🎙️ Toward Solutions Podcast | Episode 3: What really makes Solution Focused work come alive? with Jenny Clarke

As a society, we're very well first in pop psychology, not real psychology, but pop psychology and we think that it's very important to go deep and all of that to understand the problem. So I think I would start by saying it's much more important to say, to find out what you want than what you don't want. Hello and welcome to the Toward Solution Podcast where creativity meets practical application. I'm Dee on Sing and I'm Jason Pasco. Together we dive deep into the world of solution focus exploring its transformative power across a variety of contexts. Come join us each month as we engage in enlightening conversation with experts and practitioners who are applying solution focus in their unique environments. Whether you're looking to enhance your personal life, professional practice or community projects, our discussions will provide you with valuable insights and actionable ideas. Tune in to discover how you can implement solution focused strategies and practices in your own context, unlocking new possibilities and creative solutions. Let's embark on this journey of exploration and innovation together. Subscribe now so you don't miss an episode of the Toward Solution Podcast. I remember 2011. It was ended up being just you, Mark and I and we went to a Japanese sushi restaurant in Sydney. And just the conversation just opened up in such a way and it was amazing for me to be sitting there with both of you who had brought SF into an organisation or context. It was the joy and the humanity that you described your experience of SF and working in a solution focus way that I said to Dee on, we have to talk to Jenny about this. Give written. Books on this staff you've collected stories. So thank you. Thank you for. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, there are just so many memories and of course that is one of them and it's seeing when Penny's drop and then when people think, "Yeah, get it. I see what you're on about now that makes this work, the training work rather than that." I keep saying there's a difference between doing SF and talking about it and often when you talk about it, it's quite difficult to explain how can that work, how can that work. But when you see people get it, that is just such a wonderful feeling, especially people who have been trained in other disciplines and the same where they're looking for becoming experts in problems basically. And they become experts in problems and problems that they've seen before and therefore they know what to do with. And to see people change from that understanding of the human world to a different understanding is just such a lovely moment or a lovely series of moments. So I think that's a word joy because there is some joy in it. So tell me about one of those sparkling moments in a training where you've just seen someone get it. What's a standout? Okay, thank you. And usually it has been with people who have been trained with NLP or at the other end of maybe this spectrum. Engineers, there's been a little bit of discussion on the SFT list lately about engineers don't get it. Actually engineers do get it. They do get it because their resonant trait is to make things work. And if you've dismantled something and put it back together again, it's not working. Well, you've got to find some other way of dealing with it. It's what their life is about really. I can remember people who have been trained in NLP finding it really difficult. In fact, a couple of times we went and trained, and I would not have trained. We went and gave talks to NLP groups. And some of them, the way that we label and diagnose, and we'd set an exercise up about the miracle question. Imagine a time just supposed. And somebody said, "I can't do that because I'm very kinesthetic." And I was thinking, "I thought NLP was supposed to make you more flexible in the world." Not to say, "If I asked a person in the street to imagine a time, they would do it." The way that half of the group said, "No, no, this is no good." The other half said, "Wow." That kind of thing, when you get this dichotomy, this difference of response is really interesting. I should say that I'm basically by nature a problem solver and an analyst. So this stuff didn't really come very easily to me. So my own was a kind of, "Wow, moments, it happens to me." "Wow, you don't need to go into all the causes." That's not actually very helpful. So actually now I'm talking my own, "Wow, moment was." But of course, the best one for me. You don't need to find out the causes and all of that. It's a bit of a shock. It's true. I've really got about five questions I reckon, flying around in my mind. I want to know more about what was that moment for you and what led to the world to come to me up. I don't know. What was it? What's that being? I don't know. But it was almost like a vote from the blue. Gosh, you're not asking about the origins or the causes or any of that. And it worked. So I can't remember what particular, it was probably one of these pair exercises. Yeah. And I can't remember what we would call in the olden days the presenting problem was. Because now I'm not interested in presenting problems, but that's one of the difficulties of doing SF training. You've got to go around asking for