Once the children were changed and in the hall, Julie reminded them of a metaphor they were already familiar with: that they should imagine having a ‘string that reaches from the top of your head to the sky’. This got them all sitting up straight and was a great way of reminding them to have good posture throughout the lesson. Instead of nagging them to sit up straight, she simply said, “Strings on.”

The lesson centred around the children creating sequences of stretching, balancing and travelling, on apparatus and floor mats. After they’d had a go, she talked them through a visualisation where they imagined themselves being on TV in a gymnastics competition, and they were to step into their TV self, and do their sequence again. Then came the ‘clean’ bit of the lesson: one child from each group performed their sequence while everyone else looked on. Julie asked the onlookers to notice for good quality movements and good ideas, and when the performers had finished she asked them what they noticed:

Child 1:   I liked A’s balance.
Julie:       Oh you liked her balance. And what kind of balance was that?
Child 1:   Straight and tall
Julie:       And is there anything else about that balance?
Child 1:   Yes, her head wasn’t a bit wonky on its side. It was straight up.

Julie then asked A to repeat her sequence, so that everyone could see what had been noticed.

This way of doing things meant the praise was coming from another child rather than the teacher. Julie trusted that they had enough knowledge about gymnastics to be able to recognise a good move when they saw one. And by having the child show everyone the move again, they all got a chance to learn what a ‘good’ move looked like and to associate it with words like ‘straight and tall”. So they were learning from each other, rather from the ‘expert’. And since the children’s own words were used, there was also no chance of Julie using words that the children wouldn’t understand.

Here are a couple more examples:

Child 2:   I liked B’s jump.
Julie:       What kind of jump was that?
Child 2:   She did it straight like a pencil jump.*

Child 3:   I liked C’s forward roll.
Julie:       And you liked his forward roll. And is there anything else about that forward roll?
Child 3:   He did it in a kind of circle then went off and stood up at the end.

After a few of these short dialogues (each followed by a repeat performance), the questions started to become unnecessary because the children realised they needed to explain their thinking, so…

Child 4:   I thought D was very good because when she bounced on the bench she had her string on.

Child 5:   E was straight and at the right angle.

Then came this one:

Child 6:   C's roll was a bit good.
Julie:       Is there anything else about a bit good?
Child 6:   She was doing it beautiful.
Julie:       What kind of beautiful?
Child 6:   Very beautiful.
Child 7:   If it was a bit good, what could she do to make it a bit gooder?
Child 6:   She could tuck her legs in.

Again, Julie stayed clean, and after a few exchanges another child, who’d picked up on the assumption in the original statement that there was room for improvement, asked a clean-ish question in the spirit of enquiry to help the performer know how it could be improved.

After this “clean interlude” in the lesson, Julie asked everyone to run through in their minds what they’d learned about really good moves and to see if they could incorporate it in their work. And off they went, striving to make the best moves they could in their sequences. I am no expert in gymnastics but I could see a big improvement between the children’s first attempt and what they were doing by the end of the lesson. And Julie hadn’t given them a single instruction about how to move, or singled out any child as being a model to watch. They had done it all by themselves.

I’ve been making reasonably good slides for years, but good looking slides don't guarantee a good speech – and this was the first time I'd come across an idea designed to change a presenter's style. I decided to give it a go... With a Pecha Kucha presentation, I would have to keep to the point. And since 20 x 20 = 400 = 6 minutes 40 seconds, I would also be guaranteed to finish my speech within the maximum 7 minutes allotted for most speeches at Toastmasters. (You can view my presentation at the end of this post.)

The particular appeal of Pecha Kucha for me is the fact that it's based on two simple rules. I love the idea that just by following simple rules we can make something different – and sometimes very creative - happen.

The first time I became aware of the effect that simple rules can have was when we devised the POINTS diet at Weight Watchers. We created a simple formula to combine the number of calories and the amount of saturated fat in a food, to give a one (or at a push, two) digit POINTS value to every food. You get a certain number of POINTS per day, depending your current weight, gender etc. and off you go. In a way it's more complex than counting calories - you need a calculator, a slide-rule gizmo or a book to look up POINTS values - but the resultant low numbers means it’s easy to add up the POINTS values of the foods you consume in a day. The fact that it’s easier to add up to 20 than to 2000 means people are more likely to stick to the diet and lose weight. But not only that… Foods high in saturated fat are 'automatically' avoided because they bump the POINTS value of that food up, so by following the POINTS diet, people automatically change their eating habits for the better.

