These tracks feature Solution Focus in action, whether case studies or approaches to using SF.

InterAction Collection 2023

Listening to this discussion about D-BIT’s drop in service was a joy. My route into solution-focused practice was via social work, and I have always felt that this approach offers a way for social workers to practise that adheres to our values. This is by no means easy in the contemporary social care context. This is borne out here by the D-BIT workers and two of the young people who made use of their drop in. 

One of my social work heroes, Bill Jordan, believed that, at their best, social workers could be characterised by their willingness ‘to forsake the formality of their roles, and to ‘mix’ it with ordinary people in their ‘natural’ settings, using the informality of their methods as a means of negotiating solutions to problems rather than imposing them’. 

One of the ways that this willingness was evident here was where the conversations with young people took place. In effect, Luke, Steve and the other D-BIT workers were dropping in on where the young people were, by situating the service in their supported accommodation. As Zak said: "Nice having someone coming to you - a place where you are comfy - where you feel safe…" 
 
It was also fascinating hearing the young people explain the conversations that took place. They were different from counselling, like talking to your mates, or somewhere in between. I was particularly struck by T.J. describing them as conversations, not interrogations, with the workers not finding things out about people and writing them down. He appreciated talking to someone who wanted to help but not be too involved. 

This is a delicate balance to strike, and T.J’s testimony suggests the D-BIT workers do it beautifully, which to anyone who has been following their work in recent years should come as no surprise.
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

It is nice to have someone who actually cares

We are delighted to bring you audios from SOLWorld, with thanks to the SFiO Contributors who enabled SFiO to sponsor the recordings. 

Hosted by Veronika Jungwirth, join the panel of Jenny Clarke, Kati Hankovszky, Petra Müller-Demary, Daniel Meier and Peter Röhrig, with a spontaneous appearance by Paul Z Jackson, as they share stories of 20 years of SOLWorld. 

Peter ‘covers’ the Beatles, and recalls the friendliness of the community and absent friends; Jenny explains SOLWorld’s beginning in Bristol and the ‘friendly Brit’ sect; Kati shares SOLWorld secrets; Petra reveals the community house party aspects; Daniel fondly remembers the Moments, and Paul reveals cabaret murder… to name a few.

You can find the video in the InterAction Collection here: https://www.sfio.org/interaction/2023-1/stories-from-20-years-of-sol-world/

Stories From 20 Years Of SolWorld

In this presentation, Victoria Spashchenko shares her personal and professional experience of applying the Solution Focus Approach during the war in Ukraine.

She considers what worked and what was difficult; tries to summarise the resilient strategies of Ukrainians; highlights (once again) the power of a single question, and speculates if there are naturally SF people and countries.

Solution Focus In War

In this video, Vonneke Beeker and Anton Stellamans explore how theatre principles help to understand our work as Solution Focus practitioners.

To fully embrace the power of SF, we need to step out of our dominant cause-effect logic and step into the wonderful world of imagination, where miracles do happen.

We are taught to believe that change happens when we effectively do something about the situation we are confronted with. That’s why we tend to look for the next steps and solutions to fix our old problems. Solution Focus, however, takes a different route to change. Instead of following the classic cause-effect logic, we rely on the power of imagination to make change flow more naturally.

Staging The Imagination V2

Laughing together is essential for creating trust among employees, boosting morale, and increasing retention rates. Additionally, it can be a powerful tool for reducing stress and sparking creativity. 

Bea Bincze and Kornél Csajtai, from Hungary, provide coaching sessions for organisations and strive to create a safe and humorous environment, that helps their clients achieve their goals in a fun and efficient manner.

In this audio, Bea and Kornél build upon your existing skills and knowledge, providing practical tools and methods that you can implement immediately. 

They combine the Association of Applied and Therapeutic Humor's best practices with their own coaching experiences, to offer you a deeper understanding of the benefits of humour in organisations. You can try out new tools, discover your humour style, and even design your own tools. 

