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 Goals Continuum

Helping, negotiating, directing

© 2006, Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien

The goals continuum is a model reflecting in which situation you can apply which skill. The extreme left of the continuum describes situations in which the goals of the employee are the center of the discussion. In these situations helping (coaching) is the most suitable approach. The extreme right is about situations in which the goals of the manager are central. Between the two extremes on this continuum are situations that require negotiation.

Managing people is not always an easy thing to do. Take a look at this example:

A manager told us recently: “One of the people in my team, Bert, does not perform well. Time and again he does not meet the deadlines. As a consequence the delivery to our customers is frequently delayed. This has to stop! But no matter how much I try to help him, I can’t seem to get through to him. He gets irritated, he tries to avoid me and he dismisses my suggestions. What am I to do?”

Use the right skills in the right situation
In order to constructively achieve your goals as a manager it is important to apply the right skills at the right time. In the above example this did not happen. The manager tries to solve a problem by helping the employee. However, directing the employee is in order in the above example. Therefore, helping or coaching does not work. It seems like the manager and the subordinate are on a different wave length which causes nothing to change.

The goals continuum

The goals continuum is a model which describes which skills to apply in which circumstances. The extreme left of the continuum describes situations in which the goals of the employee are prevails. In these situations, helping (coaching) is the most suitable approach. The extreme right represent situations in which the goals of the manager prevail. Between the two extremes on this continuum are situations that require negotiation. The figure below represents the continuum.

1. Extreme left of the continuum: Helping

On the extreme left of the continuum, the goals of the employee are leading. This is the case when the manager does not feel the need to change the behavior of the employee. In these situations, the employee wants to change something and the manager is all right with these changes and goals. This can be the case for example when the employee is performing well and is looking for new work challenges. Another example is a situation in which an employee is performing well at work and asks his manager for help regarding a personal problem. In help-requiring situations, the manager can use the solution-focused approach about which we have written several articles (see here, here, here and here).

2. Extreme right of the continuum: Directing

On the extreme right of the continuum, the goals of the manager (and the organization) prevail. The right side of the continuum describes situations in which the manager wants to change something in the behavior of the employee. This can involve two kinds of change:

1. Imposing limits / correcting: when the employee’s behavior is unacceptable because it is harmful to others or to the organization, it is necessary for the manager to draw boundaries and clarify to the employee that the particular behavior has to stop and change.
2. Clarifying performance expectations: when the employee does not show the minimally required performance, and the manager has to take action to stimulate the employee to perform up to standard.

As a manager it is to be recommended you prepare your conversation with an employee properly. In your preparation you can come up with answers (preferably in writing) to the following questions:

1. What do I want the employee to do differently? What does he have to start doing or what does he have to stop doing?
2. To what end do I expect this of him? What are the advantages of what I expect him to do? To whom and from what perspective are these behaviors useful?

Also, it is useful to ponder the following questions: Do I have a mandate to direct the employee in this way? What exactly is my mandate? Do I have the authority to ask this? When it becomes clear that you can’t answer these questions affirmatively maybe it is better to check this first with your manager. If you find out that you don’t have the required authority you can try to enlarge your mandate by starting a discussion about the topic with your colleagues or superiors.

In the conversation itself you can provide direction in a solution-focused way by being clear and friendly at the same time. You can be both firm and inviting by using questions while you lead. A format for questions which often work well is:

1. How can you ensure that …… (what you expect from the employee)
2. so that …… (the advantage of the behavior you expect)

In this article you can read more about how to do this and also about how you can respond to different ways in which employees might respond to your attempt to direct them. The interesting thing about this way of directing is that an authoritative or bossy tone can almost always be avoided - making it much less likely that employees will resist your attempt to direct them.

3. Middle part of the continuum: Negotiating

In the center of the continuum, between Helping and Directing, there is negotiating. The center of the continuum describes situations in which the manager has goals and wants to exercise some influence. But you realize it is not an all or nothing situation. You are prepared to give and take a bit with respect to the moment in which the change has to be realized and in the amount of change that has to be made. You may want to use an “if you do this, I’ll do that” approach.

Preparation is also very useful when you want to negotiate. Questions that can be helpful are: What goals do you minimally want to achieve? What is your negotiating space? What do the both of you agree on?

Experiences

We have trained many managers to use the Goals Continuum. In a group of managers in a large hospital many of them were satisfied with the model because it helped them to prepare much better for difficult conversations. It also helped them to approach the conversations with employees with confidence. In another organization, we trained all management-levels in this solution-focused approach. The advantage they experience is felt both on an individual level and on a group level. They are pleased to have found a shared way of managing people which helps them to achieve their goals more easily and which the employees generally find pleasant.

