4 min read
The Clean Set Up: Alternatives to New Year’s Resolutions
The Clean Set Up is a versatile tool that uses 3 simple questions to allow individuals and groups to identify a goal and move towards it. Open-ended, neutral and flexible, the questions form a coherent structure that encourages exploration, choice and practicality.
This is a pertinent topic at this time of year, when people make commitments to bring about positive changes in their lives with New Year’s resolutions and companies formulate growth and development plans. The Clean Set Up quickly brings outcomes into focus, establishes a clear route forward and generates enthusiasm for the task.
The Clean Set Up asks:
For x to be just the way you’d like, it will be like what?
And you will be like what?
And what support or resources do you need?
The questions in more detail
“For x to be just the way you’d like, it will be like what?” deliberately omits words or phrasing that could direct attention in a particular way. Participants can express themselves without concern for acceptability or alignment with others’ ideas.
“And you will be like what?” invites participants to examine their behaviour and mindset. This enquiry empowers individuals, reinforcing the idea of choice through consideration of how they conduct themselves and fostering a sense of autonomy in their approach.
“And what support or resources do you need?” focuses on practicalities. The question emphasises choice by inviting people to advocate for themselves, and highlights the connection between individual and outcome. It establishes a pathway forwards, the practical means to that, and encourages assessment of existing resources.
Utility and application
Applicable to both individuals and groups, the Clean Set Up is an adaptable, robust and practical framework that can be applied before starting a project, mid-way through or at transitional points to focus, regroup and proceed. Its wide-ranging applications can be used to initiate personal inquiry, drive or reinvigorate corporate goal-setting or cohere a team of people.
The phrase “like what?”, used in questions 1 and 2, draws out the inherent human capacity for metaphor. The Clean Set Up’s sparse but invitational language allows participants to access their own desires and understandings of this. Metaphors arise spontaneously, harnessing descriptive and meaning-making processes.
On an individual basis, the questions invite psychological depth, generate insight, uncover purpose and access motivation. In this context a skilled Clean Language facilitator might make use of further questions (known as developing questions) to extend the enquiry. This creates a rich field of exploration in which meaningful, deeply personal desires, drives and resources are revealed, refined and allowed to interplay, empowering individuals to create positive change.
In a group context, metaphors are collectively created and become a common language for discussing the group, members’ individual roles and the intended goal. Co-created metaphors promote group cohesion: jointly “owned” by all who play a part in developing them, they encourage an environment of creativity, collaboration and co-responsibility.
The Clean Set Up in use: examples
We Are Clean worked with a private coaching client who sought an alternative to New Year’s resolutions. She reported a resistance to planning, citing a previous inability to keep commitments made at the beginning of the year. The clean set up question 1 was adapted to become “For 2024 to go just the way you’d like it to, it would be like what?”, and the facilitator made use of further (developing) questions to expand the inquiry.
The client quickly accessed desire, drive and resource, assessed her existing level of support and developed a clear, manageable plan for moving towards her goal. She created several metaphors that conveyed personal meaning, depth and purpose, and found practical methods for incorporating these into her strategy.
The client said: “This was a powerful and unexpectedly profound session for me. There’s something about the openness of the questions, they’re almost casual but got right to the heart of what I actually want instead of what I think I should do. Images came from somewhere deep within me and were really rich. I’m confident I can use them as touchstones if I lose my focus.” (Lewes, January 2024.)
In a corporate context, We Are Clean used the Clean Set Up with a company for whom question 1 became “for this team to be just the way you want, it would be like what?”. This generated the metaphor of a music festival, encapsulating company ethos, individual responsibility and overall purpose, and becoming a shared language with which to effectively speak about goals, roles and progress.
The Clean Set Up fosters cohesion, communication and collaboration, actively promotes diversity and inclusivity and is outcome-focused. To explore how it can benefit your team, book a call.
Watch Rachel Gilmore and Sarah Scarratt from We Are Clean use the Clean Set Up for the New Year below.