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

14 days 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) »

🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Happy Like What?

Ivo Peksens used a #CleanLanguage question to open his latest LinkedIn post about the joy of facilitating groups. “When you are happy it is like what?”

For him, happy is a place where his skills and experience “all blend and morph into nice, warm, honest, transparent, judgement free, open and a very welcoming space.”

Read his post (LinkedIn) »

🚀 “Energetic Quick Thinkers Required”

Researchers found that ableist language in job ads - wording that assumes or favours certain physical or mental abilities without explicitly stating them - can shape how well people feel they would fit at an organisation, and whether they would apply at all.

Check out the details »

🤼 Relationships Will Reshape The NHS

The future of the NHS depends on relationships just as much as structural reform, according to new research.

Catherine Harrison and Bryan Jones said that leaders they interviewed across health, local government and social-purpose organisations said that what matters most is how people relate to each other – patients to staff, teams to teams, communities to services.

“Across our interviews eight themes emerged: one core – the need to rebalance the system away from being overwhelmingly transactional and towards more relational practices – with seven enablers,” they said.

The seven enablers »

🌻 Gut Health Controls Your Leadership

“High-stakes leadership demands a high-performing gut,” says Julian Hayes in Forbes.

”Gut microbial imbalances drive low-grade systemic inflammation, impair neuroplasticity, and alter stress responses, all of which directly disrupt a leader’s cognitive functioning.”

Read more »

👀 Metaphors Last A Lifetime

Metaphors that emerge during a Clean Language session can be both immediately transformative and surprisingly durable. That’s certainly been my experience, and the experience of friends and colleagues.

Marian Way shares intriguing examples in a new blog post.

Read more »

🌱 Richmond Snippets

I mentioned a few linkletters ago that I was experimenting with BlueSky for a community project in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

The idea now has the backing of the local Community Interest Company.

Read more »

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You ask a question. There’s a pause... a little longer than expected. What does it mean?

If you’ve ever been worried, or confused, or curious, in that specific moment, then you’ve experienced one of humanity’s most unrelenting habits.

It’s not shared by AI. And that has serious implications.

Discover more in this week’s post »

👂🏻 Why They Don’t Listen To You

I love this piece from clinical psychologist and author Dr Naomi Fisher. She says parents often complain their kids don’t listen, when in fact what’s happening is that they don’t agree.

She unpicks the hidden assumptions involved, and offers ways forward. Who knows, her ideas might work for adults, too!

Read more »

🎟️ Metaphorum: Get Your Ticket To Ride

Mark your calendar right now: Saturday 12 December is Metaphorum 2026.

It’s a chance to sit with people who speak your language, literally and figuratively. Learn, share, explore and ask the questions that matter to you. Be met exactly where you are.

Co-organiser Sharon Small says: “Metaphorum 2026 is an online destination. A gathering place for everyone touched by Clean Language. Wherever you live, whatever is happening outside your window, there are no borders here. Just open minds and open hearts.

“We’d love for you to join us. Sign up to participate at the link below. Your seat is waiting.”

Details and booking »

🚀 Learning Spaces Between Them And Us

Boundaries between groups of people aren’t just boundaries. They’re also relationships, and opportunities for learning, say Roger Duck and Jane Searles.

In an interesting new article, the pair reflect on the experience of people providing and eating a weekly community meal to offer new perspectives on “them and us”.

“When you focus on being human together, you are more likely to notice that every boundary is an impoverished view of a rich relationship of mutual learning,” they say.

Read more »

🤣 Why Autistic Comic Works In Sex Shop

Autistic comedian Grace Jarvis works in a sex shop. Turns out, that makes perfect sense.

She says: “It’s interesting, working in a sex shop, because it’s kind of the only place in the world where the autistic and neurotypical experiences are swapped.

“I feel perfectly comfortable and everybody else is kind of on edge, refusing to make eye contact and not communicating clearly with me. And I’m not good at subtext, so I have to ask them to spell things out when they try to say, “I’m looking for, you know …” and it’s like, “No, I really don’t”.”