We end this article with an example on the right side of the continuum

Steve, a manager in a factory department, had to engage in a difficult conversation with Richard, an employee who had several times shown intimidating behavior towards his colleagues. A few colleagues had already said they were afraid of him. Steve had once before said to Richard that he would not accept physically aggressive behavior. Richard had responded evasively and had said:”It is very hard for me to control my temper because I was mistreated as a child myself”. This conversation between Steve and Richard did not lead to a clear understanding and agreement. Recently, there had been a new situation of Richard intimidating a co-worker and Steve wanted to talk about it with him. This time, Steve had prepared well for the conversation. He had written down what he expected of Richard and why. In the conversation he said: “Richard, you are a much appreciated person in this department because of your commitment and your readiness to help others. No wonder we would very much like to keep you around. For that, it will be necessary for you to restrain yourself at all times when you feel angry so that your colleagues can feel safe around you at all times. How can you that care of this?” After a few seconds, Richard responded like this: “I understand you ask this of me but it is very hard for me to control my anger when I feel challenged. Steve responded understandingly but firmly “I can imagine that after what you have told me recently. And given that is hard for you …. How can you still take care of it so that people will feel safe and we can keep on employing you here?” During the conversation Steve kept on coming back to the HOW-question. The conversation proceeded constructively and Richard and Steve made an agreement that Richard would at all times control himself when angry. Richard has since found a way to do this.

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.

Making Meetings More Useful

© Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien (2005)

“We have so many meetings in this organization but they lead to nothing but frustration. The wrong topics are on the agenda and even those topics aren’t handled properly. Meetings always start too late and are always drawn out. I am sick and tired of it!”

– A manager in a large organization

Meetings can be more useful!

Inefficient meetings are a pain to many managers and employees. Recent research by Microsoft among 38.000 respondents in 200 countries showed that employees are in meetings on average for 5,6 hours a week and according to them no less than 69 percent of this time leads to nothing at all. So it is no wonder that meetings often take away participants’ energy and are seen as useless. By using a success-focused approach in meetings they can be much more effective and less frustrating. The success perspective focuses constantly on making and keeping meetings useful for all participants. This works by posing a special kind of question, which we call useful-questions.

Useful-questions

By asking useful-questions you can constantly help people to focus on what they want to get out of the meeting. You help them to remember what they want to achieve and how this session can help them with that. Instead of telling them how the session is useful for them you ask them. The advantage is that they can judge for themselves and are really activated. You help them to imagine and to visualize how they can apply this session in their own situation. When they verbalize this for themselves it becomes much more likely that this will fit exactly to their goals and circumstances.

The next checklist contains examples of useful-questions that you can apply before, during and after meetings. It is not our suggestions to use all these questions. After all, too much of a thing is good for nothing. What we do intend is to provide you with some suggestions of questions that you may use in different phases of the meeting. Asking some of these questions at well-chosen moment can make meetings much more productive.

CHECKLIST USEFULNESS-QUESTIONS IN MEETINGS

Before and/or at the beginning of the meeting you may ask the following questions:

• What topic(s) should be discussed to make it a useful session for you?
• How will you know after the session has ended it will have been useful for you? What will be different?
• What small thing can you do to get as much as possible from this meeting?

During the meeting you may ask the following questions:

• Is/was this useful for you?
• If yes, how is it useful?
• If no, how could we make it more useful?
• How can we use the remaining time as well as possible?

After or at the end of the meeting you may ask the following questions:

• Has this meeting been useful for you?
• What has been most useful for you?
• How can you apply this?
• Which small step can you take tomorrow?

Keeping participants involved constantly

Asking useful-questions at the beginning helps to involve everyone actively in the process. Furthermore, it can help to really improve the agenda of the meeting. Asking useful-questions during the meeting can be very handy too, especially when a topic is ended. It also helps to keep people actively involved. They can decide for themselves and explain in their own words whether and how the topic is useful for them and if it is not what should happen to make it more useful. Sometimes you notice as a chairman you may doubt whether the participants see a topic or discussion as useful. For instance, you may get nonverbal cues that something is wrong or that something occupies others. They may frown, look at their watches or lean backwards for instance. These moments are typically suited for useful-questions. The interesting thing about these questions is that they are very much directed towards success while problems or complaints can always be addressed. The essence of the approach can be used in many types of conversations ranging from one-on-one conversations like coaching sessions and appraisal conversations to various types of group meetings like trainings and department meetings but also more large-scale events like organization-wide conferences.

Meeting rules that work here and now

In addition to the checklist with useful-questions it is good to point out that it is often wise to work with meeting rules. But be careful with generic rules you read about in books. Each organization and team will need a specific set of rules that will work best there. Therefore it is good to formulate, preferably together with your team, your own set of meeting rules. To give you an impression of what those rules might look like, here are a few examples. We know an organization how uses an 80% attendance rule, which means that team members have to attend 80% of the meetings and be on time for those. Not attending a maximum of 20% of the meetings is accepted. Here is another example. A rule that seems to work well in many places is to work with strict starting and ending times. When you use this rule it often works well to ask the following question 15 minutes before closing time: ‘How can we make the best use of the remaining 15 minutes?’

Experiment with this

Our invitation to you is to experiment a bit with this approach. It is certainly not necessary to apply all these suggestions at once. It will probably be wiser to start small and give yourself and your employees some time to get used to this way of improving the usefulness of your meetings.

