SIMPLY FOCUS Podcast: The Good Life Approach - Your podcast with the little extra Solution Focus for your daily life!

Ira Mollay about an encouraging space for change. In today’s episode, we talk with Ira Mollay, Chief Encouraging Officer and Founder of the Mutmacherei, about what fascinates her with Solution Focus, about the Mutmacherei and how it started with the good news initiative, and about focusing on progress towards a preferred future for the world. Ira shares some of the initiatives that go into that direction, her preferred future, and her contribution as chief encouraging officer directing the attention to what is already working. She talks about the „Mut in the City“-walks and how seeing positive initiatives encourages people to participate, her „soil“ metaphor, and how to contribute to a fertile common ground. Check out how Ira’s space fascination – iridium flares, iridium satellites, orbital mechanics, the overview effect and more – informs her practice, how you can apply space metaphors in coaching, and the differences her space knowledge makes for her and the Mutmacherei. Ira stresses that there is beauty to be found everywhere and that it needs practice to see it. Let’s try that out with the challenge of the week: „Go out into the world and notice what you notice. What captures your attention? And then consciously try to spot the positive things and find the beautiful things.”

The post SFP 80 – Looking up: An Encouraging Space for Change with Ira Mollay appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

Paul Z Jackson about improv and Solution Focus. In today’s episode, we talk with Paul Z Jackson, Solution-Focused practitioner, author, improviser, co-founder of the Bristol group, SOLWorld and the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN), about the fit between improvisation and Solution Focus. Find out what fascinates him about Solution Focus (SF), how he got into Solution Focus, and how Solution Focus is very well aligned with improvisation. Learn more about what fascinates him with bringing together SF and improv, the improvisation space in Solution Focus, and how knowing improv in SF and knowing SF in improv could be beneficial. Check out how they train SF practitioners with improvisation and invite their participants to improvise and the „Yes, and…“-mentality in SF and improv. Paul talks about how we learn from what works and the misconception that we mostly learn from our mistakes, the differences between an interactional - co-created emergent - and an individualistic world, and how we support our SF conversation partners to improvise in their life. Hear more about how Paul integrated Solution Focus in his life, his applied improvisation course at a University in Austria, and how SF could be used for a better world and society. And check out the challenge of the week: „Notice how you are responding in the moment to something that is important to you, something you care about, something that you are working on and allow yourself to see possibilities. Allow yourself that moment to see what other ways there might be of doing it. And try it out and see what works."

The post SFP 79 – Flow: Where Solution Focus Meets Improv With Paul Z Jackson appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

Janine Waldman on performance management and resilience. In today’s episode, we talk with Janine Waldman, MSc FCIPD, solution-focused coach, trainer, facilitator and author, about applying Solution Focus in performance management conversations and how Solution Focus amplifies resilience. Find out what fascinates her with Solution Focus, how she learned Solution Focus and how her work changed with it, as well as how her understanding of being Solution Focused changed. Check out the Solution Focused tools that fascinate her and the projects where she currently applies Solution Focus. Learn more about Solution Focus in performance management conversations and in everyday interactions at the workplace, the brilliance of skillful managers applying Solution Focus, and offering Solution Focus as a choice in trainings. Janine shares her work on resilience and Solution Focus as well as the four dimensions of resilience. She emphasizes that clients are doing the work, so trust the process, as well as the power of using and amplifying positive differences. And check out the challenge of the week: „ Over the next week, rate your days at the end of the day. 10 is the best it’s been and 1 is the opposite. And ask yourself: "How come it was so high? What did I contribute? What was the best day? How come? What is useful in this?"

The post SFP 78 – Positive Differences: Solution Focus for Performance and Resilience with Janine Waldman appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

Chris Iveson about the BRIEF minimalism. In today’s episode, we talk with Chris Iveson of BRIEF, about being neutral in Solution Focused conversations. Check out what fascinates him with Solution Focus and the BRIEF minimalism, how they developed lists, the best hopes question, the tomorrow question and much more. Learn more about how they got into Solution Focus and started BRIEF, the value of trying to be neutral in conversations with our clients, the shift from „doing“ to „noticing“, and what fascinates him about neutrality. He shares how to keep it simple and open up possibilities for our clients, the magic of detailed descriptions when using the miracle and the tomorrow question, and the importance of not using presuppositional questions. Check out how to help clients to formulate detailed descriptions and how to make questions content free. Get a glimpse of the work with Evan George and Harvey Ratner. And try out the challenge of the week: „Your next embrace with somebody you love: Notice how you show each other your mutual love in the way that you conduct the embrace, sort of microsecond by microsecond.“

