Because of these attributes, solution- focused counselling has drawn great attention from counsellors who seek a time- sensitive, positive, and highly pragmatic approach to working with their clients Murphy, Applying solution-focused approach in career counselling Connecting solution-focused principles to career counselling Berg and Miller noted that there are eight central principles associated with solution-focused counselling. In addition, Davis and Osborn propose another five principles that constitute the main frame of this therapeutic approach.
A very brief review of these principles is necessary to understand the essence of this therapy, because these principles capture the goals and their related intervention strategies of this therapeutic alternative. Chen these very principles seem to provide some viable options when they are connected to, and conceptualized in a career counselling context. Career counsellors may find these principles useful in helping clients cope with various issues in their worklife in general, and in their career planning and decision making in particular.
Focusing on positive change The emphasis of solution-focused counselling is on mental health, and the belief that positive change is possible. Solution-focused counsellors do not seek the cause of problems. Instead, the focus of career counselling with Heather would be towards the future, and on helping her to find alternate work that would cause her less anxiety.
Thus, solution-focused counsellors assist their clients to think not about their problems, but about their strengths and possible solutions.
This orientation towards competency differs markedly from the deficit-based perspective that is prevalent in many vocational counselling contexts. For example, there is a common belief that clients referred for career or employment counselling services are somehow lacking in the necessary skills required to get a job on their own. Client as the expert The client, but not the counsellor, is the expert regarding his or her own circumstances and potential solutions.
In order for a client to see him or herself as the expert, solution-focused counselling always begins where the client is, and the counsellor takes or accepts what the client has to say at face value.
To reverse this thought process, and to place the role of expert back onto the client, the counsellor can avoid using these standardized psychometric tools as the sole measurement for vocational assessment. Selecting the most relevant intervention Counselling is parsimonious, or economical, in that the least interfering and the most relevant and accessible interventions are selected first.
Once this intervention is selected, it is implemented in the shortest time frame possible. Similarly, solution-focused counselling holds that a small change in any aspect of the problem can initiate a solution.
In adapting these notions to career counselling context, we as counsellors may find that our clients do not require as extensive assistance as we are currently giving them. Chen for example, are several weeks in length. Noting that even small changes can have a profound effect on the client, vocational practitioners of such programs may be well advised to shorten their programs by focusing specifically on what the client identifies as his or her problem.
This problem would then be addressed by assisting the client to access his or her own strengths and resources to come up with a proposed solution to the problem.
Change as the unavoidable outcome Change, particularly positive change, is considered inevitable. The expectation that positive transformation can and does occur is one of the central presuppositions of solution-focused counselling DeShazer, Solutions are made possible because change is ongoing. Perceiving that change will come about can bring hope to career and employment counsellors who work with the long-term unemployed.
Often with multiple barriers, these clients are considered difficult to work with, and could no doubt benefit from a counsellor who takes on the perspective that unemployment is merely a short-term difficulty, and not an irreversible state. More importantly, the counsellor communicates this sense of hope to the client through the brief helping process that focuses on generating positive solution.
Future orientation To help clients find meaningful solutions to problems in life, counselling retains a present and future orientation.
This present and future tense appears to be particularly advisable to career development and counselling intervention. Although past events and experiences are well recognized and examined in the counselling process, the rationale for career counselling is to form viable visions and strategies for present and future career projects.
Building a collaborative alliance Solution-focused counselling insists that the counsellor and the client work best in a cooperative and collaborative manner.
They suggest that the counselling process be made transparent so as to let clients know that they have control over events and can make their own decisions and choices. The first step that can be taken involves introducing the counselling process so that it can be demystified. For example, clients can be asked what expectations they have of counselling, and what they hope to achieve through counselling.
Third, the counsellor can invite the client to leave earlier or take a break from the regular one-hour session. Fourth, clients can be informed at the end of their session that they have several choices, including making another counselling appointment, changing to another counsellor, or deciding to terminate counselling at that time. It is easy to see how each of these techniques serves to empower the clients, rather than taking away their authority over their own problems.
Forming a collaborative counsellor-client work alliance is a key condition for a healthy and productive career counselling intervention. A common misperception about career counselling is that the rapport between the counsellor and the client is not as important as that of a therapeutic intervention, because career counselling is to help the client to find a job.