Also read this related article: The solution-focused reflecting management team – Visser & Norman (2004)

The 4 Step Method of Solution-Focused Management

© 2004, Coert Visser & Gwenda Schlundt Bodien

Sandra is Edward’s manager, and she finds him difficult to manage. Edward is usually overly critical and seems to care more for his clients than for the company for which he works or his manager’s goals. Sandra genuinely tries her best to see things from Edward’s perspective and to take his wishes into account, but with little effect. Now the company has a new policy, which means concentrating on the core activities and as a consequence certain services will no longer be delivered. Edward explodes, saying: `I will not carry out this stupid decision! My client is very pleased with the service and I will continue to offer it! ` Sandra feels very angry and does not know how to respond.

What has solution-focused thinking got to offer to managers? It is very useful in coaching and consultancy but also managers can benefit from it. The Four Step Method helps managers to manage successfully. The Four Step Method is the most compact way in which we can describe solution-focused thinking.

The Four Step Method of Solution Focused Management When encountering problems the solution focused manager carefully answers the following questions:

1. Acknowledging problems: Acknowledge the problem without paying attention to the causes of the problem. What is the essence of the problem and how does it hinder you? How is it a problem to you?
2. Describing Success: What do you want instead of the problem? What kind of success are you looking for? How will you know that the success happens? What will be better then? How will you be able to change your own behaviour when the success happens?
3. Identify and analyse positive exceptions: When has the success happened already in the past, if only a little bit? Describe the situation; what was different? What caused this success to happen? What was your contribution to this success? How did you do this?
4. Take a small step forward: Think about your answers in step three for awhile. Which aspects of the positive exceptions could you use again? Think about a small step forward, which you could take tomorrow.

Continuation: If it goes well, repeat the steps 2, 3 and 4. If things do not improve, go back to step 1 and then go through with step 2, 3 and 4.

Going through the steps yourself

Sandra acknowledges that she has a problem herself and she goes through the four steps for herself.

Step 1. Acknowledge problems: she discovers what bothers her most. It´s Edward non-constructive attitude, which makes it difficult for her to trust him. Sandra realises that she finds it hard to treat Edward like a valuable member of the team.

Step 2, Describe the success: Sandra thinks about what she wants to achieve. She wants Edward to be a constructive member of the team. She will notice that this success happens when Edward keeps his promises and when she finds herself taking him seriously.

Step 3, Identify and analyse positive exceptions: Sandra tries to find a situation in the past in which Edward already showed himself as a more constructive team member. She remembers a meeting in which Edward behaved constructively. She analyses what was different and remembers that Edward wanted to cancel the meeting at first, because he did not find it very important or useful, but that she had been really firm with him because she was suddenly fed up with his behaviour. She had said: “I expect you to be there and to behave like a co-operative team member! `` To her big surprise the meeting went smoothly, Edward attended the meeting and behaved cooperatively even cheerfully.

Step 4, Take a small step forward: Sandra thinks that she could try this direct approach with Edward once more. She approaches him and says: `I understand you don’t approve of the company policy, but I expect you to comply with it with loyalty!` Edward is quiet for awhile. Then he says: `OK, that’s very clear`And then the conversation takes a turn. Edward apologises for his previous behaviour and says that he will comply with the company policy, but he admits that he does not know how to do it. He asks Sandra for her help. Helping an employee using the four steps.

Sandra decides to help Edward, using the four steps

Step 1, Acknowledge problems: she asks Edward what his problem is. He explains that he fears the response of his client, who is very demanding. He is concerned that the client will not accept the company’s policy not to deliver the service any longer. When Sandra asks Edward how this is a problem to him, he says that he finds it really hard to balance the needs of the client with the needs of his team. He doesn’t take a lot of pleasure in his work any longer.

Step 2, Describe success: Sandra says she understands how hard this is for him. She acknowledges that it is important to Edward to change the situation. Consequently, she asks him what a good balance between the clients needs and the team needs would look like to him. Edward says that he will draw boundaries towards his clients while at the same time remain to be client focused. Sandra then asks how this would help Edward. He says that he would enjoy his work more if he would achieve this success. He also says it would help him to be more friendly to his colleagues. He would feel more part of the team.

Step 3, Identify and analyse positive exceptions: Sandra says: “That sounds good to me! Has there ever been a situation that was a bit like the success you just described?` Edward thinks awhile…. Then he starts to smile. He says that he once had to announce a price increase. He told his client right from the start and he responded annoyed. Edward thought the client would break off the relationship and was so tense that he did not know what to say. But when Edward kept still, the client said something that surprised Edward very much. The client said he wanted to maintain the business relationship because he was very happy with my service level and would therefor put up with the price increase. Then Edward knew how to respond again. I thanked him for his appreciation and then continued the conversation with his client.

Step 4, Take a small step: Sandra responds: “That sounds great! How could this be useful in your current situation? Edward answers: “I am just going to tell him about the company policy! If he gets angry, I will let him get it off his chest until he says something I can respond to positively. That is definitely worth trying! Thanks for your help!

And now it is up to you!Try the four steps of solution focused management yourself! Before you start applying the four steps think carefully about whom is the problem owner. Are you having a problem with an employee or do you want to help an employee with a problem he has got? As becomes clear in this true story of Sandra and Edward, it is very important to make that distinction. When you try the method, we would appreciate to hear from you!