On Wednesday I was working online with a (large) group in Wales on day 8 of our Solution Focused Foundation programme, the second day of Level 4, the very last day of the programme. Reflecting on how to spend our time, on what to include, I decided to show a piece of Steve de Shazer working with a BRIEF client. I continue to feel a debt of gratitude to Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg and I wanted the group to feel some connection to the ‘founders’, not just to those of us who came along later. And so the piece of work that I chose was 25 minutes taken from a consultation session with a client of Chris Iveson’s.
Steve starts the session using a scale question, focusing on the client’s progress in her work with Chris. And she had made substantial progress and yet as she described the progress it also become more than apparent that she had gone through a very very tough time, and that her experiences had impacted very substantially on her. Steve did not ask questions about what she had gone through and yet in order to help Steve to appreciate the progress she wanted to make clear just how horrible things had been for her. And they clearly had. And if Steve had asked about the past I feel sure that the client would have had a terrible and painful story to tell.
However as Steve continued to gently acknowledge and to ask about the difference between 0 and 5 (where she placed herself in the session) and ask how she had managed to make the change, and inquired about ’one point up’, an alternative narrative emerged in the conversation. Her survival told not only a story of suffering but also a story of quite extraordinary resilience. As she set out the changes that she had already made, and they were truly significant, as she described how she had kept hold of a vision of a better future, which she described with poetic delicacy, as she set out her belief in her capacity to make further progress, an inspirational figure emerged from the shadows of her life. Here was a person who could not only face and be clear about the challenges, the difficulties, the pain and the trauma, but could also continue to hold hope and expectation and possibility alive. Listening to and observing the session we found ourselves ‘meeting’ a person whom it was indeed a true privilege, an honour to ‘meet’, a person who could give each of us a little more faith in humanity.
Back in 2014 Tony Medina and Mark Beyebach wrote about the potential of Solution Focused training to protect workers against burn-out. As I sat there listening and observing it was happening in front of my eyes.
My profound gratitude to Steve and to Chris Iveson’s client.
Medina, Antonio & Beyebach, Mark (2014) The Impact of Solution-focused Training on Professionals’ Beliefs, Practices and Burnout of Child Protection Workers in Tenerife Island. Child Care in Practice, 2014 Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 7–36.
Evan George
15th March 2026
London
