Supporting Clients’ Solution Building Process by Subtly Eliciting Positive Behaviour Descriptions and Expectations of Beneficial Change

Visser, C.F. & Schlundt Bodien, G. (2009). Supporting Clients’ Solution Building Process by Subtly Eliciting Positive Behaviour Descriptions and Expectations of Beneficial Change. InterAction I (2), 9-25

SF co-developer Steve de Shazer wrote, in his classic publications Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy (1985) and Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy (1988), that SF practitioners should help their clients create an expectation of beneficial change by getting a description of what they would do differently once the problem was solved. Also, he claimed subtle and implicit interventions by the SF practitioner would work best. At the time, de Shazer did not support these claims with empirical evidence. This article provides evidence for each of the assertions made by de Shazer. Only part of the evidence presented here was already available at the time of de Shazer’s writing. Evidence is discussed from diverse lines of research like Rosenthal’s Pygmalion studies, Dweck’s research on self-theories, Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory, research on Winograd’s prospective memory, Jeannerod’s research on the perception-action link, Wilson’s research on brief attributional interventions, research on Brehm’s reactance theory, and Bargh’s research on priming. The article closes with some reflections on what these research findings imply for SF theory and practice.

Full article: Supporting Clients’ Solution Building Process by Subtly Eliciting Positive Behaviour Descriptions and Expectations of Beneficial Change

Improving language, improving life

© 2008, Coert Visser

Effective use of language can be surprisingly powerful. Not only can effective language help to improve cooperation with other people, it also can help you develop a more productive outlook on life. The purpose of this article is to help you make your language more constructive and effective. Many of the suggestions in this article are based on recent findings in psychological research and on techniques which have been developed by solution-focused practitioners and researchers.

1. Improve your questions
Asking questions is an important characteristic of the solution-focused approach. Rather than telling clients how to think and what to do, a solution-focused therapist, coach or consultant asks questions which help the client develop goals and find solutions. Examples of useful questions are scaling questions (de Shazer, 1986), desired situation questions, exception seeking questions (Molnar & De Shazer, 1987), what’s better’ questions (de Shazer, 1986) and coping questions (Lipchik, 1988). Asking, rather than telling, potentially has the effect of activating the other person. This does not only work in the context of helping (like in therapy, coaching and consulting) but also in management and organizational development. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google said in an interview: “We run the company by questions, not by answers” (Caplan, 2006). Marilee Adams (2004), author of Change your questions, change your life, said: "Great results begin with great questions.

2. Improve language fitIn solution-focused coaching, an important aspect in communicating with the client is to use the language of the client. Paul Watzlawick discovered that, in helping clients, working with the concepts of the client is much more powerful that using professional jargon (Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch, 1974). When you, as a coach, replace a word of the client by a professional term, this usually works contrarily because the client may feel correct of misunderstood. Solution-focused coaches join their clients as much as possible by using their language, both in their summaries and in their questions. This skill of solution-focused coaches is called language matching. It requires the coach to listen attentively and has several advantages. A first advantage is that the coachee notices that the coach is very attentive which helps to make him feel taken seriously. A second advantage is that the coachee notices that the coach understands and accepts what he has brought forward. This gives the coachee a feeling of security and trust. A third advantage is that language matching helps the conversation to proceed fluently. This is because the coachee does not have to correct the coach and no time is lost on discussing the precise definitions of terms. Steve de Shazer, co-developer of the solution-focused approach, was very skillful in matching his language with that of his clients. Often, in his questions, he used several words taken from the last sentence of the client.

Dutch researchers Van Baaren, Holland, Steenaert and Van Knippenberg wrote the article 'Mimicry for money: Behavioral consequences of imitation' (2003). This article provides interesting empirical support for the value of language matching. Here is a summary of the article: "Two experiments investigated the idea that mimicry leads to pro-social behavior. It was hypothesized that mimicking the verbal behavior of customers would increase the size of tips. In Experiment 1, a waitress either mimicked half her customers by literally repeating their order or did not mimic her customers. It was found that she received significantly larger tips when she mimicked her customers than when she did not. In Experiment 2, in addition to a mimicry- and non-mimicry condition, a baseline condition was included in which the average tip was assessed prior to the experiment. The results indicated that, compared to the baseline, mimicry leads to larger tips. These results demonstrate that mimicry can be advantageous for the imitator because it can make people more generous."

This sheds an interesting light on the importance of using the words of the client. An important aspect of the advantage of using the clients' words is that it helps the client to like the coach much more. It improves the relationship between the two. And this, as has been shown before, is an important factor of the effectiveness of coaching and therapy.

3. Improve language wisdom
Is there any truth to the stereotype that elderly people tend to be grumpier than young people? Do people become more negative and complain more as they grow older?

James Pennebaker and his colleagues have been doing studies in which they have tried to learn about mental health by counting the use of certain categories of words by people. Research by James Pennebaker and Lori Stone (2003) showed how the use of language develops when we get older. Do we use more or less negative terms and positive terms as we get older? Pennebaker and Stone analyzed texts of people at different ages. They counted the use of positive and negative terms. In addition to this they analyzed the extent to which people used future-tense and past-tense verbs at different ages. Did they find that people talked more in negative terms and use more past-tense verbs? On the contrary! This is what they found: "With increasing age, individuals use more positive and fewer negative affect words, use fewer self references, use more future-tense and fewer past-tense verbs, and demonstrate a general pattern of increasing cognitive complexity." Reading this, you may think that this is due to the prosperity of our modern times in which older people are better taken care of than in past centuries... but no! Pennebaker and Stone also analyzed texts by authors like Shakespeare, Eliot and Yeats that they had written at different ages. They found exactly the same conclusions: the older, the more positive and future-oriented. So, the older we get, the more solution-focused our language seems to get.... Not bad!

