Eight solution focused training principles I've formulated recently are:
1. Support the student’s autonomy regarding formulating her own goals. Solution focused training implies that the student has the freedom to choose what she wants to achieve and that the trainer does not impose a goal upon the student. When people feel they are making an autonomous choice, they are more likely to be intrinsically motivated to achieve their goal.
2. Provide choice regarding the usefulness of external solutions. Solution focused training implies that there are external solutions available and that these are offered by the trainer. However, the student is free to choose which solutions are useful to her. By providing choice the trainer supports autonomous decision making, which will increase the likelihood that the student feels the solution could work for her.
3. Offer advice and help when requested by the student or when the student appreciates being advised. Solution focused training implies that advice is only offered when the student asks for advice or when the trainer has explicitly asked for permission to offer advice. When the student asks for advice (tips, information, knowledge etc) the trainer offers his advice and subsequently asks if this could be useful to the student. If the trainer thinks he has valuable advice to offer, he asks for permission to give this advice and formulates it tentatively, so that the student is still free to decide whether or not the advice is useful to her.
4. Activate the student. Solution focused training implies that the trainer activates the student by asking questions and offering an opportunity to experience something. Theory is linked to the student’s experience and is preferably offered in an interactive manner. Questions activate a thinking process. By letting the student explain herself what she already knows about the topic of the training, she will understand it better and remember it better. Explaining something also helps to be actively involved and to make your knowledge explicit.
5. Enhance a feeling of competence by focusing on the platform. Solution focused trainers acknowledge that the student is already competent to a certain extent and help the student to become aware of this level of competence. The platform consists of the knowledge and skills the student already possesses.
6. Focus on usefulness for the student. Solution focused training focuses on what is useful to the student by asking usefulness questions at the start (What would make this training useful to you? How would you notice afterwards this training has been useful to you?), in the middle (Has it been useful to you so far? Is this being useful to you?) and at the end of the training (Was it useful? If so, what was most useful to you? How can you use that which you find useful?).
7. Provide positive process feedback. Solution focused trainers give direct and indirect process compliments, so that the student becomes aware of what she did that worked well. This sort of feedback stimulates a growth mindset. Solution focused trainers avoids giving compliments regarding intelligence or personality traits as well as negative feedback regarding intelligence, personality traits or errors made by the student, since this sort of feedback stimulates a fixed mindset.
8. Help the student to improve her reasoning for herself by asking leading questions and normalising. If the student makes a mistake, the solution focused trainer asks questions which invite the student to go through her thinking process step by step (How did you arrive at your answer? How could you improve your answer even more?), so that the student improves her thinking herself. The solution focused trainer avoids pointing out errors directly but instead ask questions which imply that improvement is possible. The solution focused trainer also normalises errors (That’s what most people would think at first….)
Do you recognise these are important principles in solution focused training?
Are there other training principles you find important?
vrijdag 9 maart 2012
zondag 29 januari 2012
More is not always better?
The “what is better”-question can be a very useful question in counselling sessions. The client starts to mention something that is better and the counsellor asks questions like: ”What went better? How did you do that? How was that beneficial? How can you do that again in the future?”
Clients often are able to provide more examples of what is better than the counsellor would think possible. The question “What else is better” and “What else” may therefore be repeated several times.
However, is it better when the client comes up with 4 examples of what is better, than when she comes up with 2? I always thought it was good to keep on asking the question “what else is better”, even if it took the client longer to think and come up with something. Not anymore.. Because of the “psychology of availability.”
Paradoxically, the psychology of availability says that more positive examples are not always better than fewer positive examples…Why?
1. people believe they cycle less frequently when they have to come up with more occasions in which they cycled, than when they have to come up with fewer examples.
2. people are less certain of their choices when they have to come up with more reasons why they have made their choice
3. people are less convinced a certain event could have been prevented when they have to list more ways in which the event could have been prevented
4. people are less impressed by a car when they have had to list a lot of advantages of the car
5. people who have been asked to give 12 examples of their own assertiveness value their general assertiveness more negatively than people who have had to give 6 examples of their own assertive behaviour.
6. people who have been asked to give 12 possible improvements of a training course value that course more positively than people who have had to list 6 improvements
Counter-intuitive or what? How does this work? It turns out that fluency has a lot to do with it. The first few examples spring to mind relatively easily, but after the first few people find it harder to come up with more examples. The fluency in finding examples or arguments diminishes. Even though in the end they might come up with the requested 12 examples, the effort it took to think of those examples bothers them. They think: “If it was so hard to come up with those examples of when I was assertive, I can’t be very assertive at all”
Might this indicate that asking “what is better” is ok as long as the client can come up with examples easily? As soon as the client needs more time to think about what is better, could it be counter-productive to give more time to think about it and to repeat the question? The psychology of availability surely seems to point in that direction.
More is not always better?
Clients often are able to provide more examples of what is better than the counsellor would think possible. The question “What else is better” and “What else” may therefore be repeated several times.
However, is it better when the client comes up with 4 examples of what is better, than when she comes up with 2? I always thought it was good to keep on asking the question “what else is better”, even if it took the client longer to think and come up with something. Not anymore.. Because of the “psychology of availability.”
Paradoxically, the psychology of availability says that more positive examples are not always better than fewer positive examples…Why?
1. people believe they cycle less frequently when they have to come up with more occasions in which they cycled, than when they have to come up with fewer examples.
2. people are less certain of their choices when they have to come up with more reasons why they have made their choice
3. people are less convinced a certain event could have been prevented when they have to list more ways in which the event could have been prevented
4. people are less impressed by a car when they have had to list a lot of advantages of the car
5. people who have been asked to give 12 examples of their own assertiveness value their general assertiveness more negatively than people who have had to give 6 examples of their own assertive behaviour.
6. people who have been asked to give 12 possible improvements of a training course value that course more positively than people who have had to list 6 improvements
Counter-intuitive or what? How does this work? It turns out that fluency has a lot to do with it. The first few examples spring to mind relatively easily, but after the first few people find it harder to come up with more examples. The fluency in finding examples or arguments diminishes. Even though in the end they might come up with the requested 12 examples, the effort it took to think of those examples bothers them. They think: “If it was so hard to come up with those examples of when I was assertive, I can’t be very assertive at all”
Might this indicate that asking “what is better” is ok as long as the client can come up with examples easily? As soon as the client needs more time to think about what is better, could it be counter-productive to give more time to think about it and to repeat the question? The psychology of availability surely seems to point in that direction.
More is not always better?
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