News

Clean Conference Proposal 2012

This year, I’m going to be playing with the themes that I am exploring with 3 different clients – how clean questions support groups to develop their own language of inquiry that then allows them to develop collective trust which in turn inspires capability to build social capital.

The way that clean questions and systemic modelling create such transformation in groups can seem to be like magic. Like magic there are strict rules to the rituals that allow that magic to emerge. There is the spontaneous and the well-thought out. If you falter at one step then the whole network can drop and you need to start again.

As I’ve started writing the Inspiring Capability book which explains the reasons behind the rituals, I’ve come to see all kinds of other disciplines that follow similar principles and strive for similar results such as Agile, Collective Trust and Social Capital.

What is lovely about Systemic Modelling is that it has emerged from a modelling perspective rather than from a theoretical perspective. By taking a naive stance with my work and using nothing but clean questions and NLP modelling to build the main body of the work, I feel I’m better able to serve real groups of people right across our society.

The clean conference 2012 should be a fantastic event. Last year I particularly enjoyed the cognitive linguist perspectives on clean questions and metaphors for time.

I look forward to finding out what other people in our community are up to.

Racism in Football needs to be made very welcome before it’s ever going to leave.

You don’t change the hearts and minds of the nation by making demons of public figures – that just allows everyone to distance themselves from Terry or to create more drama about how PC has no place on the pitch. The very way this is being dealt with and reported is likely to result in no real learning, no acknowledgement of our own prejudices and acts of discrimination and no real shift in the way we do things around here.

One major mistake across the whole Diversity field is to put enforcement over play, curiosity and learning.

3 things are necessary to shift embedded racist thinking:

1. A curiosity, personal inquiry and small group acknowledgement of what actually is stereotyping, prejudice and how it leads to micro and macro discrimination
2. A curiosity, personal inquiry and small group discussion around stereotypes or prejudices that individuals used to have but lost and the processes by which they lost or updated their own prejudice
3. A discussion across the group, in the light of the previous 2 inquiries, into what are a couple of changes that the organisation could make to policy and procedure that would mean that more prejudices were being updated more of the time
That is:

1. We all make hold stereotypes, have prejudices and engage in discrimination, during almost every interaction we have. What are some of yours? What are some you hold about other people?
2. What are some prejudices you used to have, no matter how outrageous, and how did you update them?
3. What would have to be happening in this organisation so that more of you were updating your prejudices more of the time?

Repeat steps 1 – 3 regularly until there is a tipping point in the organisation – usually at around 60% of individuals having gone through this inquiry.

For more information about the kinds of changes that come from this process visit my training website: http://www.trainingattention.co.uk/case-studies/community-case-studies/police-national-search-centre-%E2%80%93-reducing-prejudice-amongst-police-trainers

The processes developed from 2 sources:
1. I had taken the groundbreaking work of Maori/English psychotherapist David Grove and developed it into an application for creating collective trust and inspiring capability for a group to re-learn their own thinking and to develop new ways of doing things around here
2. Patrick Weekes, a respected Police Diversity trainer, and I, spent a long time inquiring into our own prejudices, those we still held, those we’d updated and considered what was it that kept us from allowing our prejudices to cloud our thinking

We took the process and our personal inquiry into other small groups as a ‘modeling’ exercise to find out “What is the difference that makes the difference.” To systems that ARE able to work really effectively within a diverse culture.

Much to our surprise we found that the nature of the inquiry in and of itself was creating the very changes we were hoping to effect!

So if FIFA.com – Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) really want to shift the way we think around here, a series of small, non-judgemental inquiries, consisting of groups of around 15 individuals drawn from diagonal slices across the organisation: management, players, administrators etc. in order to get curious about what is happening, what could happen and what people want to have happen next.

ILM Courses in Coaching and Mentoring

As leading developer of coaching led culture change – we want to offer our clients and our students a nationally recognised qualification in coaching and mentoring at work.

We have been awarded the status of Accreditation Centre by the Institute of Leadership and Management.

Whether you would like the coaching qualification at Level 3 or 5, or you’d like to join the year long coaching experience of Training Attention @ Work,we have a training course to suit you.

In 2013 we are offering:

ILM Coaching and Mentoring at Work

Wirral: 6 days on Fridays and Saturdays:
15&16 March, 12&13 April and 10&11 May

For more information see the attached flyer.