presenting problems. Ever mind. That's only just a cat to me. So we have to start off with a presenting problem apparently. But you know, I'm excited about these kind of moments of change. And I've seen a few, you know, myself. I think mine was maybe more of a gradual kind of experience. But what do you think leads to that for people? So like as a trainer, as from your experience, what do you think has, you know, you've seen help there to be more, uh-huh moments? Precurses have changed. Yeah. And so, um, this is why I may be working with, I'm talking now as a coach, but this would also be true. I'm guessing as a therapist working with mandated clients can be very difficult, you know, people who've been sent to you. So how do you find a route into dealing with this person is just sitting there because that they've been sent and how to find that willingness to change. It's all about finding what, um, I don't want to use this, the impetus for change. I was going to say motivation, but I'm not very keen on motivation because, you know, people go around motivating other people. You don't motivate other people, but you can find an impetus for change somehow. What's, what's in it for me? I, you know, I've got to sit here for an hour or so. What's in it for me? So I think, um, we have a phrase about in order to may progress, you need a customer for change and we just, we, we define the customer as somebody who wants something different. There are loads of them around and just willing to do something about it. And it's finding that willingness to do something about it, which actually can take a large part of the time, our time work. What is it? Finding out what's in it for me? What's it, what would give me some impetus to change? Um, so that, that part, we call it platform, those as well. that part of a conversation can be most of the conversation. Once you've established what's in it for me, then you can move quite quickly because there's a point to it. - It's really interesting. I was thinking about, even sometimes that defining the collective, like with the group is defining that collective vision. I wonder whether that's the kind of, whether it's a similar thing to what you're saying, but it's a, yeah. - It probably is. And with a group pick and take even longer and actually working smaller on, finding that small elements of things that we all want. Because from that, you've got some kind of chahesian and some kind of agreement and willingness to work together on an element of what they all want. So with the group, we're quite often working smaller bits of the group to go away and work out what they want and then to compare and contrast and find bits that everybody wants, yeah. And work on that first. And look for small successes. - Fabulous. Sorry, that's goal. 'Cause I literally shot a 30 second video and put it on LinkedIn last week about something I've been calling collective best hopes. How do you do this thing? I think that's so important, Jenny, because to be able to articulate what I want and then literally well to what someone else wants, but listen for what we're impressed within what they want. Listen for maybe some common ground in what they want. Start to talk what signs of progress might be. And you get people then saying, actually, we all pretty much want the same thing, don't we? And there's a whole shift of not- - Very often, exactly that, because very often we're talking about the means rather than the ends. So we'll disagree about how to, while we've forgotten about what to, you know? So yeah, what do we, and having worked for, or half of my working life in what I still call a proper job and spending ages and meetings? And often you suddenly realize, we've forgotten what we're here for. Let's have another conversation about what we're trying to do rather than how we're trying to do something that we haven't actually talked about recently. What we're trying to do? Well, that's quite a useful question sometimes. And it can, well, I did it when I had a proper job, you can stop the meeting. Well, you know, what are we trying to do here? - So, what do you love about solution focus? - I love its simplicity. I hate the fact it's not easy, but I love its simplicity, that you don't have to remember patterns and stuff and you know, you don't have to, you don't have to remember stuff. You just have to listen. And I think it takes a lot of ego. You don't need, I mean, the ego takes a long time to get rid of, but actually you don't need much ego to do this job because it's not about you. It's about who you're with. And actually, and that's another sort of great, great realization that I was very slow to come to. It's not about my good questions. It's about somebody else's good answers. And this sort of, I just spent years, oh, that's a good question. I must remember that good question, but you know, it's not about me. - So, I reckon that's so, that's amazing, isn't it? There's this aha moment when you go, "Oh my goodness, this works and I don't need." But then as you progress along the journey, you go, "Actually, it's not about me." You know, these moments are long. - And that took me a while, I must admit. Well, you know, that, yes, it takes a while and can never be perfected. (all laughing) Yeah. - Yeah. - And it's very liberating that it's, you know, you don't have to be clever. And in a