They already know that it can increase clarity in ordinary work conversations; help people to be fully heard and better understood; reduce misunderstandings; and support a focus on shared outcomes.

And they know they need practice. Using questions like “What kind of X?” can be like kicking a football: most people can “do it” straight away, but it takes a lot of practice to do it with accuracy and power.

Steve McCann and I plan to share guidelines for keeping things firmly conversational, so that nobody feels like they are being “theraped”. (Hint: your selection of a word to ask about makes a big difference!)

And we’ll point the group to case studies of how conversational Clean Language can be super useful in difficult, emotionally-charged situations.

But… hang on a minute! As we planned the session, I realised that there wasn’t a definition of “conversational Clean Language” here on the Substack.

Let’s fix that, right now. For me, “conversational Clean Language” has two main ingredients:

• Using occasional Clean Language questions (especially “What kind of X?”) in ordinary, everyday conversations because they seem useful.

• Taking a Clean or Cleanish stance by

  • making an intentional shift away from prioritising “being understood” and towards prioritising “understanding others”

  • seeking to calibrate, in the moment, what’s true for other people in the conversation, and treating their truths (including the metaphors they use in their language) with respect.

Conversational Clean Language is intentionally informal. No specific process or technique is in play. There’s no special contract beforehand. Nobody’s agenda is officially on top.

Conversational Clean Language is not the hypnotic kind of Clean Language which uses clever syntax, a trancey voice tone and lots of repetition.

Conversational Clean Language shouldn’t make people feel interrogated, or force them to talk about things that make them uncomfortable.

It might surprise them, because it’s really quite unusual to come across someone who seeks to understand before being understood (as Stephen Covey recommended). But it’s usually a pleasant surprise.

So that's what we'll be practising next week. Not a technique or protocol to make your life harder — just a shift in stance, and a question or two, deployed where they're useful.

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Go here for more posts about conversational Clean Language »

❓Pro-Social: Proofs for Metaphorum

I made a big claim on my socials this week. “A pro-social stance means holding each person in the same esteem you hold yourself, while actively promoting acceptance and friendship. At Metaphorum, the global online gathering of Clean Language enthusiasts, that's what you can expect.”

I know I’ve seen this play out at every one of these gatherings over the past ten years: people stepping up to help, be kind, and be patient. But then I wondered - what other stories might there be? If you have a memory of pro-social behaviour at Metaphorum, please drop me a message!

Discover details of Metaphorum »

🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Language for Sales

Saudi-based sales trainer Mustafa Ali says #CleanLanguage is a great tool for sales professionals. He says, “When a sales professional begins to speak, their words immediately shape how the Prospect feels, evaluates, and responds. In most cases, the Prospect decides in the first few sentences whether they want to continue listening. If your tone is self-congratulatory, or if the conversation revolves around your offering with little regard to their personality, pain points, or worldview—you’ve likely lost their attention.

“Clean Language flips that script.

“It redirects the spotlight from you to them—where it should be. You’re not trying to impress. You’re trying to understand. You’re not pitching. You’re facilitating discovery.”

Read his full article on LinkedIn »

Many thanks to Ritaj Gupta for discovering this article.

🕺 Dr Dance’s Medical Mishap

Dr Dance, Peter Lovett, was jigging on LinkedIn this week after receiving the fabulous news of a medical mistake.

Join the joy (LinkedIn) »

🧭 7 Habits of Highly Misaligned Organizations

Organisational alignment boffin Lindsay Uittenbogaard says she’s found seven habits that make misalignment remarkably predictable.

”Everyone says they want alignment, but we’ve yet to meet a team that sets out hoping decisions will be revisited, priorities will become muddled, or people will work hard while somehow pulling in different directions. Yet we continue to see exactly these patterns across organizations of every size,” she says.

Discover the 7 habits »

👀 Therapists’ Open Space

My friend Tobias Mayer is pulling together a 30-person Open Space unconference to bring together action-oriented therapy and counselling practitioners with various levels of experience. The plan is to share stories and insights, explore new ideas and methods of working, address important social or political change that may affect their client work and navigate the practical realities of sustaining a viable, independent practice.

I’ve been to Tobias’s events before and I can confidently say that it will be interesting and fun.

Full details »

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🤖 Understanding AI: How Metaphors Trip Us Up

Researchers studying Large Language Models (aka AIs like ChatGPT or Claude) look at them through human metaphorical lenses - and that’s potentially problematic, according to a team from the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in China.

”Researchers map LLMs onto familiar domains, from physics and neuroscience to psychology and sociology, each illuminating specific facets while obscuring others,” they say. But, crucially, “This metaphorical projection creates a recursive loop of anthropomorphism.”

Humans think in metaphor: they can’t not.

But, the team asks, what if LLMs don’t? What if each LLM constructs its own subjective reality from its own environment and representations?

Read the full paper »

🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Collaborating At Your Best

Monica Monet shared a story this week about how she used Clean Language with a multicultural team in an international organisation in Geneva recently. Things felt fragile following significant budget and headcount cuts.

She explained: “Headcount had been reduced - and with it something less visible but equally important: trust, motivation, energy, collaboration, and how conflict was handled…

“Why Clean Language? The quickest way to lose trust in a fragile team is to assume you already understand its experience.

”Clean Language invites people to discover their own metaphors before any framework gets in the way…

“The metaphors - bridges, gardens, orchestras - became more than images. They became a shared vocabulary the team can continue to use. That's the real outcome: not another list of action items, but a language the team owns.”