A third example of rule-based behaviour comes from the world of improvisation. A few years ago, I went on a clowning course with Penny Tompkins. Not the squirty-flower, custard pie and giant boots brand of clowning, but a personal-development-meets-dressing-up kind of clowning. The course was called The Courage to Be and during a week of fun and laughter, we learned some valuable life lessons. One of these was the idea of 'receiving'. Our clown teacher, Vivian Gladwell, told us that we should receive and accept every idea and examine it, before deciding what to do with it. We could still reject it if we wanted to, but at least we will have given it a fair hearing. That sounds all very well, but how? Vivian gave us a 2-word answer: "Yes, and..." These two words, when applied to any offer that comes your way - on stage in clown school or in life - can make a real difference to a conversation, a project, your life.

In his book, Impro (Performance Books): Improvisation and the Theatre, shows how a sketch can fizzle out when an actor 'blocks' an offer:

A:   Augh!
B:   What's the matter?
A:   I've got my trousers on back to front.
B:   I'll take them off.
A:   No!

And then he shows how a scene can build when they accept one another's offers:

A:   Augh!
B:   Whatever is it, man?
A:   It's my leg, Doctor.
B:   That looks nasty. I shall have to amputate.
A:   It's the one you amputated last time, Doctor.
      (This is not a block because he's accepted the amputation.)
B:   You mean you've got a pain in your wooden leg?
A:   Yes, Doctor.
B:   You know what this means?
A:   Not woodworm, Doctor?
B:   Yes. We'll have to remove it before it spreads to the rest of you.
      (A's chair collapses)
B:   My God! It's spreading to the furniture! (And so on.)

What a difference when possibilities are opened up instead of closed down!

If you know anything about Clean Language, then you probably know where all this is leading... because of course, Clean Language, along with its successors, Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge, is also based on simple rules: use only the other person's words, and only ask questions that are clean. In one way, that is all there is to it. And if you've ever had an opportunity to ask - or answer - Clean Language questions, then you will know that it creates a different and unusual kind of experience, and how new ideas and insights start to occur, generally followed swiftly by new behaviours. We are so not used to hearing our own words and reflecting on what we really mean that these two simple rules can have a profound effect on our thinking, and our behaviour.

All the behaviours I've been describing - dynamic presentations, new eating habits, being open to new ideas, changing behaviours...  are examples of emergence. Emergence is what happens when parts of a system interact in such a way that 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts'; it's what happens when you get new book recommendations on Amazon, based on masses of data entered by individuals, or when a the parts of a car are assembled and together they have an ability to move which isn't present in any of the parts, or when you look at a page of hundreds of dots and see a 'magic eye' picture. Emergence occurs in nature: sand dunes, rainbows, ant colonies and new babies are good examples.

The emergent properties of any system are not predictable. Yes, it's possible to say that the 20/20 rule is likely to result in a more dynamic presentation, that the POINTS system will help some people cut down on saturated fat, or that "Yes, and..." will lead to more creative improvisations, but the exact nature of a particular presentation, diet or impro sketch cannot be  foretold. "There is vastly more to the behaviour of a system than one can ever foresee just by looking at its underlying rules." (Stephen Wolfram). Similarly, within a Clean Language session it is not possible to know in advance what will happen. But when various parts of someone's metaphorical landscape begin to interact with one another, it's highly likely that something new and unexpected will emerge.

Here's the presentation I gave at Toastmasters (I've tweaked it a tiny bit so it makes sense on the web):

Procrastination to Motivation from Marian Way on Vimeo.

I run a devised drama group at the Arthouse in Southampton. We meet on a project-by-project basis on Wednesday evenings, aiming to perform twice a year, and to give everyone a flavour of the whole creative process, regardless of ability.  

The group begin by looking at any themes they would like to cover and any characters they would like to play. After we have explored the characters and each actor has written their character's story I pull it all together and write the script based upon their ideas. This time, we were a month away from "Tinkering", our latest production, when disaster struck. Four actors pulled out en-mass with less than four weeks to go. As the play had seven parts, and two of the characters who'd pulled out were pivotal to the storyline making sense, let alone having a story to tell, we would be unable to continue without much re-writing and additional work for the remaining actors. I felt that I had exhausted the ideas and was a little apprehensive about continuing, though I felt it would be even worse to stop and let everyone at The Art House down. The performance is by Magic Hat and is a great way to bring extra funding into our independent arts centre.
 