Dutch psychologist Sitskoorn (2008) writes more about the positivity of older people. She explains that as people grow older they usually get more skillful at positive emotion regulation. This means that, as we get older, we tend to focus more on positive information and ignore negative information (with the exception of information about threats). Because older people are, on average, better at positive emotion regulation they feel offended less easily, their negative moods last briefer, they will be less inclined to yell or call people names, they remember positive things more easily and are less impressed by negative events. Not everything gets worse with aging. Some things do get more and better.

Here is a quote from a New York Times article on the research by Pennebaker and his colleagues (Wapner, 2008): "Dr. Pennebaker, a pioneer in the field of therapeutic writing, asked a group of people recovering from serious illness or other trauma to engage in a series of writing exercises. The word tallies showed that those whose health was improving tended to decrease their use of first-person pronouns through the course of the study. Health improvements were also seen among people whose use of causal words — because, cause, effect — increased. Simply ruminating about an experience without trying to understand the causes is less likely to lead to psychological growth, he explained; the subjects who used causal words “were changing the way they were thinking about things.”

So this knowledge could be used for diagnostical purposes. But could it work the other way around, too? In other words, can we improve our mental health (and that of our students, children, etc.) by deliberately decreasing some and increasing other words in our (/their) language? Good mental health seems to be associated with a limited use of first-person pronouns, and with a relatively high use of causal words (because, cause, effect).

4. Improve your NoWe are confronted with so much information and so many suggestions and demands that we simply cannot function well without being able to say No. But saying No is hard. If we do it ineffectively, other people may feel offended or rejected or they may view your No as arrogant or uncooperative. So developing the skill of saying No constructively and gracefully is very worthwhile. William Ury, author of The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes, describes how this can be done. He presents the simple sequence of YES!-NO-YES? The first step is to root your No in an underlying yes. What is you good reason to say No now. What positive value, interest, intention is behind that No. Ury claims that if you first express your underlying yes, your No will be understood and accepted much easier. After your YES and No have been delivered, you may come up with a YES? , which is an invitation to an alternative solution.

5. Improve healing languageGreek philosopher Aeschylus once said: "Words are the physicians of a mind diseased". And this is true. Several types of language use can have downright healing effects. For instance, take the technique of normalizing. Normalizing is used to depathologize people’s concerns and present them instead as normal life difficulties. It helps people to calm down about their problem. It helps them realize they're not abnormal for having this problem. Another example of such a technique is reframing. Reframing is a technique which places what has happened or what has been said in a positive light (for instance assuming a positive intention or pointing at a positive effect). Yet another technique is mutualizing. Ziegler and Hiller (2001) give an example of mutualizing in a mediation case: "If one parent says: 'I want the child living with me full time because that's what's best for my daughter. And the other says: ''I want our daughter living with me half time and half time with you because that would be best for her.' Then I would say, 'It's pretty clear to me that both of you want to develop a plan that will be best for your daughter--you disagree at this point about what plan would be best but you share the common goal of making the best plan for her. Can we all agree about that?" Instead of emphasizing the different positions and goals the solution-focused practitioner mutualizes the preferred future.

Finally, there is the technique of Creating an expectation of positive change. Steve de Shazer (1985) claimed that change was inevitable and he more and more began to use interventions that were based on this assumption. By asking questions that implied that change was certainly going to happen, the therapist contributed to the client’s trust that the change was actually going to happen. An example of such a question is: “How will you know things will be better?’ This formulation implies that change is going to happen more than this formulation: “How would you know things would be better?” The latter formulation is more conditional, it leaves open whether the change is going to happen or not.

6. Improve your compliments
Compliments can be great tools. Complimenting can be useful. An adequate compliment provides us with the type of feedback that can help us become aware of which of our behaviors are effective. Furthermore, a compliment can make you realize that there is someone who is paying attention to you and who feels involved with what you do. This is why complimenting effectively can be useful in different contexts like parenting, education, management and co-operation. If you want to compliment, be sincere and specific and focus your compliment on something you know is important to the other person. Focus your compliment of behavior instead of on presumed fixed traits (like intelligence) of the person. Use affirmative questions so that the other person gets activated and will reflect on his or her own behavior.

More and more, it becomes clear that improving your language is an excellent way of improving the quality of your life.


References
Adams, M. (2004). Change your questions, change your life – 7 powerful tools for life and work. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA.

Baaren, R.B. van, Holland, R.W., Steenaert, B. & Knippenberg, A. van (2003). Mimicry for money: Behavioral consequences of imitation. Psychological Science 15 (1) , 71–74.

Caplan, J. (2006). Google’s Chief Looks Ahead. www.time.com.

de Shazer, 1986. An indirect approach to brief therapy. In S. de Shazer & R. Kral (Eds) Indirect Approaches in Therapy.

de Shazer, S. & Molnar, A. (1984) Four useful interventions in brief family therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, v10 n3 297-304.

de Shazer, S. (1985). Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy. New York, NY: W W Norton & Company.

Lipchik, E. (1988). Purposeful sequences for beginning the solution-focused interview. In: Lipchik, E. (ed) Interviewing. Aspen, Rockville.

Pennebaker, J. & Stone, L.D. (2003). Words of Wisdom: Language Use Over the Life Span. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, Vol. 85, No. 2, 291–301

Sitzkoorn, M. (2008). Lang leven de hersenen. Uitgeverij Bert Bakker.

Ury, W. (2007). The Power of a Positive No. Save The Deal Save The Relationship and Still Say No. Bantam

Wapner, J. (2008). He Counts Your Words (Even Those Pronouns). New York Times, October 13.

Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. New York: Norton.

Zeigler, P. & Hiller, T. (2001). Recreating Partnership: A Solution-Oriented, Collaborative Approach to Couples Therapy. W. W. Norton & Company.

Learning to compliment effectively

© 2008, Coert Visser

1. Advocates and skeptics of complimenting

Complimenting is attractive for many people. Most people prefer to and view it as more constructive to say something positive than to say something negative. After all, who does not want to be appreciated for what he does? Although everybody makes mistakes now and then, most people mean well, don't they? This way of reasoning is surely plausible which may explain why I frequently hear people saying that is good and important to compliment frequently. They claim that this is the best way to motivate people. It is correct that complimenting can be useful. An adequate compliment provides us with the type of feedback that can help us become aware of which of our behaviors are effective. Furthermore, a compliment can make you realize that there is someone who is paying attention to you and who feels involved with what you do. This is why complimenting effectively can be useful in different contexts like parenting, education, management and co-operation.

But is complimenting really always so pleasant and motivating? There are also people who are skeptical about the use and value of complimenting. Some say that they often see compliments as insincere and exaggerated as if it were some kind of trick. Others say they often get suspicious when they are complimented ("What does he want from me?"). Still others say they don't like to be complimented because it gives them the impression that the other person looks down on them (“Who does he think he is to judge me?).

What's the deal with compliments? Are the advocates right or the skeptics? My answer is that both the advocates and the skeptics are right. Complimenting can be valuable but only in certain circumstances and when done skilfully. In those cases the advantages can be achieved while negative side effects can be prevented. Below I will first explain some negative consequences which can occur when complimenting is done ineffectively. Then I will give some practical suggestions for complimenting effectively.

2. Possible disadvantageous effects of compliments

Alfie Kohn once wrote the remarkable book Punished by Rewards (Kohn, 1993). In this book, the author shows that using rewards to get something done from people is often ineffective and even harmful. One chapter of this book is dedicated completely to what Kohn calls: The praise problem. He sums up ways in which praising people can be detrimental to people's performance.

One example of damage cause by compliments can occur when you compliment someone for having accomplished a simple task. This can give this person the feeling that little is expected of him or her ("apparently this is all that is expected of me...."). As a second example Kohn explains how complimenting can lead to less persistence and concentration. He speaks of praise paralysis with which he means that telling someone how good he is can lead to stress and performance anxiety. A next example of the negative effects of praise is that it can make the praised person risk aversive. The last example Kohn mentions is that compliments of undermines the intrinsic motivation which inspires people do their best.

A special situation in which compliments can do harm is described by Geoffrey Cohen and Claude Steel (2002). These American researchers describe how teachers teaching students from minority groups sometimes overpraise these students. Teachers who fear there are viewed as prejudiced may respond by avoiding to give any critical feedback and only giving praise, even when the performance of the student is low. This response undermines student learning because they miss important critical feedback (which they could have used to their advantage) and the praise for low performance may send the message that little more is expected from that particular student. Further, overpraise may be viewed as patronizing and even insulting.

3. Process compliments work better that trait compliments

In the book Improving Academic Achievement the American researcher Carol Dweck has written a chapter titles Messages that motivate. In this chapter she explains the importance of beliefs about intelligence. Carol Dweck describes two mindsets: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Children who hold a fixed mindset see intelligence as a more or less fixed trait: you have a certain amount and there is not much you can do to change it. Children who hold a growth mindset see intelligence as developable. They view achievement mainly as a matter of effort. Carol Dweck has shown convincingly through many elegant experiments that which mindset you hold, has a dramatic impact on achievement. The table below summarizes the differences between the fixed and the growth mindset:

Clearly, the growth mindset is more attractive in many ways. The chapter gets even more interesting when Dweck goes on to a practical level. How can educators and parents help children develop a growth mindset? In particular, what is the role of praise? Two forms of praise are compared: process praise and trait praise. With process praise you compliment the child with his or her effort or strategy ("You must have worked hard", or: "You must have used a good strategy to solve this"). With trait praise you compliment the child for a trait, some kind of fixed internal quality ("You have done well, you must be very smart."). The table below shows the different impacts these two styles of praising children have.

