Our ninth meeting and the second in Durham, on a bright Summer's Saturday. We kicked off with what seemed like a simple exercise. Maureen Norrie had copies of the basic Clean Language questions on slips of paper. We each picked a question at random and someone volunteered to be "it". Each person in turn then asked their question to the volunteer.

Seems straight forward, except that it took around two hours and was a most enlightening exercise. Even though the questions were random it still elicited meaningful information and was of benefit to the client, demonstrating that there are no "wrong" questions.

It also forced us to try new questions, questions that we might not have considered using at that particular moment.

This was followed by a quick discussion around tracking the information generated by the client, and then by lunch.

Lunch was followed, inevitably, by coffee, and a discussion around future dates, events and so on.

The next exercise was a stretch. In threes one person would be the questioner and two would be 'clients'. The questioner would alternate between the two clients, doing two pieces of work simultaneously, talk about having to carefully track information. We also found that the two clients tended to start to generate shared metaphors!

The last exercise was a revisit to the first exercise to see how things had developed, and in most cases metaphors and issues had evolved over the course of the day.

Next meeting:

10am, Saturday 12th September, Allington House, Durham

Wakefield Group next meeting:

7pm, Wednesday 16th September, Garth House, Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield

Contact me for maps and directions

Simon Stanton

01484 - 647144

simon@stant-1.demon.co.uk

http://www.stant-1.demon.co.uk