The remaining actors were keen to continue, but showed a varying degree of confidence. Having attended Less is More a couple of weeks beforehand I thought "in for a penny, in for a pound" and decided to throw myself in at the deep end and put my new Clean Language skills to test in this situation. I was inspired by the simplicity of the questions and the profoundness of people's responses. I had thought it would be a useful tool when my drama group got stuck during the course so I looked at my three actors and asked: "What would you like to have happen?"
 
"We definitely want to carry on," they said, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. I really hoped they were genuine and thought it would soon emerge if they didn't think they were up to the challenge. I had no doubt they could do it, but I was aware of the additional workload this would bring, and they all had such busy lives.
 
"Carry on, and what kind of carry on is that?"
 
The response was overwhelming. The group quickly became a single entity in total harmony, which really has been a phenomenal team building experience. They described continuing with their existing characters, using me as a voice only character, and they detailed changes in individual characters' journeys and suggested some physical acting (using the body rather than words).
 
The only other question I asked was, " X and X and is there anything else about X?" I did not require any more clean questions and did not ask any other (less clean) questions either. The group just flowed with ideas and tasked me to write the new script, which was quite simple as it was based around the old script with all their new ideas written in. I was just the minute-taker and person who rearranged the order.
 
The group had re-written the play within 15 minutes of facing their crisis. We had a little play with the lines etc., and were back on track. The new script is also an improvement on the old one!  Using Clean Language enabled me to let go of all of the stress and pressure I felt at that moment. The creativity was fantastic and really grew minute by minute. None of us felt pessimistic and none of us felt stressed. I was able to trust the group to perform and they trusted me to pull it back from the brink. The group are now strong enough a team to arrange rehersals without me and trust themselves to go with the flow.
 
I don't think I could have improved upon the results - I love what the group have done. I will also use this technique to start my next project group off. I think in that situation I will try to include extra questions, especially, "Whereabouts is X?" more "What kind of X is X?" and "Does X have a shape? colour? size?" as these could help with the staging of the script as well.
 
Thank you for giving me something extra to try and for such powerful results.

You can see this production of "Tinkering" at The Art House on Saturday 27th March at 7:30 pm.

Imagine…

You know what you want. The big goal is clear. You’ve defined your challenging and reachable goal.

It is well-formed – specific, measurable, time-bound, positive and expressed in the present tense. You know the resources that will be required and the signs that will indicate that it has been reached. You’ve even broken this goal down into smaller manageable steps. The action plan is defined. You are pleased with yourself. Excited and rearing to go… 

Suddenly, from dark rocks immediately behind you a thin, sharp, metaphorical arrow fires. It enters your head and lodges itself in the mind and lo and behold you feel unable to take action - paralyzed. 

Past negative programming has invited itself in, in a flash, and before you know it your excitement and positive feelings are draining away. Doubts have crept in. Limiting beliefs about what is possible are taking root. You wonder, can I really do this. Can I really execute and implement this master plan and get it to work. Mind obstacles proliferate.

Then, a solid impenetrable wall of sea water appears to the right in the mind. The vastness and depth of the entire ocean supports it and when the next doubting arrow flies in, from its shadow rock home behind you, it hits the wall of sea, loses momentum and energy and falls flat. It is unable to get into the mind and make a new home there.

Miraculously, you feel lighter and mental clarity is back. You are surer about your goals. Belief, faith and trust swim freely in the heart. The wall of sea is the doubts buster. Like magic, the doubts just seem to stop.  And where did this wall come from. It appeared as the client answered the coach's question.

You agree with your coach to observe over the next fortnight or so to see what happens next. Once this metaphoric wall appears it seems to work silently and like magic it has cleansed the mind of the doubts.  

It is my story as a client from a few of my clean language and symbolic modelling coaching sessions...

A few years later, as a leader for Weight Watchers, I found that I LOVED teaching adults. And now, I have found the subject I love to teach - Clean Language - I am really in my element when I'm running a training, a workshop or a seminar. And of course Clean Language skills come in very handy in training situations, and give me a chance to 'walk the talk' too.