Read more (LinkedIn) »

🧠 Conversations Do Change Minds

New research suggests that discussing differences of opinion on politically charged topics can bring us closer together in our viewpoints.

Read more »

🏆 #CleanInTheWild: Helen Wins Award

Helen Slocombe, who uses and champions Clean Language in her work with people at the end of their lives, has won a top award from her employers, HCRG Care Group.

In her citation for the Heart Award, Helen was recognised for “the exceptional kindness, empathy and humanity she brings to her work every day. Supporting patients and families through some of life's most difficult moments, Helen was commended for her ability to create space for meaningful conversations, helping families navigate challenging decisions with compassion and understanding.”

And, she puts some of this success down to her use of Clean Language in her work.

Hear Helen’s Clean Language story »

👀 Metaphorum: What would you like to happen?

Metaphorum is the global online festival celebrating Clean Language and its ever-expanding universe of applications.

It’s partly an organized festival, so you can make the most of your participation, and partly an open-space-like unconference, where practitioners of Clean Language, Clean Space, and Emergent Knowledge and other clean modalities come together to share, create, and connect. Together we co-create a thrilling day of deep dives into personal and professional development, and everything in between.

For you, what would make attending this event a complete no-brainer - something so useful and enjoyable that you couldn’t possibly miss it? I asked Caitlin Walker and Shaun Hotchkiss this the other day, and their answers were fascinating.

Drop me an email or DM and let me know!

Read more about Metaphorum »

🦋 #CleanInTheWild: High School Dialogue

Students at a California high school have been introduced to Clean Language as part of an initiative to help people feel safer to have difficult conversations.

Read more (LinkedIn) »

Big Tech could change things with the press of a button. But so far, they haven’t.

I wish that was conspiracy theory. But it isn’t. (Here’s the research.)

The machine loves extremes.

Political extremes are what gets noticed, but the same pattern can play out in slightly less obvious ways.

For example, online reviews are being pushed towards 5* or 1*, with nothing in between.

The same pattern is behind the loss of meaningful discussions in comments threads. LinkedIn and Facebook much prefer users to get angry than to think for themselves and explore other people’s positions.

Nuance is bad for the algorithm’s business, because it can’t be counted, ranked, or monetised.

Which makes this a challenging time to be advocating for Clean Language, which is a way of teasing out the nuances of individual meaning that make humans fascinatingly different.

Asking “What kind of X?” can produce exactly the kind of answer that a recommendation engine has no idea what to do with.

Asking yourself “What would I like to happen?” gets you thinking about desired outcomes, not problems… which in turn can lead you to move away from the algorithm’s anxiety-generating money-makers.

“And is there anything else about X?” is an invitation to think more deeply, more broadly and more interestingly about a topic: just what the machine doesn’t want you to do.

That’s why the algorithm hates Clean Language.

And, here’s a twist. A Clean Language question is built around another person’s words - the “X” in “What kind of X?”. You need something to ask about - and ideally that something is an honestly-held, non-extreme point of view that the person is willing to explore and discuss.

Powered by the algorithm, those kinds of points of view are getting rarer. They are not only vanishing in public online spaces (where expressing a nuanced position on one of a long list of topics can call down a rain of trolls, so people don’t bother).

I notice that it’s spilling into the “real” world, too. More and more people just hold forth, as if their own opinion (which they perceive as fact) is the only one that counts.

How might we start to bring back nuance?

The anti-algorithm revolution needs both the power of Clean Language questions, and the willingness to say stuff transparently.

If it starts here… what do you think and feel about what I’ve written above? And what questions do you have for me?

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I’m in reflective mood after a couple of weeks’ summer break. I’m thinking about the joy that my online friends have brought me over the years, and how an internet connection has linked me with so many brilliant people and their ideas.

And, as I’m another year older, I’m wondering if it’s all fading, like the summer flowers.

👀 Precisely Ambiguous Purpose

“How is it that we ache for a breakthrough fix that changes everything WHILE we hesitate to embrace an approach in which the real problems and solutions become clear only as we explore them?”

That’s a lovely Wicked Question from a timely (for me) blog post by Liberating Structures guru Keith McCandless. The post’s stated goal is to move beyond "either-or" thinking and spark deeper, wider explorations of new options.

The post’s heroine gets her group’s creative juices flowing by exploring ways they might get the worst possible result in relation their challenge. The fun activity leads to a serious breakthrough.

Read Keith’s blog post »

This post from almost a year ago highlights one of the things I’m missing most about the “old-style” online world. Things have only got worse since then.

🧠 Another Way Is Possible

And, there are still delightful surprises online - such as a glossary, produced by a team in Singapore, that aims to offer new frames of reference for these uncertain times.

The authors say, “In times of uncertainty, another way of thinking, working, and living together is possible — and necessary. There may be a tendency to default to familiarity, urgency, control, pessimism, optimisation, and risk avoidance.

“When familiar language is too narrow, the entries offer fresh concepts for asking sharper questions about policy design, implementation, engagement, crisis response, institutional learning, and service delivery.”

Check out the glossary »

⬬ The Epistemic Black Hole

More joy: argumentative complexity guy Dave Snowden has taken Virpi Oinonen’s book of complexity cartoons, Reality Strikes Back, as the inspiration for a new blog post series.

This week, he looked into an epistemic black hole.

Dive into Dave’s post »

🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Trying One Question

And a big smile to end on.

