'enabling' principles of empathy, and understanding, as opposed to traditional 'manipulative' (conscious or unconscious) methods of influence and persuasion and the projection of self-interest. Clean Language questions are ‘clean’ because they do not unwittingly contaminate the client’s experience with external metaphors and assumptions. When using advanced Metaphor Therapy techniques with trauma survivors and also as as an adjunct to regression hypnotherapy, Morris Berg found that some clients experienced energy entering their bodies at the conclusion of a metaphor session. This happened especially if the client had been feeling that some part of the self was lost or shut off. This sense of reclaimed energy suggests that there might be a link between some metaphor work and energy therapies. Such a link remains to be explored.Clean' in this context meant that the questions introduced as few of Grove's own assumptions and metaphors as possible, giving the client (or patient) maximum freedom for their own thinking.

Clean Language is a method of communication developed by the therapist David Grove. It embodies modern communication values such as listening, understanding and empathy as opposed to persuasion and self-interest. The questions containing the verb ‘to be’ help to keep time still and are mostly used for developing individual perceptions:She has developed a number of business applications and taught these to people in fields ranging fromfactoryfloor to boardroom, education to engineering, sales to complementary medicine. Example 3 - Assumptions - I like to ask teams to hunt for assumptions, that is to ask clean questions about words which may cause ambiguity. A good example is in agile “User Story” statements during planning, where discovering missed assumptions can alleviate many problems early on. Sometimes these are the ‘unknown knowns’ the Product Owner simply forgot to include. When you ask each part of the story statement any number of clean questions, you’ll methodically tease out hidden things that weren’t considered. It allows the team to ask the questions playfully and collaboratively of the Product Owner, rather than them guessing the answers or asking them midway through the Sprint. The biggest advantage is ‘no question is stupid’; everyone plays the “game” of asking. Asking clean questions, using the client’s own words and exploring metaphors are just a few of the things a clean facilitator can do to encourage the conditions for sustainable change. You can add a few Clean questions to clarify the answers to each of the above, such as “What kind of … ?” or “Anything else about ...?” to gain details.