The question ‘How did you do that?’ is a commonly used formulation in Solution Focused conversations. The client says, for example, ‘I managed to walk away’ and the worker responds ‘So how did you do that?’, or even, inspired by Insoo perhaps, ‘Wow! So how did you do that?’. So far so usual. Nothing new here. But I would like you to try something. Try saying ‘How did you do that?’ 5 times each time shifting the emphasis.
- How did you do that? (first word)
- How did you do that? (second word)
- How did you do that? (third word)
- How did you do that? (fourth word)
- How did you do that? (fifth word)
It is interesting isn’t it? Well I think so. The meaning of the question clearly changes as we move the emphasis with each of the different versions shifting where we are inviting the client to focus. I am not sure that I have ever done much with versions 1 and 2 and 5 but the difference between version 3 and 4 seems to me to tell us something about the way that SF is changing and developing.
As we all know Steve de Shazer used to talk about the 3 rules underpinning Solution Focused Brief Therapy:
- If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
- If it works do more of it.
- If it doesn’t work do something different?
And in rules 2 and 3 it is the word ‘do’ that jumps out at me, in addition of course to ‘work(s)’, but the key word I think is ‘do’. Steve really was interested in inviting people to focus on their doings, their actions, the successful strategies that were associated with these, let’s call them, instance/exception moments. And so when Steve asked the question ‘so how did you do that?’ the emphasis was I think on the word ‘do’ - version 4 in other words. Now obviously the impact of the question is complex and merely asking ‘how did you do that?’ invites the client into agency, they did something, and of course the question is also complimentary in its effect, even without the Insoo ‘WOW’. Now as I see it this emphasis on ‘doing’ is hardly surprising given the MRI influence on the development of SFBT where Weakland, Watzlawick and Fisch were interested in changing what people were doing, given that their idea was that whatever it was that people were doing in trying to resolve the problem at the point of referral was actually serving merely to maintain that problem. So people had to do something different and the word do was emphasised.
Now over a period of some years a change began to happen and there began to be more of an emphasis on the ‘you’. I began to focus more on people’s strengths and skills and competences, their resources. And I began to notice myself importing, probably from the Narrative approach, the work of White and Epston, what I called, in all probability copying the narrative people, ‘identity questions’ (Ratner et al. 2012). For example I began to ask:
‘So what did doing that tell you about yourself?’
‘So what did you draw on (in order to do that)?’
‘So what did you learn about yourself (in doing that) that you hadn’t previously known?’
‘So who would have been least surprised to hear that you managed to do that and what did that person know about you that that perhaps others had not noticed?’
However the focus on the person was balanced by a focus on strategy and so I was asking, and continue to ask, both Strategy and Identity questions (Ratner et al. 2012 p 153 – 156). And so the form of the question that I was asking could be thought of as ‘How did you do that?’ with an emphasis both on ‘you’ and ‘do’.
Recently there has been a further shift that characterises the work of some of our colleagues, in particular perhaps Elliott Connie and Adam Froerer (Connie and Froerer, 2023) and that is characterised by version 3 of the question ‘How did you do that?’ There has been a shift in emphasis towards a focus on the person who is doing the doing. Whereas many of us have focused the conversation on people’s lived lives, their lives as transformed by the presence of the best hopes and how people do those lives, now there appears to be, for some practitioners at least, more of a focus on the version of the person who will be successful in moving forward. These practitioners are focusing less on the life that is being built and more on people building a self, a self who can be successful. In a curious way this feels like a shift to a more traditional therapeutic focus and form, a focus on the person, the client, the patient, the service-user. Change truly is constant, as we might somewhat paradoxically claim, and that is as true of our model as anything else.
Connie, Elliott and Froerer, Adam (2023) The Solution Focused Diamond: A new approach to SFBT that will empower both practitioners and client to achieve the best outcome. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House Inc.
Ratner, H., George, E., Iveson, C. (2012) Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Ideas and Techniques. London: Routledge
Evan George
London
14th January 2024
