Other person perspective questions – why are they used in Solution Focused Practice?
FAQ # 12
Practitioners arriving new to the Solution Focused approach, and in particular those coming from other modalities, will inevitably notice the frequency of use of ‘Other Person Perspective’ questions and many are puzzled. So let’s have a think about why we do use them and in addition we have two particular issues about their use raised by Mark Cadman and Kelly Austin which we will address later.
Most of us will be familiar with the philosophical thought experiment ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’. Well somewhat similar might be ‘if a client makes a change and no-one notices has the change happened?’. I might change the last part of the question and ask if the client changes and yet does not notice the change does the change make a difference - a rather less radical question perhaps. We could argue that until the client notices the change their ‘narrative’ remains the same. The client who comes to us complaining of depression, if they do not notice the days when they find themselves less depressed will say to themselves ‘nothing has changed, I am still depressed’ and they will continue coming to see us to deal with the depression that is still troubling them. And of course if no-one around the client notices the difference they also will say ‘nothing has changed, s/he/they are still depressed and they will continue to think about, and to treat our client, as a depressed person’. So we can argue that for change to make a difference in the client’s life it not only has to happen but it has to be noticed by the client and preferably by those around the client. If we can accept this proposition then making change easily visible, easily noticeable, will make the change process itself easier.
Staying with the client whom we meet as a result of ‘my depression’ the Solution Focused Practitioner, as soon as it is viable, will enquire about their ‘best hopes’ (George et al., 1990,1999) and the client might respond ‘well I suppose I wouldn’t be depressed or at the very least I’d be less depressed’. Almost inevitably at this point the practitioner will ask ‘and what would you wish to see taking the place of depressed?’ and many clients will respond ‘I’d be happier’. So far so good – we have moved from depressed or less depressed to happier. We might at this point ask ‘and what else might tell you that our talking had been useful to you?’ or we might just stick with ‘happier’ as a starting point for a preferred future description. Having negotiated this shift we ask the client for their ‘criteria’ - how the client will know that they are happier, how their day-to-day living will be transformed by the presence of happier in their life. And most clients respond by describing a happier ‘tomorrow’, what they will be doing differently and what the tiniest signs will be that happier is growing. The detailed descriptions that are characteristic of Solution Focused practice potentially make a difference in a range of ways but if we return to our tree in the forest, one way is by making change easier for the client to notice. Noticing tiny changes in our quotient of happiness ‘am I happier than I was at this time yesterday’ or even tougher ‘than this time last week or month’ is really hard. In order to be noticed changes in feeling states have to be large and significant whilst small changes might slip by unnoticed. Following Steve de Shazer’s use of Wittgenstein the client is being invited to establish the ‘outward criteria’ for the ‘inner process’ (de Shazer, 1994). (1) But what happens if the client responds by saying ‘I don’t know how I would know, I’d just feel different, I wouldn’t be feeling so depressed, I’d be feeling happier’ and their description risks becoming circular – happier to less depressed to different, to happier to less depressed to different and so on (and on).
In such an extreme example the Solution Focused practitioner will follow de Shazer ‘Where you stand determines what you see and what you do not see; it determines also the angle you see it from: a change in where you stand changes everything’ (de Shazer, 1991, p xx). And so asking the client ‘who might be the first person to notice that happiness is growing?’ and the client answering ‘well my sister, she notices everything’, we can invite the client to see themselves through the eyes of ‘my sister (who) notices everything’. The advantage of course is that all ‘my sister’ can see are the ‘outward criteria’, she cannot ‘see’ ‘the inner process of happiness’ but she can notice the client going our more, answering his/her/their phone, going to the gym, smiling, looking for a job, talking louder, getting up earlier, eating better, taking better care of him/herself and more. Through ‘my sister’s eyes’ happiness has been defined in a way that makes it more visible, easier to notice, and thus perhaps we can say change has been made easier. However we do not only use ‘other person perspective questions’ when our clients are struggling to define the ‘outward criteria’ - using these questions will serve to enrich the client’s description, even when we have facilitated their beginning to define for themselves.
So other person perspective questions work, they really do, but what do we do when they don’t seem to? Mark Cadman asks about those times when clients who are finding the definition of the ‘outward’ criteria difficult then respond to the other person perspective question with ‘no-one would notice’. We can minimise the likelihood of this response by the way that we set up the question. Rather than asking ‘so who would notice?’ we take two steps, asking first ‘so who knows you really well in a good way?’ and when the client says ‘my best friend Terence’ we ask ‘so how would Terence notice that happiness was growing?’. Having defined Terence as someone who knows me really well it is less likely that the client will answer that the change will not be noticed. However there are two more possibilities, first the client saying that they don’t see anyone, they don’t have any friends, or the client responding that they are really good at pretending to be happy, at keeping up a pretence to the outside world. If the client says that they don’t see anyone we can enquire about the discounted contacts – someone at the bus-stop, the bus-driver, the person in the shop where you get your paper or milk or bread. Alternatively of course we can ask about the perspective of pets, the ubiquitous fly-on-the-wall or ‘if there was a film crew following you around making a documentary about your life. Pet owners invariably understand that their pets would notice that they were ‘happier’. And finally of course there is the world of things, your phone, your car your laptop – people use all of these things differently when they are happy. If the client tells us that ’I keep up appearances, I’m really good at it’ we could enquire ‘I imagine that keeping up appearances all the time must be hard work?’ and if the client agrees we can ask ‘so what difference would it make not having to do that?’ and the client answers ‘I guess I’d feel lighter, I’d have more energy, I could relax’ we can then ask about the outward manifestations of these changes. The client is likely to answer.
And Kelly Austin asks what we might do when, in response to ‘who would notice?’, the client responds by naming someone who is either negative about them or who perhaps would negatively connote the change. Of course both of these possibilities are reduced if we remember to ask ‘so who knows you well in a good way, someone who really wants the best for you?’. The client is then unlikely to choose a noticer who would think, or say, ‘he’ll never change’ or ‘she’ll be worse than ever’ or ‘they’ll just be their normal irritating self’. Of course anything is possible! So if the client were to respond in this way we could just say ‘goodness I’m sorry – so who would be most pleased to notice the change?’ and ask the question from their perspective.
So other person perspective questions are central to the building of a beautifully detailed description of the client’s life as transformed by the presence of the ‘best hopes’ and supporting the definition of the ‘outward criteria’ for the ‘inner process’.
- de Shazer cites Wittgenstein’s remark #580 from Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstin,1958). In fact in Wittgenstein’s original the remark is in the middle of a lengthy sequence of argument and elaboration. At #579 Wittgenstein writes
“#579 The feeling of confidence. How is this manifested in behaviour?”
and this is followed by;
“#580 An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria.”
With thanks to Mark Cadman and to Kelly Austin for raising these issues
de Shazer, Steve (1991) Putting Difference to Work. New York: Norton.
de Shazer, Steve (1994) Words were Originally Magic. New York: Norton.
George, E., Iveson, C. and Ratner, H. (1990; Revised and expanded Edition 1999) Problem to Solution: Brief Therapy with Individuals and Families. London: BT Press
Evan George
London
28th September 2025