Read more »

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If you’ve ever been worried, or confused, or curious, in that specific moment, then you’ve experienced one of humanity’s most unrelenting habits.

You’ve been making meaning from… a nothing. A silence. A pause.

Does it mean the line’s gone dead? That they didn’t understand the question? That they think you’re an idiot for asking that?

Humans make meaning all the time. We can’t not. It’s what we do.

But mostly, we don’t notice we’re doing it.

When someone uses a word like “support” or “fine” or “busy”, we think we know exactly what they mean. But in fact, we know about our meaning, not theirs.

That creates a gap between their actual meaning, and what we think they mean.

Every word presents a meaning gap. Every gesture. And, naturally, every pause.

It’s genuinely astonishing that we ever manage to “communicate”.

And, here’s the thing.

Generative AIs (ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, CoPilot, Gemini, etc) don’t do this. They produce content - often lots and lots of content - without making meaning.

They dump the content on you, the human, and leave it up to you to make the meaning.

And you can’t stop yourself.

That’s one of the ways that AIs are corroding how humans think. They’re using our meaning-making capacity, which is precious and limited, on slop, fake outrage, and trivia.

A human pause might mean something. An AI-generated thousand-word bullshit-burst doesn't mean anything - at least, not in the same way.

What can you do about it? Notice what’s happening.

Notice that you are making meaning. Notice the pause, before you react to it.

And notice when your meaning-making superpower is being drained into engaging with AI slop. Ask yourself: what would you like to happen next?

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🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Clean Used to Teach Radical Candor

Perhaps you’ve come across the business book Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Emily Wolfe hadn’t - until she was asked to teach the topic to a team at a local company.

But, as she explained to Rachel Gilmore in a YouTube interview, her Clean skills stood her in good stead: first to scope out what was needed and then to work live with the group to help them understand key elements of quality feedback.

And it all came about from running free Clean sessions at a public library.

Watch the interview »

👀 Autistic and Allistic Faces Speak Differently

Autistic and non-autistic people seem to speak a different language when it comes to conveying emotion, new research found.

According to a recent paper in Autism Research, what have previously been thought of as deficits in emotion recognition in autistic people may be better understood as difficulties in recognising emotions in neurotypical, but not necessarily autistic, faces.

Read more »

🚀 Space Craft Course: New Review

More than twelve years after its publication, my recorded course Space Craft – Clean Language and Clean Space Demonstrations keeps on selling, and apparently providing value for students.

Now it has received a careful, comprehensive review by Australian personal development enthusiast Tal Gur.

Read his review »

🎶 What If Music Harms, Not Heals?

In hospitals and clinics, music is generally seen as a low-risk and harmless way to reduce anxiety in waiting rooms, as background support for staff in the operating theatre and as a stimulation to exercise in rehabilitation.

But when music is imposed on people who haven’t asked for it, blasting music at them may switch from soothing to stressful.

Professor of Music Therapy Hilary Moss explores the issue in The Conversation.

Read her article »

👀 Eye Movement Therapies Compared

New research has compared two well-known eye movement therapies, EMDR and IEMT.

Check it out »

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Three Posts From Friends

Wu Wei and Making Things Happen

There’s a quiet tension for anyone drawn to both creation and the Tao, says James Tripp. “On one hand, you feel the pull to shape reality - to make things happen, to create, to influence outcomes, to practice a kind of everyday magic. On the other, you encounter the Tao: the call to let go, to stop forcing, to allow life to unfold in its own way.

“And somewhere in that tension, a question begins to form - if I truly align with the Tao, do I have to give up my desire to create? Or more unsettling still: is my will itself the thing that’s getting in the way?”

James has answers in his latest post.

Read more (Substack) »

Clean Language: The Coders’ Choice?

Responding to recent remarks from Jensen Huang, Dave Wharram said: “If AI lowers the barrier to building software, the competitive advantage moves upstream. From “who can write it” to “who can think it clearly.””

My oId friend Em Coste spotted a connection. “Doesn’t that open an opportunity window towards Clean, on an adaptation of it, being leveraged towards effective LLM prompting?”

He’s spot on. Clean definitely helps people to think more clearly.