A volunteer working in end-of-life care was introduced to Clean Language recently.

Next day, she reported: “I tried the "what kind of" questions with my husband and got two in before I lost my flow. But that was because he answered my question, which he ordinarily wouldn't have done, so that's a win from my end 🙂”

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I Made This Fear-Driven Mistake

The other week I was writing about how fear turns people’s attention inwards, and that ultimately makes them less trustworthy.

And then it happened to me. Nerves turned my attention inwards, to myself. And I may have screwed up a big opportunity as a result.

Clean Language Infographic

A new Clean Language enthusiast, healthcare costing expert Neil Milner, has created a lovely infographic to explain the idea to others.

Check it out (LinkedIn) »

When To Tell, When To Ask

Like many Clean-Language-trained trainers, I sometimes struggle to know when to “tell”, and when asking questions of learners will be more valuable. My friend Marian Hartman has been exploring this challenge in a new post.

When to tell »

Good End-of-Life Care Depends on Good Communication

Since 2020, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman service has investigated complaints about palliative and end of life care services across England. They found that communication is the most common failing - patients not told their diagnosis, families kept in the dark, and vital information lost when people move between services.

In a new report, they draw on the experiences of families and clinicians to set out where communication most often falls short and what needs to change.

Read the report »

Unleashing Team Creativity - Unlocked

A batch of 2023 conference recordings about unleashing team creativity - including a session with me - have been publicly released by organisers Elise Keith and Dave Mastronardi.

Explore the good stuff »

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That’s what I was saying in my last post here.

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And then it happened to me. Nerves turned my attention inwards, to myself. And I may have screwed up a big opportunity as a result.

Here’s what happened.

Twice last week, I ran an activity based on Revealing Metaphors with online groups. One was with a smallish group of Indian facilitators, members of IAF India, just as a favour to “spread the word” about Clean Language.

The other was a much bigger deal - a session with end-of-life practitioners to launch our case study and celebrate Advance Care Planning Day. We had more than 120 people registered (with a Zoom capacity of 100) and a whole lot more on the waitlist. It seemed like people were finally open to hearing that Clean Language was super valuable in Advance Care Planning. Maybe we’d even get some paid work from it!

And I screwed that one up.

The Revealing Metaphors activity needs a starter question, before the group goes into pairs breakouts to experience being asked the Lazy Jedi questions. The classic starter question is “When you’re [doing focus topic] at your best, you’re like… what?”

It’s fairly simple, and speaks directly to the participants’ own, individual experiences.

For example, with the Indian facilitators’ group (session title Surfing The Silence) I asked: “When silence in meetings serves just as you would like, that will be like… what?”

For the ACP event, I chose, “What would you like to happen about Advance Care Planning conversations in your organisation (or your own work)?”

Complicated. Abstract. Impersonal. People struggled to find an answer that resonated for them, and so the activity didn’t have its usual impact.

What on earth was I thinking?!

What I realise now is that as I planned the session, a lot of my attention was on my own thoughts and feelings, rather than on what would actually reach them, as individuals.

Result: a poor question. Lower engagement. I probably didn’t come across at my best.

It wasn’t a catastrophe, but it could have been a whole lot better.

It’s turned into a big reminder that just because I write about this stuff doesn’t mean I’m exempt from the mechanisms that affect humans. When the stakes are higher, I get more nervous, and the results get worse.

• 📖 The exercise in this post is now in a book. Revealing Metaphors - the Clean Language activity you just read about - has its own Springboard Story in the new Liberating Structures book. You can find the full, current version (with all the tips and variations) on my Substack post.

Fear May Fuel Clinician Burnout

Ever noticed what fear does to your attention? Turns out, this effect may be part of the cause of clinician burnout in end-of-life care.

In my latest Substack post I explain how that works, and what you can do about it.

Get answers »

Over My Dead Poddy

I just discovered that my local Richmond, Yorkshire undertaker, Carl Tate, co-hosts an amusingly-named, lighthearted podcast all about death and dying.

Well worth a listen!

Lifting the lid on death and dying »

LEGO: Moving Flags Matters

LEGO Serious Play facilitator Sean Blair tried something new - and generated a whole bunch of new insights.

He explained: “The group has built a shared system model, built connections, examined how the system behaves, and now they’re identifying the places in the system where a small change might produce a disproportionately large result. Each ‘candidate’ leverage point gets a flag that describes an action or intervention. The group places their flags.

“At this particular session, I asked the group to do something slightly different. I asked them to physically animate one. Pick a flag, place your hand on it, and move it…”

Learn what happened next »

Cartoon Guide To Complexity

At last! Complexity cartoonist Virpi Oinonen’s long-awaited book is now available.

I’ve shared lots of her cartoons here over the years. They’re always brilliant.

Buy on Amazon »

Enriching Advance Care Planning Conversations

Clean Language questions can help clinicians have effective conversations with patients about death and dying. That’s the headline from a case study I put together with three clinical colleagues from the Clean in Healthcare movement.

Yesterday, we hosted an online event to launch the case study and give people an experience of Clean Language. More than 120 people registered, and we’re building a waitlist for repeat date. Watch this space for more details as we have them.

Check out the case study »
Conversaurus offer »

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Turns out, there is. I’ll get to the details in a moment.

(TL:DR - Clean Language is the fix. This post explains one of the reasons why.)

First, I have a question. How would you like your death to be?

Most of us will die in a healthcare setting. The people looking after us are supposed to find out what we want - where we’d like to be, who we want with us, what matters most. These “Advance Care Planning” conversations can make an enormous difference to how someone’s final days unfold.

