I No Speaka Your Language

The methodology of Clean Language was developed in the 1980’s by David Grove for use by counsellors and therapists. It has since evolved into several branches including NLP and Symbolic Modelling.

It is a questioning and discussion technique used especially for discovering, exploring and working with people’s own personal metaphors, and allows for a greater depth of understanding when communicating. Metaphor refers to the use of vivid figurative comparison in expressing something such as a concept or experience. Expressions such as flat out, over the moon, and ready for battle, are all metaphors. The expressions are images, partly for dramatic effect, and partly because a metaphor is often the most natural and easy way to convey a meaning.

Research has shown that we use up to six metaphors per minute in our day to day communication, mostly unconsciously and unnoticed. Metaphors underpin our thinking, and bubble to the surface in the words we use. They are the natural language of the unconscious mind which is largely imagery based.

Metaphors and imagery are very valuable in communications because they make abstract ideas more tangible, and can wrap large amounts of subtle and complex information, including emotional information, into a relatively small package.

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. Think “how can I help you find a solution to your need” as opposed to “how can I make you buy something”.

Aside from clinical therapy, Clean Language is most commonly used in executive coaching, but its relative simplicity and its unusual approach to metaphor make it useful in a wide range of other contexts, working with individuals and with groups.

For example Clean Language is now being used in:

·    recruitment interviews

·    deal negotiation

·    team development and motivation

·    project planning

·    market research

·    business strategy development

·    counselling

·    and conflict resolution.

Clean Language allows managers to consciously choose to make oneself understood and to understand others. Different viewpoints can be respected and contribute to a better way forward. It also gives team members the opportunity to distinguish between ‘I don’t like your metaphor’ and ‘You’re stupid’; and to replace an ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ attitude with ‘What can we learn from each others perspective?’, thereby creating:

·    less arguments

·    more opportunities for creativity & creative solutions

·    more respect for diversity

The key is to recognise that everyone’s metaphors have value and all metaphors have limitations.

An interesting paradox exists in the effect of using metaphor in group settings was identified by Annemiek van Helsdingen and Wendy Nieuwland of www.cleanlanguage.co.uk ;

“On the one hand the use of metaphor dissociates (the metaphor we use to talk about a situation is not ‘it’, the situation itself, but something that ‘it’ can be likened to). As a result it is common for people to be less emotionally attached to the topic and find it easier to be more open and respectful in discussions;
On the other hand, when creating a metaphor together (e.g. in team alignment and visioning processes), a metaphor can also do the exact opposite: the members associate strongly with the joint metaphor and the values represented by it.”

Clean Language questions are ‘cleansed’ as far as possible of anything that comes from the questioner’s “maps” — metaphors, assumptions, paradigms or sensations-that could direct the questionee’s attention away from increased awareness of his or her own metaphorical representation of experience.

It is a way of reflecting, mirroring and matching to increase rapport, understanding and deeper insight.

Clean Language offers a template for questions that are as free as possible of the questioner’s inferences, presuppositions, mind-reading, second guessing, references and metaphors. Clean questions incorporate all or some of the client’s/questionee’s specific phrasing and might also include other auditory components of the client’s communication such as sighs, pitch, tonality, etc. The questioner might also draw attention to any non-verbal signals that coincide with the client’s auditory output, i.e., a fist being raised simultaneously with a sigh, that might also represent elements of the client’s metaphorical representation of experience.

*how many metaphors did you pick up on in this article?

For more information; http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk