I have been coaching this client on and off for many years now.

An executive, I met him for the first time when I was fresh off the Solution-Focused training and i was discovering its power in coaching conversations.

So I was eager to try Solution-Focus on him, too – I listened eagerly to his problem talk, waiting for an opening. Sure enough, there was one and I asked about it, trying to shift to solution talk.

He quickly answered, and then went on to describe the numerous downsides of that one positive exception to the problem.

Undeterred, I tried again. And again.

It was frustrating.

It was a dance that went nowhere – me trying to highlight the positive, he bringing the conversation back to what was not working.

How come he did not accept my invitations for solution talk?

Even after I listened to him for a long time?

Why was he dismissing my remarks about positive occurrences as a way to sugarcoat the reality?

This is the beginning of my guest post on Coert Visser’s Solution-Focused Change blog. Read the rest of the post, and comments to it, here–>

http://solutionfocusedchange.blogspot.com/2011/06/when-solution-focus-does-not-work.html

Tags: case study, client cooperating, complaining, complaint, executive coaching, feeling heard, negative feedback, positive feedback, problem focus, problem talk, Solution Focus, solution talk, Spreafico, trust

In his latest book, Flourish, Martin Seligman introduces very few tools to improve well-being – most of the book is a very interesting and opinionated summary of the current status of Positive Psychology.

One of the few tools presented is called: “Active, Constructive Responding” – and it is yet another piece of evidence that Positive Psychologists are “re-inventing” well-established Solution-Focused practices.

Here I quote Seligman: ” Strangely, marriage counseling usually consists of teaching partners to fight better. This may turn an insufferable relationship into a barely tolerable one… How we respond can either build the relationship of undermine it. There are four basic ways of responding, only one of which builds relationships” – and then he proceeds by providing two examples of the four styles.

I will only use the first of his examples, and I will highlight questions that come straight from SF practice:

Example – your partner says: I received a promotion and a raise at work!

Active and Constructive Response: “That is great! I am so proud of you. I know how important that promotion was to you! Please relive the event with me now. Where were you when your boss told you? What did he say? How did you react? We should go out and celebrate!” Nonverbal: maintaining eye contact, displaying positive emotions

Passive and Constructive Response: “That is good news. You deserve it.” Nonverbal: little or no active emotional expression.

Active and Destructive Response: “That sounds like a lot of responsibility to take on. Are you going to spend fewer nights at home now?” Nonverbal: display of negative emotions.

Passive and Destructive: “What’s for dinner?” Nonverbal: little to no eye contact, leaving

[Note: Seligman credits Shelly Gable, Professor of Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, for  demonstrating that  how you celebrate is more predictive of strong relations than how you fight].

So… SF practitioners out there… do the highlighted questions ring a bell? ;)

I think we would be a little bit more natural in building an “Active & Constructive Response” to what Clients bring: Wow, I am so impressed!! How did you manage to get it? When did this happen? What did your boss say? And what did you say? Were there other people there? What did they say?…

Tags: Active & Constructive Responding, Affirming, Complimenting, positive psychology, Relationship Building, Relationship Questions, Seligman, Shelly Gable, Solution Focus

Janet Beavin Bavelas, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., is one of of the co-authors of Pragmatics of Human Communication and, as a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Victoria, still at the forefront of research into interpersonal communication. The research team she leads specializes in the study of face-to-face dialogue – their findings have direct applications in psychotherapy, counseling, coaching, and management. I had the privilege and the pleasure to attend her workshop on microanalysis at the 2010 SFBTA Conference in Banff, Canada.

I was so happy to finally encounter an empirical research method dedicated to exploring the power of interaction to produce change! In my opinion, every Solution-Focused practitioner should become familiar with Janet Beavin Bavelas work: her research results are an essential part in establishing the scientific credentials of Solution-Focus.

Besides being an innovative thinker and a thorough scientist, Janet Bavelas is also a very engaging person and she very kindly accepted to be interviewed for my blog – here are her answers to my questions. I suggest  you take the time to read this interview again and again – as her motto goes, “Life Happens in Detail” and many insights wait for you in the details of her thought-provoking answers. Enjoy!

1)  You have been working a lot with Solution Focused practitioners in the past few years, using Microanalysis to investigate Solution Focused conversations. Can you briefly tell us what draws you to Solution-Focus?

Good question–especially because I’m an experimental psychologist, with absolutely no practical training in therapy or anything else!  I’m glad someone finally asked me that question, because I’ve had my answers ready:

First, Steve, Insoo, and I had the same roots, learning from the Palo Alto Group and especially John Weakland.  The three of us were not there at the same time, but that experience was a lasting influence for all of us.  (I agree with Steve and Insoo, who in a 1991 article pointed out that their SFBT was just one small change from the original Palo Alto Brief Therapy.)  In addition to John’s many wonderful qualities as a mentor, there was the focus of the whole Palo Alto Group on language and communication. That heritage makes it easy for my research group to teach what we do to SFBT folks.  For example, you have the right focus on observable communication rather than on inferred mental processes.

Second, I admit that I am always attracted to good idea that is 180° from what everyone else is thinking.  The new idea has to be a good one as well as challenging assumptions that no one usually questions–then I’m interested.  That was true for the original Brief Therapy and is also true for SFBT.

