What Everyone Gets Wrong About the Solution Focused Approach

I’m here in Dallas and I’ve rented a house. Adam has come to Dallas for us to teach a five day intensive and we’re about to start date four, and one of my favorite things about teaching is like the things that get highlighted and my thoughts that begin to evolve, crystallize, move, shift about the Solution Focused Approach and during these events, Adam and I will often do live demonstrations with people in the audience and volunteers and that sort of thing. And there’s something that I think one of the things that I highlighted is there something that I think a lot of Solution Focused professionals, a lot of people in our field in general get wrong about Solution Focused Brief Therapy.

This is an approach that really depends on like the greatness of your clients. And we need you to recognize that and view your clients in a very particular way that’s associated with people being an amazing person and with, with their capabilities and with their strengths, what I think people get wrong is they think what we’re saying is all people are amazing and all people are wonderful, but that’s actually not true. That’s actually doesn’t capture totally what we’re saying. I recognize that there are people throughout history that demonstrated like the absence of amazing conduct and the absence of amazing ability.

I think what we’re trying to highlight is that there is greatness and amazingness within and what a Solution Focused conversation should do should evoke that and trigger people to be wonderful. I remember being in high school and there was this guy who’s like a really big bully. I remember thinking even as a young person, he used to be able to get like the whole school to follow his poor behavior,

like all of the kids would like follow him and do what he did. And they would try to impress him. And I remember being a kid thinking he clearly has the ability to impact people and leave. He was just leading them in a difficult and dangerous and kind of problematic direction. So putting a Solution Focused lense on that person, I would be thinking, I don’t know that that’s a good person, amazing person, wonderful person. That’s actually not what I’m thinking. I’m just thinking there’s clearly talents, skills and ability within, and my job is to promote them and help people to use their talents, skills and abilities to start making changes that more, move them towards their desired outcomes. And I have to hold the belief that everybody’s desired outcome is a positive one.

And I think that’s the thing that people miss about Solution Focused Brief Therapy. Because if we start saying which I’ve said, like ‘think ofeverybody’s amazing and wonderful’, then the obvious pushback is like, what about those people who aren’t amazing. And I’ve just really struggled for a long time on how you address them. And during this week, this is really,

really good highlight. I want you guys to remember, it’s not about people being amazing, it’s about people having amazing things in them and me having a conversation that evokes them and holding the belief that every single person wants to do good things. And they have things within them that allow them to do good things and a really impactful conversation helps them do just that.

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