Format: Audio
Level: Introductory and Intermediate/Advanced

Laugh Your Way To Solution

In this video, Yoram offers you a twofold activity. 
In the first part he presents The Genius Zone, (a term Gay Hendricks coined) as a possible concept for building the answer to the Miracle Question. Viewers can identify their Genius Zone and learn how to help clients identify it.
In the second part he queries how one might combine the SF paradigm with another paradigm/model. The idea and the main message is to continue developing Solution Focused thinking by interacting between the SF language and another one.
By watching or listening, you can expect at least two benefits:
1.  To get acquainted with the concept of The Genius Zone and the offered idea of its relation to SF by exploring their own Zone of Genius
2.  To further develop the already known SF approach by looking at the work presented and learning.
You can discover your own Genius Zone and ponder what might be useful for you to develop in the SF arena.

Format: Workshop
Level: Intermediate/Advanced

The SF Genius Zone

What do SF practitioners that are involved in large-scale change projects do that works?
The Macroanalysis Study Group has studied this question for the last two years. We have examined case stories together and identified some distinctive features of SF organisational development (OD) processes.
In the first part of this audio, we share these insights with you and get your ideas and feedback.
During the second part of our workshop, you hear a short presentation of an OD case and reflecting teams collect “wow-moments”, ideas and insights for you and our case owner.
The audio concludes with a harvest of new insights and possibly further questions leading to more learning in the future.

This audio should provide you with ideas, skills and inspiration if you:
•	are already working in OD and making it even more SF or
•	want to expand your skills from individuals and teams to work with whole-scale organisational or inter-organisational change, 
Be prepared to gain new insights!

Micro Skills In A Macro World V2

When sharing feedback, we want to provide opportunities for learning and growth. Done well, it can strengthen our relationships and raise performance. Done poorly, it can be uncomfortable and even devastating for the recipient.

Working with clients on global leadership programmes, we created this workshop to take the fear out of feedback. We will give you the tools to start delivering meaningful messages in ways that are heard and acted on. 

You'll experience a new 6-step SF SPIRAL feedback model, which offers step-by-step guidance on confidently approaching these conversations.

From watching this video, you will:
•	Experience a solution-focused feedback model
•	Learn to frame comments in a productive and positive way
•	Demonstrate your ability to give and receive clear and impactful feedback.
•	Take away our new 6-step SF SPIRAL feedback model

Format: Workshop
Level: Introductory/Intermediate/Advanced

Getting The Best From Feedback

Solution-Focused Coaching meets Advanced Leadership Development - Our SF contribution to the growth and development of future leaders
Being a leader in these times isn’t easy – it is complex, ambiguous, and demanding. Leaders need advanced leadership skills and support on how to deal with their daily leadership challenges. Still, they also need to develop higher levels of leadership awareness and consciousness along the way. 
These levels of leadership skills, awareness and consciousness are often not developed alone or in isolation. And this is a much longer-term professional and personal learning journey that can extend over many years.

As (SF) coaches, Stephanie believes we can play a crucial role in supporting leaders willing to step up on their developmental journey.

In this workshop, Stephanie shares how to combine being a truly dedicated Solution focused coach with being a highly committed leadership development expert. Are these two different worlds, or can they merge meaningfully?
Stephanie has her own experiences and worked with different leadership awareness models over the last few years, and would like to share one of her favourite leadership development models with you:
•	How can these models even be helpful to us as we grow as coaches?
•	How can understanding of different levels of leadership awareness, leadership consciousness, and stages of leadership development be helpful in the coaching process and facilitate our clients’ growth without being dogmatic?
•	What is the benefit of our SF pureness and simplicity in this process?
This workshop offers opportunities for exploration and personal insight on how these models can create more awareness for ourselves on our own growth and development as coaches.

SF Coaching Meets Advanced Leadership Development

In a VUCA world, organisations must significantly increase their change of pace. Leaders and coaches must apply state-of-the-art “social technologies” to effect profound organisational transformations. Solution Focus (SF)provides such an effective “social technology”.

SF Organisational Development (OD) is a pragmatic and powerful approach to organisational change that combines three benefits that can rarely be achieved in concert: greater speed (fast), more agility (fluid) and stronger stakeholder engagement (fun).

What do solution focused change coaches and leaders need to do to reap these benefits and trigger a profound transformation? They may allow themselves to be guided by the Solution Focused OD process, which is vividly illustrated in this contribution by using the metaphor of the “Solution Focused gallery walk”.

