Solutionsurfers PURE Brief Coach Training, Module 2, Basel, May 17-19

Tags: Basel, brief coaching, Jesper Hankovszky Christiansen, Peter Szabo, solutionsurfers, training

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

What is the essence of Solution-Focused practice?

Is it the use of some key techniques, like asking the “Miracle Question”?

Or is it something else?

Veronica Bliss and Dominic Bray try to give an answer to these questions in a little gem of a paper titled: THE SMALLEST SOLUTION FOCUSED PARTICLES: TOWARDS A MINIMALIST DEFINITION OF WHEN THERAPY IS SOLUTION FOCUSED published in the Journal of Systemic Therapies.

As the authors note, some practitioners use typical SF techniques, and yet it does not feel they are “doing” SF; and, on the other hand, some practitioners might not be using some key SF techniques and yet it feels they are “doing” SF.

What are then the “smallest solution-focused particles”?

To answer this question the authors take us on a journey in the history of SF: how SF was born; what its major tenets are; the key role of the therapist in SF.

The authors then talk in detail about the different attempts of coming up with technique-oriented definitions of SFBT, including the minimum requirements listed by the European Brief Therapy Association (EBTA).

This alone makes for very interesting reading.

Veronica Bliss and Dominic Bray then introduce some clinical examples of SFBT done without the use of key techniques – mainly work done with people who have limited cognitive abilities, a kind of work that led the authors to “question the technique-oriented definition of SFBT”.

And here I put in my two cents.

From the opposite end of the spectrum (i.e. coaching, not therapy; executives, not people with limited cognitive abilities), my work has led me to question the technique-oriented definition of SF practice, too.

I did have some coaching sessions in which I was definitely brief (less than 20 minutes), in which I felt I was definitely solution-focused and yet in which no or very few SF key techniques were used: the conversation just flowed naturally following a SF rhythm.

I now consider this to be a sign of Mastery: to leave as little of a footprint as possible in the coaching conversation. Do what is necessary, and only that. Simplify to the utmost. In this I am echoing Peter Szabo’s position that the brief coach is a “witness” of clients’ change – read his 10 brief-coaching assumptions here.

Still, all this begs the question: what are “the smallest number of parameters that distinguish solution-focused work from other kinds of therapy”?

The authors, “in the spirit of the minimalist tradition” (to which I subscribe 100%) find two sets of parameters:

a) the role of the client and of the SF practitioner

b) certain key steps.

Let’s take a look at these two points.

a) the client’s role and the SF practitioner’s role.

The quality of client-practitioner interaction is unique in SF.

Clients not only are “the experts” (one of the main tenets of SF practice) but also have “fewer requirements put upon them.. than they do with other types of psychotherapy“. They do not need to learn the language of the therapist nor to fit the therapist’s frame of reference. They do not have to subscribe to a diagnosis nor even to talk about their problem!

SF practitioners‘ behavior is what makes the difference.
Much has been said about keeping a posture of “not-knowing”.
The authors here, though, go for a very simple idea: “the absolute minimal requirement for uniquely solution focused work is the co-construction aspect which requires that the therapist learn from the client”.

b) This idea of the SF practitioner learning from the client leads us directly to the second point highlighted by the authors: the therapist needs to learn from the client about 4 key things:

“1 – the person’s preferred future and implications thereof (perhaps using the miracle question, but perhaps not)

2 – how they both will know when they are moving in the right direction (perhaps using scaling questions but perhaps not)

3 – what the client can do more of or what he or she might do differently to start moving in that direction

4 – how they will both know when they have done enough SFBT”.

These are, in the words of the authors, “unique aspects which need to be operationalized in the most minimal, least restrictive way.”

Incidentally, the first 3 steps listed above correspond directly to the view of SF practice as a Darwinian Algorithm, which I articulated in a recently published paper.

Veronica Bliss & Dominic Bray’s minimalist summary of SF matches my summary of SF as a Darwinian Algorithm point by point:

1 – preferred future and implications thereof / establishing a fitness function

2 – knowing when we are moving in the right direction / searching for and scoring useful behaviors

3 – what the client can do more of or what he or she might do differently / replicate behaviors with the highest score and recombine them.

Though using a different language and starting out from a different perspective, I share with the authors of this paper the quest to get to the core of SF and to capture its beautiful simplicity and elegant effectiveness.

Bliss, E.V., Bray, D. (2009). THE SMALLEST SOLUTION FOCUSED PARTICLES: TOWARDS A MINIMALIST DEFINITION OF WHEN THERAPY IS SOLUTION FOCUSED Journal of Systemic Therapies, 28 (2), 62–74

Tags: Darwinian Algorithm, Dominic Bray, essence of, minimalist, smallest solution-focused particles, Solution Focused, technique-oriented, Veronica Bliss

I am reading the latest book by Atul Gawande: The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

I have always been a fan of checklists: I think they are immensely useful. When I think of checklists I think of pilots in the cockpit of a jetliner getting ready to take that marvel of technology and complexity into the air.

Moreover, I had the chance to appreciate the writing style and the insights of Dr. Atul Gawande in the past.

So it was pretty obvious to me that I had to get his latest book.

And it is no surprise that I loved it.

A little bit more surprising are the connections that can be made between Checklists and Solution-Focused practice.

1. to begin with, checklists are a simple and elegant solution to a complext problem – and we already talked in this blog about how Solution-Focused is elegantly simple yet very effective.
2. Dr. Gawande makes a distinction between two issues when facing problems: ignorance and ineptitude. Ignorance means that we do not have enough knowledge to deal effectively with the problem – as an example, Dr. Gawande mentions the differences in treating heart attacks now vs. in the 60s. Back then, we simply did not know. Now we know much more about heart attacks and we have a whole array of surgical options, interventions and drugs to treat heart attack victims. Ineptitude is a different thing altogether – it means we have the knowledge to deal effectively with a problem but somehow we fail to take the necessary steps. For example, on average, according to Dr. Gawande, less than 50% of patients with suspected heart attacks receive the proper protocol within 90 minutes of their admittance to the hospital – after 90 minutes the chances of making it through a heart attack significantly drop. It is not a question of lack of will or improper training – it is just that procedures can be very complicated and require the coordinated performance of many specialists. Checklists, then, are a way to deal with this problem: making sure that nothing is missed, making sure that the knowledge acquired is properly applied right here and right now with the patient. It then struck me that SF questions are just that – a way to help clients appy their own experience, successes and insights to the problem at hand. As SF practitioners we assume clients have all the knowledge they need to solve their own problems – they are the experts. They come to us because, for whatever reason, they got overwhelmed by the problem – the sheer complexity seems too much. But our questions, such as the Miracle Question, or the Scaling Question, are ways for clients to make a checklist of their successful strategies and apply them to the problem they are facing now.
3. I admit it – I have a pre-session checklist. Things to do before a session, to make sure the session runs smoothly. I also have a post-session debrief checklist – with a Solution-Focused twist, since it is a checklist made of scales. But it is still a checklist.
4. Another point that is made in the book and that I felt was very interesting is that checklists can be used also to deal with emergencies. Such checklists are not made of routine operations. Rather they make clear who needs to talk to whom and when in case of emergency X – as Dr. Gawande shows, that is a brilliant solution. The checklist still gives structure and tells people who to talk to – but it allows for maximum flexibility in responding to the emergency, shifting responsibility to experts and people on the ground rather than on a single decision-maker.

Tags: Analogies, Atul Gawande, book review, Checklists, Healthcare, simplicity, Solution Focus