JUDY REES
Unlocking Conversations with Clean Language
Judy Rees, co-author of the bestselling book Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds, has taught and applied Clean Language globally for around 20 years.
She currently specialises in applying it in healthcare, especially with clinicians working in end-of-life care, and is also creating a Clean-Language-based patient-coaching app (as part of a US startup). With a background in journalism, Judy also shares stories of Clean Language success through her substack, newsletter, YouTube channel, and the annual online Clean unconference, Metaphorum.
She is based in Richmond, North Yorkshire, UK, and operates internationally.
Interview with Judy
What’s something you believed about coaching early on that you no longer believe?
Judy: Highly empathetic people make the best coaches.
What do you find yourself returning to again and again in a coaching conversation: a question, a stance?
Clean Language questions, a Clean stance, and the fact that things in inner worlds have spatial relationships to each other.
What’s the one thing you hope every APC learner leaves with from your module?
The confidence that questions (especially Clean Language questions) will do their thing whether you “get it” or not
What’s the biggest misconception new coaches bring into the room?
That their job is to advise. Give them both an experience of being advised, and a contrasting experience where change emerges from non-advice.
What enticed you to join the faculty?
My ELMO puppet persuaded me.
What pulled you towards coaching in the first place?
That my existing skills as a journalist could be repurposed
What’s changed in you, outside of coaching skills, because of the years spent doing this work?
I’m less shy since discovering that *everyone* is comparing their inside to other people’s outsides
What’s the one person you’d like to coach if you could coach anyone (and why)?
Andy Burnham. I think it would be interesting and impactful.
What question should I have asked you? And how would you have answered it?
What would you like to happen as a result of this course? I’d like to meet some interesting coaches and get them excited about the usefulness of Clean Language.