Symbolic Modeling Training
Who can use these skills?
The applications of Symbolic Modeling and Clean Language are many and varied. For example:
| Counselor | Asian body work practitioner | Communicating with others |
| Therapist | Business leader or consultant | Teacher |
| Coach | Manager | Creativity consultant |
If you’re a counselor or therapist looking for a technique that rapidly addresses your client’s fundamental issues and builds your client’s resources, you’ll find Symbolic Modeling effective and fascinating. Clean Language questions, with their deliberate limitations, means the Symbolic Modeling process is client-directed. It says to your clients, “You are the expert on you.” It strengthens their trust in their own intuitive knowing of what is right for them. And your use of the clients’ own words means they feel an instant empathetic connection. First developed for use with trauma victims, Symbolic Modeling is now widely used with many types of clients. Read what clients say.
If you’re a coach, Symbolic Modeling and Clean Language are very effective at helping your clients get clear on what it is they want and need, figuring out what they need to do to make that happen, and motivating them to take the steps. It’s a client-centered approach that keeps the responsibility for solutions squarely with the client. So it’s not that Symbolic Modeling is different from what most coaches are trying to do; it’s just that this process is a particularly effective way of doing it! Read what other coaches are saying.
When you counsel or coach using Symbolic Modeling, you’ll get better results than your colleagues because:
1) Mining your clients’ metaphors means you are working with powerful resources other therapists and coaches don’t make the most effective use of.
2) Exploring metaphors often leads to surprising places and outcomes neither you nor your client would have thought of when working with rational logic and conscious awareness.
If you’re an Asian body work practitioner, you’re well aware of the body/mind connection. Working with metaphor addresses the ying qi Chinese medicine, making your bodywork therapy deeply effective at removing energy blocks and facilitating change. And using Clean Language questions can help your clients clarify their thoughts and feelings and target what they really want from each treatment.
If you’re in business, learn how working with metaphor can help you help your clients. Using Clean Language can assist your client in getting clear on his issues and his solutions—and communicate to you what you need to know to do your job effectively. Examples might include:
If you’re a manager, on any level, you will find working with Clean Language and Symbolic Modeling can help you be a more effective leader. Evolve your leadership style. Clarify goals and the necessary steps to achieve them. Enhance team work among your employees. Help your board function more cohesively. Consider a workshop for your team or schedule a personal session for yourself.
If you’re in any field that relies on communication, Clean Language can help you be more effective and precise—in a way that draws out your subject while keeping your influence and assumptions to a minimum.
- Health care providers
- Interviewers of all sorts— reporters, journalists, radio show hosts, police
- Mediators
- Researchers
If you’re a teacher, discover how Clean Language and metaphors can help you help your students be more successful. Learn how to communicate with parents more easily and effectively. And use the same skills to better work with fellow teachers. Contact me about designing an in-service program, or get trained yourself and become the expert for your school!
If you work with creative artists, learn how to remove the blocks that keep artists stuck. Help them tap into their own vast treasure trove of personal metaphors and mine their unconscious creative wellspring. And do so with a process that will appeal to their creativity!
Applications of Clean Language and Symbolic Modeling are limited only by your imagination!
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