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Way To Go!
By Marian Way & Phil Swallow
If you're anything like us, you find metaphor fascinating, elegant, sometimes astonishing.
When we're working with clients or training people in Clean Language, we often catch each other's eye when we hear someone describing their experience with a particularly arresting metaphor. Sometimes we say aloud what we're thinking: 'Aren't people amazing!'You might think we'd be used to it by now. Yes, we appreciate how metaphor is central to the way we think, yes, it is a great way to encapsulate a large amount of information in a small package, yes again, it's 'one kind of thing represented in terms of another'. We know all that - and people still have the capacity to delight and astound us with the creativity of their metaphors.
Posted on 15 May 2009 by Marian Way in Metaphor
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Metaphor Maps
Practice Group Report
We welcomed Walter and Helen to the group this month - all the way from Bracknell! After admiring the view from the balcony, they were treated to a demonstration during the 'new member' part of the meeting. When everyone else arrived, we settled down to our main activity for the evening, which revolved around 'metaphor maps'.
Working in threes, with a facilitator, client and observer in each group, the facilitator used Clean Language to help the client model "When I'm _________ at my best, that's like what?" The _________ could be 'learning', 'working', 'coaching', 'parenting', 'cycling'... whatever the client chose.
Posted on 20 Apr 2009 by Marian Way in Metaphor, Practice Group
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Resolutions are Like What?
A stake in the sand; an engine without enough oil; an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other; a milky, inert globe; waves breaking on a beach; a blocked American Indian healer; a rainbow that looks lovely but disappears... these were just a few of the metaphors for 'resolutions' that emerged from last night's Clean Language session with Wessex NLP.
Everyone in the group had some experience / knowledge of Clean Language, so we spent the time honing skills such as using the three-part-syntax, clarifying other aspects of the syntax and ensuring that the questions we asked were purposeful (i.e. that we were modelling rather than asking 'random' questions).
Posted on 29 Jan 2009 by Marian Way in Metaphor
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A New Metaphor for the New Year
Practice Group Report
We welcomed Robin and John to the group for the first time last night, and rather than asking them what they would like to add to our group metaphor (as we have been doing), we started again with a 'clean sheet' for the new year.
In order to create a new metaphor, we used a cut-down version of Caitlin Walker and Nancy Doyle's Metaphors At Work process. This involved us working in two small groups to elicit - and develop, using Clean questions - our individual metaphors for the kind of group we would like in 2009. As well as those present, Nigel and Monica had sent their ideas, too.
Posted on 19 Jan 2009 by Marian Way in Metaphor, Practice Group
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Clean Language as a Coaching Tool
Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Hampshire Coaching Group last night, I used the metaphor of Clean Language as a 'powerful tool' to illustrate the upsides and downsides of using metaphors to explain things. This metaphor is often used of Clean Language and since coaching draws from many different disciplines, it's an obvious one for coaches - who tend to collect new tools as they develop themselves, gathering different skills from different disciplines and being able to choose the right one for the situation.
Posted on 15 Jan 2009 by Marian Way in Clean Language, Coaching, Metaphor
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What is Clean… and Clean Is Like What?
I ran a session with Nancy Doyle at this year's Clean Conference, where we asked: What is Clean? Where did Clean come from? Clean is like... because... and Clean is not like... because…
Participants worked alone and then in small groups to answer these questions - and here are all the responses:
Posted on 06 Aug 2008 by Marian Way in Clean Language, Metaphor
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When You Elicit a Metaphor, Then What Happens?
Practice Group Report
We started this month’s meeting with an ‘Open Space’ type beginning, by asking for ideas about how we could spend our time together. Everyone then voted for the two items on the list that most attracted them. The following suggestions were put forward, with the number of votes each received in brackets: To be facilitated cleanly to find a (life) partner (1); Using Clean Language with ‘away from’ people (2);
Posted on 10 Dec 2007 by Marian Way in Metaphor, Practice Group
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Creative / Not Creative
When I am working on the 'technical' bits of this website - choosing colours, getting columns to line up properly in a table, or buying stock photos, for example - I often wonder whether other people would describe the process as 'creative'.
I am a fan of Robert Fritz, author of "Creating" and "The Path of Least Resistance" - and I know that he would definitely consider this to have been a creative process. He describes the need to have a purpose (i.e. in this case, a good looking website) and to set up a tension between that purpose and current reality. To illustrate this, he uses the metaphor of an elastic band stretched between the two and suggests that the creative process is all about reducing that tension, so you gradually make it towards your goal.
Posted on 08 Feb 2007 by Marian Way in Creativity, Metaphor, Modelling
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