Read more (LinkedIn) »

Revealing Anthro-Complexity

Complexity boffin Dave Snowden has written a new series of posts about how complexity shows up in human systems, and what makes those systems special. It’s worth the (slightly tricky) read.

For example, in post 2, he writes: “Human systems are made of meaning the way wood is made of grain. The grain is not a property you add to the wood; it is how the wood grew, shaped by everything that happened to it over time — the weather, the soil, the stress of wind, the injuries it survived. You cannot see it from outside without looking closely, and you cannot change it by deciding it should be different. You can only work with it or against it, and working against it takes more force, leaves a rougher surface, and splits in ways you did not intend.”

Check out the whole series »

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Two Ways To Get Involved

Clean In Healthcare Online Meetup

The Clean in Healthcare Community of Practice next meets on 17 April. Can you join? It’s open to anyone using Clean (in any way) in healthcare.

Details and registration »

London Clean Practice Group

London Clean Language Group this month will explore the theme of Calibration. Organiser Azi Khatiri told me: “We would love to have more Clean novices at the sessions. I think that's how we will spread clean more widely.”

Details and registration »

One Resource From Me

The Mistake You’re Making Before You Even Speak

There’s a hidden mechanism at the heart of conversations. For most people, most of the time, this mechanism is messing things up, causing misunderstandings and confusion. And they don’t even know that it’s there.

Read more (Substack) »

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The mechanism operates in the bit of a conversation that’s just after someone says something and just before you respond.

That bit, there.

For you, what’s happening just there?

That’s the place where we make meaning.

Their words come in. Our reactions, decisions, or advice go out. But what happens in between - how those words are interpreted, reshaped, added to, or quietly replaced by our own assumptions - is practically invisible.

We assume we know what their words meant.

What we rarely notice is that we’ve been responding to what we heard - our own version of what was said - and not to what was actually said.

That, in turn has consequences. People’s words have meaning for them. Our meaning is, almost certainly, different.

When they say “support” it’s never exactly the same kind of support you have in mind. Same with “overwhelm”, “stuck”… even “elephant”, “flower” or “frog”.

And so the mechanism kicks in. You respond to your (mis)interpretation of their words, not to what they actually said.

They feel unheard, misunderstood. You take your next action based on duff data.

And it’s possible to stop doing that. To notice the hidden mechanism in action, and to do something different in that moment.

What kind of “something different” is that?

You could pause your inner interpretation engine just long enough to ask a question like “What kind of …?”

What needs to happen for that to happen in your next conversation?

📖 Resources for Clean Language in Healthcare

You asked for it: when you meet someone working in healthcare who proves curious about Clean Language, where should you point them?

Here’s an answer: a web page packed with resources. Why Clean Language matters in healthcare, what the evidence is, what people say and what you can do about it.

Check out the resources page »

🍄 Psychedelics Remodel Myelin

For years, scientists have focused on how psychedelics “rewire” neurons. But a groundbreaking study has found a “missing link” in long-term PTSD recovery: myelin remodelling.

Researchers discovered that psilocybin and MDMA do more than just alter brain activity; they trigger the physical repair of myelin—the insulating layer that protects nerve fibres and synchronises brain signals.

Explore the research findings »

⛬ Connecting The Dots

It’s always interesting to hear about people’s Clean Language journeys - especially when it’s someone you’ve known for a while. So it was great to see a timeline from former IT consultant Bernard Vander Beken.

Read more (LinkedIn) »

🗞️ Developing Group: More Notes Online

Penny Tompkins and James Lawley have shared more notes originally used by The Developing Group: an international group consisted of experienced practitioners who came together to explore Clean-related topics.

James said: “These notes are not fully worked-out articles, rather they are ideas we thought would stimulate the group’s exploration.”

Eight sets of notes have just been published for the first time online:

• The characteristics of heuristics

• How desires and problems relate

• On the Edge: Facilitating at the margins

• Going Out and Going In: Dissociation and Fragmentation (David Grove notes from 1992 )

• Living in the Blend – Counterfactual thinking

• Seizing a Thought: Learning from Method of Levels

• Investigating Agency

• David Grove’s last four questions (Matthew Hudson’s history )

Explore the notes »

👀 Rubbernecking’s Survival Benefits

Why do people feel drawn to stare at car crashes, watch gruesome true crime documentaries, or spend hours doomscrolling?