They’re frequently not happening. And when they do, they often stay surface-level. A form gets filled, a box gets ticked, but the real conversation never quite starts.

Research suggests that’s often because clinicians and other healthcare staff are frightened. They don’t know how to start. They don’t know what to do when they get answers. They’re worried they’ll be asked for things they can’t deliver. And it’s all made worse when they’re afraid to face the fact that they too, one day, will die.

It’s not surprising that burnout is common.

The Power of Other-Orientation

There’s a model in professional services called the Trust Equation. Trustworthiness, it says, is built from four things: credibility, reliability, psychological safety and other-orientation.

Other-orientation means the degree to which you’re focused on the other person rather than yourself.

For frontline healthcare workers credibility is handled by the uniform and the institution. Reliability is handled, or not, by admin. Neither is really within their control.

The two other factors are within their control. And the one which makes the most difference, according to the model, is other-orientation.

When a clinician is frightened, their attention turns inward. To what they might say wrong. To what they can’t fix. To their own discomfort. The patient feels this. The conversation closes down.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s what fear does to attention.

The Empathy Trap

In healthcare, empathy is everywhere. Feel what they feel. Show you care.

But empathy has a problem: it’s about your response to their situation. Done well, it’s powerful. Done badly, it pulls attention back to you. I feel your pain is a sentence about “I”.

Other-orientation is different. It means your attention is genuinely on the other person - their words, their meaning, their world - rather than your interpretation of it.

This is exactly where Clean Language comes in. Its questions follow the patient’s exact words. It is structurally, practically other-oriented — and it’s almost impossible to use it while staying focused on yourself.

That’s why a third-year student nurse asked one question — What do YOU want to happen? — and unlocked a conversation that had been blocked for weeks. The patient’s wife had been speaking for him. Nobody had directed attention at him directly, in his own words, without assumption.

“Like magic — we heard what he had to say, and then could put everything in place, and he died at home as he wished.”

She hadn’t known it was called Clean Language. She’d heard about it once, in a lecture.

Burnout Busting

When your job in a conversation is to follow rather than fix — to attend rather than perform — it’s less exhausting. You don’t need to have the answers. You don’t need to manage your own emotional response while simultaneously managing theirs. The attention is outward, and that turns out to be protective.

This is the mechanism behind something practitioners report consistently: Clean Language doesn’t just improve conversations. It makes the work feel sustainable again.

• Thanks to Neil Massa for the conversation about the Trust Equation; to my collaborators in this case study and this paper in BMJ Open Quality; and Dr Emma Clare for sharing her research.

Healthcare Interviewing Skills: Rant Mode On

“How many times do you wake up to go to the toilet in the night?”

Seem like a reasonable question from a clinician?

Really, it isn’t. Not if the patient wakes up once, then stays awake - and needs the toilet four more times.

When my friend Colette Hawkins shared this story about a relative’s care on LinkedIn, it sent me into rant mode.

Feels like we need a campaign for better interviewing skills in healthcare!

Read Colette’s post - and my rant »

Failure Demand Report

Colette’s relative is experiencing the effects of “failure demand”, defined as “work created not by new patient need but because the system has not met an existing need effectively, quickly or with clear ownership.”

Up to 30 per cent of health service work may fit into this category, according to a new report.

Read the details »

Surfing The Silence

Any members of the International Association of Facilitators here?

I’m leading a 100-minute online session for IAF India. Do join if you can!

Details (LinkedIn) »

Exploring Space With Clean Language

Want an example of what really good interviewing looks like, and the results it can have? Here’s a lovely case study written up by my friend Marian Way.

As you read, notice what the facilitator, James Lawley, is actually doing. He’s not firing questions at the client, though there clearly are questions. More importantly, he’s using his curiosity, and his attention, in the service of the client, patiently.

If you’re not used to this level of detail, it can feel slow, and perhaps absurdly painstaking. But it usually pays off for the client - as it does in this story.

"The next time I had to do my accounting, it took less than 25 minutes instead of a whole day,” she said.

Read the case study »

Why Might This Power Up Tough Conversations?

Last week, I was involved in publishing a brand-new case study about how Clean Language can support professionals to actually have conversations about the kind of death a person wants. Read the case study here »

It got me thinking about why. What’s going on that means Clean Language helps here?

The result was a bit of a mega-list. Check it out in this week’s main Substack post.

Participative Facilitators’ Bookfest

I’ve been asked to explain. There are two Liberating Structures books just out.

What are Liberating Structures? “Simple, powerful interaction patterns that ignite widespread local action to spark global ripples.” You could call them meeting formats, designed to include everybody. I love them. They inspired Metaphorum.

The two new books are:

The Liberating Structures Fieldbook by Keith McCandless and Nancy White. This one is the long-awaited big update to the method, increasing the 33 original structures to 43 and including guidance for both online and face-to-face facilitation. It’s been published in the USA and my copy is currently stuck somewhere mid-Atlantic.

Liberating Structures: Stories From The Field edited by Anja Ebers. This is the crowdsourced book of real-life stories. “Drawing on the real-world experiences of 39 practitioners across 6 continents, this book brings the global Liberating Structures movement to life through compelling, practical stories from the field.” It’s been published in Europe.

Each book offers something different, and valuable. Lots of love amongst everyone involved in both books. My recommendation: if you ever run meetings or work with groups, get them both!

