Using Discernment to Link Questions to the Desired Outcome

Every year, I do a training that is all about your skills as a Solution Focused Brief Therapist. I mean, going way beyond theory and getting into like the practical skills you need in a session in order to produce outcomes effectively, efficiently, and consistently with your clients. And for me, this is one of the most important trainings that I do. And this year’s event blew me away.

We had thousands of people from all over the world, like it was remarkable. And Adam Froerer, so this year I taught it with Adam Froerer. Dr. Adam Froerer is one of the most genius minds in Solution Focused Brief Therapy. He’s a leading researcher. He’s an amazing clinician. He’s an amazing lecturer, but he’s, so he’s got these really, really great ideas. And he, he talked about something that I had never heard him talk about before during the series. And it’s called discernment.

And I just literally got off the phone with him. I was like, that was such an amazing idea. The people in this training raved about it, I want to talk about it beyond just the training. So we just had a conversation and here’s the thing that Adam is trying to get across and

I completely agree with him. One of the things we have to do in Solution Focused Brief Therapy is make sure our questions land. And what I mean by land is like, make sure our questions are connected to things that the client experiences as meaningful, the best way to do that is to make sure your questions are linked to the outcome that the client wants to achieve.

Right? Like we have to make sure that we’re focused on things that are meaningful to the client and they’re related to the outcome the client wants to achieve. The problem is oftentimes our client will talk kind of all over the place. Like, they’ll answer your questions with all kinds of material that feels like it’s just untethered going everywhere. And one of the most important skills you have to learn as a psychotherapist using this approach, is how to discern the content

the client is giving you and then apply it, using a question that’s connected to their outcome. And I think that is a game changer. I think sometimes we ask brilliant Solution Focused questions, especially when we first start learning this approach. We ask brilliant solution focused questions that don’t go anywhere. That don’t mean anything that don’t, that, that don’t lead to kind of change that our client is looking for.

And the problem is not that there’s anything wrong with the question, but the problem is we haven’t connected the question to the outcome that the client wants to achieve. That’s a skill that we have to have where we have to kind of discern, what is it the client wants. We have to take the content the client is giving us in their responses to our questions and then turn them into more questions that are linked to what they want to achieve.

And that is so much more gonna make a difference in your client’s life. That is gonna be, that’s gonna help you apply this approach so much more. It’s gonna help you achieve consistent outcome with your clients. That’s what this is all about. So make sure that you are practicing the skill of discernment, which is hearing the client information and then discerning how you will build a question that is linked to their outcome.

That’s the game changing skill. And that’s what I want you guys to take away from this video. So I just wanna say, thank you, Dr. Froerer for letting me like share the stage with you. Thank you for sharing your ideas. And that was a brilliant one. I mean, Adam and I, in the past decade, we’re probably responsible for the majority of innovations that happen in the Solution Focused world.

And it’s stuff like this, where we are constantly working to kind of sharpen our skills. And then like, while we’re teaching these things come out, we’re like, oh my gosh, there’s a thing that we need to highlight, spending more time on. And this time as we were teaching, this idea of discernment became really important. So I hope it helps you.