But I have often wondered about my first love - what would have happened if I'd chosen to teach primary school children instead of being lured into secondary education with the promise that there would always be jobs for maths teachers? Or what if I had stuck it out long enough to discover NLP, coaching and Clean Language while I was still teaching? Would I still have discovered them? And would Clean Language have made a difference to my behaviour management skills? Of course, we can never know what would have happened if... But recently I was offered an opportunity to have a 'sneak peak' into what might have been - and it was too good an opportunity to pass up...

Julie McCracken is a primary school teacher who, unlike me, persevered when the going got tough, so when she discovered coaching, then NLP and then Clean Language, she was able to put them to the test in the classroom situation. I haven't actually met Julie (yet) - but for the last two months we have 'skyped' every Thursday evening. Julie tells me her latest adventures with Clean Language as she puts it into practice with her class of five- to seven-year-olds, and I type like crazy... for together we are writing a book about how she uses Clean Language in the classroom. And I delight in every minute of our conversations - noting what might have been, yes - but more in the spirit of celebrating what is happening as this extraordinary lady uses Clean Language, Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge to: bring subjects like handwriting, story telling and science to life; create mutual respect and understanding between children; sort out playground arguments; put on a school play; eliminate behaviour problems; and teach children the Clean Language questions themselves. A visitor to Julie's classroom - there because she was mentoring a student teacher - remarked that her children have thinking skills more akin to that of juniors. To which Julie simply replied, "I know."

I can hardly wait for each Thursday evening, for the next instalment of 'Clean in the Classroom'. I am so thrilled to have this opportunity to link my first love - teaching children - with my latest (and lasting) love of Clean Language and to see what is emerging. I am looking forward to the day the book is published and can help teachers to use David Grove's fabulous legacy for themselves, and if we can help even one teacher to avoid some of the problems I had as a young teacher, and to keep going - it will have been worth it.

Prior to publication, Julie and I plan to write a few of her 'Clean in the Classroom' stories on this blog, so if you’re interested, please check back from time to time (or follow me on Twitter and get notified when a new story appears). And if you are a teacher or you know any teachers who would like to try out some of Julie's 'Clean in the Classroom' ideas, please email me.

The question arises because when we start questioning people in this way, they start to access different kinds of information, sometimes at quite a deep level quite quickly. We always recommend that you get permission to ask people these kinds of questions, by simply asking "Would you like me to ask you a few questions to help you clarify that?" although whether you want to frame the questions as 'Clean Language' will depend on the context.

With this question in mind, Lizz Clarke, Managing Director of LCM Ltd, a marketing agency based in Fareham, decided to run an experiment at work. She chaired an internal meeting, during which she limited her contributions to Clean questions, except when her particular knowledge was needed, when she went into ‘input’ mode. She felt she was getting far stronger contributions from her team and no one seemed to notice that she was doing anything different.

Towards the end of the meeting, she asked if it was OK to take the opportunity to practice some Clean Language questions with them - they knew she was learning the skill... They said yes, but after only two or three questions one of them said the questions were odd and they couldn't answer them!

Later the same day, a potential client came in, and Lizz interviewed him 'cleanly' - with a couple of staff members present. She says that the information she got from the client was particularly rich. Afterwards she mentioned to her staff that she'd been using Clean Language; again they hadn't noticed.

So it seems that if you prime people that something different is about to happen, they become alert and see the questions as a bit strange, whereas if you simply slip them into a conversation, they are just viewed as everyday questions (which they are, of course).

It may also pay to look at the phraseology you use when you ask someone for a practice opportunity. I prefer 'practice with' to 'practice on' and I would advise against asking someone if they can be your guinea pig, or, even worse, victim!

Incidentally, towards the end of Lizz's day of experiments she noticed that one of her members of staff was asking many more questions than they normally did when discussing a project with a client. They weren't necessarily clean questions, but it seems as if some good modelling had been going on during the day!

This is the challenge Penny Tompkins and I set ourselves when we first conceived our Discover Your Assertive Self workshop - and it took a LOT of thinking about. We were so tempted to add in a few pearls of wisdom, and to talk about our favourite models! We had to be strong for each other when one of us made a 'let's tell them' kind of suggestion. We had to notice what assumptions were going into activities we were designing. And we had to acknowledge that it was impossible to make no assumptions at all. Even the name of the workshop has an assumption or two: that everyone has an 'assertive self' for example, and that it's possible to 'discover' it.

A common way of explaining ‘assertiveness’ is to compare it to passivity and aggression. Assertiveness is generally thought to be somewhere between the two, and is often described as the middle way, or a balanced approach. Could we assume that this very general model would be true for most of our participants? And how useful would it be, if we did?

