When used well, Clean Language brings into awareness information held outside the client’s everyday consciousness, in the realm of metaphor.
Both client and facilitator use this to create their own dynamic models of whatever’s going on for the client, which in turn leads to further questioning.
In a context where change is wanted (eg coaching or therapy or a problemy business situation) the questioning process is used to develop a desired outcome (usually in the form of metaphor) and to find out how it may be achieved (often still in metaphor). Working at a metaphoric level often seems to allow the other-than-conscious system to make the necessary changes spontaneously. In other cases, the client gets a greater understanding of what’s going on and is able to discover new choice-points at which they can do something differently in future.
In contexts of modelling excellence, both client and facilitator find out more about how the client does something, in a form which is easily communicated to others – a metaphor.