The Liberating Structures Fieldbook >>

Liberating Structures: Stories From The Field >>

Mismatched Meaning “A Major NHS Problem”

Costing consultant Neil Milner wrote on LinkedIn: “One of the biggest problems in NHS improvement is that people use the same words to mean completely different things…

”Take the word “capacity.”

• For operational teams that might mean appointment slots.

• For finance it might mean affordability.

• For workforce teams it might mean staffing hours.

• For estates teams it might mean physical space.

“All valid. But all different.”

What an opportunity to put Clean Language to work in healthcare! (And yes, I had a chat with Neil this week.)

Read his LinkedIn post »

Clean Language in Ukraine

How did Ukraine become a major hotspot for Clean Language in psychotherapy?

Hanna Statyvka has written up the full story.

Read about the roots and growth »

Intense Spiritual and Extraordinary Experiences

Any UK mental health practitioners reading? Clean enthusiast Lorraine Tolmie would like your help with research about therapy and counselling for intense spiritual or extraordinary experiences.

She says: “There are lots of different terms for these experiences including ‘spiritually transformative experience’, ‘spiritual crisis’, and ‘spiritual emergency’. People often describe unusual or expansive states of consciousness, intense emotional states, physical/energetic shifts, heightened perception, and other experiences that are out of the ordinary.”

She hopes to learn about the practitioner perspective of these experiences, and discover what helps and what doesn’t.

Research survey »

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It’s challenging to think about, isn’t it? And it can be even harder to ask about.

Last week, I was involved in publishing a brand-new case study about how precision questioning with Clean Language can support professionals to actually have conversations about the kind of death a person wants.

These conversations are widely recognised as important, because they help ensure care reflects what actually matters to each person, rather than what clinical convention assumes. Yet they are frequently not happening. Staff are afraid to start, afraid of what might be said.

Clean Language, it turns out, is a powerful tool in these situations, as attested by three senior clinicians and by a student nurse who described it as “like magic”.

Read the case study »

And it got me thinking. Why is Clean Language so useful in this kind of challenging conversation?

Lots of reasons, of course. Here are a few.

1. All the benefits of putting loads of attention on the patient:

• Supports noticing of more subtle factors

• Builds intimacy and trust

• Reduces the clinician’s self-orientation and self-consciousness

2. All the benefits of setting your own assumptions aside, and allowing their meaning to emerge:

• Grounds decisions in what was actually said

• Leaves people feeling genuinely understood, not just heard

• Reduces the clinician’s unintentional influence

• Surfaces problems early, before they become expensive

• Makes the right next step obvious to both parties

• Resolves objections based on misunderstanding

• Builds intimacy and trust

• Reduces the clinician’s self-orientation

3. All the benefits of parrot-phrasing:

• Builds intimacy and trust

• Retains subtle distinctions of meaning

• Encourages the person to continue speaking, rather than shutting them down, so allowing meaning to develop until what matters most becomes clear

• Encourages the person to think about what they have just said, and perhaps to understand their own ideas more deeply

• Saves you the trouble of thinking of suitable paraphrases

• Prevents distracting and time-consuming disagreements over slight differences in wording

• Conceals your inevitable lack of knowledge or understanding about the specifics of their feelings

4. Plus, the benefits of having a simple “here’s what to do” plan:

• Reduces cognitive load, which is especially valuable in stressful situations

• Offers a good-practice standard that can easily be shared.

Any other ideas? Please comment below.

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In end-of-life care, advance care planning conversations are widely recognised as important. They help ensure care reflects what actually matters to each person, rather than what clinical convention assumes. Yet they are frequently not happening, and the barrier is… fear.

Turns out, Clean Language can help build health workers’ confidence to have those conversations. I’ve worked with clinicians Saskie Dorman, Siobhan Aris and Helen Slocombe to put together a case study with the details.

It’s available on the NHS Futures website and, more publicly, here.

We’ll also be running an online event about it on 2 July. The limited seats are being snapped up fast, so if you work in end-of-life or palliative care, please contact me for details.

Read the full case study »

👀 Liberating Structures Fieldbook

It’s out! The long-awaited new book on Liberating Structures has hit the shelves - at least in the USA.

Co-author (with Keith McCandless) Nancy White said: “What constantly inspires us is the never-ending creative adaptability of the LS community. Whether you are building apps, translating materials, or leading workshops, nearly all LS innovation is personal and local. We wrote this fieldbook inspired and informed by this fabulous community's practices, building on insights of your own local work.”

I think that our Clean Language-inspired candidate Liberating Structure may also get a mention. Still waiting for my copy!

Get the details - and the book »

🪄 Cursed By Knowledge? Try This

Smart, well-prepared presenters fall into a trap called the Curse of Knowledge. The more expert you become, the harder it is to remember what it felt like not to know what you know. You present to your own understanding, not your audience’s.

Maggie Chumbley has excellent tips to lift the curse.

Maggie Chumbley

Cognitive Headroom

I work with a coalition that runs on expertise. Their meetings are built around smart people sharing important information. They are researchers, agency leads, policy folks, and the default format is almost always the same: a presentation, followed by questions, and then…discussion…

Read more

3 months ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Maggie Chumbley

Read her post »

🚦NHS: Could AI Solve the Signal Problem?

“Since 1974 the NHS has been reorganised so many times that the list reads like a chronicle of institutional self-harm,” writes Diarmaid Crean. As one of millions whose life may depend on the UK’s National Health Service, it’s frightening to think that this view is hardly controversial.

