Blog - The Solutions Focus

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

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

I’d love to take a solutions focus, but I can’t let go of the problem

12/6/2017

Many clients have difficulty in letting go of their problem. It’s not surprising. They have lived with the problem for a while; the problem is giving them trouble and it’s worthy of respect. Yet the solution-focused practitioner pops up to say the problem may have nothing to do with the solution – and remind them that it’s the solution that the client wants. That may make sense logically, but from the client’s perspective that can be tough to accept emotionally.

Solution focused conversations

What happens when you accidentally give people a taste of Solutions Focus? | Paul

10/4/2017

I was running a two-day course in Facilitation Skills, teaching a bunch of tips and tools, especially those neat processes into which you can put pretty much any content.

This particular format was a series of rotating pairs. It was near the end of the programme, so I quickly made up a few questions which each set of paired partners could ask each other.

Improvisation Academy Advanced Facilitation Masterclass

The activity ran smoothly and the participants raced back to their chairs to make notes. ‘What were those questions we just asked?’, they demanded. ‘What do you remember them to be?’, I parried - still in facilitator mode.

It so happened that my questions were all flavoured with a solutions focus. That’s because SF is the way that I think, even though in terms of the format we were learning the wording of the questions was irrelevant...

How do we make our big decisions? Ripeness is all. | Paul

1/8/2016

The language of decision-making is quite stressful. You make a choice. You have to take a decision. In German it’s a little less stressful: you meet a decision.

In our coaching conversations we can reduce the stress by changing the terms we use. How about ‘I understand you are in a time of deciding. How is that for you?'

Decisions take time, but we ask binary questions like 'Did you decide yet?’ It may be better to acknowledge the time factor, for example by changing the metaphor to one of ‘ripening the decision’. There are things you can do to help ripening - sun, rain - but you can’t rush it.

First sighting of 'Solutions-Focused Journalism' at the BBC | Paul

15/2/2016

Well, I went to a fascinating presentation at the BBC, where I used to work as a senior producer.

The invitation said, ‘Danish Public broadcasting claims great success with integrating a solutions-focused approach across all their News output. Please join us for lunch to hear from them about how they did it and learn more about Solutions-Focused Journalism.’

BBC Solutions Focused Journalism

I don't like Mondays - or do I? | Janine

11/1/2016

The season’s festivities are over and many of us are experiencing expanding waistlines and decreasing bank balances. Perhaps you can add in some relationship fall-out from spending just a bit too much time with your nearest and dearest.

And according to academic Cliff Arnell the worst is yet to come...