Getting through to the information 2

I promised to give some more information on Clean Language. I’m always surprised that so few people have even heard of this set of techniques as they have such profound results.

David Grove developed Clean Language as he recognised that when listening and responding to others we introduce much of ourselves into our understanding of the other person. This means that our psychological baggage can influence the way the other person reacts and that because of this we interfere with their understanding of their own thoughts and feelings.

Clean language, to simplify the idea, uses just nine questions to encourage others to talk about their thoughts feelings and emotions with as little interference from the personality, views, judgements and stereotypes of the listener as possible.

Here are the 9 basic questions:

And is there anything else about ......?
And what kind of ...... is that ......?
And where is ......?
And whereabouts?
And what happens next?
And then what happens?
And what happens just before ......?
And where does/could ...... come from?
And that's ...... like what?

In each case '......' is a repetition of (some of) the exact words of the client.

For instance if the client talks about ‘a black cloud over me’ the listener might ask (using question 8):

And where could ‘a black cloud over me’ come from?

I’ll leave you with the basic questions for now, but notice how the repetition uses 'me', not 'you'. This is of vital importance in Clean Language. See how well you understand the idea and you might even try out the questions in conversation with others. You might be surprised at how forthcoming they are almost immediately.