And, Crean has an interesting take. He argues that well-used AI could change the information environment in which decisions are made, and solve the perpetual problem of co-ordination in a way that endless hierarchical restructurings have failed to do, so that people could co-ordinate more like starlings in a murmuration.

“Change what every agent can see, and the coordination changes with it - not because anyone has been told to coordinate differently, but because the signal has changed,” he says.

Read the (longish) article on LinkedIn »

🗓️ Save The Date: Metaphorum 2026

Metaphorum is a creative gathering for Clean Language explorers. It’s an online event, part organized festival, and part open-space un-conference, spread over 13 hours so that people all over the world can participate, for at least part of the time.

Practitioners of Clean Language, Clean Space, and Emergent Knowledge and other Clean modalities come together to share, create, and connect.

It’s not a taster session or introductory event, nor a sales pitch for Clean Language. It is:

• a community event to share what you know and love

• a place to showcase, crowd-source, play, and learn

• a space for creative global collaboration

• a chance to have some good, Clean fun!

This year, it’s on 12 December, and early bird tickets are currently on sale.

Book your seat »

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⏰ Start Early. No, Earlier Than That!

Here’s a tip I share with everyone I work with in health or end-of-life care, because it just works. And it works in a bunch of other contexts, too.

Ask your first Clean Language question as early as you can. And that might be sooner than you think.

In my main Substack post this week, I spell out the details.

Get started now »

🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Supporting NEETs with Clean Language

There are more than a million NEETs in the UK - young people not in Education, Employment or Training. As Alan Milburn’s report hit the headlines, Caitlin Walker posted a reminder of how valuable Clean Language has been in working with this group on Merseyside for over 25 years.

She said: “Our approach is to engage the young people through clean language interviewing and then to teach them clean and systemic coaching skills so that they become a self-learning system. They develop self-awareness, skills to consider what they do and don't want to have happen, skills to regulate their emotions and clean set-ups to approach new experiences. The programme creates new social attachments which gives them the confidence to reengage with college or work.”

Read more (LinkedIn) »

🍄 Healthcare Managers’ Listening Boosts Staff Retention

High-quality listening by healthcare managers may help buffer the negative effects of emotional exhaustion and reduce turnover intentions, new research showed.

A team from the University of Haifa concluded: “Managers’ listening quality emerged as a critical relational resource in healthcare settings, particularly under high strain.

Practical interventions that enhance managers’ listening skills could therefore serve as a low-cost strategy to support staff well-being and retention during crises.”

Read the full paper »

🧠 Serotonin Can Unstick Beliefs

Serotonin directly reduces “belief stickiness”, the cognitive failure to abandon old ideas despite contradicting evidence, according to a new study. The authors say this redefines the biological understanding of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and paves the way for new treatment protocols.

Read more »

👀 Memory Lane: Boosting Healing With Metaphor

Many thanks to James Lawley who reminded me this week of one of the first things I ever published about Clean Language in healthcare, back in 2007.

It was for the Institute for Complementary Medicine Journal - and James has kindly included it in the Big List of publications using David Grove’s ideas, here.

I reckon it still stands up to a read!

Read the full article »

🧱 LEGO, Metaphor and Hidden Assumptions

LEGO Serious Play is often described as surfacing tacit knowledge or revealing ideas that are difficult to reach through ordinary discussion. But what if it could also do something different: make visible the metaphors that are so shared that they are never questioned? That’s a question from Ben Mizen with some big implications.

Read Ben’s article »

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It’s a tip I share with everyone I work with in health or end-of-life care, because it just works. And it works in a bunch of other contexts, too.

It’s this:

Ask your first Clean Language question as early as you can. And that might be sooner than you think.

For example, if your job role involves any kind of helping, ask: “What would you like to happen in this meeting/conversation/appointment?” as early as possible, right after initial greetings. Then ask: “What kind of X?” about their answer, using their words as “X”.

What this does:

• You find out what they actually want - which may not be what you assumed they wanted

• You give a really clear signal that what they want is important. That helps them to actively engage with the conversation.

• In using their words in the “What kind of X?” you give a really clear signal that they are being listened to. (And there’s more magic to using their words, see this post.)

• The two questions, taken together, rapidly establish relationship and trust - the strongest basis for any meaningful conversation, according to listening research.

Could you get your first Clean Language question in even earlier than that? Maybe.

There’s an opportunity to demonstrate good listening that happens dozens of times every day, that most people are missing. Maybe that’s because most people tend to always keep doing what they’ve always done, and changing a social habit feels uncomfortable, even transgressive.

You know that greeting ritual at the start of every conversation? “How’s things?” “Fine. You?” “Fine.”

What if you could weave more value into that moment?

For her stalls at Dying Matters Week recently, I designed a flier for Helen Slocombe, End-Of-Life lead for Bath Swindon and Wiltshire, which set up this conversational opening:

Q. How are you?

A. Fine

Q. What kind of fine?

One person commented to her: “We all say ‘fine’ and hear ‘fine’ but it is just a word. Maybe it really means ‘I am struggling but I don’t want to talk right now’. But if we ask ‘What kind of fine?’, we give permission to say more.”

Again, asking this question indicates that you are open to really listening. And again, it builds relationship and trust. It works whether the person responds by elaborating on their ‘fine’ or not.

You might not ask it in every conversation.

But if there’s a time today when you want to build relationship and trust quickly, give it a go. Let me know what happens!

