The Arc of Engagement

[phil]

On a training in France this year, there was some discussion about where a facilitator might place themselves in relation to a client (see Robert G's interesting post here (http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=178)). Distance is one factor which may be relevant here. what interested me most was the angle between facilitator and client.

At the time, I sketched some angles on a flipchart to make my point. I reproduce these more neatly below. My metaphor for all this is an 'arc of engagement'.

As you look at the positions, ask yourself, first as a facilitator, then as a client:

Where do I normally place myself in relation to the other person?
Do I sometimes change position during a session?
How might the interaction change if I choose a different place?
Do I have any resistance to being in any of the places shown?
Which position is best for me?
Which position is best for my client?
Which position is best for the process?I encourage you to experiment with different places and angles along the arc of engagement and to post your comments and findings as a reply to this post.

I intend to follow this up with an article on Penny and James' new site when it's ready and, with your permission, will include your relevant comments and discoveries.

Phil

http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/images/arcofeng00.png

http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/images/arcofeng45.png

http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/images/arcofeng90.png

http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/images/arcofeng135.png

http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/images/arcofeng180.png

[JamesLawley]

Great diagrams Phil which make it very easy to understand your interesting questions.

Perhaps to go off at a tangent, it seems to me that the arc could also extend behind the client. When spatialising a metaphor, using the Clean Space format or other moving-around processes, I often stand behind and to one side, say at 45 degrees. My aim is to make sure I am out of the client's 'line of sight' and not within the perimeter of their 'working space'. (If the client turns to look at me I will rarely make eye contact and instead direct my next question to the space. after a couple of times the client usually drops the social convention and focussed on their own perceptual space.)

David Grove devised a fascinating exercise when he was exploring Lines of Sight in the mid 1990's. It was extended by the London Clean Language Practise Group into the following mostly nonverbal format:

1. 'Client' sits or stands where they would like (preferably with a lot of room around them).

2. Facilitator silently and slowly walks around the Client in a circle. The Client indicates nonverbally or by "there!" when they notice some sort of shift in their internal experience. The Facilitator goes back and forth until the exact spot can be marked on the floor (with chalk or a post-it note). No discussion takes place.

[If the Facilitator notices a sudden change in the client - a change in skin colour or breathing, or a movement of the body, etc. - they can ask "And did anything just happen?". If a change was on the edge of the client's awareness this can help them to access it, and the location marked. If the Client says "no" the Facilitator honours that. No discussion takes place.]

3. Facilitator continues walking and marking until a complete circle has been circumscribed.

4. The Facilitator then chooses another circle with a different radius from the Client and repeats steps 2 & 3.

5. After a few circles, the client and facilitator step outside the circles and notice if the marks form a pattern. (Often they form one or more clear Lines of Sight, which can then be investigated with Clean Language).

The obvious difference in this exercise and your investigation is that in the exercise the client is at the centre of the circle rather than on the periphery as in your diagrams. And the exercise could easily be adapted.

James Lawley

[phil]

As ever, James, you trigger new distinctions for me in your reply.

'Behind' the client - certainly - for me this is one aspect of the distance which I mention in passing in the my first post on my way to looking at angles.

What I also hadn't thought out conceptually or put into words (yet is implied in the diagrams) is that the angle and distance are a spatial relationship between the client and the facilitator, as related through the client's Perceived (Pd = what they are attending to: symbol, memory, desired outcome, etc) .

In the diagrams, the circle represents this client's Pd and the angle of facilitator to client is measured through the centre of the circle.. Of course in reality it is not necessarily in front of them - it could be off to one side, above them, inside the body, behind them - anywhere.

:)
When I tried to represent the Pd 'anywhere', I remembered that Anywhere is the same as Nowhere. So I decided to draw Pd Somewhere and let you know it could be Anywhere... Are you in trance yet?

James when you say:
When spatialising a metaphor, using the Clean Space format or other moving-around processes, I often stand behind and to one side, say at 45 degrees. My aim is to make sure I am out of the client's 'line of sight' and not within the perimeter of their 'working space'. (If the client turns to look at me I will rarely make eye contact and instead direct my next question to the space. after a couple of times the client usually drops the social convention and focussed on their own perceptual space.)