Researchers theorise that morbid curiosity, also known as morbid fascination, drives us to explore ambiguous situations in which we might learn lessons that could prove helpful to our own survival.

Discover the benefits »

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📖 Stories Reveal The Hidden Structure

This week, I experimented with a new-to-me way to share the secrets of unlocking conversations: using stories instead of experiences.

Instead of an experiential online session of an hour, Steve McCann and I packed a 30-minute lunchtime micro-learning session for the Texas New Mexico Hospice and Palliative Care Organization with examples of how people working in end-of-life care used questions like “What kind of X?”, and what results they noticed.

It seemed to go really well - I was pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback.

A written version of that session script became this week’s Substack post.

Check it out »

🎧 Clean Boost on Doctors’ Podcast

We spend a lot of time and energy avoiding our uncomfortable feelings. We push through at pace, suppress what we’re experiencing, we distract ourselves, blame others, or try to think our way out of emotions instead of actually feeling them.

When my friend Tamsin Hartley appeared on the doctors’ podcast You're Not a Frog (but Eat a Frog) she recommended a solution: “get better at feeling, not to feel better”. And she said that Clean Language was a great way to achieve that.

Podcast episode, including a nice demo »

🧠 Neuroscience “Rethinking Dopamine”

Dopamine is known as the ‘pleasure chemical’, depicted as the hit of reward that people get from recreational drugs or scrolling through social media. But what if that wasn’t just a gross oversimplification, but just plain wrong? There’s a controversy ongoing.

Read the details in Nature »

🧱 Using Clean + Lego to Build Grief Architecture

How might people be better supported as they navigate moments of organisational transition (downsizing, redundancies, restructuring, mergers)?

Guy Stephens has been spelling out how he uses a combination of Lego and Clean Language in his workshops to help participants crate their own “Grief Architecture”, a repeatable framework for understanding feelings of quiet grief and working with loss, ambiguity, and identity shifts inside an organisation.

Guy’s working with organisational change - but I wonder if the same structure might work well elsewhere?

Read Guy’s session flow »

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There’s a hidden structure in those conversations - and once you know it’s there, things make a lot more sense.

You have a conversation with someone - in a hospice, it might be a patient or a family member. You explain the options clearly, show empathy. Everyone nods. Preferences are documented.

Then later they say the document is wrong. They say they weren’t heard, that staff didn’t listen to what mattered to them.

But some hospice staff have found a way to avoid the flip-flop. And what they do reveals the hidden structure of conversations.

Helen Slocombe, a Clinical Lead Nurse in end-of-life care, found herself alone with a dying man she’d never met. His family were worried — did he understand what was happening? Was he scared?

He said: “I’m going to be going over the wall soon.”

Helen didn’t translate “over the wall” into “dying.” She asked: “What kind of wall?”

What followed was a conversation his daughter described as unlike anything she’d ever heard from her normally closed-off father. He talked about who was waiting for him on the other side. And then, unprompted, he said: “I’m not scared” — the very thing his family had been afraid to ask.

Here’s what most of us do in conversations, without realising it: someone says something, and we immediately translate their words into our words.

“I’m going over the wall” becomes “dying.” “I need support” becomes “home care package.” “I’m tired” becomes “needs rest.”

It feels normal, because it is normal. But here’s the problem: your translation might be completely wrong. And you’ll never know, because you never checked.

So you respond to your translation, not to what they actually meant. You document what you heard. You think the conversation went well.

And then later, they say they weren’t heard. Or they change their answer. Not because they’ve changed their minds, but because their real concern was never addressed. It was there all along, underneath the words you translated past.

That’s the hidden structure. The flip-flop isn’t inconsistency on their part. It’s the gap between what they meant and what you heard, finally surfacing.

Helen didn’t translate. She followed his exact words. And because she did, she found out what actually mattered to him — which wasn’t fear of death at all.

