Product Description

A best seller in Clean Language!Would you like better relationships, a deeper understanding of the people around you, and a simple yet powerful way to help them achieve their life goals? Clean Language can offer all this and more. This elegant and powerful questioning technique is simple to learn. It opens a door to a new way of thinking about how people s minds actually work. By getting people to explore their internal metaphors you will find it much easier to truly understand them, motivate them or help them to change. Counselling Psychologist David Grove devised Clean Language to help clients resolve deep trauma. The approach is now used by some of the sharpest and most innovative people in the world business people, coaches, educators, health professionals and many others - to cut through complex problems.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14812 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
This book promises to transform the way we think about language and meaning. --Psychologies Magazine

One of the most fundamental and important tools available in NLP and coaching. This book stands out for the clarity of its explanations and makes Clean Language commonsense. The communicators' bible. --Toby McCartney, WestOne Training, Author of Mastering Memory

An excellent, thorough, thoughtful, easy to follow, well-structured manual that starts with the basics and builds up to some quite advanced techniques. It has a clear exposition of the underlying principles of Clean, with good practical exercises and pertinent examples from real-life cases. Having worked closely with David Grove over many years I know he would have approved unequivocally that his early work had been so comprehensively and clearly presented - and in some cases furthered - by Wendy and Judy. I congratulate them on what I believe will become a standard work on Clean Language. This is an invaluable contribution to the Grovian canon. --Philip Harland, Psychotherapist

I really love this book. It s a gift book for any helper. I praise the 16 chapters of Clean Language. The book is so well constructed. So refreshingly clear to read. So it is with pleasure, that its comes highly recommended to others. --Deborah Rose: DipM, MA Marketing Consultant and Facilitator

An excellent, thorough, thoughtful, easy to follow, well-structured manual that starts with the basics and builds up to some quite advanced techniques. It has a clear exposition of the underlying principles of Clean, with good practical exercises and pertinent examples from real-life cases. Having worked closely with David Grove over many years I know he would have approved unequivocally that his early work had been so comprehensively and clearly presented - and in some cases furthered - by Wendy and Judy. I congratulate them on what I believe will become a standard work on Clean Language. This is an invaluable contribution to the Grovian canon. --Philip Harland, Psychotherapist

I really love this book. It s a gift book for any helper. I praise the 16 chapters of Clean Language. The book is so well constructed. So refreshingly clear to read. So it is with pleasure, that its comes highly recommended to others. --Deborah Rose: DipM, MA Marketing Consultant and Facilitator

An excellent, thorough, thoughtful, easy to follow, well-structured manual that starts with the basics and builds up to some quite advanced techniques. It has a clear exposition of the underlying principles of Clean, with good practical exercises and pertinent examples from real-life cases. Having worked closely with David Grove over many years I know he would have approved unequivocally that his early work had been so comprehensively and clearly presented - and in some cases furthered - by Wendy and Judy. I congratulate them on what I believe will become a standard work on Clean Language. This is an invaluable contribution to the Grovian canon. --Philip Harland, Psychotherapist

About the Author
Wendy Sullivan is a specialist international trainer of Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling. Her students, who work on five continents and include both private individuals and corporate clients, use these powerful approaches in personal development and to improve communication, relationships, team working and business success. Wendy is a coach, registered psychotherapist and a certified trainer of NLP and, with Judy Rees, owns West London-based Clean Change Company. Judy Rees is a former news reporter and media executive. She has been instrumental in highlighting many potential applications of Clean Language beyond coaching and therapy, and enjoys devising and developing new ways of using the approach and linking people and ideas. She uses Clean with individuals and groups in sales and marketing, interviewing, online networking, and in personal, team and business development.

Customer Reviews

A treasure chest
I've just started reading this gem of a book for the second time, and keep finding new meanings which further enrich my understanding and use of Clean Language. In many ways, it changes the way we think about the way people think and use language, which results in a much richer understanding of what constitutes effective communication. I came across the concept of Clean Language about a year ago when reading the fascinating book 'Metaphors in Mind: Transformation through Symbolic Modelling.' It instantly captured my interest, and I have been practising and applying Clean Language on a large number of occasions, often with surprising results.

