Clients mention exceptions without noticing. Treating them as strategies to repeat misses the point. Dr. Deborah Teplow on staying close to what happened.
The Hidden Power of Exceptions
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Solution-Focused Practice Began With Observation, Not Theory
Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg spent thousands of hours behind a one-way mirror, watching sessions in real time and tracking one thing: which responses led to real client progress. The approach they developed is what survived.
The Better Future Still Includes Hard Days
Clients commit on the day the goal is set. The commitment isn’t tested until a hard day arrives. Solution-Focused practice rehearses that day in advance, and the client writes the script.
Beware of Problem-Solving Dressed Up in a Solution-Focused Question
A client went to the gym twice. What you ask next decides which side of the problem they’re on. Dr. Deborah Teplow on questions that only sound Solution-Focused.
Select the Client’s Words to Formulate Your Next Question
Every time a client speaks, a practitioner does one of three things with the client’s words: keeps them, deletes them, or changes them. Which one you do shapes everything that follows.
Don’t I Have to Understand My Client to Help Them?
You don’t need to figure out what’s driving your client, and they don’t need insight before change begins. Dr. Deborah Teplow on connecting instead, and the questions that bring a better future to life.
Solution-Focused Practice and Motivational Interviewing: Four Points of Departure
MI and Solution-Focused practice are not variations on a theme. Four specific points of departure, and what each one changes from the first moment of a session.
What Do I Do When My Client Wants Something Unrealistic or Impossible?
Some clients want what coaching cannot deliver. Dr. Deborah Teplow on naming what is true without arguing, and asking the question that moves the conversation somewhere possible.
Three Continents, One Pattern: Where Lasting Change Actually Starts
Elders in Uganda. Mothers in India. A husband-and-wife team in Vietnam with no budget and no nutrition training. Three stories from Deborah’s summit talk, all converging on the same five principles of lasting change.
Every Solution-Focused Conversation Has the Same Three Parts
Five minutes or fifty, every Solution-Focused conversation has the same three parts. Like driving a car: you start it, you drive it, you park it.