ILM 6 day flyer – Coaching and Mentoring at Work – Wirral 2013

Anyone interested should contact Trish McGinley

Association of Coaching Ireland – report

AC Masterclass: Clean Tools for Enhancing Coaching Effectiveness Presented by Nancy Doyle and Caitlin Walker from Training Attention
Report by Julie Wilson

I really had no experience of clean language before attending the master class other than looking it up on the intranet, where I had found it described as: a way of helping people to explore the symbols and metaphors that make up their mental landscapes otherwise known as symbolic modelling. As you can imagine this made me none the wiser!
At the Masterclass Nancy and Caitlin introduced the session by telling us how they had
achieved amazing results using clean language with people who had learning difficulties and people that had been long term unemployed. We were then treated to Nancy and Caitlin going through a coaching session using clean language so we could observe how it worked. By the way, I had by now labelled them in my
head as yin and yang or hippy chick and the air hostess, which in my map of the world meant that their very different styles gave a refreshing sense of balance to the session.
As they went through the clean questioning you could see how it unravelled richer detail from the client. It came across as an egoless or observational method of coaching which makes you more mindful of trampling on someone else’s “ reality” by using your words instead of theirs.

Then they gave us the handout below to use with the person sitting beside us. This gave us a structure of clean questions to practice with. As we all went through the exercise you could feel the tension in the room rise! The process itself initially
felt quite clunky and frustrating and I could hear and feel this elsewhere throughout the
room so I knew I wasn’t the only one. However as we worked round the questions you could feel the frustration lessening and the dawning realisation of the depth and richness of the information that was being obtained through this process coming to the fore.
I can honestly say that I found this Masterclass enlightening and the two presenters not only experts in the subject matter but also excellent communicators and very engaging. I have since used the “Clean Set-up – Setting an intention for a meeting “exercise on a team of 30 with illuminating results so I am definitely a convert. It was so interesting to observe how it really made each individual look deep within themselves for the answers.
I also bought Caitlin’s DVD and look forward to learning more of the techniques involved in clean language as the Masterclass has certainly left me wanting to know more.

training attention @ work

Caitlin is running a unique training event in Euston, Central London starting this October.
It is a peer-coaching programme for leaders, managers and coaches who want to facilitate teams and organisations to think and work systemically.

The course will cover the skills and practise required for the following qualifications:

NLP Practitioner / Master Practitioner
ILM Level 3 and 5 in Coaching and Mentoring at Work
Clean Language facilitator

All 4 outcomes are achieved through differentiated facilitation and a variety of excellent trainers.

Prices start at £1800 inc. VAT

For more information see the attached flyer.

Download Training Attention @ Work

Sandy Bradley, Department Manager People Point, Boots HR Shared Services

“Team managers are far more open and honest with each other.
They come to me less for guidance on how to handle each other with delicate issues.”

Alison Whatsize – Group Quality Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Manager

“Training Attention’s Dyslexia Awareness course was really informative and was very clearly related to how dyslexia affects people at work. I would highly recommend anyone to attend this course!”

Nov 2011 – NLP Conference

Now in its 21st year, The NLP Conference is an annual 3 day event which attracts some of the best national and international speakers, trainers and authors from the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).

The conference caters for all levels of experience from complete beginners to seasoned professionals who have been using NLP for decades.
Caitlin Walker will be presenting “Facilitating ‘Difficult’ Groups” at the conference.
Training Attention believe that once ‘difficult’ people:

• develop curiosity and respect about themselves and one another
• attend to their outcomes and become really clear about what they’d like to have happen
• practise simple strategies to create, maintain and repair relationships

Then these groups can quickly and creatively train their attention on just what they want to have happen next. Facilitating them to unleash their own potential can be a light touch, enjoyable and highly effective process. This workshop is all about the fundamental principles, philosophy and practise underpinning Systemic Modelling.

Oct 2010 – Clean Conference

The Clean Conference 22-24 October 2010 is a unique international showcase for Clean Language, Clean Space, Emergent Knowledge, The Power of Six and other aspects of the work of David Grove. Held in central London, close to Euston main line station, the Conference attracts outstanding speakers, both UK-based and international, on the subject of Clean Language and its applications.

Nancy Doyle and Paul Tosey will be presenting Organisational Theory and the Application of Clean. Although the majority of Clean work is carried out in a 1-1 context, Training Attention have specialised in group-based applications. These have been evaluated, honed and developed into whole organisational change processes. In this session Nancy Doyle of Training Attention, an occupational psychologist, and Dr Paul Tosey of Surrey University will explain the relationship between the principles of facilitating groups Cleanly and current organisational theory.

Caitlin Walker will be presenting Coaching your internal team. During this session Caitlin will facilitate you to develop your internal sense of: I, me, you, yourself etc and to relate each of these to a current outcome you have. Getting your pronouns aligned is a great step towards dreams becoming actions.

July 2010 – Teaching and Learning Symposium

Training Attention and LJMU ran a Teaching and Learning Symposium in July 2010 for the Higher Education Sector – the first sector-wide clean modelling project
At this symposium we took personal and professional outcomes and spent 2 days developing mental models, sharing wisdom and created the conditions necessary for emergent knowledge.