way, I mean, I do agree that we need to test the effectiveness of our work. But you know, and actually asking for feedback three months later, for example, is a good way of reinforcing the work as well as finding out about whether the work. But again, there's a bit of ego in that. Well, what did you think of me there, you know? And so it's a double edged thing, this asking for feedback. Tell me I was good, please. But mostly, mostly actually what we want is them to have not noticed yet. Which is the thing that heart for the ego? - Yeah, it is indeed, I think, you know, amazingly freeing, isn't it? Like I definitely find that, I think, you know, that it's knowing that it doesn't all, you know, hinge off you and that you're just there to facilitate a conversation is really, I find it quite reassuring anyway. I'd like to hear some more about the kind of context that you've applied SFM over your career. - Okay, so we usually, when I say we I'm talking about SF work, that's Myanmar, Macauga. We're quite often asked to somebody, well, somebody in a company will have said, "Oh, that's really good. I want my whole company to be sufficient focused from now on." And we really resist that kind of invitation. But what we do instead is say, give us an issue, we'll work with it. And then afterwards we might bring to consciousness some of what we did. Two particularly good examples of that kind of thing. One was in a glass factory where again, the boss had learned a solution focus and liked it. Come and teach us. And so we spent a day with about 30 people, all of the people who worked in this factory. Most of whom had left school as soon as they could. Most of whom had never been on a training course. Most of whom were thinking, why the hell are we here with these people? And so we got away with all chairs and we just let them sort out the furniture and got them again to in small groups, what would be a perfect way of managing our work in this to make a better and more enjoyable place. And they were worked on that for some time. Huge energy, drawing, they were mostly drawing things. And after a bit of that, then they had a list of issues that would need to be addressed like stock control. We can never find anything. Where the hell is that thing that we're looking for? So stock control, putting things in the right place, all that kind of issue came up. And then we spent time working out small steps about how they could improve of that kind of thing. And then on day two, we broke that down and said this is what we did, this is how we did it. And taught them some of the tools. And the best result of that was, well, they had results, they had sort of bottom line results. But for us, they then had a room which they designated the solutions room. And whenever they had a problem, they would go to the solution room and consciously use some of these tools. And the other example was also in a factory, but a very different factory, a semiconductor factory. So again, these are now highly disciplined engineers and so on and it was very similar. Draw pictures, draw pictures, compare results and they go off and do some of the things that you need to do. We did some work on performance management in a finance company. I think the one result of that that we didn't achieve, we had hoped to achieve was to disentangle performance discussions from pay discussions, but they wouldn't separate those discussions. So it was a big thing, but you know the usual performance management conversation which describes you as good average, you are no good. As if your performance through the year had just been one of those things and didn't notice the variations in performances. And if you do notice variations in performances, you can get all sorts of interesting information like, gosh, that was a really good thing to you do. You did, how did you do that? How can you do more of that? That kind of thing. A conversation that people might enjoy instead of this dreaded, and your review thing, which is mysteriously connected in many places to pay rises. And again, back in the olden days when I was a manager myself, and I had described somebody as below average, the live-off said, "You can't, you can't, you can't say somebody's below average." That's the real half of the people must be. I mean, you know, that's just ridiculous. I'm a bit of a mathematician, you can't say somebody's below average. So the whole thing is often a bit of a fast, isn't it? So getting more interesting performance conversations, God, you did that really well. Let's start with those conversations. How did you do that? What helped you? Is there an element of the job that we could make sure that you have more of that kind of task to do? That kind of more interesting question. I love it, because I've got a quote here on your article, another Copernican revolution. Oh, yeah. See, on and I were talking about earlier, it's the remember of the future. It says, "human beings have an amazing ability to imagine things which have not yet happened." The magic of the miracle question lies in the way it taps into the ability, this ability, so that the client experiences in his or her mind's eye and body, what things would be like in the absence of the problem. Not only does this provide sensory clues to how things could be in a better world, it also widens the client's sense of what is