‘And what happens just before?’ is such a useful question and has been part of Clean Language for 30 years, so how come it’s so rarely used to facilitate clients to make the changes they would like to make?
Inviting a client to ‘move time back’ using Clean Language is a fundamental feature of Symbolic Modelling and there are more ways to do it than you might realise.
Do I invite the client to stay with what and where they are currently attending to, or do I invite them to switch to something or somewhere else?
Why, when we ask ‘And what would you like to have happen?’ does it have a different effect? What’s the secret ingredient?
The case of a client who wanted to be able to ‘light the match’ and ‘decide and do’ at will.
27 situations when I consider facilitating a person or group to self-model a problem:
Our answers to ten questions raised by a group of Ukrainian psychologists and psychotherapists in preparation for our first workshop with them.
A review of the key dates in the development of the cleanness rating used in Clean Language Interviewing
The history of the invaluable PRO model with explanatory diagrams.
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.
A leader in the field of NLP comments on the standard opening Clean Language question, and my reply.
I was asked: (a) what a modelling outcome should look like, and (b) what I mean by: Scope, Timescale and Presupposition.
An investigation of an under-reserached aspect of modelling – the perspective adopted by the modeller when modelling an exemplar for an ability or behaviour.
Given Symbolic Modelling is an outcome orientated methodology, what if a client cannot identify a desired outcome?
A conversation with Maarten Aalberse about ‘The Tree of Wisdom’ video in my last blog.
When a client comes for coaching or therapy with a topic that presents a conundrum, what do you?
A review of Fogg’s 15 ways behaviour can change and the three components needed for a behaviour to happen
How we use a person’s language to model the way they self-deceive.
Answers to: 1. How long after you started modelling David Grove did you start training others?; 2. What were the main difficulties modelling Grove?
A blog that questions whether “Client feedback is … one of the least reliable measures we have.”
Double binds defined and why “Be spontaneous!” and “Damned if I do and damned if I don’t” are not examples of double binds.
‘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.
First published in the SerenA newsletter whose aim is “to transform research processes by proactively creating surprising connection opportunities.”
A blog about the metaphorical roots and uses of the word ‘surgery’.
Why we now consider ‘How far?’ to be a mildly leading question and have removed it from the summary of ‘specialised’ questions
My second blog about DEEDS delves deeper into the ideas which pose an alternative to the standard computational theory of mind.
A cognitive science in which brain, body and world intertwine “beyond-the-skin”.
The opening question in an exemplar modelling interview is often hard to keep clean. I offer some tips on how to do it.
I was asked: I wonder if clean could help in getting conceptually the experience of no-self?
Part 2: A new metaphor for the perspective I adopt as a symbolic modeller.
How do humans sum up a complex situation and rapidly decide what action to take?
Attending more to the artistic aspects of Clean Space whihc contribute to the overall aim of encouraging conditions for creative emergence.
A new metaphor for the perspective I take when symbolic modelling:
15 questions to assess the degree to which.participants have acquired our model of facilitating.
Does emergent change always create a desired rather than a less desired result?
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.
Investigating the ‘anchor’ metaphor in relation to a client’s inner landscape.
How Clean Language helped Debbie Happy Cohen write her book.
Implications for Clean Language of Elizabeth Loftus’s classic research.
A report on how I have been doing in one area – running regularly – applying the self-nudge process.
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.
The third of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators.
The second of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators.
The first of four parts of my general feedback to advanced facilitators
My reflections on being professional.
Examining the equivalence between Aristotle’s 4 causes and our 4 modelling processes.
Thoughts on Daniel Kahneman’s research into when confidence trumps the evidence.
When the zeal to heal can end up hurting
Five experiments about how metaphors influence the way that we reason.
Is increasing complexity of life just random motion away from simple beginnings?
Is there a direction to the evolution and the future of humanity?
Penny Tompkins’ thoughts on Clean Language’s use with addictions.
Modelling criteria: the principles, values or standard by which something may be judged or decided.
How to model the pattern of facilitator/interviewer decisions from a session transcript.
Reflections on subtle differences in some Clean Space instructions.
When a client wondered about the source of a space.
Experienced Clean facilitators make maximal use of just four fundamental modelling processes.
Preface to Michael Hall’s book, Benchmarking Intangibles: The art of measuring quality
How ‘mistakes’ can be an accidental authentic acts of symbolising.
As well as ‘the’ therapeutic relationship between client and facilitator, the relationship between the client and themselves is just as important.
Does the value of something achieved / produced / created depend on hard / easy it was to achieve / produce / create?
How likely is it that a client will need to go beyond or outside the Symbolic Modelling Lite process?
What drives most innovation, both of knowledge and technology? Making use of Nassim Nicholas Taleb ideas.
Early example of teaching through embodied cognition.
How I model a client’s metaphor landscape during a session.
A neurological explanation for two of the stranger aspects of Clean Language.
The neurology activated when sharing a client’s inner landscape from their perspective.
We do not ask clean questions so they are ‘answered’, in the traditional meaning of that word. We ask them to envoke Ent-sprechen:
The role of metaphor in shaping our ideas about evolution
Our definition and the difference with solution thinking
If natural ‘selection’ is a ‘filter’, how does the system filter changes?
Comments on Sharon Moalem’s Survival of the Sickest: The surprising connections between disease and longevity.
New reserach show how we learn not to act like someone when they fail.
Five comments on Dan Gardner conclusion to Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear.
NN Taleb identifies the three ‘villains’ that make companies Black Swan prone. How do they apply to individuals?
“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.
“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.
“The problem with technology is that when it works, it is better; when it does not work, it is far worse.” NN Taleb
Are certain client populations not suited to Symbolic Modelling?
How to work with someone who can develop rich metaphors for their desired outcomes but later dismisses them as only fantasy.
‘A victim’ is a perspective on a situation which can develop into a perspective on life. The question is, do we also have the choice to be other-than-a-victim?
A ‘thought experiment’ to appreciate more or to be more grateful for someone or something in your life.
A new study which concludes that weight-conscious individuals are likely to believe in “negative calories”. But do they really?
Cognitive scientists believe the brain simulates experience from the past in order to make sense of the world today, how does that influences who we think are?
If bodily states infiltrate cognition so often, why are we so seldom aware of this phenomenon?
My thoughts on ‘This Is Your Brain on Metaphors’ by Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Neurology and Neurosurgery.
If ‘eureka moments’ are very, very rare how do we progress? Rather than leaps it seems we take the next “adjacent possible” step.