It’s not just dying patients. Cathy Hasty, who trains chaplains in North Carolina, describes a moment when someone’s father had just died. “He was a special dad,” the son said. Cathy asked: “What kind of special?” And the son opened up about their relationship in ways that made him feel truly heard — not just acknowledged.

Same question. Different context. Same result.

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Try it yourself. Notice when someone uses a vague word — support, tired, worried, busy, difficult, scared. Words that could mean anything. Then ask: “What kind of [their exact word]?” and stop talking.

That’s it. You don’t need to interpret. You don’t need to fix. Just follow their language with genuine curiosity.

It works in hospices. It works in hospitals. It works in team meetings, in difficult family conversations, anywhere that words matter - which is everywhere.

• Fellow WhisperQuake director Steve McCann and I will be sharing this with in an online event members of the Texas and New Mexico Hospice and Palliative Care Organization tomorrow. Why not join us? Register here »

🔑 The Six Actions That Unlock Any Conversation

What do you do that makes conversations click? What are the specific actions that bring brilliant results?

There’s a hidden mechanism at the heart of conversation. Most people never notice that it’s there.

And increasingly, I’m realising that the way to unlock that mechanism is with a set of actions. In this week’s post, I spell out what those are.

Discover the six actions »

😩 Quasimodo and The Hobbit

Metaphors bring people’s experience of pain vividly to life in their online contributions, researchers showed. They picked through an 8-million–word corpus of contributions to the Pain Concern online forum to explore how contributors used similes to describe their own (changing) self-perceptions due to living with pain and its consequences.

Examples included:

• “like a 98 years old grandpa” / “like a grandpa”

• “like a baby” (nervous about new medication)

• “like a druggy off the street” (at A&E seeking pain relief)

• “like a zombie” (sedated by medication)

• “like an upside down turtle” (couldn’t get out of bed)

• “like a burden” (to their partner)

• “like a beached whale” (weight gain from medication)

• “like a guinea pig” (experimented on with medication)

• “like a criminal” (applying for disability benefit)

• “like a child” (patronised by health professionals)

• “like a kid in a sweetshop” (getting their prescription)

• “like a cross between Quasimodo and the Hobbit”.

LinkedIn discussion, including public link to the research paper »

By the way, the next online meetup of the Clean in Healthcare Community of Practice is on 17 April.

Register »

👀 Eyes Reveal Expertise Secrets - and a Learning Hack

New research shows that an expert’s unconscious know-how can be identified through eye movements.

By tracking where volunteers focused their eyes during a complex visual task, researchers found that people unconsciously shifted their focus to the most relevant information without even realising it.

When these “expert secrets” were made explicit and shown back to the volunteers, their performance skyrocketed, proving that we can hack the learning curve by making the unconscious conscious. (Thanks to Richard Bolstad for this link.)

Read more details »

🦋 #CleanInTheWild: Local Business Women’s Networking

Joanne Appleton used Clean Language questions at a workshop on Monday for local business women. She said: “We are starting a new network for women on the Roseland in Cornwall who own their own business - running your own business can be a lonely experience!

”We had our first session on Monday. People worked in threes – each shared an issue or idea, and then the other two were encouraged to use Clean Language questions to help the person think through what they wanted to have happen, and then give a bit of advice from their perspective at the end. It was quite fast moving – about 15 minutes per person, then people moved round. Worked really well!”

Roseland Women In Business »

🤖 AI Interview Tool Uses Cleanness Framework

Details have been published of an AI-based tool that conducts automated, semi-structured interviews - and which claims to use the the Cleanness framework developed by James Lawley, Heather Cairns-Lee and Paul Tosey.

Read the complete paper »

🌴 Coaches: Claim Your Brand Voice

In May, my good friend Annemiek van Helsdingen and her team will be travelling to Portugal again for their annual Coach-the-Coach Retreat. Their core theme is Claim Your Brand Voice — how to approach marketing in a way that aligns with your Clean-inspired work. All of this takes place in a beautiful, inspiring setting. This retreat is for women only.

Learn more »

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