4. Practical tips for complimenting effectively

The research by Carol Dweck shows that complimenting about trait can have harmful consequences. These don't occur with process compliments. Alfie Kohn (1993) provides four practical suggestions that fit well with Dweck's findings and that limit possible damaging effects of praise:

1. Don't praise people, only, what they do
2. Make praise as specific as possible
3. Avoid phony praise
4. Avoid praise that sets up competition

From the solution-focused approach some additional suggestions can be deduced:

1. Compliment only on things which are important to the other person. When using the solution-focused approach you don't just compliment about everything. Compliments have a specific function. They are pointers to solutions (Jackson and McKergow, 2002). Any compliments you make are focused on behaviors which seem to be related to progress in the direction of the desired situation.
2. Use the ABC of compliments (source: http://www.gingerich.net/). A- Accurate: The compliment has to accurately refer to what has happened and what the person has done. B – Believable: The compliment should not be an exaggeration but realistic. C – Constructive: The compliment should refer to what the person wants to achieve and be useful for making progress.
3. Compliment with questions. Instead of complimenting directly (for example: “Well done!") you can also compliment indirectly. This means that you invite the other through a question to describe what was good about what he or she has done and what has worked well. An example of an indirect compliment is: “Wow, how did you manage to finish that task so quickly?"). I like to call such kinds of questions affirmative questions. It is also possible to include the perspective of other people in compliments. An example may be: “What do your colleagues appreciate in how you work?” An advantage of complimenting through questions is that you activate the other person. Also, there is less chance that he or she will feel embarrassed or will turn down the compliment ("It was nothing special"). Instead you challenge the other person and make him or her reflect (“Actually, how did I do that.... let's see.....?”).

5. Summary and invitation
A brief summary of the suggestions provided here is: if you want to compliment be sincere and specific and focus your compliment on something you know is important to the other person. Focus your compliment of behavior instead of on presumed fixed traits (like intelligence) of the person. Use affirmative questions so that the other person gets activated and will reflect on his or her own behavior.

My invitation is to try these suggestions. You are welcome to share your experiences.

References

1. Cohen, G. L., & Steele, C. M. (2002). A barrier of mistrust: How negative stereotypes affect cross-race mentoring. In J. Aronson (Ed.), Improving academic achievement: Impact of psychological factors on education (pp. 303-328). San Diego: Academic Press.
2. Dweck, C. (2002). Messages that motivate: How praise molds students’ beliefs, motivation, and performance (in surprising ways). In Aronson, J. (Ed.), Improving academic achievement: Impact of psychological factors on education (pp. 37-60). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
3. Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset, the new psychology of success. Random House.
4. Kohn, A. 1993. Punished by Rewards: the Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's. Praise and Other Bribe. s. New York: Houghton Mifflin
5. Jackson, P.& McKergow, M. (2002). The Solutions Focus, the SIMPLE way to positive change. Nicolas Brealy Publishing

The Origin of the Solution-Focused Approach

The Origin of the Solution-Focused Approach
Coert F. Visser

Abstract: The solution-focused approach to therapy and coaching has its roots in the work done by therapists in the second half of the twentieth century. This article discusses some important precursors, such as Milton Erickson and the Mental Research Institute. Further, it shows how the members of the Brief Family Therapy Center, led by Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer, developed the core of the solution-focused approach in the 1980s. Key concepts and publications are discussed and a description is given of how the team members worked together closely to find out what works in therapy.

Keywords solution-focused, BFTC, solution-focused history, de Shazer, Berg

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Moving FORWARD with solution-focused change

A results-oriented and appreciative way of making progress

© 2007, Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien

The solution-focused approach

Just before the turn of the millennium, a relatively new approach to psychotherapy began to raise curiosity among some organizational consultants, coaches, and trainers. Articles and books claimed this approach to be quite different from other approaches. They claimed it was simple, positive, and amazingly effective. Around that time, several groups of people in different parts of the world started using the approach in organizational settings. Now, roughly ten years later, these pioneers have made considerable progress. They discovered the solution-focused model is also very useful outside the field of therapy. Coaches, trainers, consultants, and managers have started to apply the approach, or parts of it. This has helped them to be more effective in achieving their goals. Moreover, often, at the same time, it has made their work more enjoyable.

Below follows a description of the solution-focused approach to change. We developed a simple and, hopefully, sticky acronym, FORWARD, to make it easier for you to start applying and to remember the main ingredients of the solution-focused model. Next, some examples will follow on how to apply the solution-focused model in the workplace. We will end the article with possible ways forward.

What is solution-focused change?

Many authors describe the solution-focused approach as a process in which practitioners invite their clients to envision their preferred future. Next, they start asking questions about the clients’ strengths and resources, and about things that have already gone well and then they invite them to take small steps forward. Often in this process, they use techniques like scaling, the miracle question, exception finding questions and coping questions.

The FORWARD-model

A new and different way of explaining the solution-focused approach is through the FORWARD acronym. The letters FORWARD stand for:

Below follows a brief description of each step:

1. Focus on what you want to be different

The first step in the solution-focused change process is usually to focus on what you want to change and why you want to change that. There may be two kinds of desire for change: 1) there is something negative you want to get rid of (a problem) and 2) there is something positive you want more of (an unfulfilled aspiration). In this first step of the solution-focused change process, you ask questions like:

1. What would you like to be different?
2. What is it you want to change?
3. What is the reason you want things to be different?
4. How is the current situation bothering you?

A remarkable aspect of the solution-focused approach is that you skip problem analysis and diagnosis. Analyzing why the problem exists and who is responsible for causing the problems are not part of the approach (read more). Instead, you take the shortest route to the desired outcomes.

2. Outcomes desired are made specific

Next, you focus your attention on specifying how you want things to be. In other words, what should be the concrete positive results of the change process? An important precondition of making any change process succeed is to know specifically what you want to achieve (read more). When people start formulating how they want things to be different, they often become excited and hopeful. By focusing on specific positive goals, the change process has actually begun. In this step, you ask questions like the following:

1. How would you like things to be different?
2. What do you want to achieve?
3. What will be different when the change has succeeded?
4. What will you do differently?
5. How will others notice things have become better?
6. What advantages will this have?

