Resources, embodied metaphor and Clean Language
How we facilitate clients to recognise, access, develop and enhance personal resources – qualities that can be drawn on to respond more effectively to difficult circumstances.
Guidance: competency criteria Level-1 Clean Facilitator
General guidance about how to understand the Level-1 Criteria for Certification version 1.8
Competence criteria Level-1
Criteria for assessing the competence of a Level-1 Clean Facilitator, version 1-8.
The role of identifying
The first of four fundamental modelling processes
Introducing Clean Language
How Clean Language questions embody the principles and spirit of a clean approach.
List of transcripts with Ukrainian therapists
Links to annotated demonstrations of Symbolic Modelling with Clean Language
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Modelling in the symbolic domain
Introducing David Grove, the field of Clean, modelling excellence, Symbolic Modelling, metaphor and a client case.
Context makes Clean clean
What makes a question contextually clean in coaching and therapy? What is the value of these questions? Under what conditions does it makes sense to ask them?
Evaluating Coaching
A full transcript of Clean Language Interviewing (CLI) in action. The annotation focusses on the process of interviewing with Clean Language, rather than the interviewee’s content.
The secret ingredients of AWWYLTHH?
My answer to: When you ask ‘And what would you like to have happen?’ it has a different effect to when I ask it. What is the secret ingredient in how you ask this question?
Publications using David Grove’s ideas
List of articles published in academic and professional journals that have incorporated the ideas of David Grove.
Do we want agency over our inner signals?
The case of a client who wanted to be able to ‘light the match’ and ‘decide and do’ at will.
Ten questions and answers about Symbolic Modelling
Our answers to ten questions raised by a group of Ukrainian psychologists and psychotherapists in preparation for our first workshop with them.
Origin and Development of the Cleanness Rating
A review of the key dates in the development of the cleanness rating used in Clean Language Interviewing
The evolution of the Problem-Remedy-Outcome (PRO) model
The history of the invaluable PRO model with explanatory diagrams.
I want a clean house
A transcript of Penny Tompkins facilitating with Symbolic Modelling using the Problem-Remedy-Outcome model and working ‘live’ with the client’s here-and-now embodied experience.
Becoming more mindful with Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling
What ‘mindfulness’ is, what it isn’t, and how Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling can support people to access, cultivate and sustain it.
Going live
When a client is aware of what they are experiencing ‘in the now’, they get direct, high-quality information for self-modelling as it is happening.
The ‘When … what happens to …?’ question
Why is ‘And when X, what happens to Y?’ such a versatile question?
Steve Andreas on ‘What would you like to have happen?’
A leader in the field of NLP comments on the standard opening Clean Language question, and my reply.
It’s about time
Why it is vital to model the timeframes, structures and evidence of a client’s desires.
Extending Clean Space
A series of activities to create entirely new processes based on Clean Space principles.
Getting to ‘it’
How do experienced symbolic modellers use the information embedded in a client’s first words to guide the direction of a session?
Embodying others’ metaphors
Metaphor is a prime vehicle for the acquisition of knowledge, tacit or otherwise. But how do we ‘acquire’ or ‘take on’ or ‘incorporate’ metaphors that are not our own?
Choosing a modelling project
I was asked: (a) what a modelling outcome should look like, and (b) what I mean by: Scope, Timescale and Presupposition.
A modeller’s perspective
An investigation of an under-reserached aspect of modelling – the perspective adopted by the modeller when modelling an exemplar for an ability or behaviour.
I don’t know what I want
Given Symbolic Modelling is an outcome orientated methodology, what if a client cannot identify a desired outcome?
Facilitator choices
A conversation with Maarten Aalberse about ‘The Tree of Wisdom’ video in my last blog.
The Tree of Wisdom
When a client comes for coaching or therapy with a topic that presents a conundrum, what do you?
Pointing to a new modelling perspective
Examines why physical and attentional pointing is a perfect metaphor for Symbolic Modelling. Published in ‘Acuity’.
What do you say before you say goodbye?
How to use the end of a coaching or therapy session to maximise the benefit to the client.
Nobody duped me
How we use a person’s language to model the way they self-deceive.
Deconstructing Feedback
This paper raises awareness of both the complexity of the feedback-giving process and the range of information that can be included in feedback.
Difficulties Modelling David Grove
Answers to: 1. How long after you started modelling David Grove did you start training others?; 2. What were the main difficulties modelling Grove?
He does not think the coaching he received was of any use
A blog that questions whether “Client feedback is … one of the least reliable measures we have.”
Applying cross-domain thinking
Domain dependence and it’s inverse, cross-domain thinking, occur in many different guises. We have collected ideas from a range of contexts.
What are Double Binds?
Double binds defined and why “Be spontaneous!” and “Damned if I do and damned if I don’t” are not examples of double binds.
What constitutes Clean Language?
‘Clean Language’ has been used in many ways since David Grove coined the term in the early 1980s. This is my attempt at defining and contextualising it.
Maximising Serendipity for Personal Change
This blog first appeared in the newsletter of the SerenA project whose aim is “to transform research processes by proactively creating surprising connection opportunities.”
REPROCess: Modelling attention
A new, simple, way to model where people are placing their attention. Published in ‘Acuity’.
Surgery and Metaphor
A blog about the metaphorical roots and uses of the word ‘surgery’.
Between a rock and a hard place
Defines three kinds of problem, and describes how to work with client problems involving ‘binding patterns’.
Modelling Shared Reality
Introducing Modelling Shared Reality, a new qualitative research methodology which is rooted in Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling. Published in Kwalon.
How Clean is How Far?
