W is for . . . well what is w for?

In ‘Brief Coaching for Lasting Solutions’ Berg and Szabo (2005) set out clearly why asking the ‘why’ question is not such a good idea. They write ‘the thinking behind this search for the cause is to make sure that such mistakes or wrongheaded thinking can be eliminated so that the problem will never occur again. A noble cause, indeed. However, when we try to solve problems, asking why questions implies that somebody made a mistake and a finger is pointed at the person who is asked the question. Rather than helping us get at the desired change, this helps to make the person defensive and reluctant to confess to a mistake. This can easily lead to an argument, sulking, or defensive moves such as attacking the one who is criticising’ (p 78 – 79). Berg and Szabo lay our clearly the risks involved in exploring why problems happen; however whilst they propose using a ‘how come?’ formulation BRIEF would propose a bigger jump to ‘what?’. And so when the client describes a difficulty we might ask ‘and is that something that you would like to see changing?’ and in all probability the client will respond by saying ‘yes – of course’ and then we can ask ‘so what will tell you that . . . ?’. So rather than staying with the difficulty we invite the client to start to describe the ‘solved state’, ‘what will tell them that the problem is no longer holding them back’ (for instance). So not ‘why’ but ‘what’.

 

Staying with Insoo Kim Berg we could suggest that w stands for ‘wow’. There is no-one in the Solution Focused world who ‘wowed’ like Insoo ‘wowed’. Insoo’s ‘wows’ contained so much meaning, acknowledgement of the achievement and admiration, and an invitation to the client to be impressed with themselves. In the early days of our Solution Focused practice we also ‘wowed’ at BRIEF, although never quite as well as Insoo Kim Berg. And then we began to develop the idea of ‘centralising the client’, and we began to question whether it was our job to punctuate the client’s report, to take a position on what they are saying. Instead of ‘wowing’ we decided that we should be asking question, inviting the client to establish their own position. So if the client reports ‘I got the children to school myself today’, we would respond with a question ‘so were you pleased with that?’ and if the client responds that they were indeed pleased then that response legitimates following-up with both strategy and identity questions, ‘how did you do that?’ and ‘what did you draw on?’. Whilst this is indeed my preferred position, inviting the client to take a view, that is not to say that a ‘wow’ never escapes my lips, most often when working with a child, but none of my ‘wows’ has ever matched an Insoo ‘wow’.

 

And of course we could say that w stands for ‘what’s working’. Many of you will be familiar with Berg and Shilt’s text ‘Classroom Solutions: WOWW Coaching’ (2005/2) a wonderfully creative, effective and minimal intervention in classroom settings, where WOWW stands for ‘working on what works’ (p 2). However here I am assuming that we can think about ‘what’s working’ more broadly as everything that the client is doing, or indeed has done, that fits with the preferred future, the life that the client wishes to build. Thus ‘what’s working’ can be assumed to include ‘instances’ (Ratner et al., 2012), little elements of the preferred future already in place, exceptions, times when the problem pattern is absent, and surviving, whatever the client is doing that gets them through tough times in a way that fits with a better future.

So each of our three possible ‘w’s’ starts with Insoo Kim Berg perhaps reflecting Steve de Shazer when he said, repeatedly, over and over, that all he had done, in writing about SFBT, was to observe the work of a ‘master clinician’ and describe what she was doing. So thank-you Insoo and thank-you Steve for noticing and describing.

Berg, Insoo Kim and Szabo, Peter (2005) Brief Coaching for Lasting Solutions. New York; Norton.
Berg, Insoo Kim and Shilts, Lee (2005/2) Classroom Solutions: WOWW Coaching’. Milwaukee: BFTC,
Ratner, H., George, E., Iveson, C.  (2012) Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Ideas and Techniques.  London: Routledge

Evan George
London
11^th May 2025