X is for X-factor

Being introduced to the Solution Focused approach can be a puzzling and perhaps even somewhat confusing experience for practitioners. For many the shift involved in moving away from problem-solving challenges many deeply entrenched assumptions about therapy, about coaching and about the change process more broadly. How can an approach be effective, people ask themselves, when there is no requirement to have any knowledge regarding the ‘problem’ that brings our clients to us, when there is no attempt to answer the question ‘what is causing the problem?’. Surely we have to address the ‘underlying issues’, people worry, for change to have any chance of persisting, of enduring. Are not Solution Focused practitioners the modern equivalent of ‘snake-oil’ salespeople, selling a product that may offer a ‘feel-good’ difference, a sticking plaster, but no long-lasting benefit? There will of course be some people who never, for whatever reason, progress beyond their doubts but for those who do, who begin to take the approach seriously and to explore its possibilities, many find themselves enthused, often re-invigorated in relation to their work, and many ‘fall in love’ with this way of working.

Practitioners differ, fortunately, and it could not be that everyone who comes to love the Solution Focused approach, does so for exactly the same reasons and indeed there are many facets of the approach that are potentially ‘lovable’. For some people it may be the fact that the approach can work with anyone and everyone – there are no ‘exclusion criteria’. We do not have to start by assessing, attempting to figure out whether this particular person is ‘right for our approach’.  It may be the ‘non-disruptive’ nature of the work that appeals. People are likely to feel better at the end of a session rather than upset or distressed and so the work does not require that people are in a stable situation. The work can be carried out, for example, in a school-setting without the school staff needing to be concerned about the impact of the sessions on a child’s subsequent behaviour for the rest of a school day. People can be worked with in the midst of real crises of living, crises that are disruptive of every element of their experience, of their focus and their attention. It may be the relative brevity of the work that stands out for others – interventions typically lasting between three and five sessions and sometimes less. After all longer-term interventions are not easy for hard-pressed people to manage – the requirement that a child, for instance, be seen regularly over a significant period of time sometimes makes impossible demands upon a parent that effectively exclude some children from help. Or it may just be that the work is fun. People tend to enjoy their sessions. There is a great deal of smiling and laughter, even when people come to us wishing to address the effects of traumatising, immensely distressing, life experiences. And indeed practitioners very quickly appreciate that this approach is also good for us! The fact that the approach seems to protect practitioners against ‘burn-out’, a finding confirmed by Medina and Beyebach (2014), becomes experientially self-evident as people immerse themselves in the approach and find themselves, or so they report, enjoying their work more and more, keen to take on new referrals.

So there are many reasons for ‘loving’ Solution Focused practice but what is the x-factor, the difference that truly seems to make a difference for so many practitioners? And for many it seems that the x-factor lies in the way that the approach invites us to think about our clients and therefore to treat our clients and thus of course in the way that our clients experience the work. Solution Focused practitioners choose to assume that our clients are competent, that they are the experts on their own lives and that they mean what they say.  Thus clients are ‘taken seriously’, there is no listening through the client’s words for hidden meanings, for the unsaid; we happily work with the words and the descriptions that the client gives us. There is no focus to the work until the client answers the ‘best hopes’ question and the client’s ‘best hopes’ (George et al., 1999) are the sole focus; the worker has no view on how the client should be living or indeed what is ‘good’ for the client. The client’s life is their own business and not the practitioner’s business (1). The Solution Focused practitioner chooses to assume that when the client says that they want to change that they mean it and that whether change happens in the first session, or indeed prior to it, or later or maybe never, that the client is at all times giving of their best. There is no concept of client-centred resistance. It could never occur to a SF practitioner that the client is not motivated, or that they are ‘not ready’ for change. If the client changes then the Solution Focused Practitioner credits the client and if the client does not change then we challenge ourselves – ‘clearly my work was not effective and so what might I have done differently?’. In Solution Focus there is no client-blaming, indeed there are no critical thoughts about the client at all; the stance that we adopt can be thought of as ‘appreciative’ (George 2024). As Steve de Shazer was not infrequently head to say when asked to explain his effectiveness, such good outcomes in relatively few sessions, ‘it is because I get such great clients’. The worker brings no idea of ‘solution’ to the work, merely asking questions which allow the client   to discover their own best way forward, the way that works for them in all their singularities and diferences. And of course we assume that our clients’ time is precious and must not be wasted. If change can be achieved in one session we really should not take two sessions, if in three we should not take four and if in twenty-three we should avoid the twenty-fourth. And this points to another aspect the model. Every intervention is client-specific. The client is not offered just three sessions or just six or just twelve – Solution Focus offers ‘as long as it takes and not one more’, as de Shazer defined brevity. There is no assumption that every client should come once a week – Solution Focus works out a specific schedule for each and every client that will vary during the course of a piece of work and the client will be consulted on the timings ‘when do you think that it might be useful for us to meet again?’. The client is in charge of endings, the worker assuming the client’s competence, with no idea that the client should have more sessions or that the client is not ready to finish. And finally the Solution Focused practitioner believes that every client has the capacity to change, that every client has resources, indeed that change is likely already to be happening at the beginning of the work.

The stance that Solution Focus adopts is a celebratory, appreciative, joyous and indeed loving stance with the practitioner taking enormous care to shape each and every question building on the client’s own words, taking account of the client’s position. It is not hard to imagine the impact on the client of working with a worker who takes the client seriously (and indeed literally), who believes in the client’s capacity to change, who assumes competence and believes that the client is the expert in their own life and that their own way of changing is the best way and where the work is focused exclusively on the client’s own ‘best hopes’. Clients are likely to notice and to appreciate the way that each piece of work is individually tailored to them rather than the ‘one fits all approach’, six sessions once a week, that they may have experienced elsewhere. It is not hard to imagine that working with a worker who believes that effective, long-lasting change need not be painful, indeed might well be enjoyable, truly makes a difference to the client’s experience. And this seems to us at BRIEF to represent a way of working, a stance, that most practitioners would prefer to adopt when they realise that we can do so without sacrificing effectiveness. It is the stance that is the x-factor.

1. The only time that a worker may be obliged to step away from the client’s preferences is when risk or danger obliges the worker to step out of their ‘therapist’ role and to adopt the ‘safe guarder’ role instead.

 

George, E. (2024) A is for Appreciating https://www.brief.org.uk/resources/a-to-z-of-sf-practice/a-is-for-appreciating.html
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  
Medina, A. and Beyebach, M. (2014), The Impact of Solution-focused Training on Professionals' Beliefs, Practices and Burnout of Child Protection Workers in Tenerife Island, Child Care in Practice, 20(1): 7-36, DOI: 10.1080/13575279.2013.847058

Evan George
London
08 June 2025