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🚀 A Paper Got It Wrong - And I Love What Happened Next!

It’s been a brilliantly interesting week for me.

In last week’s linkletter I shared my excitement about an academic paper called Puzzles Of Interpersonal Listening. For me, it’s a gripping read, spelling out tensions I’ve been grappling with for years.

And, the two academics behind it had found their way to Clean Language as a solution to some of the issues they identified. Magic!

But they said, “While primarily applied in therapeutic and counseling contexts, Clean Language requires adaptation for ordinary conversation.”

Neither of those things is true nowadays - and hasn’t been, for years!

So I sat down and wrote a Substack post to put the record straight.

Check out the step-by-step correction »

Next, I nervously connected on LinkedIn with the academics behind the paper, Guy Itzchakov and Graham D. Bodie, and shared my post with them. Turns out, that was the right thing to do. Check out:

Itzchakov’s thread, which I commented on and ended up in chat with both authors »

My thread, where Itzchakov was very lovely »

Who knows where this will all lead, but I’m really pleased to have posted!

🦋 #CleanInTheWild In A High-School Newsroom

Graham D. Bodie is Professor, of Media & Communication, University of Mississippi - which connects neatly to a #CleanInTheWild story.

Emily Stifler Wolfe, co-host of the Clean In Montana event that’s been happening this week, squeezed in time to write about how she made connections between Solutions Journalism and Clean Language when speaking at her local high school.

It’s almost 20 years since my last newsroom gig, and I wasn’t familiar with Solutions Journalism before. But it all makes good sense to me.

Read Emily’s post »

📖 Peter Checkland Dies

Peter Checkland, the developer of soft systems methodology, has died at the age of 95.

Read more »

🕺🏻 Body Motion Puts Brain In Motion

New research in mice finds that exercise may help keep the brain healthy by mechanically assisting cerebrospinal fluid circulation.

Full research details »

🧠 Blind-From-Birth People Don’t Get Schizophrenia

Across more than 70 years of evidence: not a single congenitally blind person with schizophrenia has ever been reported, apparently. That says something interesting about the condition, researchers think.

Read more »

🤖 AI That Helps People Find Their Own Answers, Proved

And one more exciting twist. WhisperQuake, where I’m a co-founder and Head of Methodology, has completed a proof of concept showing that core parts of its method can move into AI-supported software behaviour while supporting a person's own meaning.

Read the full press release »

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P.S. My friend, regular linkletter contributor Matthew Kalman Mezey, is looking for a new role after ten years as the Q Community’s manager. Who can help?

P.P.S. The International Clean Language Association is the first professional association to bring this global community together in one place. Sign up here to stay informed about events, resources, and opportunities to connect with practitioners and learners worldwide.

That’s at least partly because it spells out tensions I’ve been grappling with for years, such as what counts as good listening, and why paraphrasing is so often included in the definition of good listening despite evidence that it causes problems.

I love that the authors find their way to Clean Language as a solution to some of the issues they identify. Full marks for that, Guy Itzchakov and Graham D. Bodie!

But, the paper contains two mistakes about Clean Language. I’d like to correct them here.

The paper says that:

1. Clean Language is primarily applied in therapeutic and counselling contexts, and

2. It requires adaptation for ordinary conversation.

Both of these things haven’t been true for a long time.

Clean Language was starting to burst out of its therapy bubble around 20 years ago, about the time that I first got involved. The book I co-authored, Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds, was explicitly aimed at coaches, business people, healthcare professionals. It was published in 2008 and included lots of non-therapy case studies, some of them originated many years earlier.

By 2014, Paul Tosey, James Lawley and Rupert Meese were confidently saying in their paper about the use of Clean Language to elicit metaphor in research: “It is important to emphasise that Clean Language is neither exclusively nor even predominantly used as a psychotherapeutic technique today.”

Nowadays, it’s really quite hard to find more than a handful of Clean Language therapists when I’m asked for a referral. (The exception to this is in Ukraine, where Penny Tompkins and James Lawley have trained large numbers of therapists in recent years.)

And, the adaptation of Clean Language for everyday contexts has been done, and documented. There are so many stories that it’s hard to decide where to start.

Maybe with Sheila Stacey’s use of Clean Language in primary care medical consultations, more than 25 years ago.

Maybe with Marian Way’s One-Minute Motivation process for Weight Watchers, more than 20 years ago.

Or, if we want published books, with Cooper and Castellino’s The Five Minute Coach (2012), Julie McCracken’s Clean Language in The Classroom (2016) or Angela Dunbar’s Clean Coaching (also 2016).

By the 2022 publication of Clean Language Interviewing (ed. Heather Cairns-Lee) the adaptations were becoming codified. And by summer last year I was complaining that I had a high-quality problem - there were so many #CleanInTheWild case studies that it’s hard to decide which one to share in a given context.

The spread of conversational Clean Language just keeps on rippling.

I love it. We’ve done it.

Now, let’s make sure people know about it.

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📝 Ultra-processed: Why AI Makes Your Writing Worse

AI does something very specific when you ask it to rewrite emails and social media posts for you - and it’s really not good.

What you end up with is “ultra-processed”, stripped of the nutrients that make it feel worth reading and replying to.

In my latest post, I offer a Clean Language-based, research-backed argument against clicking that tempting “make it better” button.

Read the full post »

🗺️ The Battle to Navigate Healthcare

One big theme stood out from my reading this week - the challenge of getting the UK’s Health Service to do its job.

