Recently Katalin Hankovszky shared the following thought by Liselotte Baeijaert:

Solution Focus is not about finding THE solution for a problem, it’s about a useful interaction that leaves the client changed: with more hope, with more creative ideas, with a feeling of competence, with a clearer view on possibilities.

I think this is an important distinction that goes a long way in making clear what Solution-Focus is and what Solution-Focus is not.

Tags: InterAction, solution, Solution-Focus definition, Solution-Focus distinction

Great short video presentation by Coert Visser which shows how the 3 basic human needs for Autonomy, Competence & Relatedness are supported by Solution-Focused Coaching & Therapy.

Tags: Autonomy, Coert Visser, Competence, Human Needs, Relatedness, Solution Focus, video presentation

I have always been a great fan of the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi about the psychology of optimal performance.
His idea of flow has resonated with me ever since.

In my life I had the good luck of experiencing flow states in different occasions.
When you are “in the flow” everything disappears – including the self.
You are totally absorbed in the activity, passionately engaged in what you are doing.
Time disappears. Joy and doing are all there is.
One word follows another, one movement follows another, in an effortless flow of action and creation.
A frictionless world.

I experienced flow in writing; I experienced flow in running, sometimes with mystical over-tones; I even experienced flow while leading workshops.

But I have always wondered which form flow would take in coaching.
Not anymore.
I experienced it.

Flow in coaching is about tuning in to rhythm of the interaction rather than on the content of the conversation.

Or, as my friend Svea Van Der Hoorn put it recently during a workshop: in the discipline lies the magic.

Just like a tango dancer who is so connected with his partner and so engaged in the dance that he knows exactly when and how to lead his partner into the next step – in the same way a Solution-Focused Coach in a state of flow knows exactly when and how to lead the client into the next phase of the coaching conversation.

Flow in coaching is definitely linked with the concept of not knowing –  having no specific expertise in the clients’ field of work can be a tremendous asset.
The details of the problem the client is experiencing is noise – the signal is that little shift in the coachee’s tone of voice which tells you the client feels he or she has been heard and therefore we can move on to negotiating goals; the subtle smile which tells the coach that the coachee has found something that worked in the past and so we can start asking amplifying questions around that exception; the eyes of the coachee staring in the distance and contemplating the landscape of the Miracle – let’s leave the client there for a while; the signal is noticing the client shifting from “problem language” to “solution language”; the signal is that little key word buried there in that long sentence or that sparkling moment in that long litany of complaints.

Content changes but the process does not.

There is an opening, there is a middle and there is an end – there might be endless variations, thousands of different words and meanings, but the grammar of a Solution-Focused coaching session stays the same.

I am indebted to Coert Visser for having me reflect some more about the importance of not-knowing.

Tags: coaching, content, Flow, not-knowing, process, Solution Focused

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: people with low levels of ability in a certain field vastly over-rate their talents because they lack the skills to judge their own competence (definition from Mind Hacks Blog).

I see it all the time in trainings: Workshop participants learn something. They get the hang of, say, how to lead a motivational interview, and then I watch in horror as, all of a sudden, they go about touting their skills and marketing themselves as professional interviewers.

This is another reason why I like Solution-Focused practice.
Of course the Dunning-Kruger Effect is still lurking in the background when I lead the Solutionsurfers Training Program for Brief Coaches.
However, as part of the program and inherent in the SF practice itself, lots and lots of positive and specific behavioral feedback is given.
Participants quickly learn to observe details and little cues: what did I say exactly? How did clients respond to that? What did they do specifically? What did they say, and so on.
Trainees are taught to observe, observe and observe, paying close attention to behavioral cues and nuances in the interactions.
They are taught to share those observations with other participants.
They are also taught to think about what they would do differently, if they had the chance to have the same coaching interaction again.

This is a powerful way of defusing the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Granted, it takes time. But I know of no other way,

Our job as trainers is to bring our students quickly to the “other side” of the Dunning-Kruger Effect where improving people’s skills reduces their self-assessment as they also learn to judge their ability level more accurately (again in the words of Mind Hacks Blog).

Paradoxically, then, a trainer does a good job if, at the end of a training program, (on a scale from 1 to 10), the trainees rate their skill levels at a 6, 7 or an 8, rather than at a 10. it means they are being realistic and it means they appreciate the difficulties involved in the skill-set taught. Experience will move the trainees forward on their proficiency scale!

For more thoughts on the issue, check out Coert Visser’s posting.

Tags: Dunning-Kruger Effect, feedback, Psychology, self-assessment, skills, Solution Focused, solutionsurfers, training

Tags: Flowchart, positive psychology, Poster, Solution Focused

When philosophers use a word – “knowledge”, “being”, “object”, “I”, “proposition”, “name” – and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home? What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use – Wittgenstein, #116, Philosophical Investigations

Clients use words like: “unsatisfied”, “undecided”, “stuck”, “fearful”, unable to”, “personality”, “leader”, “executive”, “organization”, “team”.
They also use sentences like: “being more productive”, “being more assertive”, “being a decision-maker”, “being a team-player”, “working better & working less”.

Clients try to grasp the essence of the problem, the root cause of why they feel_____ or why they are_____ or why other people are_____  or why the organization / team is__________

As Solution-Focused practitioners what we do is to help clients bring words back from their metaphysical (i.e. generalizing judgement) to their everyday use (i.e. specific behavioral & contextual descriptions).
We work with specific behaviors in specific situations in specific moments of time in specific interactions (everyday use) –  and when that happens, generalizations and labels crumble, a whole range of different episodes presents itself instead, and solutions emerge.

A picture held us captive. And we could not go outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably - Wittgenstein, #115, Philosophical Investigations

Tags: behavioral descriptions, language, ordinary use, philosophy, Solution Focused, Wittgenstein