The third reason is ethical. My personal ethics will not accept inventing negative characterizations of a client and imposing these labels on someone who is vulnerable.  I say “inventing” because there is usually no basis except the opinion of someone in authority. For example, diagnosis usually categorizes an individual based on a single highly limited observation, with no objective check or recheck. The individual arrives at a consultation with one problem and leaves with at least two! More broadly, clinical theories of  personality, cognition, emotion, or brain processes almost always indulge in circular reasoning.  For example,
Continue reading…

Tags: Change, dialogue, empiricism, experimental psychology, face-to-face interaction, Janet Beavin Bavelas, microanalysis, pragmatics of human communication, research, SF theory, SFBT, SFBTA, Solution Focus

We have the pleasure to publish an interview with Coert Visser, Dutch Psychologist, author and expert on the Solution-Focused approach. His blog has become over the years a trusted source of reference regarding cutting-edge Psychological research which is relevant to Solution-Focused practitioners, coaches and consultants.

So I was very excited to have the opportunity to pick his brain regarding matters we both care a lot about. Here is the interview:

Q: Can you briefly tell us how you got interested in the solution-focused approach?

A: Before I heard about the solution-focused approach I was working as an associate director at a very large international consultancy firm. I felt a certain dissatisfaction with my work which I did not fully understand. Somehow, I decided to reflect carefully and came up with the question: when did I really feel gratified with my work? When thought about this deeply I discovered to my great surprise that the four or five situations of gratification which I had identified were rather strange cases. They were situations in which I had worked with clients and in which I had worked quite differently from what was normal for the firm and for myself. Yet, the clients had been very satisfied.

All of these cases had a few things in common. First, I had asked many questions; in particular variations on the questions: “What do you want to achieve?” and “Why do you want to achieve that?” Second, instead of providing standardized prescriptions for solutions I thought along with clients and really tried to understand them. And I improvised. I was very confused when I found this out. A few days later I was talking about this with a colleague manager and shared my discovery: “I have found I am most successful in my work for clients when I am asking questions.” He replied: “I understand. But I don’t think clients will pay money for questions. We’re in the business of providing answers.”

Continue reading…

Tags: Coert Visser, Growth Mindset, Interview, Psychology, research, Self-determination theory, Solution Focus, What works

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard – by Chip & Dan Heath

Not all change is difficult.

We change all the time, voluntarily, in many different ways – we get married, we start a family, we take up a new job or a new role, we change ideas…

just think of much you changed in the last 10 years!

Based on this insight, the question is: what are the characteristics of successful change?

Chip and Dan Heath set out on a quest to find what works to make change easier, at any scale – individual, organizational, societal.

And in doing so they dispel 3 big myths about change: that some people are just hard to change, it is in their nature; that people are lazy, and that is why they do not change; that there is a “resistance” to change.

To illustrate their findings, the authors borrow Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor of the Elephant and the Rider: the conscious, analytical part of ourselves is like a rider perched on top of an elephant, the adaptive unconscious.

The rider has the ability to plan, to analyze, to make rational choices – but it also has the tendency to spin its wheels and over-analyze, and it stands no chance guiding the elephant with brute force, at least not in the long run.

The elephant gives us drive and power, but it is easily distracted by short term rewards.

The authors use this simple metaphor as a framework to make sense of some useful strategies for change, based on research and illustrated with vivid, “sticky” stories – these strategies are grouped in 3 sections:  how to “direct the rider”, how to “engage the elephant” and how to “shape the path”.

I am a Solution-Focused practitioner, so I was very happy to see Solution-Focused Brief Therapy featured in this book. It appears, together with Appreciative Inquiry, in the section about Directing the Rider, in the chapter “Find the Bright Spots”.

As the authors themselves point out, an effective approach to change involves all 3 dimensions (rider, elephant, path), and sometimes this distinction is pretty fuzzy.

I believe Solution-Focus interviewing protocols to be a case in point:

- when we, as Solution-Focused practitioners, ask exception-finding questions, we “find the bright spots” (chapter one)

- when we, as Solution-Focused practitioners,  ask for concrete, behavioral details about what works, we help clients “script the critical moves” (chapter two)

- when we, as Solution-Focused practitioners, ask the Miracle Question, we “point [the rider] to the destination” (chapter 3) and we also help the elephant “find the feeling” (chapter 4)

- when we, as Solution-Focused practitioners, ask “what would be the smallest sign that…” we “shrink the change” (chapter 5)

- and since all the questions in the Solution-Focused therapy or coaching protocols are interactional, i.e. are aimed at focusing the client’s attention on the situation, we do help in “shaping the path“.

The more I practice Solution-Focus, the more I am impressed by how effective it is.

Yet, despite the empirical nature of the work that led to the creation of Solution-focused interviewing protocols and despite the research supporting it,  people have a hard time believing it can work. And that is because of ingrained assumptions about change. The authors did an excellent job in showing that there is a different way to think about change. And for that, I am very grateful to Chip and Dan Heath.

Tags: Change, Chip and Dan Heath, Elephant, Haidt, Rider, Solution Focus, Switch

Here are 3 books that I think all SF practitioners should read.

Study them, and you will be well-grounded in the practice and theory of SF.

INTERVIEWING FOR SOLUTIONS by Peter De Jong & Insoo Kim Berg

The Bible. All you need to know about how to lead a Solution-Focused conversation.

COACHING PLAIN & SIMPLE by Peter Szabo, Daniel Meier, Kirsten Dierolf

The Essence. Solution-Focused Brief Coaching in all its stunning elegant simplicity.

Solution Focus: the SIMPLE way to Positive Change by Paul Z. Jackson & Mark McKergow

The consulting companion: the SF approach let loose in the business world.

Tags: coaching books, SF, Solution Focus, Solution-Focused Brief Coaching