IX Coach

Coaching approaches

Clean language coaching

Clean language coaching is a way of questioning built on a small set of questions that reuse the client's own words and metaphors, with the coach adding as few ideas of their own as possible. It grew out of psychotherapy and has been developed for coaching, business and research interviews. The peer-reviewed research is small. One peer-reviewed study used Clean Language as an interview method, after single coaching sessions that the study does not describe as clean language sessions, so it does not test the clean language coaching form, and no controlled trial of its outcomes turned up in the sources checked for this page.

What it is

A clean language session is built around questions that return to the client's own words. For example, the coach may ask what kind of thing a word the client has just used is, or where it is. The aim is to let the client's own images and symbols develop, so the coach does not supply pictures or interpretations.

Practitioners describe the approach as minimal: the coach tries to keep their own metaphors, values and expectations out of the conversation. The same questioning style is also used for research interviews (Tosey, Cairns-Lee & Lawley, 2022).

Where it comes from

Clean language grew out of psychotherapy. David Grove developed it while working with clients' traumatic memories, and set out his methods with Basil Panzer in Resolving Traumatic Memories: Metaphors and Symbols in Psychotherapy (Grove & Panzer, 1989).

Tosey, Cairns-Lee and Lawley (2022) describe the approach's origins and its move from psychotherapy into coaching, business and education. Later writers, including Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees, have written about and taught the approach (Sullivan & Rees, 2008).

The principles underneath

The client's words come first

Questions reuse the client's own words rather than the coach's, so the client's meaning is kept intact.

Images as information

A metaphor the client offers, such as a weight or a path, is treated as material to explore, not as a symbol for the coach to decode.

Minimal coach presence

The coach keeps their own ideas, advice and expectations out of the questions as far as possible.

A model built by the client

Asking about the features of an image and what happens next lets the client build an account that is their own.

How a session runs

  1. Start with a topic or problem in the client's own words, without reframing it.
  2. Ask the client to describe it in more detail, using their words back to them.
  3. When an image or metaphor appears, ask about its qualities: what kind of thing it is, where it is, and what it is like.
  4. Ask what happens next within the image, or what the client would like to happen, without suggesting an answer.
  5. Finish by asking what the client now notices, and what they might do with it.

When it tends to fit

  • You describe a situation in vivid images and want to explore what those images mean to you.
  • Advice from others has not landed, and you want to think it through in your own terms.
  • You are working out a decision and notice that you keep describing it as a weight, a journey or a barrier.

What the research shows

Evidence: Practitioner tradition — little or no outcome research

Linder-Pelz and Lawley (2015) is the peer-reviewed study this page found that uses Clean Language, and it uses it as an interview method rather than as the coaching form. Three coaches accredited in the same coaching methodology each delivered a single session to two randomly allocated coachees, and the sessions are not described as clean language sessions. The coachees were then interviewed using Clean Language, and the paper frames this as a phenomenological approach to coaching research. Tosey, Cairns-Lee and Lawley (2022) describe the approach's origins and its use in research interviews. The wider literature is practitioner and methods writing, such as Sullivan and Rees (2008).

Where the evidence is thin: The only study found is small, descriptive and covers single sessions, and it uses Clean Language to interview coachees rather than to deliver the coaching. It has no control group and no outcome comparison, and no source here tests clean language coaching itself, so there is no outcome evidence for this form in the sources checked. The tier is P, the practitioner tier, because the peer-reviewed work does not test the form.

Sources

  1. Linder-Pelz, S., & Lawley, J. (2015). Using Clean Language to explore the subjectivity of coachees' experience and outcomes. International Coaching Psychology Review, 10(2), 161–174.
  2. Tosey, P., Cairns-Lee, H., & Lawley, J. (2022). An introduction to clean language interviewing for research. In Clean Language Interviewing (pp. 3–16). Emerald.
  3. Sullivan, W., & Rees, J. (2008). Clean language: Revealing metaphors and opening minds. Crown House Publishing.
  4. Grove, D., & Panzer, B. (1989). Resolving traumatic memories: Metaphors and symbols in psychotherapy. Irvington.

Where it stops

Clean language is a method of questioning, not a therapy. If distress is intense, or the topic is a traumatic memory, a qualified therapist is better placed to work with it.

Because the questions avoid offering interpretations, a session can feel slow or unfocused to someone who wants clear advice or a plan. The approach does not give advice by design.

Practices for this approach

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice