Positively Consulting

Bring Solutions Focus to bear on your organisation's sticking points. If you find yourself struggling to clarify or achieve your organisation’s goals, consultancy may help you to make major shifts in the right direction.

Our Solutions Focus Consultancy

Clarifies what you want
Looks at what’s working and worth keeping
doesn’t delve unnecessarily into problems
Finds first steps – we’re action-oriented

What we offer is not preconceived: it’s a step-by-step emergent and progressive process.

Future Focus Project

The leadership team at Capita Learning and Development used SF techniques to guide their organization of several hundred people through a major transition, including a change of ownership, change of name and change of location. It turned what could have been a traumatic period into a positive experience. “We wouldn’t have got through this without you,” they said afterwards.

Change Projects
Customised, for change practitioners

If you want a change project that turns an organisation, department or team into a more focused, productive and harmonious unit, Solutions Focus could be the best way to get the most from your resources.

We have been working, for example, with Reading Borough Council to improve results across all their directorates, starting with a two-year project in the Department of Education and Children's Services.

Chief Executive Michael Coughlin talks about how the programme impacted the council and what accounted for the effectiveness of the programme.

He says, the answer lies perhaps in the simplicity of the approach, which is in widespread use in therapeutic settings across the world and is increasingly used in organisations such as ours.

It is easy to understand and can be implemented without changing a great deal else about what we do. Its emphasis on building on what already works well is attractive to staff who may be tired of fad-like initiatives offering little impact.

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Chief Executive Michael Coughlin

Strategy Workshops
1-2 days, for managers and teams

Get your team focused on clear aims and objectives, aligned and ready for action, with a one or two-day strategy workshop. These are always engaging, directly relevant and involve the views of all team members to make best use of the resources available.

Take a look at this case study by Colin Coombes, Learning and Development Manager at the Tate.

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Appraisal Design
Customised, for HR stakeholders and MDs

Differences that make a difference - with carefully-designed questions and feedback sessions that produce managers glad to hear what their colleagues have to say and motivated to make useful changes in their own performance.

Would you like?

Performance conversations to take place
Conversations to be inspiring and forward-looking
Objectives agreed and documented
A process that’s accessible and inviting to use

That’s what Hallmark Care Homes wanted when they asked us to redesign their process. The result was an elegant system, implemented with full training for the appraisers.

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People and Performance Director, Gemma Todd

360 Degree Feedback
Customised, for leaders and managers

360° SF Feedback evaluates people’s performance by eliciting comments from a selection of co-workers, managers, direct reports and internal and external customers, and offering this to participants in a structured, supportive and developmental way.

If you want a system to:

Improve the performance of your managers – individually and collectively
Develop the confidence of team members in each other
Discover how well your team and each manager rates

We begin from the premise that people are good enough – and we can all improve on our performance and contribution as managers and leaders.

"SF is easy to understand and can be implemented without changing a great deal else about what we do. Its emphasis on building on what already works well is attractive to staff who may be tired of fad-like initiatives offering little impact."

Michael Coughlin, Chief Executive, Reading Borough Council

This process develops the significant and positive contributions that individuals make in their work.

The 360° SF Feedback system is part of a process to help managers create meaningful action plans to move them and the organisation forward, reinforcing effective behaviours they already exhibit, whilst developing areas where they show less skill. It is not a system designed to ‘examine’ or ‘catch people out’.

Understanding our impact on others can be a significant step towards creating more choices of behaviour and becoming more skilled in our interactions.

The entire process is solution-focused; this includes how we work with you, the questions asked, how feedback is delivered and the structure and focus of individual action plans.

We customise 360° questionnaires, individual and group reports, supporting workshops and briefing sessions to meet your specific requirements.

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SF Professional Development Programme
3-4 months, for coaches, consultants, facilitators, leaders, managers, professionals, staff, and trainers

Discover the next generation of change technology.

In these 6 comprehensive steps, you will learn how to:

Apply the 6 SIMPLE Principles of Solutions Focus to find out what's important and what you can overlook.

Use the unique Solutions Tools to build positive change in a wide range of work settings

Deploy the OSKAR Coaching Model within teams as well as with individuals.

Work with Solutions Focus ideas in everyday management contexts, including performance management, interviews, feedback and delegation

Coach others and be coached yourself on significant work-related issues

Tackle a real-life work project using your Solutions Focus skills with support from the course team

The SFPD programme is a compelling mix of presentations and activities, each step building your knowledge and skills. The format is three sets of two-day sessions over a period of 3-4 months. In the sessions, you will get to understand the principles and use them right away, applying the tools and concepts to case studies and your own real-life issues within your organisation. In between sessions, you will have the chance to practice your new skills with your colleagues and clients and get feedback on what worked. This means your skills will improve fast, enabling you to put your learning to good use immediately.

The SF Professional Development Programme runs as an in-house programme and is used in Solutions Focused consultancy engagements.

A complete approach to change, the Solutions Professional Development Programme brings the radical simplicity of the fast-growing solutions focus approach to organisations, if you:

Are facing major change
Have a work or project team with a common goal
Have clear targets … or even if you are hazy about the future
Aim to build capacity … and develop your leadership thinking

Headline Project and Capacity Building

"The Solutions Focus introduces a concept that is both elegant and powerful in its simplicity.

For too long, business has wasted time focusing on the blocks to progress rather than finding the routes to success - the Solutions Focus gives you the opportunity to find the routes to success.

Don't be fooled, this process is Simple but it is far from simplistic!"

Chris Howe - Managing Director of Change Group and global change consultant

The 6-step Professional Programme teaches a whole new approach to change, so as well as delivering on a current headline project, it leaves a skill legacy for parallel and future projects.

Three levels at once – our work with you operates simultaneously at an:

Organisational level
Team level
Individual level

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Licensing our Programme
Customised, for consultancies and organisations

If you want to licence our programmes, they are available with full train-the-trainer workshops, trainer guides and participant materials. We have licensed programmes to large organisations and also to independent training organisations that want to share the best in solutions-focused training.

Training Your Trainers in Solutions Focus

For larger organisations that have change programmes in place, an excellent way to save time and money during the change process is to train your trainers in the Solutions Focus approach. By knowing what to focus on and – crucially - what to overlook, your trainers can attain results in a much shorter time and foster a culture in which the changes are more likely to stick once they have happened.

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"I thought I would let you know the Increasing Engagement workshop went really well. I was really pleased with how I presented (thank you both for your tips) and the participants loved it.

Thanks again for your support in running my first workshop and being able to use your materials and program. I loved it!"

Annette Gray - Director, Consulting & Coaching, Growth Leadership Solution