Writer, presenter and former Harward Business Scool professor David Meister has a great site with losts of useful stuff that fits well with a solution focused approach. This video is an example of coaching management that could have been done by a experienced solution focused coach. Spend 16 minutes with David Meister, it will be […]

The professional compliment as used when we are leading or coaching is different from the everyday compliment. To say “your eyes shine like the sun” or “that hat looks good on you” has limited use in organisational life. Everyday compliments functions like a social lubricant. And are as such a very important part of communication. […]

Some people would say they are lucky, other would say the are plagued by unluck. Is this true, in real life? What magical forces of the universe would bestow one individual with luck and another with bad luck? Is this just a myths about human life that we could ask the TV-Myth-busters to demolish?. Oddly […]

It is often assumed that we give compliments and acknowledgement for the benifit of the reciever. But consider the other side of the coin: what does giving compliment do to you the person giving compliments. I would like to argue that giving professional compliments is as important for the giver as the reciever, but in […]

In a recent blog, Solution-Focused Change: The compliment and the acrimony, the very productive and always interesting solution focused blogger Coert Visser talks about Maya Angelou’s stance of not letting neither compliments nor acrimony disturb her work, since work should be a reward in itself.

Maya Angelou says: The reward for the doing must be […]

Nobody doubts the value in using compliments, acknowledgement and validation in solution focused work. But sometimes it doesn’t work as well as we would like. Not everyone in every situation responds well to compliments. It might feel or be experienced as tacky or patronising. Another problem with compliments is that they are short-range. The compliment […]

In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895)

This quote from the great french scientist Louis Pasteur reminded me of one of they keys in solutions focus: the future perfect and the power of chance. By imagining, as clear as possible, how you would like a prefered future […]