For me two important things emerge from what you say. Firstly you place yourself in relation to the client AND their Pd. Secondly you place yourself so as to enhance the CLEANNESS of the session.

So perhaps the ideal spatial arrangement for a Clean session is one where the facilitator can pay attention to what is happening with the client and the client's Pd, while the client is attending mostly to their own information and only minimally to the facilitator. It seems to me that James' way is one example of this. Any others out there?

Phil

http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/images/arcofeng45+.png

[super_yacht@hotmail.com]

I’m wondering how your placement affects the client. The starting conditions are paramount in ‘Clean Space’ and when we start off our opening gambit is for the client to determine where we should be.
Questions for ‘Starting Conditions’ –
Am I in the right place?
If you (the facilitator) are not to enter into the system you can not be drawn into the dynamics of the setup. So this question is asked only once, or rarely twice.
Are you in the right place? (A) (and a range of questions (6) to explore are they in the right place relative to B)
Is that in the right place? (B) (and a range of questions (6) to explore the geography of B).

The client will move you once they are starting to place themselves and ‘B’ if you are in the way!

[phil]

John, thanks for reminding me and us all of the 'right place' questions to the client and thus that it is the client who chooses the placement of the facilitator.

It does raise a question: who are we posing the question to when we ask 'Are you in the right place?' Perhaps that's a question for another post...

In a Clean Space session the client has the choice of placing 'A' (himherself) in relation to 'B' (hisher outcome or statement), thus creating 'C' (the space between A & B) and of placing 'D' (the facilitator) in relation to the A-C-B system.

Similarly in a seated Clean Language/Symbolic Modelling session, the client places A (herhimself) in the room and places D (the facilitator) in relation to himherself.

Both of these processes inevitably create a system which includes D - the facilitator is always involved in the system to some degree.

So, re being 'drawn into the dynamics of the setup' and 'starting', from my point of view, the facilitator is already part of the dynamics of the setup. The system is already setting itself up even before the client and facilitator meet and the relationship has already 'started' well before the formal start to the session.

Happily, as facilitators, we can minimise the degree of our involvement and thus interference, by keeping our opinions, interpretations and judgments tou ourselves, by using Clean Language, by encouraging the client to arrange the session spatially, by directing their attention towards their own information and away from the us and so on.

This is what I mean by 'being Clean' - it's never perfect and it's often good enough to enhance the client's self-modelling, which is my purpose.

It could be argued that in choosing to be Clean, we are really seeking to affect and influence the client in a particular and unusual way, unusual because our purpose in doing so is to enhance the client's ability to find and pursue their personal purpose in their own way, in their own time and on their own terms.

The initial trigger for these posts about 'the arc of engagement' came when I saw a client firmly placing their facilitator across the table from them so they ended up looking into each other's eyes. It occurred to me that while this might be Clean in terms of the facilitator complying with the client's request to have such an arrangement, it might not be Clean in terms of enhancing the client's self-modelling.

For example, imagine as facilitator hearing an outcome like 'I want to be more aware of what's around me' while the client's eyes are 'locked on' to your own. Having full eye contact could be a 'local' pattern that prevents the client from seeing the stuff that would stimulate a change that their whole system desires.

This can present a dilemma for the facilitator: comply with the client's request and gaze into their eyes or direct their attention to their 'what's around me'? To answer my own question, I guess what I would do is comply then at some point 'go live': "And when I look into your eyes and you look into my eyes like this, what happens to being more aware of what's around you?'

Phil

[Steve Saunders]

Hi Phil,

Absolutely - the eye-to-eye causes huge transferrence and countertransference and is a disturbing example one sees in Bandler and others work.

As a practitioner, it is possible to sense where to place yourself and then to engage the cleint with their topic (A to B).

I expect David to write extensively soon on the subject of cleaner than clean, and will share this as soon as its done.

One exercise we have used is to have facilitators enter a cleint's space and navigate to where to be: (a) via "friendly spaces", (b) via "hostile spaces", and then (c) via neutral spaces.

I have noticed that David either avoids eye contact, or it is very short. I've also noticed that people do dissociate into eyes very easily, which is why David was not most agreeable to my experiment at the conference!

Cheers

Steve