We imagined laying down a line with 'extremely assertive behaviour' at one end and 'extremely passive behaviour' at the other:

We imagined asking participants to think of a time when they would have liked to be more assertive and to stand where that would be on the line. Then we imagined asking where they would rather be standing.

But we soon realised that if we were to run an activity like this, we would be implying that assertivenss could be measured on a line. We felt it was getting less clean, so we gave up on this idea.

Another common metaphor about assertiveness relates to personal boundaries.

On MentalHelp.net, Mark Dombeck and Jolyn Wells-Moran make the following distinctions:

• Aggression is about domination and invasion; it is fundamentally disrespectful of a relationship partner's personal boundaries.
• Passivity is about submission and being invaded; it is fundamentally disrespectful of one's own personal boundaries.
• In contrast to these two fundamentally disrespectful positions, assertiveness is about finding a middle way between aggression and passivity that best respects the personal boundaries of all relationship partners.

Lots of metaphors are introduced here, and words like domination and submission, invasion and boundaries suggest an underlying 'war' metaphor, where people are like lands with distinct boundaries that can be invaded. Indeed, they go on to say that “assertive people defend themselves when someone else attempts to dominate them, using any necessary method (including force) to repel the invasion attempt.” Did we want to suggest a 'war' metaphor in our workshop? No.

Of course, if a participant were to discover they thought about assertiveness in 'warlike' terms, that would not be a problem.

Our aim in designing a clean workshop was to respect the metaphors that people already had, to help them work out how they wanted to behave in difficult situations and to provide them with an environment where they could learn how to do that.

So we took another route: modelling each other. We found our own metaphors for when we were being assertive and for when we were not being assertive. We had different metaphors of course, but we realised that we both experienced some uncomfortable 'bodily symptoms' that let us know when something needed attending to. We recognised 'uncomfortable' body symptoms or other kinds of signals were present in all of the clients who came to us with assertiveness issues – and what useful information these symptoms and signals revealed. So we decided it was safe to assume that our participants might be experiencing something similar.

Reflecting on our own models, we recognised that there was often a choice to be made about how to react in difficult situations, so this became another of our 'safe assumptions'.

We went on to list a number of safe assumptions, including that:

• participants on the workshop would want to change their behaviour
• they would be able to notice where in their perceptual space they were placing the people who were involved in their assertiveness situation
• there would be situations when they were just as assertive as they wanted to be
• they would learn from each other and the group

So the question then became: How do we minimise those assumptions and how do we maximise the opportunity for people to discover what THEY want / need from their two days with us and with each other? (It's no coincidence that the name of the Apricot Island introductory Clean Language training is Less is More.)

After designing several activities which utilised these and other safe assumptions we discovered one assumption had us stumped. It seemed safe to assume that most people would benefit from practising how to be assertive within the workshop itself and naturally thought of role plays. But any role palys we could create in advance were unlikely to fit with participants' contexts, so compared with all the good clean work we'd be doing, that would feel contrived and unreal.

What we wanted was the practising to be an integral part of the workshop. And with two weeks to go, we had a brainwave. We had many more activities than we had time to do – so what would happen if participants were to interact with each other to choose which activities were used, and in what order? This would certainly provide a context within which they would need to be assertive. We decided to go with it - and it was a great success. This new idea turned a 'collection' of activities into a coherent whole, and resulted in a really innovative and lively workshop. This is another good example of 'Less is More': giving ourselves this constraint meant we became more creative.

So what did we learn about designing Clean workshops? First of all, two heads were definitely better than one. The fact that there were two of us kept us clean, allowed us to model each other, generated lots of new information and meant we could build on each others' ideas. Secondly, our list of 'safe' assumptions was invaluable in keeping us on track, helping us to decide which activities warranted further development and which did not. And thirdly, as with all things clean, we needed to trust that by constraining ourselves something new and creative would emerge.

If you'd like to join us on the nextDiscover Your Assertive Self workshop,click here.

This is a case study of mine that is to be published in Coaching Skills for Leaders in the Workplace: How to Motivate and Get the Best from Your Staff, by Jackie Arnold. It was written about a year ago.

