A "Clean" Sweep

Over a period of years David Grove identified questions that would least influence clients in their metaphorical journey, hence the term "Clean Language." Carol Wilson, "Metaphor and Symbolic Modelling for Coaches."

Even though metaphors are commonplace in everyday language, we sometimes miss their potential to open doors that logic and its accompanying censors keep firmly locked. Think about it. If logic ruled the day, you could simply say, "I'm going to stop feeling defensive when someone criticizes me" or "I want to lose 15 pounds," and voila! It's done. 

Just as our unconscious patterns and resistances defy logic, they can be accessed and transformed with metaphor. It's really fun to follow a client's metaphor and see where it leads. And I've found they'll accept suggestions that might otherwise seem strange or silly, if presented with confidence. 

So, for example, when I asked a client about her loneliness, she said it was like being stranded on a desert island. Dropping assumptions about my role as helper, I followed her into her own metaphor, trusting that her internal resources would lead us somewhere healing. 

(It's a long story, but a key player was a talking bird, a guide neither of us could have anticipated.)

If coaches comes into metaphor play with their own worldview, make assumptions about what clients see in their own metaphors, and take them where the coach thinks they should go, this negates clients' experience and dismisses the potential for their own solutions. Psychologist David Grove suggested that metaphors are not only symbolic of a problem but also contain clues to solutions. He developed questions he called clean, meaning they don't engage a cognitive process but rather keep clients in relationship with their own metaphors.

Angela Dunbar's article "Using Metaphors with Coaching" will give you a good start with Clean Language. The first question is always, "What would you like to have happen?" and clients are typically in a logical, left-brain mode, as my client was when she said she wanted to feel connection instead of lonely. So it may take a while for a metaphor to arise, but soon, as you follow the client's lead, a whole metaphorical landscape begins to appear.

Here are a few examples of clean questions and content taken from a session of about 30 minutes. I'll use the word bird to represent my client's metaphor (one of many before she became aware of a voice, which then became a talking bird):

1. To develop awareness: "What kind of voice is that voice? or "Whereabouts is that voice?" or "Is there anything else about that voice?" (She sees a bird landing next to her.)
2. To understand the bigger picture: "Then what happens?" or "What happens just before?" or "Where could that bird have come from?" (She says it's a talking bird that comes from a ship she sees in the distance."
3. To explore relationships and connections: "And is there a relationship between that talking bird and feeling connected?" or "And when the bird talks to you, what happens to feeling connected?" (She says when she reaches the ship she'll be connected, and the bird is telling her how to reach the ship.)
4. To find out how the goal can be reached: "What needs to happen for you to feel connected?" or "And can that connection happen?" (The client at first says she has no way to get to the ship, she can't swim that far, but eventually the bird tells her how to build a raft and she is able to do that.)

A complete session is very much in flow and may move between questions, as new metaphors and even new goals appear.

It's important to hold a playful attitude as a coach. Even if you've never done this kind of work before, you'll be surprised how freeing the process can be for both you and your clients.

Mind-Bending Metaphors

In What is Metaphor and How Can Metaphor Resolve Problems and Conflicts? Thomas H. Smith wrote,"Metaphor is a primary way we frame, categorize and conceptualize... drawing attention to unnoticed similarities and connections, offering new ways to perceive and understand."

One of my clients wanted coaching on how to approach her landlord about necessary repairs to the house she was renting. She knew how to ask for what she wanted without attacking. But that didn't relieve her concern.

"I don't like confrontation," she said. "It's not fear, it's anger. I don't want to go into a rage. In my last e-mail I gave him the facts and said, 'I'm sick of it.' Now I dread looking for his e-mail response."

Operating on intuition, I asked, "If your landlord were an animal, what animal would he be?"

She answered without hesitation, "A hyena! They're scavengers, annoying, bottom-feeders, goofy-looking."

"And what animal represents you?" I asked.

"I'm a tiger. I may purr and be all kitty-cat, but If you piss me off I'll bare my teeth."

When we talked the following week, after her meeting with the landlord, she said, "It was kind of matter-of-fact. When he started pointing the finger at me, I was angry, but then I visualized him as a hyena, realized that was his M.O. to throw people off. And I was fine."

Metaphors Can Die!

A colleague asked me how I use metaphors in change work. As I described how I elicit and mirror metaphors, I rather casually gave him an example: 

You’ve said you want to be able to distinguish between falling into excitement--which carries passion and commitment, or falling into yearning--where you’re stuck in envy and unable to move forward.

Let's say I asked you what falling into excitement is like and you said, "It’s like flying, like a bird in migration that knows, that follows its instincts."

Then I might ask, "Tell me more about that bird, and where you are in the picture."

And you might respond, "I'm flying, following the bird, and it’s an eagle."

I then explained if he were my client, of course, his metaphor might be very different and it would be important to honor that, because a metaphor is only potent if it’s alive for the person wanting the change. 

“But as soon as you mentioned eliciting a metaphor,” he said, “I thought of flying!”

In his next email he wrote, “Thanks for an enlightening conversation. There is a subtle excitement in me... like the feeling I feel just before flying in a dream... a warm light that tries to burst from my chest... pulling me forward... a child's spirit... a wisdom unmistakably ancient... an eagle turning its smiling eye back at me... knowingly flapping its wings.. leaving a soothing breeze in its wake... I will follow it.”   

Unwittingly, I’d used a metaphor that was alive for him. But metaphors can be dead if they have no figurative value. Someone who sails might say, for example, “It’s like being on a sailboat in a heavy wind,” but continue the discussion in everyday language because the sailing image is literal and therefore dead as a metaphor. If the same person says “It’s like I’m balancing on top of a huge ice skate going very fast” this is probably a live metaphor. 

Listen for combinations of words that don’t fit known patterns of meaning – these are more likely to engage right-brain processes, and live on, as the eagle did for my friend.