Clean and MSN

[nickyp]

After a couple of unexpected experiences recently I’d like to use the knowledge and experience of the forum members to help me in exploring a new thought.

I, like many people, use msn messenger a lot to “talk” to friends all over the world regularly. Messages are type written in real time.

I frequently find during a typed conversation the person I am talking to will begin to talk about something that cries out for clean exploration. I have resisted this in the past. With a typed form of communication the received wisdom seems to be that you are down to about 15% of the usual information available in a face to face conversation. Clearly tone, intonation, body language and gesture are completely absent and pace can only be hinted at. Enough challenges there to get us started I think!!

However, I decided to play with what was presented, with permission, and I would like to share my interpretation of what happened on two of these occasions.

What I would like is for the forum members to read my post and if they feel moved to, to respond with suggestions, concerns, parallel or relevant experiences and ways of taking this forward/applications. If you have feedback to give I would ask that use the clean feed back model to do this so I am able to make maximum use of your observations and inferences.

Case 1 young man on a gap year in New Zealand, no NLP or clean experience stated he needed a proper girlfriend. Using clean language to explore this allowed him to gain a clearer idea of the attributes and necessary qualities of a person to fill such a role. I used the classic form of questioning. Afterwards I asked him to draw what had talked about, but this did not find any new information he was able to verbalise. He described the process as “odd”.

Case 2 man in North America, NLP practitioner, no knowledge of clean. Walked a fine line everyday. Use of clean rapidly elicited rich symbols and mapped characteristics and relationships between symbols Use of type written info did not prevent deep engagement with his stuff by the individual. The individual concerned was amazed at the wealth of new information elicited. He has previously done a fair amount of personal work but was amazed how productive the use of clean was, even over this very strange medium. In the two weeks since I have noticed behavioural change which I believe is linked to the information discovered in this interaction. He is now clean-curious and may join us at some point.

Just these two brief overviews suggest to me that there may be a way to use clean like this. The use of typed info allows absolute accuracy in you r reflection of the subject’s words. ( except when you type “ and when you love me” instead of “ and when I love me” oops!).

But, why would you? Except in interrogating my friends, where could this be useful? Were would I take this, or is it simply interesting and should remain as just that.

sorry for the long post.

Thanks

Nicky

[Steve Saunders]

Hi Nicky,

I've been using skype/msn for facilitating emergence for a couple of years - works really well for coaching, co-coaching, etc

It's also a way that allows many people time to work on themselves while multi-tasking.

Cheers

Steve

[nickyp]

Thanks for that Steve, could you tell me a bit more about what youre doing and how youre doing it? Or is there anything I can read about it ?? thanks

Nicky

[Steve Saunders]

Nothing written unfortunately. Sometimes the work is voice or even video-phone with these technologies; then its pretty much the same as for working in the physical presence of the client.

By skype, the following is a de-personalised exhange:
-------------
Hi <Facilitator’s name>
<Facilitator>
10:53
and ...?
<name>
10:53
crap!
<Facilitator>
10:53
ok, whereabouts is crap! ...?
-----------

The way of working is the same really as for normal clean facilitation. The set-up might include an agreed price for the session etc, or maybe pay-per-minute or per-question or per-result - however you work, really.

Then the client communicates first - this I feel is important. Then you can ask clean questions and go from there. Sometimes I have to wait a long time between answers but eventually the client does answer.

With practice and time, you could run a few clients in parallel with messaging, so its more efficient than "physical-presence" work.

I believe a very large % of coaching is done over the phone anyway, and this is an extension. You can combine MSN with voice and so have both typed words and vocal - sometimes it helps to type back a clients words for them to read/see - works well.

anyone else do this?

Steven

[nickyp]

Thanks for that Steve that's really helpful. Lots to think about there.

[phil]

Marian Way and I experimented for some months last year with her proposal of using blog software as a coaching tool. We each had a few clients and managed clean language sessions with them online. The blog was closed to public so that only the facilitator and the specific client could read it. The technology worked well enough once we'd worked out how to isolte the conversations from each other.

What was great as a facilitator was being able to review the material to date, as the process automatically creates a written transcript, showing who said what. It was easier to spot patterns in their words (and in own questions).

What was prominent for me was the time delay. Sometimes this was useful in that a client would go away and enact in the real world some of what they had discussed in the virtual world of the blog and then report back. Often though it seemed too slow.

I think it would be interesting to arrange focused times when both agree to be there blogging to and fro at nearly IM speeds. Between these sessions questions and answers are mused about for longer with gaps between. Perhaps integrate the two - do a quickfire IM session and the facilitator pastes it into the blog afterwards.

I guess these remote coaching tools are useful. I reckon they are very useful adjuncts to face-to-face or at least voice-to-voice stuff. Personally I would still prefer to have seen someone in the flesh first.

Thanks for the interesting posts, both.

Phil

[nickyp]

i am diarying some time later in the year to have a go at this, not quite got the format yet but am thinking maybe, an inital face to face or as a minimum webcam. use the cam and IM and maybe voip as well. then keep history for IM and paste to a secure site for review. I do like the fact that IM gives a complete record where no voice is used at all and is avialable for a number of purposes including pattern spotting. Maybe get people to do some representations of their stuff in between sessions and post them to the site to. Lots to think about, and fun to play with the available technologies. I think this links with the stuff David was talking about later on , taking the facilitator even further out of the process and challenges the emphasis some of us put on tone and intonation at present.