Clean Language 1

2010 Dates to be Announced

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Your trainer for this program is Marian Way.

  

Clean Language 1

5-Day Training in Portland, Oregon, USA

2010 Dates to be Announced

     

  • Harness the power of metaphor to help people make the changes they reallywant
  • Essential skills for creating conditions for change
  • Free your mind to pay exquisite attention to your clients' mental models
  • Add a powerful communication tool to your toolbox
  • Learn techniques you can use to work more effectively with individuals and groups

Join us in Portland during 2010 (dates to be announced) to explore this powerful communication tool. A great mix of theory and practical sessions, demonstrations and thought-provoking activities, this training will equip you to work ‘cleanly’ with a client from start to finish or to dip in and out as you wish. The program is suitable for coaches, mentors, NLP practitioners, therapists, teachers, managers, parents – anyone who is in a leadership role and who understands the importance and value of exceptional communication skills.

Marian Way teaches this program in Portland. Marian is a skilled facilitator and trainer, who’s trained Clean Language in the USA, Russia and the UK. Participants on the 2008 training said:

"One of the best trainings I’ve ever been to! Very powerful work – I’m hooked."
Michael Spandel

"This training was the most profound and transformational experience I have ever had. I highly recommend it to anybody. You’ll get experience of Clean Language and learn a lot more about who you are."
Margarita Abramov

"Marian is an excellent trainer! The process of learning Clean Language & Symbolic Modelling was logical, systematic and delightful."
Bev Martin

The training includes:

  • Practising Clean LiteAn overview of the history of Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling and the range of contexts to which it is now being applied
  • The full range of Clean Language questions and how to ask them for maximum effect
  • Demonstrations of the questions being used within various contexts
  • Activities to help you to ‘pick out’ and pay attention to the metaphors in peoples’ language
  • How to develop individuals’ metaphors, and help them gain new insights, quickly
  • Clean-Lite: a powerful Clean Language model for motivating yourself and others to take action
  • How to help your clients to focus on what they really want, and discover what needs to happen to achieve their outcomes
  • How to differentiate between different kinds of information presented by clients and determine what question to ask next
  • Basic modelling: begin to spot patterns in a client’s metaphor landscape
  • Psychoactivity: how to help someone get an embodied sense of what it will be like when they have achieved their outcome
  • How having a 'clean' intention (i.e. keeping away from any questions which suggest change and honouring someone's existing mental models) can, paradoxically, bring about the most profound change
  • Demonstrations, group discussions, plenty of practice and feedback
  • Full colour course manual

"Clean Language is an honouring, affirming and facilitatory language."
Lawley, J. & Tompkins, P., "Metaphors in Mind", p.28

 

"Research shows that we use, on average, six metaphors a minute in ordinary speech."
Raymond R Gibbs Jr, "Categorisation and Metaphor Understanding" Psychological Review 99, no 3 (1992)

A highly experiential, fun event, with a good balance between theory and practice, and some personal development thrown in.

You’ll emerge with a thorough understanding of the principles behind Clean Language and how to ask Clean questions in a way that acknowledges and honours individual perceptions - whilst gently drawing attention to the assumptions that are holding them in place. You will have taken your listening, thinking and questioning skills to a whole new level. And you'll have gained heightened awareness of the role that language - and especially metaphor - plays in forming our perceptions. Plus you’ll meet other interesting, inspiring people doing great work in different fields - members of the global Clean Language community.

What is Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling?

Clean Language was devised by psychotherapist, David Grove, as a way to keep his assumptions out of the interaction, as far as that is possible, so he could work directly with his clients’ perceptions. In practice, it consists of 30 or so Clean Questions, asked in a particular way. David’s use of Clean Language resulted in deep and long-lasting changes for his clients.

A ‘neutral’ tool, Clean Language is very flexible. What started out as (and still is) a therapeutic tool is now used in many contexts, including:

  • as an interviewing tool
  • for modelling different skills and perceptions
  • as a coaching tool…
  • in business – for meetings and appraisals
  • for team building
  • for self-facilitation

Symbolic Modelling is the name given by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley to the model they devised after working with and observing David over several years, to discover what he was doing to achieve his results. They combined David’s ideas with ideas from the fields of cognitive linguistics, systems thinking and NLP to produce a model which could be taught to others to enable them to achieve the same kinds of results as David.

"We define Symbolic Modelling as a process, which uses Clean Language to facilitate people's discovery of how their metaphors express their way of being in the world."
Lawley, J. & Tompkins, P., "Metaphors in Mind", page 22

 

On days one and two of the course you'll learn about Clean Language and metaphor. From day three, you’ll begin to engage in modelling. We’re all natural modellers; modelling is how we learn about the world around us. We create mental models of the rooms we live in, the streets we walk along and the towns we visit. These mental models allow us to navigate from place to place. We fathom out how systems work, and create descriptions, recipes, diagrams, illustrations and analogies to help us remember what we’ve learned and to pass on what we’ve learned to others. We’re good at modelling other people, too. As children, we observe how the adults around us behave, and we seek to emulate them. And we fall into particular ways of behaving with certain people because of what we notice about their patterns of behaviour.

Most of the modelling we do is so natural that we don’t even know we’re doing it. It’s happening at an unconscious level.

In a Symbolic Modelling session, a facilitator helps a client or clients to become aware of the unconscious models they live by, so that they can make conscious choices about what they want to have happen in the future. And in order to do this, the facilitator has to make their own mental model of the client’s model. This is not the same as gathering information. What we are talking about is getting into the perspective / inner world of the client and asking questions designed to make the model explicit.

It’s the client’s desired outcome that drives the whole process. All of the facilitator’s choices – which question to ask, which direction to go in – are in service of that outcome. And since the client’s model is being continually updated – what they want can change at any time. It’s complex and challenging, and infinitely worthwhile and rewarding…

 

"Begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like. Go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements. Play them over and over to yourself."
Maxwell Maltz

 

 

"In order to achieve clarity and be fully and positively engaged in what you're doing, you must (1) know the goal or outcome you're intending and (2) decide and take the next physical move to propel you in that direction."
David Allen

 

"This training was so well put together. It offered me the opportunity to learn a different way of thinking and reflecting as well as learning the fabulous skills of Clean Language. Marian is a truly trustworthy facilitator."
Janine Clark, Business Consultant

"I am really glad I gave myself the opportunity to learn more about this process, to practice the questions and to be party to the most amazing metaphors."
Karen West

Great mix of theory and practice. A very well-structured course, run at a good pace. I was made to feel that asking questions was welcomed and Iwas being helped throughout."
Jackie Fletcher, Life Coach and Coach Supervisor

"I can honestly say it was one of the best training events I have attended - the energy and pace were superb, we worked hard and it was so very rewarding on several levels."
Viv Bolton, Executive Coach

"This has been a thoroughly enjoyable and complete learning experience."
Richard McKenny, Change Facilitator

"All of us will need better skills in listening, conversing, respecting one another's uniqueness, because these are essential for strong relationships."
Margaret Wheatley, "Leadership and the New Science", page 39

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