Lizz Clarke is the Managing Director of Logical Creative Marketing (LCM), one of Hampshire's leading PR, marketing and design agencies. Lizz has built this business from scratch over the past 19 years and has had to face up to lots of different challenges along the way, as she’s developed the business from a ‘one-man band’ to a company which employs 10 members of staff and has a turnover of nearly £1 million per annum.

I first coached Lizz (using Clean Language) five years ago. At this time she had two members of staff as well as people she outsourced work to. During one session, she spoke about being scatterbrained, and I asked a few questions to develop this metaphor:

"It’s like there are scatters of seeds flying round in my head and I would like to feel more relaxed and in control. But it’s like there’s a small white fan whipping things up, fast and randomly. There could be between 10 and 50 seeds at any one time. And most of them are not labelled and a big seed could leap up and say: ‘You’ve got to do me tomorrow’. I want to have a place for everything and everything in its place."

These realisations led Lizz to make some changes, and in a subsequent session, Lizz told me:

"I love my seeds now. I know their names and where they are. And when there are some flying about, they are slightly bigger now and I can catch them. They take less than five minutes to list and everything I need is in a folder on my desk. I am also beginning to realise that other people can make them grow. I am nowhere near as worried about each day."

And in the next session:

"I am worried about keeping this new pattern up. I am eager to find out how I can establish the new pattern. The seeds are still a little bit fly away. They are not pinned down. There needs to be a link between the seeds and the core of the business. I need a landing stage. It’s like I am growing the seeds into rush matting – but I can’t stand and jump on it because it’s not knitted together. I need to stop and knit it together. I need to think a bit more about what I’ve been doing, and put more bits of rush in. I could have more than one place where I can make seeds grow – so I can grow another bit of rush matting. I can see that there will be lots of stages: some small and some big, significant ones. I want it to be big, but I need to be secure on this stage first."

I asked Lizz what needed to happen for the rush matting to grow bigger and for her to be more secure on this stage?

"I need to get more organised with communications in the office. I need to let some of the work go. I need keep some kind of caring handle on it, but I don’t need to know the detail. They need to feel I am interested. I need some way to monitor what’s going on – we need a new accountancy firm with monthly reports so I can check what’s happening. I need my staff to create weekly progress reports. I need a proper appraisal system. I want ‘corporate’ rush matting."

We discussed the above plans in more detail – and with this plan in place, Lizz felt she didn’t need further coaching at that time. Recently, however, Lizz contacted me for another Clean Coaching session...

At the start of the session, Lizz outlined three things that were on her mind: developing a long term vision and business strategy, restructuring, and developing a score card for the business which will allow them to measure five or six things, constantly. When I asked her what she would like to have happen, she envisioned a scenario where she doesn’t do client work at LCM any more. Instead she chairs meetings where those who report to her come and tell her where they are on the score card, and they discuss deviations and what can be or (ideally) is being done about them. This is like being on the bridge of a ship, with five or six dials that let everyone know what adjustments to make. Getting the business ‘shipshape’ like this will allow Lizz to do what she really wants: put what she has learned into practice with another business, invest in property and have time off.

As well as the ‘ship’ metaphor, two other metaphors appeared which warranted further exploration…

"I feel like the Incredible Hulk, stretching out of my clothes. I have been told about ‘letting go’ by people; now I am beginning to know it. I can glimpse it and I am convinced that within a few months the picture will be clear."

The Incredible Hulk represented thinking different things, and old habits falling away. (Lizz had got into a habit of hiding from going forward by busying herserlf with ironing and crosswords. She’d been complacent and had become uncomfortable with a feeling that everything was standing still.) Now, she felt that freedom was coming.

I asked where she felt that…

"It’s coming into my head – a white / yellow light."

And where was it coming from?

"From the universe (she pointed up and in front of her), down and into the front of my head – just going in and cleaning bits up."

Lizz experienced the light as powerful, giving and gushing.

"Oh! I can’t take it in all at once. It will sweep me away… I need to be able to control it – and I can control it."

How did Lizz know she could control it?

"All I have to do is turn my face away from the light, and take a rest."

This would involve ironing and crosswords – and long soaks in the bath – but now it wouldn’t be mindless hiding, it would have a purpose… to rest from the light.

"And I won’t be doing it much."

And a when a light could go into her head and clean bits up, what kind of ‘clean bits up’ was that?

"Exhausting. I have to spend a lot of time with people with more expertise than me, them explaining so I can see things more clearly, and it can be arduous. The meeting I had yeserday (where explaining was happening) was like wading through treacle. There have been challenges all my life, but this is different. I have to understand detailed concepts and then apply them to help other people to change their behaviour. But the glimpse of the picture keeps me going."

