Blog - The Solutions Focus

How Don Jackson brought an interactional view to people seen as dysfunctional

27/11/2017

At the UKASFP conference, Dr Wendel Ray from the University of Louisiana at Monroe, reminded us about Don Jackson, one of the founding fathers of what’s become the solutions-focused approach to change.

Jackson took a view of people not as isolated individuals to be thought about or studied separately, but as part of the small or larger groups to which they belonged. Then any particular individual’s behaviour is seen as them adapting as well as they can to the way the group is operating.

Hard problems, easy solutions

13/11/2017

The problem might be hard, but the solution can be easy. That’s a central insight of a solutions-focused approach. If we get too tangled up in thinking about the problem, analysing it and talking about it, we might miss the simplicity of doing something different – which may well be unrelated to the problem in any obvious way, yet improve things quickly. A nice example here, in this Guardian Weekend column by Oliver Burkeman.

What’s the best question to start with in a workshop or coaching session?

30/10/2017

Our opening words inevitably contain assumptions, destiny-filled assumptions which can shape the rest of the conversation.

What if we start with ’What’s the problem?'. That assumes a problem, which we’ll now have to talk about and then try to solve.

Bulgarian solution-focused practitioner Plamen Panayotov proposes, ‘What question brought you here today?’

The Solutions Focus Book

‘The client is the expert’. What?!

17/10/2017

In our Solutions Focus practice we like to say that our clients and customers are the experts, by which we acknowledge that they know their lives and work better than we ever can, and are therefore best placed to decide how to use their resources to solve their problems.

So, if the client is the expert, how do we let them know that, while still adding value in our job as coach, therapist or workshop leader? How do we empower clients in practice during a workshop or a coaching session?

Positively Speaking

6 ideas about setting goals in your organisation | Paul

11/9/2017

Here are 6 thoughts about goals:

It’s unethical to hold people to goals that they have set, because much of what happens after you set a goal is unpredictable.
Watch out for when goals turn counter-productive. Like prescription drugs, they can have unwanted side-effects.
It’s important to give yourself permission not to stick to goals when circumstances change and you need your wits about you to deal with uncertainty.
Perhaps if goals are modest and short-term, they will not be so delusional.
A deadline by which you have to produce a piece of work can be very productive. I write here as a trained journalist.
If you work with others, instead of setting goals ask them what they would like to achieve. Then when you meet again, ask them what progress they have made.

Answer and question sessions

4/9/2017

In many forms of coaching and therapy, the practitioner has a plan. The course of the conversation depends relatively little on what the client wants. That makes it predictable and thus easy for the coach. But is the comfort of the coach or the therapist (rather than the client) the goal of the session?

In taking a solutions-focused approach, you do have to listen to the client, and the questions you ask depend a great deal on what the client has to say.

We have a favourite SF training exercise, in which you practice with a partner and your next question must include a significant word or phrase from the previous answer. So the pattern shifts from ‘Question, answer, question’ to ‘Answer, question, answer’.

Positively Speaking The Solutions Focus

In SF coaching sessions, we start by asking what the client wants. That’s the plan, and that’s as far as the plan goes. The rest depends upon the answer you get and whatever is needed to get a more detailed description of what’s wanted, descriptions of resources and descriptions of progress.

And the value of that? These questions will produce change. And they will keep you as the coach in the moment and on your toes.

What if your coaching client isn’t ready to talk goals?

21/8/2017

Sometimes a client in a coaching session is not ready to talk about what they want, their goals or even to have a sense of what a better future might be like for them. That may appear to scupper the conversation if you are intent on goal-finding as your first coaching step. But there are other ways to proceed.

One option is to ask your client, ‘What are you already doing that's useful?’ to gain pointers towards from their current activities that might plausibly form part of a more fruitful future.

The Solutions Focus Resilience Pocketbook

Another is to start with highlights from the past - proud achievements, better periods in their life or their work - to get a sense of what’s important to them, their talents and their experiences.

Then, when the time is right, you can have a more informed conversation about what’s wanted in the future.

How can a coach come up with useful questions on the spot?

7/8/2017

How do you know what to say when a client answers your question? Most of the time you did not know what your client was going to say. That was why you asked the question.

Knowing what to do next at that precise moment has a great deal to do with paying attention to language. And what we say will depend on our assumptions.

The Solutions Focus Positively Speaking

What’s the impact of visualisation on motivation?

24/7/2017

A participant on a recent webinar cited a study he’d heard about, saying that visualising a goal can be counter-productive to one’s motivation. Apparently, there’s a danger of feeling that you’ve already accomplished your objective, so you put less effort into doing it ‘again’ for real.

For a solutions-focused practitioner, this seems more about the danger of extrapolating too much from a single research project than about the value of visualisation. There’s obvious value for an individual or a team in the clarity gained by visualising the goal. The depiction of the Future Perfect in detail also provides useful signs by which to measure progress. And it encourages reflecting on the benefits of the various aspects of the goal – which again will provoke and boost motivation. I’m not sure how you would gain those benefits without somehow visualising what’s wanted in glorious detail.

Nor is the Future Perfect visualisation the end of the typical coaching process. First, in a detailed articulation of a vision, we not only see it, we speak it, unearthing more and more detail. And then we also explore resources and consider the next small steps. Those additional elements should be more than enough to avoid any loss of motivation.

The Solutions Focus Future Perfect

Have a look at all of our SF TOOLS on one page.

Is Solutions Focus a science, an art or a craft?

10/7/2017

At a recent conference, SF practitioner Chris Iveson reminded us that SF is neither a science nor an art, but a craft.

It’s a craft that may take practice, but it is basically simple. There are a few things we need to do as coaches or therapists. And it is a good idea to learn to do them well.

Then we can easily be tempted to add on various optional extras, which we hope look good. Yes, that is very tempting.

Or we may prefer to keep our practice pared down and minimal. And if that is possible, we can do so with an appreciation that the rest is decoration. The pure craft is enough.

The Solutions Focus Book