Cleaning Up Your Questions

One lovely thing—among many!—about a quiet, pandemic-induced holiday is that I was able to catch up on some of my reading. I read widely, voraciously, everything from biographies to poetry to murder mysteries to novels to that big pile of professional-development books that is never far from my desk. Two books anchoring that towering stack were James Geary’s I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World and Caitlin Walker’s From Curiosity to Contempt: Creating the Conditions for Groups to Collaborate Using Clean Language and Systemic Modelling, both of which had been languishing in the pile for far too long. The Geary book is a deeper dive on metaphors and their role in our language and the way that we think, and the Walker book is the practice and application of Clean language and systemic modeling (and honestly, one of the most humble, experimental, open books I’ve read in some time).

Happily, I was able to get through both.

Clean language is worthy of a deep dive all its own, and one day, I’ll get there. But today is not that day. This is the day to focus on how Clean language can help you to clean up the questions you use in coaching and mentoring sessions, in organizational retrospectives, and in any conversation with clients. Here is the question that drives this blog post: As coaches, how do we clean up our questions?

Getting Clean (Language)

Clean language is a practice that helps people to discover and to develop their own symbols and metaphors instead of using those of the coach, facilitator, or leader. Clean-language questions, which are simply questions that utilize and follow Clean-language techniques, seek to minimize content that comes from the questioner's "maps": metaphors, assumptions, paradigms, or sensations.

In other words, using Clean language while coaching helps me to keep my language and my metaphors to myself. I use the language of the person, team, or organization I am serving, not my own.

Clean language was created by David Grove, a New Zealand-born coach and therapist. James Lawley and Penny Tompkins used this work as their basis for symbolic modeling. In the agile space and team space, Caitlin Walker has been using clean language in larger systems and coaching conversations. As agile coaches mature in practice and application of our craft, we begin to pull in techniques like Clean language and symbolic modeling to better serve those with whom we work.

Clean language is a set of questions that make us of the most basic elements of human perception: space, event, category, attribution, and intention. These questions have been cleaned as much as possible, removing metaphors and assumptions. Clean language is not a tool to manipulate clients, teams, or organizations. Instead, its intent is to create a mental bridge using their language and metaphors.

Polluting the Issue

It is easier said than done, minding my language. When I coach, I’m attempting to stand in curiosity, to listen to my whole body, to observe what is happening, manage myself and my reactions, and ask good questions at the right time. I have a lot going on underneath the surface. But I need to do more. I need to be mindful of the ways that I “pollute the issue,” meaning that I insert my own words, my metaphors, into another’s language. Here are four ways that this can happen.

• Introduce Content—When we add in our words or ideas into the client’s language through our own metaphors and phrasing, we introduce content. This content is called “introduced” because it had not been previously used in their language. Once foreign content is introduced, one of two things will happen: the other person adopts our concepts or metaphors, or they resist, arguing against that content. Either way, foreign matter has been brought in, and the field is contaminated.

• Structural Presupposition—When we ask questions based on our own assumptions, we presuppose the person or organization we are meant to serve. The structural part of this term relates to the structure of the question’s syntax that presupposes a situation that the client has not previously stated. In other words, the question is based on an assumption of the facilitator. Unless the facilitator’s presupposition is first noticed and then rejected by the client, they are likely to adopt the assumption of the presupposed situation, taking the coach’s stance.

• Logical Presupposition—When we ask questions or use language that presupposes a relationship between two or more items that have not been specified by the client, we create a faulty cause-and-effect relationship. Unless the facilitator’s presupposition is rejected, the client is likely to adopt the facilitator’s presupposed relationship, and we pollute the issue.

• Evaluation—The coach introduces a view or evaluation, often prematurely, or raises a doubt of object about something said by the client. This may serve to undermine the client’s opinion or confidence in the value of their own experience, thus making them more susceptible to later questions and statements that lean in a particular direction. Evaluation is a subtle form of “leading the witness,” and yes, it pollutes the issue.

What can we do, once we befouled the system? The dye has been cast, but try the following:

• Call it out, saying “I’m sorry, those were my words, not yours. Let’s backtrack a bit, returning to your language.”

• Just keep swimming, moving forward but with a redoubled effort to stay with the client’s words.

Leaning into Metaphors

My dad’s favorite pickup is an ancient blue-and-white Ford that he has nicknamed “The Valdez.” Why? Because if you drive that truck anywhere, it will burn through a case of motor oil, much like the Exxon Valdez disaster of the late 1980s. The Valdez is seldom used for anything but hauling hay or feeding livestock in the winter, so you’re safe from seeing it on the highway.

And if you need an example of a metaphor, naming a Ford truck after an oil tanker is just such an example.

I’ve written previously about metaphor and will no doubt do so again, if only because I am fascinated by how pervasive it is in our language. James Geary, he that wrote the tome on metaphors that I finished over Christmas, estimates that we use six metaphors every minute, or one ever 10-25 words. Even I who loves metaphor was a bit gobsmacked by that estimation. Six metaphors every minute? That seems a bit much. And I like to talk!

“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another.”

--George Lakoff

Clean-language questions are about getting to the metaphors that a client uses. By asking questions that suss those metaphors out, we can help them to see those metaphors and become conscious of them. These questions help to reveal the hidden and the apparent, the conscious and the unconscious. When you know what metaphors you use, it becomes easier to interact with those metaphors, those ways of thinking, changing and improving as need be.

But why come back to metaphor? Because of the pervasiveness, the persuasiveness of metaphor. As coaches, if we reject their metaphors for our own, we cut them out of their experience. So lean in to your client’s metaphors, honoring them and their experience by using their words and imagery. Ask permission before modifying, respecting where they are.

Asking Clean Questions

As coaches, we want to use clean language with our clients, teams, and organizations, asking clean questions that do the following:

• Questions that can be answered easily

• Build trust, relationship, and rapport

• Space for authentic, genuine response

• Allow for better recall by those we serve

Conversely, we want to decrease and reduce the following in our questions:

• Presuppositions, assumptions, evaluation, and judgment

• Leading or content-heavy questions

• Introduced or conflated terms

• Bias of any type

To answer the question we started with, “As coaches, how do we clean up our questions?” the answer is what you might expect.

• Practice, namely practice with feedback from a person who understands and practices clean-language questions, who can pinpoint when language or metaphor was contaminated.

• If you cannot find a practice partner (and this would be a great time for you to check out the Agile Coaching Circles), ask your client for permission to record sessions if at all possible. Make it clear that you’re not critiquing their work but rather your own performance. And yes, destroy those recordings one you have finished your review.

• Pay attention. Listen to yourself and to the questions that you ask. Be especially mindful of the words you use, matching them to those of your client.

If questions are the care and feeding of relationship, then clean questions are the organic compounds, the mulch we use to build healthy, rich soil. Great relationships require great, clean questions, and it’s worth the effort for us to get there.

The image used for this blog post was captured by Linda Nickell. Connect with her on Instagram as @coznlinda, or join in on Wednesday evenings for the Happiness Hour. Details, upcoming presentations, and past recordings can be found on her site.