Where was the glimpse?

"To the right and up. I am not looking at the glimpse for a picture. Oh, that is where the light is coming from (not ahead). I am pulling it into me. It is tiring and exhausting. It is half good and half bad. I am excited by the knowledge but frightened by the arduousness of it."

So when it’s half good and half bad, what would Lizz like to have happen?

"I’d rather like it if I could be more in control of the cycle. And I’d like to tidy up my personal life, too. My home, my physical fitness. As I stretch, the light is coming in and it’s not all for work. I want to support my son better. I could use the five dials for home things as well. When I was pushing the company ahead before, I could always fit things in: I had lots of energy."

Although the metaphors were different, it seemed to me as if there were some similarities between Lizz’s current situation and what we had been discussing five years ago. Both times, Lizz was talking about ‘bits’ in her mind, and both times she was envisioning builing a bigger business and letting go. (I was able to recall this because metaphors are very memorable, and capture the structure of someone’s thought processes rather than the content.) So I asked Lizz whether there was a relationship between the light and the rush matting.

"Yes, there is. The rush matting is now very firm. I have built lots of steps since then, and they are solid. I am not worried about the next step. I know I can build it. They (the people who work in the company) are building it. They build it for me to walk on. I think I need to give them the rush matting pattern. What they are building is solid but not pretty. They are each building their own bit, and the bits are solid, the joins are fairly solid, but it could fall apart. I need them all to do the score card pattern. And creating a vision is the context for the pattern. It is like when you buy a duvet cover and in the corner of the packaging, there’s a picture of how the whole cover looks on the bed: you can see the whole thing and the pattern. And everyone else can see it as well. When we are two or three steps further up the rush matting and the pattern is strong, the company will be able to live on in its own right."

Lizz was already working on the score card and so needed to continue with that and with her long term business strategy and restructuring. So what difference did this session make to Lizz?

"Now I know where the light is, it feels like an entity and that I have some control over it. I can turn away from it and I can decide to let some light in. The meeting I went to yesterday felt like I was swimming in treacle; it was hard to move forward. Now I will think of meetings like that as ‘light meetings’. I will just let the light in. And I can have light time anywhere – at my PC, for example. The study is full of clutter and the room is dark and dingy but if I allow the light to flood in, it gives me energy. That’s the main difference. I was feeling a bit hopeless and depressed. Then I went to the light – and it lit everything. I will have energy for my home, my pyhsical fitness, my family and my work."

Within a week of the session, Lizz contacted me to tell me that she had:

• a tidy home office
• sorted out her son’s homework schedule
• had an induction session at a gym two minutes’ walk away from her main office
• had two discussions with one of the people that she previously felt exhausted by and both times had felt energized instead.

"I am about to go into another of this sort of meeting and I realise my attitude is very enthusiastic rather than 'girding my loins' so I imagine the outcome will be different. Its amazes me how much personal development I have done and how, each time I reach a new platform of success I need to learn anew!"

The pain was in a pre-molar that had been root-filled. When her dentist investigated, she found it was caused by the molar next door, which was badly inflamed, and gave her root canal treatment for this. But the pain didn’t stop… the dentist said that the molar tooth was still ‘settling down’ whilst the root was being destroyed by the medication, and further treatment was planned. Jane still had the pain when she arrived at the practice group. She couldn’t eat on the left hand side and drinking or eating anything hot or cold caused her excruciating pain.

Coincidentally, the topic we’d chosen for our practice session was using Clean Language to work with physical symptoms. It was a no-brainer for Jane – she offered up her toothache to be worked on.

Her metaphor for the toothache was that of a drain, blocked with a lump of custard. It wanted to be unblocked, and during the session Jane found that when the pressure built up, the unblocking could happen, and the custard would gurgle down the drain. But then the pressure would build up all over again. As she was asked more questions, the pain moved to a pipe behind her ear. The pipe was also blocked – but now that the pain had moved, Jane found she was able to eat a biscuit on the left-hand side during the meeting.

The following day, Jane started to wonder whether her toothache could be related to a situation which had been going on at work – also for nine months. She emailed me:

“There is some stuff whirling round in my head – like a whirlwind and I am waiting for it to set (and there is an image of slightly cloudy, crazed chunks of jelly like material – red, yellow, lime green. The chunks are beginning to meld together and as very slowly beginning to clear).