The post SFP 77 – It’s Not Your Life! Being Neutral in Solution Focused Conversations with Chris Iveson appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

Sue Lickorish about spirituality in SF. In today’s episode, we talk with Sue Lickorish, a conversation changer and Solution-Focused practitioner, about what fascinates her with Solution Focus, her „wow“-moments in the beginning, and her solution-focused journey. Sue shares how she is mindful in her work to have a different kind of conversation, how her conversations changed with Solution Focus, and how she developed her own way of Solution Focus including what is important to her. She mentions he we leave imprints on each other and on our clients. And she tells the story of how her menopause experience influenced her solution-focused practice and helped her find a new kind of sovereignty. Learn more about how she is including spirituality and found her own way. Check out her reset for change spiral with the oneness in the center and the changing world at the outside of the spiral. We talk about the importance of showing up, finding your own voice in the solution-focused world, and radical acceptance with the possibility to make a small next step. And do the challenge of the week: "In your life, over the next 24 hours, take any moment and accept it radically. And ask, “From this moment, am I moving in the direction of my preferred future, with intention?”

The post SFP 76 – Reset for Change: A New Kind of Sovereignty with Sue Lickorish appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

The post SFP 75 – Building a Platform: Inviting to a Paradigm Shift with Jenny Clarke appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

The post SFP 74 – What Makes Solution Focus Beautiful? Solution Focus as an Aesthetic with Dr. Mark McKergow appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

Rayya Ghul about Solution Focus and Problem Solving. In today’s episode, we talk with Rayya Ghul, MA (Ed.) Dip.COT, Solution-Focused Therapist, Life Coach, Trainer, and Lecturer in University Learning and Teaching at the University of Edinburgh, about differences between Solution Focus and problem solving or how humans are not washing machines. We explore with her what fascinates her with Solution Focus, how to identify the best in a person and reactivate their capabilities, her book „The power of the next small step“, and how she brings Solution Focus to everyday people and everyday life. Learn more about the differences between better and different or the question „what differences would that make?", Solution Focus as a language for being useful for each other, the differences Solution Focus can make for self-help groups as well as evidence-based compliments and her „moan, moan, moan“-exercise about how to listen to people who complain. Find out more about her show „Are you a problem addict?“ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and how Solution Focus should be available for everyone in everyday life. Check out the Challenge of the week: "At the end of every day, on a scale of 0 to 10 (on a topic of your choice) where are you today and how could you maybe do better tomorrow?"

The post SFP 73 – A Genuine Alternative: Differences Between Solution Focus and Problem Solving with Rayya Ghul appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

John Wheeler about the practitioner’s perspective. In today’s episode, we talk with John Wheeler, M.A., Social Worker, UKCP Registered Systemic Psychotherapist, Solution Focused Trainer, Supervisor and Consultant as well as Board Member of the EBTA, about what fascinated him with Solution Focus at the beginning and how his conversations changed. Check out how he and Greg Vinnicombe collected Solution-focused assumptions, categorized them into four groups, have been teaching them, and how this focus on assumptions keeps him on track. He shares a great story of learning from our clients or an example of how adapting to the session rating scale (SRS) changed his conversation - from roughly connecting to truly connecting to our clients. Learn more about Solution Focused Supervision and how to be mindful of our own special perspective and the different contexts. Listen how they bridge quality assessments in a solution-focused way in their SF trainings. And check out the Challenge of the Week: „Look out for what you love most about your use of SF, based on the benefit you see it bringing to the people you are working with.”

The post SFP 72 – A Unique Perspective: Seeing an Elephant with a Rhino Horn with John Wheeler appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.

John Brooker about Team Facilitation with Solution Focus. In today’s episode, we talk with John Brooker, Solution-Focused Meeting Facilitator and Innovator, Author, and Co-President of SFiO (Solution Focus in Organisations), about how to facilitate change with teams with Solution Focus. Check out what fascinates him with Solution Focus, what differences Solution Focus made for him in the beginning, and how his team facilitations changed. Learn more about his constructive rant or how to turn difficult topics into „what they want instead?“ in the beginning, solution-focused collaboration, and John’s DNA metaphor. Listen how he navigates and maintains space and pace in team workshops and how his team impetus, an agile metaphor for teams, works. Check out SFiO and and his vision as co-president of SFiO (Solution Focus in Organisations). Join in the Challenge of the week: „Think about what you could contribute to the development of SF. What is one tiny little thing you could do?”

The post SFP 71 – Facilitating Change With Teams: John Brooker About Collaborating and the DNA of Solution Focus appeared first on SF on tour with Elfie J. Czerny & Dominik Godat.