One of the main factors that reinforces such a misunderstanding is often the time constraint placed on career counselling. Unlike psychotherapy and many other forms of personal and social counselling, very often career counselling is a time-pressed intervention that aims to yield immediate result such as making a decision that will lead to present career change. The counsellor-client work alliance principle and its associated strategies from the solution-focused counselling can fit very well to career counselling context.
To adopt these strategies, career counselling can make the building of the work alliance as the very same process that produces concrete and observable result for positive change. Being pragmatic and flexible A central philosophy of solution-focused counselling is being pragmatic and flexible in problem solving.
It focuses on what works, while ignoring what does not work. Chen the importance of these three points to the philosophy of solution-focused counselling is high. McFarland expands each of these points, stating first that the counsellor should be concerned only with what the client actively presents as the problem and not what the counsellor believes is the problem.
Second, she states that when the therapist and the client discover a time or times when the problem is not occurring, then a solution has probably been discovered and the client needs to do more of it.
Third, she states that if something does not work, it is to be rigorously avoided by the therapist. This pragmatic and flexible helping philosophy is certainly very helpful to many career counselling interventions that deal with complex and dynamic challenges in the current labor market. Career counselling should foster a sense of long term planning. In the meanwhile, it is equally important that career counselling should help the client adopt more effective and efficient ways of solving some career problems in the immediate future.
Along with the continuous small yet effective steps i. Attention to solution Problems are not solved in solution-focused counselling, rather solutions are constructed.
Solutions are invented and constructed jointly by the client and the counsellor. In using this unique perspective, career counselling can devote its attention to developing solutions rather concentrating on a career problem itself.
This is by no means to minimize the importance of problem-solving, yet to propose a more creative way for problem solving. The counsellor can help the client form alternatives that will render productive action.
Exceptions to problem Exceptions to problems form the building blocks of solutions. Exceptions are circumstances in which the stated problem: 1 does not occur; 2 occurs less often or intensely; or 3 is in some way different from its regular state Murphy, In doing so, the career counsellor helps the client gain insight on a range of issues.
Second, because of complex environmental and personal influences, a career problem is very often not static, but a dynamic and changing variable. Understanding this changing context, and utilizing it will be a necessity in identifying a career problem. Goal orientation Solution-focused counselling is goal-oriented. Solution-focused counsellors work closely with their clients in the construction of goals, but they do not have the power to modify or change the goal — even if they feel the goal is not relevant Powers, Goals are the constructed solutions to the presenting problem.
Walter and Peller suggested that there are several assumptions that can be made with regards to solution construction: 1 there are solutions, 2 there is more than one solution, 3 solutions are constructable, 4 the therapist and client do the constructing, and 5 solutions are constructed or invented rather than discovered. There is no doubt that career counselling shares the same general priority about goal-setting in the counselling process.
While not necessarily all goal-related assumptions proposed by solution-focused counselling may be applicable to career counselling, three points are definitely worthy of consideration. First, career counselling is goal-oriented, and helping clients set goals is part of the essential task of career counselling. Second, the career counsellor and the client work together to construct obtainable goals.
Third, goals for career planning can remain flexible, and there can be several goals that will facilitate more than one solution to a career problem. Constructivist propensity Solution-focused counselling is influenced by post-structuralist or constructivist thought. In essence, a constructivist orientation in solution-focused counselling assumes that there is not a hidden truth or reality to uncover during the course of counselling.
That is, the counsellor does not act as an investigator or spy to unearth an already-existing objective reality lying dormant within the client. This constructivist view on counselling is echoed strongly by the newly emerging post-modern theoretical approaches in vocational and career psychology Chen, ; Sharf, Chen career development and career counselling have proposed parallel arguments in the last two decades, suggesting very similar theoretical and clinical positions as those illustrated by solution-focused counselling.
Thus, both counselling approaches, i. Brief intervention The duration of counselling is brief or short-term. Solution-focused counsellors are intentional about time, which means that the natural time limitations that are a part of counselling work are respected. This time-efficient therapeutic frame is certainly very pertinent to career counselling in the current world of work.
Along with the swift changes of the labour market caused by various political, social, economic, cultural, demographic, and technological forces, career change has become such a common phenomenon that most workers have to encounter it voluntarily or involuntarily. As a result, various complex and dynamic worklife issues emerge in a time-pressed manner, and they require timely responses and solutions.
