Product reviews for Clean Language

All coaches enjoy observing the effects of their questions, on the thinking and state of mind of their clients. Some time ago I started wondering how, in my questions, I might be applying my own assumptions to limit unwittingly the freedom of my clients to reframe their issues and outcomes for themselves. The desire to work with an individual without contaminating their mental landscape with features from my own has led me to David Grove's Clean Language. Sullivan and Rees have done a great service in producing this excellent and long overdue introduction to it.

They describe how Clean Language works and why, taking the reader through the different types of Clean questions and their effects. As a frame for this they emphasise the importance of listening exquisitely, which while true of all coaching, is especially important in using Clean with its exacting concentration on and use of the client's own, un-paraphrased language. They bring out the key concept in Clean of closely directing the client's attention to the emerging elements of their narrative, quite a different perspective to the more elaborate and interpretative questioning generally found in coaching conversations.

Modelling with Clean explicitly uses metaphor because an individual's metaphors replicate the structure and qualities of their experience. As more of the individual's unconscious metaphoric world comes into their awareness, new metaphors and new information emerge towards a resolution of their problem or achievement of their desired outcome. Sullivan and Rees place working with metaphor at the centre of their book, showing how we achieve an understanding of our experience, indeed how we conceptualise out of the sensory data we constantly receive, not just through metaphor but in metaphor. Their central point here is that when an individual's metaphor changes, through the artful simplicity of Clean questioning, so does their experience.

The authors also show the importance of the space in which the Clean conversation takes place and of the client's gestures, on the basis that we embody our metaphors in the space inside and around us. A particularly interesting distinguishing mark of Clean is how the facilitator uses space and the client's non-verbal communications, the distinction here being that when the coach is symbolically modelling through metaphor with Clean Language, they build rapport with the client's information and its location, as much as if not more than with the client, in order to facilitate the client to model themselves.

Sullivan & Rees achieve the difficult task of presenting a clear pathway into their subject for those new to it, while offering useful reinforcement and a helpful reference for others who have some experience of using Clean. They balance enthusiasm with pragmatism and give us a practical guide for the curious that includes exercises that can be undertaken by the reader themselves and with a partner, and which can be adapted for use in coaching and with groups. They rightly acknowledge the challenge in using Clean in coaching and a need to adapt the strict syntax of Clean questioning to achieve a more natural conversational style in the coaching session.

If you want to increase your ability to work with your clients and not get in their way, so that they can achieve their own more deeply embedded change; if you are familiar with NLP and want to explore a related but fascinatingly different perspective on modelling; and to know more about the use of language and metaphor in coding and creating our experience, you will find this book an invaluable companion.