X-Ray Listening
minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
How To Use Clean Language To Transform Groups And Teams
Feb 8th
Welcome! If you're interested in how people think, click to get The X-Ray Listener's Quick Guide To Metaphor and unlock a new perspective on the mind... for free.
Today’s podcast features one of the most experienced Clean Language facilitators in the world, Caitlin Walker. Her specialism is working with groups and teams to help them sort out their differences and become more vibrant, energetic and results-oriented.
Effectively, she’s taken what was originally a one-to-one coaching and therapy approach in a whole new direction.
In this half-hour interview, she reveals:
- details of a project in which she helped a university department to deliver a huge increase in degree results (from 49 per cent to 73 per cent getting a 2:1)
- how she uses Clean to sell herself and her interventions in organisations
- how you can use Clean Language for yourself to improve the way you learn, and how you make decisions.
To listen to the podcast right now, click here
This podcast is the latest in my series, “How Do You Use Clean Language?”, in which I’ve asked some of my friends in the Clean community to share short stories which provide good examples of how Clean Language has been useful to them.
My aim is to:
- Give newcomers to Clean a sense of how More >
Weapons of Influence
Feb 6th
While I’ve been working on my Intelligent Influence site, I’ve been reviewing some of the classics of the persuasion and influence world.
After all, I make the big claim that my Secrets of Intelligent Influence video offers new ideas and information that you won’t get anywhere else. I’m delighted that the more I explore, the more I think my claim really does stand up
And as I re-read the classics, there’s always another level of knowledge and insight to be gained.
How about Robert Cialdini’s Influence: Science and Practice? If you’re interested in influence, persuasion and manipulation then it’s worth a read. In it, Cialdini describes a set of “weapons of influence” including:
- Reciprocation
- Commitment and Consistency
- Social Proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Scarcity
Naturally, he uses a metaphor to introduce these weapons:
“A woman employing the Japanese martial art form called jujitsu would use her own strength only minimally against an opponent. Instead, she would exploit the power inherent in such naturally present principles as gravity, leverage, momentum, and inertia. If she knows where to engage the action of these principles she can easily defeat a physically stronger rival. And so it is for the exploiters of the weapons of automatic influence that exist naturally around us. The profiteers can commission the power of these More >
The Smooth Ideavirus
Feb 3rd
I’ve spent a bit of time this week tidying up my Intelligent Influence website. (Do pop over there if you’d like some free videos!)
I’ve got material that I want to get out into the world about persuasion, influence and even (gasp!) manipulation, and to achieve my goal in the internet age I have to make it easier for people to find the information, and to share it with their friends. Smooth, in fact.
Smooth like what? Like the spiral-stair-slide picture that people have been sharing on Facebook (left)!
Because as Seth Godin points out in Unleashing the Ideavirus, “Persistence matters… cool is critical… smooth is essential because if you make it easy for the virus to spread, it’s more likely to do so.”
It’s got me thinking, yet again, about why Clean Language is not a particularly smooth ideavirus. After all, the technique can be incredibly powerful, and the only way to become good at using it is to practice with other people.
So how come every learner isn’t sharing the concept with hundreds of other people, who are clamouring to grab it? Instead, the idea is spreading relatively slowly.
I think there are at least a couple of issues:
- Clean Language may be simple, but it’s not easy. Beginners More >
The Core Clean Language Questions
Jan 31st
Want a handy list of the core Clean Language questions? Here goes:
Developing Questions
- What kind of X (is that X)?
- is there anything else about X?
- Where is X? or (And) whereabouts is X?
- Is there a relationship between X and Y?
- When X, what happens to Y?
- That’s X like what?
Sequence and Source
- Then what happens?
- What happens just before X?
- Where could X come from?
Intention Questions
- What would X like to have happen?
- What needs to happen for X?
- Can X (happen)?
For more about the core Clean Language questions and how to use them, get the book
Simple But Not Easy: Mastering Clean Language
Jan 30th
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ve probably had a go at using the Clean Language questions to help someone to change. After all, the questions are simple. How complicated can it be to apply them, particularly if you’re an experienced hypnotist of other change worker?
And you may well have been left wondering why you bothered. The attempt might have ended in your client’s tears – or just fizzled out.
Because of course there’s more to using this powerful change methodology than just asking the simple questions at random to ask about people’s self-generated metaphors.
What Clean Language question should you ask, about what, and when? And what should you do with the response?
Over the weekend, I was teaching two close friends the heuristics I use to choose my questions, based on Penny Tompkins and James Lawley’s Framework for Change. Both of my students are very bright and both have been exposed to my work for years. “They’ll soon pick it up,” I told myself.
And of course, it was much more complicated than that. As soon as they began to practice with “real” content, they began to struggle. They were overwhelmed with the sheer volume of stuff that their More >
