Clean Language, my beloved! This is definitely a 1-pager that I’m making for myself. I’ve encountered Clean Language as a coaching approach but as many coaching schools it was originally developed for therapy.
Its creator David Grove was a trauma therapist and noticed that patients would often pick up phrases used by him/their therapists. He searched for ways to not introduce any of his own concepts to let his clients explore their own metaphors.
Ultimately, he came up with a set of Clean Questions that were later advanced by other, e.g. Penny Tompkins and James Lawley for Symbolic Modeling.
If this is your first encounter with Clean Language, the questions will sound “weird” and artificial and like they would take people out of their self-discovery. Let me assure you that clients get so immersed in their own world, they don’t notice the structure of the questions.
Anyhow, without further ado, here are the questions:
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Content of 1-Pager:
Clean Language Questions
Clean Language is a coaching approach that uses a specific set of questions that exclusively use words and phrases the client used before – the “X”. The questions help clients to self-model their inner world and explore how they make sense of things – without the coach introducing any concepts or metaphors of their own.
Explore Metaphor
- And what kind of X (is that X)?
- And is there anything else about X?
Ask for Metaphor
- And that’s X like what?
Location
- And where is X?
- And whereabouts is X?
Source
- And where does X come from?
Sequence
- And what happens just before X?
- And then what happens?
- And what happens next?
Relationship
- And is there a relationship between X and Y?
- And when X, what happens to Y?
Intention
- And what would X like to have happen?
- And what needs to happen for X (to happen)?
- And can X?
Sources:
I’ve learned various bits of and about Clean Language for at least 12+ years so it’s really hard for me to say where a specific piece of information comes from but as references for this 1-pager I used these two sources:
- Clean Language Revisited – By Penny Tompkins and James Lawley the creators of Symbolic Modelling, a therapeutic approach that builds on Clean Language.
- Clean Language Questions – This site is run by basically everyone I’ve ever heard of in connection with Clean Language (e. g. Caitlin Walker as well as Penny & James) so also very reputable.