Sarah Gatford described it as navigating, without a map, “a vast sprawling maze that assumes you already know the language. That you already know who to call and already know which door to knock on first.”

Lesley Goodburn was blunter. “NHS admin is just rubbish. If I hear Wes Streeting talk about digital enablement, the NHS app and improving efficiency and experience one more time…….. well, I might not be responsible for my actions.”

And even Palliative Medicine Consultant Colette Hawkins couldn’t get specialist palliative care for a family member. Read her post »

It’s worrying. And, it makes me even more determined to find ways to release more clarity into the system.

📖 Liberating Structures: New Book Launches

A new book, Liberating Structures: Stories From The Field, launches next week. With 39 co-authors, it’s a lovely example of the kind of collaboration that the Structures help to make happen.

Online launch party details »

🧩 The Puzzles of Listening

Here’s a fantastic academic paper - I’m going to be reading it, and quoting it, over and over again.

Guy Itzchakov and Graham D Bodie have pulled together the “conceptually fragmented and theoretically inconsistent” research on interpersonal listening and spelled out ten areas of tension, or “puzzles”.

My favourite section is about what good listening actually looks and sounds like - and how many commonly-used definitions might be wrong.

Many thanks to James Lawley for sharing the paper.

Dig into the puzzles »

🌱 How Change Happens

How do you expect change to happen for you? Clean Language coaching expert Angela Dunbar noticed that her clients had very different views.

“Some will say, “Nothing happens for ages, then suddenly it all shifts.” Others: “I make gradual improvements, small step by small step.” A few may say, “I don’t really believe I can change,” which is in itself precious information,” she writes.

Read how she uses the info »

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But as my friend Matt Barnaby put it recently, “It's not you and you're not it.”

AI does something very specific when you ask it to rewrite.

To quote a study by Tom van Nuenen at Berkeley, published last month: “LLM rewriting produces a consistent pattern of stylistic normalization. Function words, contractions, and first-person pronouns decrease, while vocabulary diversity, word length, and punctuation elaboration increase.”

In other words, it no longer sounds like you.

And that matters.

Your specific words have real meaning. Especially when they are spontaneously chosen (rather than carefully crafted), they represent how you think.

That’s why Clean Language users reflect people’s exact words back to them, as far as possible. We don’t paraphrase.

When someone uses an idiosyncratic word or phrase, or repeats a word several times, we think, “that’s interesting”, and ask them about it. Chances are, it offers a clue about how this person is thinking about the topic under discussion - and their thinking will be interesting, a little unusual.

For example, palliative care nurse Helen Slocombe noticed a patient’s idiosyncratic phrase “over the wall” and asked a Clean Language question about it: “What kind of wall?” Quickly, gently and without drama, she uncovered his beliefs about death and dying - and who he would meet beyond the wall.

“Stylistic normalization” removes the opportunity for that kind of thing. AI strips out idiosyncrasy and repetition. It paraphrases.

What’s left is “ultra-processed”, stripped of the nutrients that make it feel worth reading and replying to.

Like Matt, I aim to use social media, and email, to have real conversations with real people. AI rewrites (along with the anger algorithm) frustrate that purpose.

And, of course AI isn’t all bad. It’s brilliant at transcription - which ought to mean that people who wouldn’t usually write much now can, using dictation. I’d love to see/hear more of that!

I do use AI (Claude, specifically) as a brainstorming partner and a research assistant when writing - including when writing this post.

But I keep clear of the “make it better” button - because I know it will make it worse.

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🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Smooth In Sports

“If somebody were asking me for advice for new leaders and using Clean, I would say, do whatever Judy says. That's the best coaching I have.”

There’s a testimonial for you. And, it’s from no less than Dr Tom Hanson - an athletic and leadership coach with more than 40 years experience.

He’s talking about his own real, practical experience. In a new podcast episode he explains specifically how he uses Clean Language in his coaching, asking a softball player what they were like when they were playing at their best.

“She said, ‘smooth’. I go, ‘oh, what kind of smooth?’ She opened up all this clarity for her on what she's doing when she's at her best. Then it doesn't take a PhD to say, ‘do that!’”

Hear Tom, myself and host Suzie Price on the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast »

🦋 CleanInTheWild: Dying Matters Week

Helen Slocombe’s been taking Clean Language on the road in the South West Uk to mark Dying Matters Week.

Read more (LinkedIn) »

📚 How Kids Learn To Read: Researcher Needed

NLP trainer and passionate Clean enthusiast Cricket Kemp has a huge fund of knowledge about the process she calls Magical Spelling - a highly-effective way of teaching children to read which is almost the opposite of the currently-mandated synthetic phonics.

Now she needs help to capture and codify this approach before she dies. Her daughter, my friend and colleague Caitlin Walker, needs your help to find the right person to make it happen.

Read the details (LinkedIn) »

👀 What Counts As Communication?

Autistic people express themselves in a wide range of ways that are not always recognised as communication. These include deep engagement with particular interests, through rhythmic or repeated movement and sound, or repetition of words and phrases, art, play, care and simply being with others.

But because they are harder to observe or measure than language, these forms of communication are often missed - and that has consequences, according to two experts.

Read more »

🤖 How To Beat AI Sycophancy

“LLMs may have eased off on telling us we’re chillingly insightful or genuinely groundbreaking. But the problem of AI sycophancy has not gone away.”

Jack Richardson has been experimenting with ways to persuade AI to tell him what he doesn’t want to hear.

Read more (Substack) »