“If (the client) cannot answer (the question), the therapist has either asked the wrong question or asked it in the wrong way.” (de Shazer et al., 2007, p 82).
How do we describe the Solution Focused approach? We could describe the model in terms of the techniques that are central, the questions that we ask. And this would be clear and would perhaps fit well Steve de Shazer’s ‘requirement’ that ‘therapy needs to be described in such a way that therapists understand what to do and how to do it’ (de Shazer, 1991, p 26). But would such a way of describing the approach be enough? Would a practitioner being informed about the model solely by a list of questions practice in a way that looked like Solution Focused Practice to experienced practitioners of the approach? And I think that the answer has to be ‘may be and may be not’. It seems to me that Solution Focused Practice is also defined by what informs the practitioner in their use of our techniques, our questions. So what is it that makes best hopes questions and preferred future questions and exception questions and instance questions and scale questions and so on Solution Focused? And there are I think a number of key ideas.
- Solution Focused practitioners will always remember that the questions that we ask are for the client and not for us. When we ask questions we are not trying to find anything out about the client. There is no idea of figuring out what is going on or what makes the client tick. There is no concept of ‘information’. Each question that we ask is an invitation to our client to describe their life in a particular way and it is this concept of invitation that seems important. Our talking with our clients is ‘invitational’.
- Difference and change in the Solution Focused approach is thought to come about as a result of the client ‘hearing’ their own answers to the questions that we ask. Theoretically therefore the client could sit silent throughout the whole of a session and yet if the client were to be answering our questions silently, for themselves, the session could make a difference – theoretically. It would of course be difficult for us to ask good questions if we are not hearing the client’s response however that would not preclude the possibility of the conversation (as it were) making a difference.
- So what makes a good question? Good Solution Focused questions do, of course, have to be Solution Focused. So we are not asking questions that might serve to detain the client in their problem description. Indeed we are never asking questions that serve to amplify, or to expand that problem description. We are never inviting the client to focus, or to stay focused, on what it is that they do not want, the life that they want to move away from. So Solution Focused questions are solution focused – of course - focused on the life that people do want rather than exploring the life that people do not want or what has going wrong or what is blocking the client from making progress.
- In addition, Solution Focused questions take account of the client’s last answer and build with the client’s own words. So when we ask ‘so what’s been better since we last met?’ and the client answers ‘nothing really’, we might respond with ’OK so what have you been pleased to notice even though nothing really has been better?’. We have taken account of the client’s answer and indeed used the client’s words in constructing our next question. The Solution Focused practitioner always resists becoming ‘persuasive’, never ever trying a ‘there is always something better, so what has been even a tiny bit better?’ response.
- So this leads us back to de Shazer’s ‘“If (the client) cannot answer (the question), the therapist has either asked the wrong question or asked it in the wrong way.” (de Shazer et al., 2007, p 82). It is our job not only to ask questions that are solution focused, not only to take account of the client’s last answer, not only to build with the client’s words but to ask questions that are ‘answerable’, questions that facilitate a response rather than questions which defeat the client. So if we ask a question that the client cannot answer it might be the wrong question, or we have framed it wrongly or we have asked it at the wrong time or indeed it may be that our tone of voice does not work for the client. We choose to assume the client not answering tells us nothing about the client, rather it reflects on our own practice and so the challenge is a challenge for the practitioner, how can I frame a question with which the client can work.
So in Solution Focused Practice the client can never fail, can never ‘get it wrong’. In Solution Focused Practice every answer that the client gives us is the right answer and it is that answer with which we must work. As Steve de Shazer writes in More than Miracles ‘if you do not like the answer, ask a different question’ (de Shazer et al., 2007, p 91).
de Shazer, Steve (1991) Putting Difference to Work. New York: Norton.
de Shazer, Steve, Dolan, Yvonne, Korman, Harry, Trepper, Terry, MacCollum, Eric and Berg, Insoo Kim (2007) More Then Miracles: the state of the art of solution focused therapy. New York: Haworth.
Evan George,
London
13 July 2025.