3. Describe results already realized

The third step is often to look specifically at what is already there. It is like looking at the glass as half full. This often has the following strong positive effects: 1) people involved find new energy and hope (read more). People tend to overlook what has already been achieved. When they rediscover what is already working well, they often become more optimistic and hopeful, 2) they find some practical ideas to hold on to what works well and to make some progress. The following questions are associated with this step:

1. What is already going well?
2. Which results have already been achieved?
3. What helped?
4. What worked well before?

4. When did success already happen?

The following step is to identify specific situations in the past in which things have already gone better. This might involve: a) an exception to the problem: the current problem was less problematic, or b) an earlier success: the situation you want to achieve was already happening to some extent. When you have identified such a situation, you answer questions like:

1. What went right in this situation?
2. What was different in this situation?
3. What made possible for things to go better?
4. What was your own role in this success?

5. Action: one small step forward

Then, the attention shifts to taking action by looking at how earlier success is useful for the current situation. This is sometimes called building a bridge between successes in the past to success in the future. You focus on taking one small step forward instead of taking a big leap. Taking small steps has several advantages: 1) it is easy: the required energy, motivation, and trust are minimal, 2) it is safe: if it does not work not much will be lost, 3) it is encouraging: aiming for a small step implies something positive, namely that there is already a lot functioning well as it is, 4) there is a chance of positive snowball effects: the one small step approach has a surprising side effect: it may lead to a snowball effect: one small improvement may unexpectedly bring about more positive change (read more). Associated with this step are questions like:

1. How is what we talked about relevant for your current situation?
2. What small step forward could you take?
3. How would you notice that this small step would work?

6. Results achieved are monitored

After the small step forward has been taken you, focus your attention on what goes better. This purposeful improvement-focus helps you to notice positive changes, even small ones. Noticing that you are moving forward is supportive to making further change. First, is it encouraging to notice you are on the right way. Second, it provides you with a clear sense of what works so that it will become easier to take next steps forward. In this step, the following questions are answered:

1. What is going better?
2. What helped?
3. What did you specifically do that worked?
4. What else went better?
5. Etc.

7. Desire for further change is made explicit

A next step is to ask specifically what further change is desired. Doing this allows you check your motivation for further change and to adjust your goals, if necessary. The benefits of frequently asking what further change you want are threefold: 1) motivational: by remembering why you want things to be different you re-inject new motivation for change, 2) fine-tuning: it allows you to fine-tune your goals by taking into account new things that have happened, or new insights you may have gained, 3) efficiency: it keeps you from doing too much. The question may help you to realize that you have already done enough and that you don’t need to make further changes. Questions in this step may be:

1. What further change do you need?
2. When will you know you have made enough progress?
3. Use the FORWARD-model like a recipe

The FORWARD model is a descriptive model, not a prescriptive model. Its intention is to describe what happens during a solution-focused change process. Its purpose is to inspire you, not to confine you. The order in which to use these steps is not mandatory. You may also decide to leave out one or more steps when you apply the model. Think of the model as a recipe. You can freely apply these steps, add your own flavors, and experiment. Can you recognize in the case below how the FORWARD steps are taken?

Case: improving productivity

Charles wants to improve the productivity of his team because it has been far too low the last few months. The team is now performing on 49% productivity while the monthly target is 63%. Charles' short-term goal is to get back on target within three months. That way everybody will clearly see the team is back on the right track. It would mean more job security for everyone within the team. In addition, it would mean that the business unit manager would worry less about the team and get off Charles’ back more. It would also be good for Charles’ reputation. It would prove that he is able to turn a bad-performing team into a well-performing team. Charles thinks of how he has managed before to turn a lesser team performance into a better one. He had organized a team meeting in which he discussed all available information with his team and expressed his worry. He had asked the team to come up with ideas to improve the financial performance. In response to this, several good ideas were brought forward. Charles noticed that the team members made more appointments with customers and that sales increased quickly. Charles realizes that the following things worked well: informing the team fully, sharing his worries, and activating every team member to come up with improvements without telling them specifically what to do. Charles again arranges a team meeting and does the same things. This time too, it leads to a quick recovery of the financial performance. The solutions turned out to be already there within the team but they were not fully utilized. By the intervention Charles made they have become more available so that they could be used to improve the results.

Two meanings of FORWARD

For us, the acronym FORWARD has two meanings. The first meaning refers to the characteristics of the approach. The solution-focused approach enables you to focus constantly on helping people move forward in the desired direction. The second meaning of the word refers to how practitioners have made progress in understanding and applying the solution-focused approach in a wide variety of settings. A first field of application for many was in the context of personal coaching, a setting more or less comparable to psychotherapy.

Advantages of the solution-focused approach

When people start applying the solution-focused approach, it can be challenging. You have to learn new skills, mainly in asking helpful questions. In addition, you have to unlearn some things. You leave certain very familiar things out when you work solution-focused, like analyzing problems, finding out who is to blame, and looking primarily at what is not right. When you manage to learn these new skills, the advantages can be great. Some of the main advantages are:

1. The solution focused approach works as least as well as other approaches.
2. The approach can be very broadly applied. It turns out to be useful for dealing with a wide range of problems and goals.
3. It works much faster than many other approaches.
4. Clients are more satisfied with themselves and about the change process.
5. Practitioners who use the model to help others are more satisfied with their work.
6. New applications of the solution-focused model

These positive effects have encouraged many people to start using the solution-focused model in a broader context. Consultants applying it become more client-focused. They have learned how to help clients formulate their own goals and to find their own solutions by asking the right kinds of questions. They have noticed that clients have become more independent because they found out they could solve their own problems.