The career intervention with a time constraint pushes both the counsellor and the client to work toward solutions with higher effectiveness and efficiency. This trend, in turn, stimulates action implementation in career planning, decision making, and problem solving. Utilizing solution-focused interventions in career counselling The foregoing discussion has been helpful. In connecting the key principles of the solution-focused counselling to career counselling, the discussion has provided a grounded rationale for the two counselling approaches to integrate, rendering a series of theoretical considerations that aim to enhance the career counselling practice in the current world of work.
With such a conceptual foundation, this part of the discussion will illustrate the technical possibility for the two approaches to join hands in a career counselling context. Below are four techniques that are commonly used by solution-focused counsellors. Each technique is explained, and an example is provided to show how this technique might be useful in a career counselling situation.
The following example demonstrates how scaling questions might be used in a career counselling context. Tracey works in a retirement home and has been struggling with her relationship with her boss. She and her supervisor have constant disagreements and Tracey feels that he has no idea how hard she works and how much skill she brings to her job. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst possible relationship a person could have with their boss, and ten being the best possible relationship, Tracey rated her relationship with her boss at a four.
Recognizing the importance of this and its potential impact on her level of job satisfaction, Tracey writes a proposal for her boss, suggesting how having her own office space would allow her to be more productive. Compliments DeShazer noted that the use of compliments in solution-focused counselling is an important therapeutic tool that helps people build solutions to their problems. They tell us that our compliments helped them to better understand their situations, made them feel heard, and gave them a sense of hope and optimism.
Compliments can take on one of four forms Campbell et al. Normalizing statements. This is a form of complimenting that simply lets the client know that his or her problem is understandable and is commonly shared by others in similar situations. The following is an example of how a normalizing statement might be used in a career counselling session.
Robert is a year-old client who sought career counselling because he was not feeling very satisfied in his position as regional manager for a major national bank. A solution-focused counsellor can take the experiences of the client and reshape them so that solutions become more apparent.
Linda is a year-old client who has been off work for three years due to a severe injury she sustained in a skiing accident. She cannot return to her previous job as an airline attendant due to her injury and would like to use her newly acquired computer skills in an administrative position. These statements provide positive feedback, demonstrating to the client how his or her own resources will be beneficial in developing solutions.
David is a client in his sixties who was recently laid off from his position as lab manager with a well-respected research organization. This fear is so strong that he is considering early retirement, even though he loves his work. Bridging statements. These are in the form of suggestions that serve to link potential next steps with the problem or part thereof as described by the client.
For example, Christopher is an accomplished writer who is seeking a contract to write a series of travel books. He is confident in his ability to complete the contract, but not in his ability to sell himself in a job interview. He speaks very quickly, and so much so in an interview that he slurs his words and becomes almost completely uncomprehendable. The idea of writing these travel books is just so thrilling to me!
The major benefit of exceptions is that they create stories that make it possible for the client to learn from what they are already doing and to see success. When a client cannot identify an exception, then an exception can be pretended. For example, the client could try living for a week as if the problem was less of a problem.
This latter question serves to empower the client, shifting the locus of control to him or her. In using exceptions in career counselling, the counsellor helps the client look at a career problem from a different angle or with a different mindset.
For example, Sebastian has been a successful real estate agent for twelve years. How were things different for you then? What was happening at that time that relieved your stress? First, he starts his work each day at noon as he had done when his wife was on maternity leave to allow her to rest. Second, he hires someone to clean the house two times a week as he finds the chaos and disorganization created by having two children to be very stressful. Chen go out and do what you have to do, you get home, have something to eat and later on you go to bed.
While you are asleep something miraculous happens and the problems that brought you here vanish, in the click of a finger. Procedures and Techniques of SFBT listening for and highlighting client strengths, successes, achievements, and resources looking for what is right and how to use it ; co-construction of goals framed in concrete and positive terms i.
References De Shazer, S. Brief therapy: Focused solution development. Family Process , 25 2 , — Ratner, H. Solution focused brief therapy: key points and techniques. New York: Routledge. It is based on the work of psychiatrist and noted hypnotherapist Milton H. SFBT differs from problem-based therapies. SFBT focuses on finding solutions and attends only minimally to defining or understanding presenting problems. It is typically very brief—in the order of three to five sessions.
Read more. Motivation and Ambivalence Motivation is a necessary precursor to change, yet many clients are ambivalent about the process of change.
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