Why we now consider ‘How far?’ to be a mildly leading question and have removed it from the summary of ‘specialised’ questions
More good DEEDS
My second blog about DEEDS delves deeper into the ideas which pose an alternative to the standard computational theory of mind.
DEEDS: Putting minds back together
A cognitive science in which brain, body and world intertwine “beyond-the-skin”.
Inhibition
Nine functions of inhibition, how it affects learning and the body, and 12 activities exploring the value and problems of inhibition.
How to start modelling an exemplar
How to start finding out how others access emotional and other resource states
How to start a modelling project
The opening question in an exemplar modelling interview is often hard to keep clean. I offer some tips on how to do it.
Accessing transpersonal states
I was asked: I wonder if clean could help in getting conceptually the experience of no-self?
Pointing attention
Part 2: A new metaphor for the perspective I adopt as a symbolic modeller.
Making complex decisions rapidly
How do humans sum up a complex situation and rapidly decide what action to take?
Setting up Clean Space
Attending more to the artistic aspects of Clean Space whihc contribute to the overall aim of encouraging conditions for creative emergence.
What do you know about Symbolic Modelling?
15 questions to assess the degree to which.participants have acquired our model of facilitating.
The chaotic nature of the reorganisation process
Does emergent change always create a desired rather than a less desired result?
What is self-modelling?
A process whereby a person constructs a model of the way their system operates and in so doing provides feedback to the system from which it can learn.
Anchoring symbols in time/space
Investigating the ‘anchor’ metaphor in relation to a client’s inner landscape.
Imagine your life in full color
How Clean Language helped Debbie Happy Cohen write her book.
The point of pointing
A new metaphor for the perspective I take when symbolic modelling:
Leading the witness
Implications for Clean Language of Elizabeth Loftus’s classic research.
Tracking where clients perceive from
An important question-to-self when modelling symbolically is: Where is the client perceiving from?. Tracking changes to the ‘point of perception’ is a sophisticated skill.
Not making decisions for the client
The third of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators.
What facilitators tend to do too early
The second of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators.
Questions I frequently ask facilitators
The first of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators
Foreword to ‘The NLP Professional’
My reflections on being professional.
Aristotle got there first
Examining the equivalence between Aristotle’s 4 causes and our 4 modelling processes.
Symbolic Modelling Lite
Introduces the ‘lite’ version of our general method. Published as Chapter 4 of Innovations in NLP.
Pathological altruism
When the zeal to heal can end up hurting
Metaphors we think with
Five experiments about how metaphors influence the way that we reason.
Has biological progress had too much to drink?
Is increasing complexity of life just random motion away from simple beginnings?
Evolution’s arrow
Is there a direction to the evolution and the future of humanity?
Addicts, maps and sharp syntax
Penny Tompkins’ thoughts on Clean Language’s use with addictions.
How DO you know?
Modelling criteria: the principles, values or standard by which something may be judged or decided.
Analysing transcripts
How to model the pattern of facilitator/interviewer decisions from a session transcript.
Off-piste interventions in Clean Space
When a client wondered about the source of a space.
Do your Clean Space instructions have wiggle room?
Reflections on subtle differences in some Clean Space instructions.
Benchmarking intangibles
Preface to Michael Hall’s book, Benchmarking Intangibles: The art of measuring quality
Metaphor as mistake
How ‘mistakes’ can be an accidental authentic acts of symbolising.
The Other Therapeutic Relationship
As well as ‘the’ therapeutic relationship between client and facilitator, the relationship between the client and themselves is just as important.
If it is easy it is meant to be – or is it?
Does the value of something achieved / produced / created depend on hard / easy it was to achieve / produce / create?
What if there is no change?
How likely is it that a client will need to go beyond or outside the Symbolic Modelling Lite process?
Stochastic Tinkering
What drives most innovation, both of knowledge and technology? Making use of Nassim Nicholas Taleb ideas.
Metaphors of Movement & Symbolic Modelling
Discussions with Andrew Austin and Steve Andreas with comments by several others
Verbal dynamics
Early example of teaching through embodied cognition.
Am I visualizing a spatial model?
How I model a client’s metaphor landscape during a session.
Joining up the work of David Grove
How to combine the three main phases of David Grove’s work. Published in Acuity.
Balancing brain hemispheres
A neurological explanation for two of the stranger aspects of Clean Language.
Mutual gaze
The neurology activated when sharing a client’s inner landscape from their perspective.
Ent-sprechen says it all
We do not ask clean questions so they are ‘answered’, in the traditional meaning of that word. We ask them to envoke Ent-sprechen:
Metaphor, the body, and healing
Working with physical symptoms. the body as metaphor and a case study. Published in The CAPA Quarterly Issue1, 2011.
The selfish metaphor
The role of metaphor in shaping our ideas about evolution
Desired outcome thinking
Our definition and the difference with solution thinking
Survival of the sickest – Part 2
If natural ‘selection’ is a ‘filter’, how does the system filter changes?
Survival of the sickest – Part 1
Comments on Sharon Moalem’s Survival of the Sickest: The surprising connections between disease and longevity.
Monkey see, monkey don’t
New reserach show how we learn not to act like someone when they fail.
Why are so many of the safest humans in history scared of their own shadow?
Five comments on Dan Gardner conclusion to Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear.
Robustness and Fragility – Part 4
NN Taleb identifies the three ‘villains’ that make companies Black Swan prone. How do they apply to individuals?
Robustness and Fragility – Part 3
“After the crisis, people asked me what we should be doing. The logical conclusion is to stay as far away as possible from certain exposures that make you Black Swan prone.” NN Taleb.
Robustness and Fragility – Part 2
“There is an environment that creates Black Swan problems; a man made environment that I call ‘extremistan’ … where the exception plays a very large role”. NN Taleb.