“As I write this and become more aware, the pain has shifted to this pipe under my ear – like it did last night. The pipe feels raw as if it has been prodded about too much and it wants to be left alone. I have a hot drink and do not get the shooting pain from the tooth that I initially believed to be the cause – so something is changing. The pipe still wants to be unblocked but is not ready – I think I have to wait for the jelly chunks to crystallize and set. A thought has just flashed through my mind: it is my future that is crystallizing! This feels right – I get a warm feeling in chest when I picture the crystallizing chunks. I am going to leave the pipe to its own devices for a bit and to heal before further treatment.

“Now something else has come to mind… The pipe that needs to heal represents the wounds I have from my boss. The poison is my work situation and wants to be lanced but the chunks need to crystallize.

“This is all so weird, I did not expect all this to come out whilst I am writing this note.”

On that day, Jane resolved to set up her own business and the metaphor had made her realise the effect that her work situation was having on her health. She believes that this decision allowed the pipe to unblock and the poisons to gurgle away.

After that she had no more pain, and was able to eat normally. The root canal treatment on the molar tooth was completed, and a crown was fitted to the pre-molar (after drilling and without an injection), and there has been no pain since.

“The scientist in me was looking for a ‘medical’ explanation to the pain disappearing. But it must have been the Clean Language and I am just so grateful. I am still shocked by this – I have never witnessed, or experienced, anything like it! Some of my (limiting) beliefs have been well and truly blown away. I just never believed it was possible to use words to cure intense physical pain – until now!”

Having had three one-to-one Clean Language sessions with Marian working on my own challenges, I have now started to apply just two of the techniques she uses with my own coaching clients and I have been very impressed with the results: first the outcome question, "What would you like to have happen by the end of this session?" and second, repeating back exact words, regardless of grammatical sense.

Just to put this in context I should explain that I run Speed Coaching sessions with clients as a final step in a three day interpersonal skills programme. And so you know the setting I work in, my client is a large telecoms company.

In the particular situation I am describing, I have worked with a group of 6 people for two days and each brings to the group a particular interpersonal challenge that they would like to solve. The group works with them to come up with solutions to this challenge and they then make written commitments to take certain steps during a 6 week 'back to work' period. We then all meet up 6 weeks later and review their progress, congratulate them on their successes and explore anything that has either not gone to plan or anything new that has arisen in the intervening 6 weeks.

On the afternoon of the follow up day and as a way to send them off with a spring in their step and as a consolidation of all the hard work they have put in, they each get a 30 minute time slot with me to discuss whatever is on their mind. It is at the start of these 30 minute Speed Coaching sessions that I used to ask the question: "What would you like to talk about?" and then use supplementary questions to get them to consider how they wanted things to be different. Essentially I was setting up the coaching session process to start with problem and then move to outcome.

Having had my own sessions which have been all completely transformational and recognising the power of this different start question to focus and guide my own pre-session thoughts and actual session process, I thought this was worth a try with my clients.

I wrote the question up on the flipchart for them all to see in the morning of the third day and asked them to think about it. As a fairly reflective bunch I think this was essential. I then had the question displayed during their session and I placed it behind me but facing them.

The results, as I say were impressive; the conversations were instantly outcome focused and if they deviated, I was able to repeat the question and get them back to the outcome very quickly. I knew their issues pretty well and it was clear to me when they strayed back into the problem and it was when this happened that I asked them if they thought they had gone back into the problem and then guided them back to the outcome by repeating the question. I wrote down exactly what they said.

I then used the second technique of repeating back the exact words they had used, regardless of grammatical sense. During my sessions with Marian I am always particularly impressed with the level of extreme rapport she uses. There are several components to this and I would say I routinely use many of them as part of my tool kit anyway eg, tonal matching, bodylanguage matching (we sit facing in our speed coaching sessions), repeating back their words. What I did differently was to repeat back their exact words regardless of grammatical sense and then either leave a silence and wait for them to say more or say "Is there anything else about....?" Depending on the words they had used initially, the question I then used did in some cases sound quite clumsy but no one seemed to notice or react to the slightly odd syntax. I started to realise that my previous attempts to put what coaching clients said into a grammatically correct follow on question had probably broken rapport.

I shall continue to use these two Clean Language technques and I am keen to incorporate more.