A spiritual community needed to discover more about a key part of their mission, including the key steps needed to get the results they wanted to achieve.

Clean Change Company’s Wendy Sullivan and a team of facilitators used Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling to explore with a group of more than 70 members.

By the end of the project, people were reporting that their understanding had been transformed – and they knew just how to contribute day-to-day to make a real difference.

Building a team

A virtual team were having a difficult time working together, and asked for help from Wendy Sullivan. Exploring individuals’ metaphors for the team revealed they were all very different – and offered a way forward.

“When we explored how each person wanted the team to be, a team discovered that while one member wanted working in the team to be like setting sail for distant shores, another wanted it to be like a Formula One racing team!” Wendy explained.

“There were nods and smiles as the team realised they had seen individuals living their metaphors from day to day. The Formula One person’s meetings had no stops for lunch or tea. People were expected to keep working and concentrating as long as there was work to do. He spoke fast, with concepts flashing past at high speed.

“People started changing their communication so that it fitted in within the logic of a person’s metaphor. For example, they’d say to the Formula One person: ‘If we take this highly-targetted approach, we’ll get it done much faster and beat the other divisions by miles.’

“This helped members to feel understood.

“At the same time they were also more understanding of how and why others responded differently to situations affecting the team.”

Developing leaders as motivators

Weight Watchers leaders are learning how to use Clean Language principles to motivate members to lose weight. Members have just a few minutes of the leader’s personal attention each week, so the organisation wanted to discover the fastest, most effective way to make a real difference.

Using Clean facilitation, Wendy Sullivan and the team devised a “one-minute motivator” which helps people to focus on what they want to have happen, and what steps they need to take to bring it about.

This approach is now being taught to 1600 Weight Watchers leaders and their managers.

Coaching for change

Coaching can help in a wide variety of situations, at work and outside.

One client said: “Looking back, I am amazed at the extent of ground we covered and the number of ideas generated.

“Being able to bounce ideas of someone 'independent' and to almost practice how a difficult discussion will run was really helpful. It made me think more about what I do.

“My sessions with Wendy have helped me to welcome and relish the challenges. I also have a more accurate idea of how I naturally act in certain situations and a stack of ideas on how to change that if the need arises.

“On a number of occasions the questioning which you provided cleared my thoughts when I was unsure, and on other occasions I saw the problem/issue from a different perspective.”

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