Angela Dunbar - Clean Coaching: The Insider Guide to Making Change Happen

Most coaches today see their role as mainly non-directive, helping to uncover their coachees own wisdom. However, coaches may unwittingly and unconsciously constrain what their coachees talk and think about, getting in the way of unique, self-generated solutions. Clean Coaching provides a different, simple yet highly effective approach to one-to-one facilitation. It is a style, strategy and set of techniques that helps coachees gain insight and make changes through discovering more about their own insider perspective: of themselves and the world around them. Through the use of specifically-phrased, structured coaching questions, the coachs own biased perspectives are stripped from their language, ensuring the coachees unique personal experience is honoured.

In Clean Coaching, Angela Dunbar explains how this approach works in practical terms, with descriptions of how to structure a Clean Coaching session and the steps to take within such a session. The book gives detailed descriptions of the kinds of questions to ask and provides a wealth of analogues, examples and case studies to bring the descriptions alive, offering a clear blueprint for action. In addition, the book explains where Clean Coaching has come from, describing the development of Clean Language and other Clean approaches by the psychologist and psychotherapist David Grove. It also tracks how Clean approaches have been adopted and adapted by other practitioners. Dunbar draws on current research in the fields of developmental, neurological, cognitive and social psychology to demonstrate why Clean Coaching works so successfully.

Exploring Clean Coaching in detail, and informed by both research and practice, this book is a valuable resource for coaches at all levels, including executive coaches and those in training, as well as managers and executives acting in a coaching capacity.

Angela Dunbar is a highly experienced coach and coach supervisor, accredited with and a former council member of the Association for Coaching. As Managing Director of her own training and development consultancy since 1994, Angela coaches people on their professional and personal lives, and her passion is using and teaching Clean techniques through The Clean Coaching Centre, www.cleancoaching.com. She is the author of Essential Life Coaching Skills (Routledge, 2009), and has twice been nominated for the Association for Coachings Honorary Award for Impacting the Coaching Profession.

Whether you are new to Clean Coaching or already have some deep exposure, there is a wealth of information and guidance in this book from the basics of just two questions you can use in a profound way to get started, through the full range of Clean questions and techniques, to the capacities and world views that will help you to use it successfully. Angelas writing, her examples and stories, spur you on to explore and use these powerful techniques.

Caroline Talbott, coach and author of
Essential Career Transition Coaching Skills

I loved this book for its clarity and simplicity. It gives a thorough representation of the work that David, Angela and I did together during the years leading up to his death, as well as the way in which she has gone on to develop and progress our work. It provides a detailed description of what coaching is, what Clean coaching is, the differences between them, and how they complement each other, and will guide coaches towards a more neutral style of coaching. I regard it as essential reading for those studying or delivering Clean techniques, and a valuable resource for anyone studying and/or practicing coaching more generally too.

Carol Wilson FILM FAC FPSA, www.coachingcultureatwork.com

A hugely valuable addition to the field of Clean Coaching, this book will surely become a seminal text. It contains a rich explanation of the benefits of a Clean approach to coaching plus practical know-how for coaches to apply to enhance their effectiveness through Clean strategies, mindsets and techniques. Angela shares her in-depth knowledge and understanding of Clean in relation to the art of coaching and the application of psychological and systemic models, all in a hugely warm and accessible style.

Lynne Cooper, Executive Coach, Coaching Supervisor, co-author of
The Five-Minute Coach and managing partner of Change Perspectives

Angelas latest book is an excellent addition to the current literature on coaching and how Clean Coaching is distinguished from other approaches. In one volume, the reader can explore the theoretical underpinnings of coaching, our unconscious bias towards being directive and how Clean Coaching offers an alternative. Discover ways to build your Clean Coaching capabilities and strategies for structuring Clean sessions, peppered throughout with case studies, transcripts and insights drawn from Angelas rich experience in the field. An indispensible resource for both novice and experienced coaches alike.

Anne Munro-Kua Ph.D, CEO AMK Transformations,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This book is a comprehensive overview of Clean coaching by someone who learnt from David Grove himself. Angela Dunbar puts Clean coaching into context by showing all coaches how we should Clean up our coaching approach, even if not using Clean methods primarily. She explains how and why Clean works, and provides how to sections for basic Clean questions and the more evolved Emergent Knowledge variations. Coaches will find this book useful and challenging, as well as informative.

Gill Smith, UK Chair, Association for Coaching,
Partner in The Brain@Work

First published 2017

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 Angela Dunbar

The right of Angela Dunbar to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dunbar, Angela, 1964 author.
Title: Clean coaching : the insider guide to making change happen /
Angela Dunbar.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016011365 | ISBN 9781138816367 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138816374 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Personal coaching. | Counseling.
Classification: LCC BF637.P36 D858 2017 | DDC 158.3dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016011365

ISBN: 978-1-138-81636-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-81637-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-73866-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Section I
The foundations for Clean Coaching

Section II