Solution-focused change in groups

‘Solutionists’ also began to apply the solution-focused model more and more in group situations. From the time it was invented, the solution-focused model had been applied in group situations, mainly in family therapy. Many people have now found that they can apply it in organizational group settings as well. All the steps in the FORWARD-model can be easily used in groups. You can use the model to formulate goals, to share what is going well, to identify steps forward, and so forth.

Solution-focused management

A particular challenge has been to make the solution-focused model available to managers. Many people were convinced right away that managers could use solution-focused techniques to help their employees. However, we wrestled for quite some time with the question about how to deal with situations in which employees are not performing well. The normal solution-focused steps are specifically aimed at helping people to make progress in the direction of their own choice. However, what should a manager do when an employee is not meeting minimal requirements or when the employee’s behavior is unacceptable because it is harmful to others or to the organization? We realized that in these situations the goals of the manager (and the organization) are the starting point for the conversation. These situations ask primarily for providing direction instead of helping. Thinking and experimenting more with these thoughts, we developed a tool, which we call the goals continuum. We developed ways in which the solution-focused appreciativeness and clarity can be used to direct people. We refer interested readers to this article to learn more about that model.

Further FORWARD

The solution-focused approach is not unique in the sense that it overlaps to some extent with positive change approaches like Appreciative Inquiry, the Positive Deviance initiative, Positive Psychology and Strengths-based management. Will all these approaches merge into one new approach? Or will they develop further more or less independently from each other? Who knows…? One thing seems certain, however. The solution-focused approach will not stay the same. It will develop further.

Insoo Kim Berg once answered the following question: “Do you see the solution-focused approach as a finished approach or do you think it will keep on developing and changing?” She started laughing and answered right away in a don’t-be-silly kind of way:

“Oh no, it’s not finished. For any model to stay alive it will need to constantly keep developing and renewing itself.” She smiled brightly and continued: “So, we need bright young people who will do that.”

We would like to invite you to join us in further developing the solution-focused approach by starting to try out some of the things mentioned in this article and by sharing your experiences. Together we may find small steps forward.

We dedicate this article to the memory of Insoo Kim Berg who taught us many things we use every day and who remains an example and inspiration to us.

The Not-Knowing Posture

© 2006, Coert Visser and Insoo Kim Berg

This article presents some thoughts about the not-knowing posture. Is it easy? Is it valuable? Is it ethical to charge money for your services while assuming a not-knowing posture? Does the not-knowing posture mean you have to completely discard expertise?

Many who are new to the Solution-Focused practice principles seem to get confused by the concept taking a “not-knowing” posture when facing their clients. The not-knowing posture (Anderson and Goolishian, 1992) means that as practitioners we work from the assumption that each case is different. Therefore we do not know exactly what the situation of the client is and what he should think or do. This is why in order to arrive at a more satisfying outcome, solution-focused practitioners ask lots of what seem like strange questions that activate their minds.

We did not realize for a long time that the “not-knowing posture” was creating some confusion among the newly learning therapists, coaches, consultants, trainers, educators and managers. Several questions are raised by confusion.

1. Does “not-knowing” imply that it’s easy and that anyone can do this work without training and a solid grasp of the philosophy behind it?
2. If we take a “not-knowing” posture, how can we ethically charge money for our services?
3. How can I prove to our clients how valuable my service is to them if I don’t know?
4. I went through years of education and post-graduate training in order to be an expert and now you are saying I should forget everything I learned?

These are some of the most pressing questions we have come across. Let’s have a look and each of these important questions.

Is it easy?

The phrase ‘not-knowing posture’ might suggest that this is very easy to do and that anyone can do this without much effort. Quite the opposite is true. Taking a not-knowing posture is much more difficult than it might seem, because it seems counter-intuitive at first glance. Both as professionals and human beings we have all kinds of experiences, views and opinions. Actively setting these ideas, knowledge, and skills aside by assuming a “not-knowing” posture is demanding and requires great discipline. Furthermore, applying the solution-building model is a specific expertise in itself. We are not expert in knowing what caused the client’s problem and what he or she should do to solve it. Instead, we are experts on “solution-building conversation,” a process by which clients discover their own most effective ways of achieving their goals. Again, this is not easy: It requires both attention and skills that are quire different from problem analysis.

Is it ethical to charge money for it?

The mere fact that taking a “not-knowing posture” is hard, is not enough justification in itself to charge money for it. Taking a not-knowing posture engages clients in their own solution-building process, thus reading his/her goals much quicker, and with confidence. There is an important difference between telling clients what they should do and helping them to find out for themselves what they should do, instead, clients discover what works for them. Traditional tell-sell approaches to coaching and consultancy are wide-spread but can be problematic. Clients might wonder whether the solution offered by the expert will work in his specific situation. Also, they may wonder whether they will be able to execute the solution effectively without spending additional time and expense. Since the solution-focused approach builds on what has already worked for clients it will therefore not create resistance but energy and confidence. This is probably the main reason why the solution-focused approach works well and efficiently (Gingerich & Eisenhart, 2000; Visser & Butter, 2006). This efficiency and effectiveness adds value for the client.

How will clients accept the not-knowing posture?

