SOLWorld

Sharing and building Solution Focused practice in organisations

"Give me feedback or I die" - analysing interactions

In a brilliant introduction to his presentation on Microanalysis, Harry Korman told his audience, “Give me feedback or I die.  When I look at you I need you to nod.”

This was not simply amusing self-disclosure, but contained an important truth about interactions.  He described an experimental finding: if a presenter instructs the whole class, but directs the instructions to one person (looking and speaking directly to only that one person), then he or she performs (statistically) better at the task than the others in the audience.

Why so? It must be something to do with the different quality of the interaction between the instructor and that person.  After all, all the information is equally available to everyone else in the room.

While others’ attention may drift, the presenter and targeted listener - let’s call her Kidge - are able to exchange all the subtle cues that ensure attention is engaged.  He gets her feedback, which changes him and indeed her.

Some of the information that Kidge gets may be specifically useful only to her – sorting out some personal confusions,  perhaps,  which may irrelevant or downright dull to others. Perhaps she also feels more of an obligation to get it right, which others don’t share.  There could be a lot going on – and it is productive to consider these goings on in terms of interactions, Harry told the audience at
Brief this week.

Harry Korman and Insoo Kim Berg agreed they could spot within two minutes of a therapy conversation whether or not the therapist was doing SF – and many of us in this workshop thought we could too.  The question was, How would we know?

I plan to write more about this in my next blog.  Meanwhile, how would you identify whether or not someone is taking a solutions-focused approach?  What are the criteria, and how quickly do you think they would come in to play?

Views: 215

Add a Comment

You need to be a member of SOLWorld to add comments!

Join SOLWorld

Comment by Paolo Terni on December 2, 2011 at 1:22

I just love Microanalysis!

Thanks for sharing some highlights from harry Korman's presentation!

I took Janet Baveals' Microanalysis Workshop in 2010 and it was eye-opening.

Cheers,

Paolo

Badge

Loading…

Notes

Jumpstart into Solution Focus

You want to learn more about "Solution Focus"?

You prefer a "step by step" introduction instead to start with reading some
voluminous books?

You would appreciate to have a complete "helicopter view" on SF after the first step…

Continue

Created by Hans-Peter Korn Dec 25, 2009 at 10:25am. Last updated by Mark McKergow Nov 3, 2014.

Making the most of SOLWorld.ning.com

If you’ve just arrived at SOLWorld.org (the SOLWorld ning group), you may be looking at all the features and wondering where to start.  This note might be helpful…

 …

Continue

Created by Mark McKergow Jun 3, 2008 at 4:55pm. Last updated by Jesper H Christiansen Aug 22, 2017.

Open Space at SOLworld conferences

SOLworld Open Space instructions as it was used at the 2011 conference, by Mark McKergow

Continue

Created by Katalin Hankovszky Dec 30, 2015 at 10:18pm. Last updated by Katalin Hankovszky Dec 30, 2015.

SOLWorld Resources

Welcome to the SOLWorld Resources section.  This part of the site features information about the SOLWorld network, our past events and materials from our previous website.  It will take some time to update all the information, so thanks for your patience. 

Information in this part of the site is 'read-only'.  If you want to start discussions, please go to the Forum or Groups. …

Continue

Created by Mark McKergow May 12, 2008 at 4:08pm. Last updated by Mark McKergow Dec 2, 2022.

© 2024   Created by Mark McKergow.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service