possible, and it provides a muscle memory that can be recalled later. Thus, imagination is transformed to memory, a remembering. The search for exceptions, examples of the desired outcome happening in the past, thickens this strand of memory. That's a beautiful way to describe solutions' focus, I think. And that thickens the strand. The problem's story is very well rehearsed, very well told, very well known, and it's a very thick strand. And trying to get those small examples of something better happening needs to be thickened, but thanks to narrative people for that phrase. I started thinking about solution-focused, and then I thought about how, you know, in effect, memories, there's no. The only thing that changes a memory from something past to something in the future is just our relation in how we relate time to it. So it's still matter, as far as, you know, it's still neurons, and it's still matter, and still growing a. It's still physical real estate in our minds, and so this idea, I actually had read this before and told Jason, shared it with me, and I thought that really almost perfectly sums up what I was thinking about as far as the strand of memory. And the bit that I'm really interested in, I like what you talked about, the sensory clues, because I think we're not separate, our bodies and minds aren't separate things, where, you know, we're whole. Yeah, interested in how I think solution-focused relates to that, and, you know, it does build memories of our preferred future, and if you think that there is, you know, a physical matter in our body and mind. I'm sure you've had experience of this watching as well as maybe having it yourself, but when somebody's given a really rich answer to the miracle question, and I'm used, that's shorthand to the miracle question, because of course it can take you 10 minutes to get an answer to the miracle question. But, you can see the physical change when they experience for themselves as satisfactory answer to the miracle question. You can see the relaxation, you can see that, and you don't have to ask questions like, "How, and how does that make you feel?" Because you can see how it makes you feel, and if you ask a question like, "How do you, how does that make you feel?" You're interrupting the feeling. So, I'm really not keen on, "How does that make you feel?" When they're in the midst of feeling something, and how did that make you feel is even more strange in a way. They will show you how they made them feel. By the way, they hold their bodies, by the way they talk, by the black ends. It's almost rude to interrupt the feeling by asking about it. Let's take this feeling out and have a look at it, shall we? That's one of my, I've developed a grumpy old woman persona, and this is one of my grumpy things. You can't ask about feelings. You can only observe them. You've developed the grumpy old woman persona in the soul world presentation from 2014 on this topic. Revolution. We need to be more assertive and ruder. What did you mean? Oh, I'm very strong about this. This is what makes me grumpy, although I'm mellowing, because there are some battles you can't win, and therefore stop it. But I mean, I mean our willingness to, okay, the reason why I'm used to be more concerned about it when I am now, is if you're claiming to be solution focused, please be solution focused. I don't mind what you actually do with your clients, but if you're calling it solution focused, don't quit the bitch, but everybody else who is calling themselves. So there must be some criteria that actually is solution focused. So that talk is about what's the difference between solution, but I'm still quite proud of that talk and that article because I too often people, well, it's the eclectic people, they would say, well, I do this with a bit of an I exaggerated in the talk, but in their past life regressions that they're very solution focused when they're doing that. I think I think your misunderstanding and the name solution focus doesn't help, of course. So, who isn't solution focused? Who doesn't want the solution? But people tell me what to do, give me a solution, it's tell me what to do. It doesn't mean tell me what help me find out what I want, which is what we're doing. Help me find out what I want is the kind of the plea that we're answering, I think. Yes, I'm ramping about people who say I'm very solution focused and, oh, well, you know, I actually heard this. Well, I'm very good at seeing solutions and as soon as I do, I tell everybody, you know, that solution focused and of course it is. If you ask a man in the street, what solution focused means that that's what they would understand. Yeah, we're too nice and we're not assertive enough to say, no, we're not delving into problems. We haven't got theories about precursors of change and so on. We've got theories about what to pay attention to. What's interesting. So it's not true that we haven't got any theories, we haven't got theories, but they're not generalizable our theories. They're all about what's happening to this person in this context of this time and every case is different. That's a theory that every case is different because, you know, there are similarities. Of course, there are. But you can't draw on that knowledge because you're then you're too much in your head and not listening to you. I've seen this