Taking a not-knowing posture is demanding and valuable but how will clients be able to recognize and understand this? After all, clients may expect you as a consultant, coach or therapist to tell them what to do and think. So, what will they think of you when you will instead start asking a lot of questions? From our careful observations of client response to our thoughtful questions many clients report how our questions are because they help them to form goals and discover strengths, they usually find this very helpful. There is nothing like a personal experience to discover the benefits of the “not-knowing” posture as be activated and energized to make further progress.

For example, a colleague of ours, Steve Langer was interviewed for a job as a consultant for a prison population. The Director of the prison who interviewed him asked him many questions, and Steve found himself describing what he might do as a consultant to difficult prisoners who are hostile, angry, and uncooperative. Instead of continuing to explain to the Director, he said to the director, he knows his prison population very well and would he mind playing one of the difficult prison that Steve might work with. The Director took on the challenge and played a very tough prisoner who was causing a great deal of difficulty for the staff. Of course Steve used all the solution-building practices and took the “not-knowing” posture and asked many questions. The Director was so impressed with Steve that he got hired immediately on the spot.

Some clients may be confused, however. After all, they may have some experiences with other professionals which use a quite different approach. Sometimes it may be helpful to explain it. A manager who was talking with her coach, suddenly smiled and asked: “You do ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” The coach replied: “That’s right, it helps me to understand your situation better.” The manager responded: “Okay, I did not quite expect that but I think it’s very useful.” On another occasion a client explicitly asked for tips from his coach. The coach replied by answering: “Alright, I will give you some tips. Is it alright if I first ask some questions so that I can focus my tips on your specific situation?” The client said: “Of course, you first need to know more about my situation, I understand. I can see that you are very careful with your suggestions, and I like that.”

What about my expertise?

The not-knowing posture does not mean that you know nothing and that you have no expertise. Being able to conduct a solution-focused conversation requires expertise in itself, in addition to others you have, and keep all the other skills you have acquired over the years and continue to learn. While continuing to engage in solution-building conversations, you take a “not-knowing” posture and you postpone your judgments for a while and approach the client’s situation with great curiosity. Many experienced practitioners find time and again that their curiosity has been more than rewarded. One reason for this is that the client will feel he’s taken very seriously and respect for their own expertise. Another reason is that it will create a conversation in which client and solution-focused practitioner will be able to find tailor-made solutions that will fit perfectly to the situation.

We are not alone in arguing for a not-knowing posture when helping clients. Peter Drucker, the famous management guru, once said: “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions."

References

1. Anderson, H. (1990) Then and now: From knowing to not-knowing. Contemporary Family Therapy Journal. 12:193-198.


2. Anderson, H. & Goolishian, H. (1992) The client is the expert: A not-knowing approach to therapy. In. S. McNamee & K. Gergen (Eds.). Social Construction and the Therapeutic Process. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.


3. Berg, I.K. & Dolan, Y. (2001). Tales of Solutions. WW. Norton & Company, Inc., New York


4. Gingerich WJ, Eisengart S: Solution-focused brief therapy: A review of the outcome research. Family Process 39:477-498, 2000


5. Visser, C.F. & Butter, R. (2006). What works in coaching and consultancy? www.m-cc.nl/solution-focusedchange.htm

Circles of Change

© 2005, Arnoud Huibers and Coert Visser

The solution-focused approach has brought forward a simple technique which can help to make meetings about organizational change stimulating and effective.

Organizational change
Organizations, departments, and people in organizations work are practically permanently going through large and small changes. Those changes can encompass structural aspects like a change in the business process, merging departments, implementing systems, or changes in the management structure. They can also be about cultural changes like improving customer satisfaction, improving co-operation, raising productivity, and so forth.

Talking about progress
In large-scale change projects, it is very important to keep communicating about the goals of and the progress in the change process. Our observation is that meetings about organizational change often focus on two topics: 1) what goes wrong? and 2) What will we do about that? When people focus attention on these two questions, the result often disappoints. Participants in the meeting can get discouraged of everything that goes wrong and everything that has yet to be done.

The circle technique
The solution-focused approach to change has brought forward a technique that often helps to make meetings about organizational change simulating: the circle technique. It works like this. The facilitator of the meeting draws two circles on a large board or sheet, an inner circle, and an outer circle. In the inner circle, he writes down everything that has already been achieved and in the outer circle, he writes down what has yet to be achieved. It is also useful to divide the circle in two parts. Topics that refer to the department are written on the left side; topics that refer to the whole organization are written down on the right side (see figure 1).

Way of working
You can apply the circle technique quite broadly and flexibly. You can use it in one-on-one situations, in small groups and in large groups. When applied in small groups a serial approach often works well. The process facilitator asks one person after the other which results have already been achieved and which things have yet to be achieved. In larger groups, a parallel approach might work better. All participants can mention examples of achievements and goals. Splitting up the group into subgroups might also work well. Each subgroup is asked to draw their won circles and write down achievements and goals. Of course, after that, these subgroup circles can be discussed and integrated.

Positive terms
The circle technique works best when the words in the circles are phrased as concrete and positive as possible. In finding the most constructive words, the facilitator plays a crucial role. When participants at first phrase a goal in terms of a complaint (“the managers never gives us feedback”) the facilitator may help them to rephrase this complaint into a goal (“helpful management feedback”). De complaint is rephrased in terms of the presence of something positive instead of in terms of the absence of something.