Chris Iveson of the leading BRIEF Institute, London, introduced the metaphor of the “art gallery” as an orientation for solution-focused conversations in 1999. It was taken up by other SF practitioners, most cogently by Mark McKergow in 2021. He uses the ‘art gallery’ metaphor for the solution-focused transformational dialogue with an organisation.

In this workshop, you will:

Hear from Chris Iveson about what prompted him to invent this metaphor to describe and teach the SF process of change.
Learn from Mark McKergow how he elaborated the art gallery in his book “The Next Generation of Solution Focused Practice”.
Explore together with Susanne Burgstaller how the “SF Art Gallery” can provide orientation for the SF OD process.
Walk through the rooms of the gallery to answer these questions:
Foundation: What assumptions do SF change leaders hold about organisations, change and people?

At the Ticket Office: How is a “joint project”, i.e. the intention and purpose of the transformation, effectively formulated?
In the Resource Room: When and how do we gather resources, building blocks of the preferred future, and signs of progress?
In the Future Gallery: How do change leaders elicit details about the Preferred Future from many different stakeholders?
In the Progress Gallery: How best to make progress visible, reinforce positive outcomes, and keep change in motion?
In the Gift Shop: The secret to how change leaders finish (most of) their work without finishing the transformation!

The Solution Focus Art Gallery

In 2007 the Dutch government introduced a significant change in thinking about its welfare system as our ageing population would stress resources more and more. Besides combining several laws and transferring the funding from national to local council level, the government changed from a philosophy of ‘caring for’, to working towards the quality of life people envisioned for themselves. 
The local council of Barneveld, a town in the Dutch province of Gelderland, sought a new way of implementing this thinking. Paut Stromkamp had an idea of how solution focus might fit the bill. 

Since 2010 they have been working together implementing John Wheeler’s and Vivian Hogg’s Signs of Wellbeing model with exciting results, including:
* fewer objections and appeals
* higher customer satisfaction
* different and sometimes cheaper provisions 
Together with Els van Beurden, her client from day one, Paut will tell you the story of how they took on board all the other significant systems changes since and are now expanding SF thinking to the whole organisation of 600 employees. 
Low key, minimal interventions, leaving the content with the organisation, involving the rest of the community, introducing Intervision - there are many stories to tell about these past 12+ years.

Els van Beurden and Paut Kromkamp Struik - Barneveld SF Case Study

In a time when children and young people’s well-being is vitally important and still tragically under-supported and underfunded, I find myself as a practitioner who has worked directly with children and adolescents my whole career, inspired and thankful for services like Learning Space. Especially the innovative projects they embark on to make every extra difference they can to the experience and well-being of young people.

My inspiration is further fuelled by their latest project, which promotes and privileges the use of an approach very close to my heart, Solution Focus, in a truly innovative and accessible way.

I have spoken regularly about my view on using the accessibility and potency of the solution-focused methodology in moments others might not expect. This is exactly what Learning Space has done in their latest project, proving the endless possibility of the Solution Focus approach and co-production with clients.

Learning Space has designed and used a triaging system that begins to impact positively on children, young people and their families even before they have accessed the service that they hope will fit just right for them. It has received feedback from families like “We have increased optimism” and “We feel heard”. Families are a part of the design of what might lead to achieving their best hopes, truly honouring their expertise in their own life/children.

Imagine this: you arrive at the entrance to the hypothetical library of available services, and before you’ve finished looking through the map, you already begin to feel ever so slightly better, heard, more hopeful and more connected to your power and strengths.

Well, you need not imagine. Begin reading/watching/listening more to Learning Space and how they bring humanity, the solution-focused approach, families’ voices, community and change work to triage and service access.

It is no surprise to me to read of the outcomes of this pilot, and I will watch with interest to see their successes grow, because, as they’ve shown, even in the earliest moments of service access, hope can be ignited.
Luke Goldie-McSorley, Social Worker, Practice Supervisor, Solution Focused Practitioner & Trainer at ECC Solution Focused Centre

Solution Focus Speeding Access To Children And Young People's Mental Health Services

Soundcloud features our audio features on Solution Focus in organisations, from The InterAction Collection. We are an international community of Solution Focus practitioners who continue learning and developing the SF approach in organisations.

InterAction Collection 2023

SFiO - Solution Focus in Organisations