before. You know, that's not helpful. We were discussing and I'm interested in it from a something I've been pondering, but if you were to, you know, tell a neighbor over the fence, what is solution focused in a, you know, in a statement. What, how would you describe it? What would you, you know, what's your explanation? I think I would describe it in trying to define what we mean by solution and I would define it as well. Spending some time to investigate what people really want and usually that word instead will come into that. What do you want to start because people, you, we're very well. As a society, we're very well versed in pop psychology, not real psychology, but pop psychology and we think that it's very. important to go deep and all of that and to understand the problems. So I think I would start by saying it's much more important to say to find out what you want than what you don't want. And that's a much more interesting line of inquiry what do you want rather than what's wrong? And so that we have conversations which help people to work out what they want. And what life would be like. Well, actually the miracle question originally was what will life life be like without the problem? That's gone. Now the problem is never really mentioned. It's just what would life be like in an ideal world in a miraculous world? And so even without the problem kind of held the problem there for quite some time. And I'm not sure who noticed that first, but the brief guys are just so brilliant. You must talk to one of them. So brilliant at making things even more simple, even more outcomes razor which was a great tool of steve de cheeses. They were even better at using it. I remember walking there when you and Mark were living in London, walking down your front steps and along the path because you were going to a meeting about I suppose what eventually became sort of SF 2.0 in an article and another and Mark's book on next generation. But we had this conversation because you were going to a meeting and we were talking about they're doing it even briefer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They really are and that's one example of it. But when you go through some of the what you might call protocols about how to do solution focus, there are still things in there from the really, really ancient days, the early 80s about taking a break. Thinking of compliments, setting tasks, all of that has gone from those very early days. And again, I don't want to particular the Milwaukee people were noticing that themselves of course because they were they were supreme investigators and and notices of what's working and what's what's unnecessary. But I think the brief people refined it even further and I don't know which elements to ascribed to that. But when you think of those elements taking a break. And during which you're supposed to think about what impressed you and what you're going to tell them to do next. All of that's gone. Yeah. And again, that's takes some of the expertise away and you don't have to think about that anymore. And brief would say they don't give compliments or christen talking about Chris in particular because I know his work best Chris Ivesson. He says we don't do compliments that that's rubbish. His whole demeanor is complimentary. But he doesn't come out at the end with this expert sort of description of what's impressed him because he thinks that's unnecessary. I quite like to do it. But you know, he's it's unnecessary and he demonstrates it's unnecessary might be desirable. But it's not necessary. Fantastic. See, just to summarize and you can tell me if I've gone off track or whether I've captured you captured your summary. So effectively you're saying solution focus is helping people to or conversations that help people to discover what they do want. Yeah. Yeah. And examples of that happening already ideas about how they might be able to expand that and so on. Yeah. Fantastic. One of the things that we really want or we really wanted to do with the podcast was for people to be able to listen to it and then you know have a new idea or something they could go away and experiment or or try. Do you have something that you you know you could teach us and that you know listeners could go away and experiment with? I think it is an example of the miracle question. And the shorthand for this is best hopes. I don't personally, I don't like that phrase very much, but I think that's a bit of jargon best hopes. But but something like that that in an ideal world, how would you like things to be? And it's very difficult question to answer that because with I would say, well, I'm not in an ideal world, I've got I've got this going on. So it's not an easy question to answer and it needs quite a lot of um preparation in a way. I'm going to ask you a strange question and all of that kind of thing. But there's something about this is a beautiful example in one of the books and I'm not sure it's probably in sir because this is what she was such a genius about J. Aster a version of the very good question and the woman said, my husband would be dead. They cause and in so he said, what difference would that make? Great question. So you know, I don't like great questions, but it's great question. And the woman said, well, then I would go and see my married daughter who lives in a different