A department manager did the circle exercise together with his team and came to the following achievements and goals (figure 2).

GoalsWhen the circles are filled, the facilitator focuses on the outer circle. First, he asks participants to prioritize the goals mentioned. Often it is wise to limit the number of goals to two or three. Then some attention may be paid to how the goals may be achieved. For this, the scaling technique may be used. More information about this technique can be found here.

AdvantagesUsing the circle technique has several advantages. First, it is very simple and goal oriented. It forces people to focus on the essence: making progress in the desired direction. Secondly, we often notice how participants in meetings are positively surprised by what everything that has already been achieved. This strengthens their confidence, pride and faith. Thirdly, it is very pleasant that people leave the room with some very concrete goals.

Using the circle technique can provide a useful impulse in the change process. We hope you like it and try it out. When you try it, do let us know how it worked!

Five Tips for Sustaining Change

© 2005, Coert Visser

Change processes can sometimes stagnate and old problems can turn up again. Often this leads to disappointwiment and pessimism. But in many cases the change process can be revitalized by very simple means. The five tips mentioned in this article have time and again proven their usefulness.

A department was trying to implement a culture change in which more discipline and sticking better to agreements were important goals. The change process had started and had at first led to promising results. After about one and a half year, it became obvious that the change process was no longer proceeding well. Several old problems reappeared and there were no clear signs of progress.

With long lasting change processes in organizations managers sometimes worry about the possibility that at a certain moment stagnation or a set-back might happen. After a promising start the change process can lose its momentum. The energy disappears, the progress in the direction of the goal seems to be gone, people seem to go back to business as usual, old problems come back, and cynicism about the desired change turns up. To worry about these things is understandable because it is not uncommon that periods of stagnation and set-backs happen in change programs. The solution-focused approach to organizational change offers some practical tips for managers to deal with these phenomena.

Tip 1: Don’t focus on stagnation when it is not yet a problem
Many change managers begin to warn about stagnation, set-backs, and cynicism when it is not yet happening. But by doing this they focus the attention on something that does not necessarily have to occur. People involved in the change process could become pessimistic through such warnings or they could get discouraged. They can even feel they are being underestimated. Talking about stagnation that might occur could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But major stagnation and set-backs certainly do not always happen! Solution-focused change practitioners use the principle:

“If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”.

They don’t try to solve problems of stagnation and set-backs in advance but only when they occur, if they occur at all…

Tip 2: Look for signs that indicate that change will be maintainedSometimes people think it is important to take measure to prevent stagnation and set-backs. If youti decide to do that the way you do it is important. Steve De Shazer, the solution-focused pioneer from Milwaukee, says:

“People are trained to look for signs of a set-back. But we train people to look for signs that indicate that with this change there will be no set-back.”

By focusing attention on signs that the change will continue the people involved will get a better sight on the factors that help the change so that they can use these. The question of De Shazer is an example of question which is often used in the solution-focused approach: what reasons for optimism do you see? This type of question often works very well because it strengthens optimism and the confidence needed for change.

Tip 3: Normalize it when it happensWhen stagnation and set-backs happen it is often useful to apply the technique of normalizing. This means that you help people to see that what happens is normal. This helps to keep people from getting discouraged and losing confidence in the feasibility of the change. One manager applies normalizing by making a comparison with the stock market.

“If you look at stock price bdevelopment from a distance you see a steadily growing line. But if you look closer you see many fluctuations, some large some small. It is like that with organizational change. Overall it goes up but from day to day there may be set-backs and disappointments, sometimes small, sometimes larger. That is only normal. This is why every now and then you have to take a step back in order to keep sight on the steadily growing line that you can only see when looking from a distance.”

Tip 4: Focus on what has been achieved so farAt moments when things don’t seem to go well in a change process it is often useful to focus closely on what has been achieved, how that was done and what advantages it has brought. By doing this people usually come to realize that more things have gone right than they had thought and they usually find new confidence, optimism and focus. Furthermore, they find new ideas to get the change going again and to start making progress.

Tip 5: Apply again what worked beforeWhen a set-back happens people can sometimes wonder how to progress forward. But there is a simple answer that is often very useful. Many times, set-backs are caused by attention slipping away and by forgetting to apply effective solutions. In many cases we see that simply starting to apply again what has worked before will bring new life to the change process. This is similar to the Rose of Jericho.

The Rose of Jericho is a plant from the desert of Mexico. When it does not get water it dries out and becomes grey and breakable. It can stay like this for a surprisingly long time. But when it receives water again it gets its natural green color back and it starts to flourish again. This can be repeated over and over.

Bringing new life to stagnating change
Of course change processes can stagnate and of course old problems can turn up again. And often this leads to disappointment and pessimism. But just as often the change process can be revitalized by very simple means. The five tips mentioned in this article have proven their use many times. The department manager from the case at the beginning of this article applied them.

The department manager called for a meeting about the change process. He emphasized that it was normal to be confronted with a set-back and invited all to make a list of everything that had been achieved since the start of the change process. About every thing they mentioned he asked what its advantages were and how they had managed to achieve it. This inquiry led to an impressive amount of material and the spirit of the meeting changed remarkably. The enthusiasm for the change goals grew and people regained their pride and hope. Next, the manager invited every participant to formulate which concrete results they wanted to achieve for the coming period and which small steps they would take in order to achieve them. This led to a very nice list of small goals and steps. The energy for change had been low for a period but after this session it was back without a doubt.