DingbatsWelcome to Sara and Rob who joined us for the first time this month. We hope you enjoyed the meeting and that you'll come again. :)

Our topic was 'Prepositions' and we started with a page of 'Dingbats' to decipher, shown right (answers below). This got us into the topic (all involve prepositions) and we talked briefly about what prepositions and why we, as Clean Language facilitators, might be interested in them...

A preposition is a word that shows the relationship between a noun and the rest of a sentence. The word preposition literally means 'in front of' and generally speaking, a preposition comes in front of the noun to which it refers. Examples of simple prepositions are:

• he went up the hill
• darkest before the dawn
• she had a glass of wine with her friend

Welcome to Kim who joined us for the first time this month. We hope you enjoyed the meeting in our new venue at Gosport Business Park. It was certainly a lot less noisy and most people found us OK, although a couple didn't (I am so sorry about that) so next time we'll need to have more signs around the place.

Our topic for the evening was modelling how we make decisions, and before we got going we discussed what kinds of decisions it would be best to model, and agreed that we were looking for decisions that either (a) worked out OK (we recognised that sometimes we don't know whether a decision has worked out for several years) and/or (b) seemed to involve a good decision-making process. We ruled out not making a decision until one is made for you.

Our topic this month was Developing Resource Metaphors and we started with a discussion about what is a resource, concluding that anything could be a resource, depending on how it is used / perceived.]]>

Welcome to Jewels, Marion and Judith who joined us for the first time this month. Marion and Judith had already attended Less is More, so were able to benefit from the practice opportunity straight away. We hope you enjoyed the meeting and will come again!

Our topic was Metaphors and Values. This was inspired by conversations with coaches who want to practise their Clean Language skills but do not yet feel confident to use Clean Language for a whole session. One way to achieve this is to use Clean Language for a specific task. Many coaches spend time with their clients looking at their values, which are ideally suited for metaphor work.

It was great to see so many people last night and a special welcome to Gary, Steve, Roger, Mary, Maureen, Bob and Helen who all joined us for the first time. We hope you enjoyed the evening and that it gave you plenty of food for thought.

After the regular ‘new member orientation’ we moved onto the topic for the evening: “Clean and …” Several people in the group use Clean in combination with other models and methodologies and the idea was to find out how they do this.

Welcome to Angie and Ros who joined us for the first time this month; we hope you enjoyed the meeting and found it useful - and that you will come again! Having been indoors for the last couple of weeks because of the snow, it was great to have an evening out and see everyone again.

Our topic this month was 'problems'. We normally emphasise the need to help clients to focus on their desired outcomes, using the PRO (Problem, Remedy, Outcome) model.

Welcome to Gill and Kaaren who joined us for the first time last night, both travelling quite some way to be with us. We hope you both enjoyed the evening. And thank you to Robin for providing some seasonal cheer in the form of mince pies.

Our topic this month was “Directing Attention”. Of course, every Clean Language session is an exercise in directing attention. That’s what it’s all about – every question is designed to have someone pay attention to some aspect of their experience and to find out more about it.

No new members this month, so we got straight on with the main event: an activity based around the 'PRO' Model. This model was devised by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley to give facilitators a way to keep a client's attention on their desired outcome:

Start by asking the question, "And what would you like to have happen?"