However, I still had many unanswered questions which I felt limited my understanding of and confidence in using Clean Language. When I heard this book was about to be released, I instantly ordered it. It exceeded my expectations in many ways. I found it to be both a great companion to Metaphors in Mind and an excellent work in itself which extends and refines many aspects of Clean Language. It contains a rich collection of exercises, real-life examples, tips, and background information which should satisfy newcomers as well as experienced users of Clean Language. It extends the scope for using Clean Language to include a wide variety of contexts including counselling, training, teaching, management, parenting, relationships, and research.


For me, the book managed to effectively weave together the basics as well as more advanced aspects of Clean Language. As a relative newcomer, I especially liked the many exercises which allow the reader to first develop and gain confidence in using the basics of Clean Language before moving on to more advanced techniques. The Frequently Asked Questions chapter provides some excellent down-to-earth tips and explanations which greatly help any newcomer dealing with relevant issues and skills such as memory strategies, dealing with information overload, maintaining focus, and many others.

The techniques have helped me to support myself as well as friends and colleagues in gaining a deeper understanding of difficult situations they faced and in finding new ways to think and act effectively, often with surprising results. In fact, I find it increasingly difficult not to use any Clean Language within conversations, as once you become more familiar with the questions you start to understand their power in developing and maintaining positive relationships and gaining a deeper understanding for yourself and those around you.

I Want You to Tell Me a Story
As co-creator of Clean Language, Carol Wilson, says in one of the front of book recommendations: "With this book, Clean Language comes of age."

Which is, I think, a very apt metaphor.

Wendy and Judy have written a genuinely well-crafted and useful book which anyone wanting to get a solid grounding in Clean Language will want to own and read, and read again. And such is the quality of the writing and expertise behind the writing that I can imagine many people who are already "Clean Languagers" (?) will also find it equally interesting and useful.

The essence of Clean Language, as I understand it, is to create a context in which people can create and learn from their own metaphors. The process of Clean Languaging is therefore all about how to assist the client to carry out the creation and development of their metaphor(s) with as little input from the practitioner as possible. Hence the practitioner uses "clean" language, language that is free from hints, suggestions, directions or any of the other influences that get in the way of the client being able to create a metaphor that is genuinely, as far as this is ever possible, "all their own work."

It is true that the process concentrates on just 12 questions, but this book is far from being limited to just a basic description of the questions and the overall process.

It shows how Clean Language can be used constructively in a wide range of contexts - including using it on yourself (in the privacy of your own head!), as well as with other people.
And all the way through, the book positively sparkles with the little hints and observations that mark the authors as being genuinely experienced and effective in the skill that they are describing.

As well as getting a lot of very useable information from it, I found this book genuinely entertaining, and I suspect that many, many other readers will enjoy it just as much.

Check it out and see if I'm right.

Helping people be all that they can be
"Clean" language, developed originally by David Grove, has been an interest of mine since I read "Metaphors in Mind" (Lawley and Tomkins). So, I was very interested to see the approach taken by Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees. I'm impressed by this book's, simplicity and practicality. For the uninitiated or novice "clean" user, this book has some great application strategies, techniques and tips.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of "clean" questioning, it is a way of helping another person find answers without giving advice. This may sound similar to the contemporary model of "coaching", so popular today, particularly in the business context. However, "clean" is substantially different. "Clean" is as clean as possible of the questioner's assumptions, opinions and metaphors. Furthermore, although listening is an integral component of the process of clean, it definitely does not use techniques such as paraphrasing, summarising etc, for these automatically provide the opinion of the questioner.

Chapter headings are not normally my cup of tea (there's a metaphor for you!). However, Sullivan and Rees have selected some gems that add to the explanation and the reader's understanding of "clean". Two that particularly sum this up are, "No-one ever listened themselves out of a job" (Colin Coolidge, U.S. president) and "The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people's thinking" (Nancy Kline).

As Sullivan and Rees suggest in their introduction, the book is "designed to put Clean Language in people's hands, worldwide, ready to be used whenever it could be valuable". To my mind, they have achieved their aim. The book has 16 chapters, each of which has a select number of practical activities which enable the reader to practise the concepts. There are just 12 "clean" questions and each is covered in detail. They form three clusters, Developing Questions (to encourage a person to become clear about what's true for them), Sequence and Source Questions (to tease out the sequence of events), Intention Questions (to help the person establish what they would like to change).

This is a great book. If you are really interested in helping other people, then I would suggest reading this book, undertaking the activities, then reading it again. It's one that I will certainly be using in my role as management and leadership coach and facilitator. Highly recommended.

Bob Selden,
Author, What To Do When You Become The Boss: How New Managers Become Successful Managers