state, but he doesn't want he doesn't want to come in. He doesn't like traveling. And then the woman said, but I suppose I could do that by myself. I don't need to wait until he's dead to go and do that. And just that that kind of when you say how things how you really like things to be, when you say it out loud, perhaps even that is enough to make it possible. I'm very keen on the power of saying things out loud. When I was in New Zealand a few years ago and I watched people jumping off the tower there, and I said out loud, oh, I'd like to do that. And having said I'd like to do that, I got out to do it. And the house for me again later when I was on a load in the house and meet Liv's record came on. I'd do anything for love, but I won't do that. And I shouted at the radio, put out the bins, I suppose. And then I said out loud, even though I was the I should I should do stand up. And because I had said I should do stand up, I have to go and do stand up. There's something very powerful about saying things out loud, even to yourself. Yeah, because I think you're right. It is there is something and actually those rich descriptions of the future. It's not just in, you know, it's in people being able to talk about that and verbalize it. And it's yeah, it's not just kind of thinking about it. Is it like it's there is something I think, you know, it's actually a question about the physical, yeah, the physical elements of it. Yeah. And it's you interact, you win your context, even if there's no one else there. Yeah. Yeah. But you hear it. You hear it. You think it's back to remembering. I like that English word. Remembering is putting things back together again. And differently each time you remember something, especially if somebody else has a, you know, the family groups and you remember things, but the other one remembers it completely differently. The story changes every time you re-enver it. Sorry. You're giving off on tangents. No, no, that's gone. I don't mind it all. I think it's fabulous. We love tangents. In fact, we probably like tangents more than, you know, structure to be honest. It's making me think about, you know, the actions in the interaction, even when you buy yourself yeah, even when you buy yourself loud and you're still interacting, you're still hearing that sound bounce off the wall, you're hearing it by, you know, come out of your own mouth. And you know, we say, you know, it's it's about, it's not about me hearing the answer of a client. It's about them hearing their answer. So it reminded me about, and Jenny, you taught me this was a question. It was the question of, it was a noticing question. What would your car notice? Because we still have a relationship with our car. Yeah. And the car really does notice how you're holding onto that steering wheel. And we slam the door or close the door. Radio station, you put on your, what do you stream next? All that sort of stuff. And they're the beautiful things in people's descriptions of the day after the miracle. It's really easy, normal things that flow. And things which had happened occasionally. Yeah. I was happy to see you. Yeah. It's fantastic. Do you have any questions for us or anything else? Well, do Definitely, we will make sure we link to the article and your YouTube video. Definitely. They are very related. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And partly prompted by this, I've said to Mark, my articles should be more easily found. So he's now given me a page with my articles. And actually, what he should have included, this is part of the Grumpy Odd Woman, was my rap. I've got a rap. No, I've got a rap. So there's my rap, which I think he ought to put on the page. I'll get him to do that as well. We'll definitely find all those and we'll make sure that we circulate this with the conversation. So people can dig further. Jenny, the sparkle is still in your eye when you talk about all of these moments and I love it. I love it. I tell you why, here's what it's done for me over the years. I remember, it's bizarre because we have these moments, but I can almost remember every meal we've had together. But they're those moments after all the other stuff where you just sit and connect and you trash out bits and pieces of things and it's magical. And I've appreciated every moment. It's the conversations, isn't it? And just these unstructured conversations are just so, it's just what makes life so good, isn't it? I've learned a lot. I've got a lot to go away and think about and ponders some more on. So I really appreciate that. Thanks for taking the time. It's great to see me here today on We're back a few months ago because I'm just so loving this younger generation and you know, that the future is secure. Thank you for joining us on the Towards Solutions podcast. We hope today's insights inspire you to apply solution focus in your life and projects. Whether you're applying these strategies in your personal life, professional practice or community projects, we're excited to see the impact you create. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with others who might benefit from our discussions. Your support helps us to reach more people and continue to bring you quality content. Stay tuned for more enlightening conversations and make sure you subscribe and let's continue this journey towards solutions together.