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Janine Waldman I love finding and developing new activities and also get great satisfaction from the efficiency and emergent nature of tweaking classic activities to apply to a given topic. This session shares some examples of both, and how we’ve used them to meet specific needs and to illustrate specific SF concepts in our work with clients on their leadership and team programmes. Here are four reasons why you might enjoy watching this session:

John Brooker & Annie Bordeleau [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG-CLXDUio4] Introduction by John Brooker What can people in organisations learn about the use of SF from social workers working with children and families? A great deal it seems. Sue Lancaster is a Service Manager in the Children and Family Service department of Essex Council in England. She manages The Divisional Based Intervention Team Service (D-BIT). This is an “edge of care” service which steps in where there is concern over family relationships breaking down and fragmentation may lead to children being moved in to care.

Tara Gretton Introduced by Anna-Julia Szabo In this interview, we see how the Solution Focus approach has changed the culture of a school. There is a focus on enabling students and staff to have meaningful conversations, concentrating on possibilities and solutions and what is already working. Tara Gretton introduced the Solution Focus approach in this school and met staff and students were very welcoming, full of energy and had a hunger for new possibilities for useful change.

Mark McKergow and Peter Röhrig Article Model In their book “Host – Six New Roles of Engagement” (2014, pp.45 – 59) Mark McKergow and Helen Bailey present the following model which illuminates the responsiveness of hosting and helps Host Leaders (and indeed SF workers) think about where to put their focus; how to connect long-term hopes and objectives with short-term action. It outlines a way of working with uncertainty that is both efficient – getting lots of action for less effort – and responsive to the unfolding future.

Wim Sucaet, John Wheeler & John Brooker Introduction by John Brooker This recording (at bottom of review) and the PDF review comments below are intended to demonstrate an example of a real SFiO review process in action. We hope that it might awaken your interest in having a piece of work reviewed by your peers, or attract you to become a reviewer; if you have already been reviewed. However, every review brings up a lot of useful learning on Solution Focus and you are encouraged to listen and read the comments to pull out some important lessons on SF in practice.

John Brooker, Wendy Van den Bulck and brent-gardiner Introduced by John Brooker Wendy Van den Bulck is an SF leadership trainer in Belgium who works with horses to teach leaders how to become meaningful to others. I had always thought she applied Solution Focus with horses. As Wendy explains in the video, horses use Solutions Focus with people and each other, one might say, they are “SF Inside”, (with acknowledgement to Yasuteru Aoki, an SF practitioner from Japan, for that concept).

Andrew Gibson Reviewed by Wendy Van den Bulck Just as the whole world is overwhelmed by complexity, here’s Andrew’s latest book, ‘Make Life Simple’. I’d say, brilliant timing… I met Andrew on two occasions; the SOL World Conference in Frankfurt in 2017 and the SFiO Unconference ‘SF use in Large Scale Contexts’ in 2019, long before he wrote this book. Having read his book, I realise now that in our conversations at these events, Andrew did a lot of what he describes.

Dave Mckenna & Paul Z Jackson Introduced by Paul Z Jackson As a new area of practice grows, such as the flourishing of SF in organisations, it takes a while before we can stand outside what we are doing and get to the point of defining it. This article is of particular importance in adding to our ability to define what we do. Introduction This article sets out six different styles of Solution-Focused working in organisations.

Alex Steele on the piano and Dom on the saxophone take us through an entrancing journey. A journey where you can truly stretch your SF beliefs as never before, as they work with what is there and fully accept the offerings of others to move forward.

A Global Chapter Meeting with Jenny Clarke Introduced by Stanus Cloete In this SFiO Global Chapter Meeting, Jenny Clarke talks about From Best Hopes to Platform. As the title suggests, she addresses the jargon that we, as SF practitioners use. Different practitioners may use different questions to formulate the Platform. The thought-provoking question is, “What do we want to accomplish with the questions we ask?” To illustrate this, in her talk, Jenny focuses on the start of a conversation as a distinct chunk.