Getting to the Information 3
As I’ve said, Clean Language gets its name because it is ‘clean’ of the interviewer’s prejudices and mind-sets. Using Clean Language allows the ‘client’ to get closer to their thoughts and feelings and they soon become very descriptive in the way that they outline their emotions and ideas. Because Clean Language encourages interviewees to go deeper than we normally go in conversation or indeed thought, the language which they tend to use becomes very metaphorical and picturesque.
If we then use the nine basic questions to examine those metaphors and symbols more deeply we access even more information, often much to the surprise and benefit of the interviewee. Even though Clean Language was originally envisaged as a psychotherapeutic technique, it has shown itself very powerful in problem solving and decision making especially where change is at the core of the challenge.
Not your problem
Even more than in traditional interview methodology it is for the interviewee to work towards their own ‘salvation’. It is not for the interviewer to interpret what the ‘client’ is saying nor to try to understand it. It is merely the job of the interviewer to try to help the ‘client’ to work through their own metaphorical psychological landscape. Great insights can be made in this way and because the insight is owned by the ‘client’ and not by the interviewer, at least in part, the client can clearly realise that this is their content and nobody else’s. It’s not ‘client- centred’ though. If anything the interview is focussed on the information instead of either of the protagonists. In this way, there is a sort of neutrality to the information that allows the ‘client’ to think about it and use it in ways untrammelled with guilt or other unhelpful baggage. Instead they can work positively to use, change, process further or reject the metaphorical landscape or parts of it that they feel can longer help with their challenge.
Using these questions brings about a strong feeling that we (who undergo such an interview) have genuine contact with our sub-conscious and that this allows us to access our deepest thoughts and feelings with interest and wonder rather than with shame or frustration. Through an almost trancelike though wakeful state, we build our internal world in the external world so that we can address its lessons without fear or pain, helped though not led by the interviewer.
If we then use the nine basic questions to examine those metaphors and symbols more deeply we access even more information, often much to the surprise and benefit of the interviewee. Even though Clean Language was originally envisaged as a psychotherapeutic technique, it has shown itself very powerful in problem solving and decision making especially where change is at the core of the challenge.
Not your problem
Even more than in traditional interview methodology it is for the interviewee to work towards their own ‘salvation’. It is not for the interviewer to interpret what the ‘client’ is saying nor to try to understand it. It is merely the job of the interviewer to try to help the ‘client’ to work through their own metaphorical psychological landscape. Great insights can be made in this way and because the insight is owned by the ‘client’ and not by the interviewer, at least in part, the client can clearly realise that this is their content and nobody else’s. It’s not ‘client- centred’ though. If anything the interview is focussed on the information instead of either of the protagonists. In this way, there is a sort of neutrality to the information that allows the ‘client’ to think about it and use it in ways untrammelled with guilt or other unhelpful baggage. Instead they can work positively to use, change, process further or reject the metaphorical landscape or parts of it that they feel can longer help with their challenge.
Using these questions brings about a strong feeling that we (who undergo such an interview) have genuine contact with our sub-conscious and that this allows us to access our deepest thoughts and feelings with interest and wonder rather than with shame or frustration. Through an almost trancelike though wakeful state, we build our internal world in the external world so that we can address its lessons without fear or pain, helped though not led by the interviewer.
posted by Derek Shields at
5:30 pm
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