Solution focused supervision — some useful questions (of many you might think of)
Beginning:
- What's your goal in coming to supervision today?
- What would you like to accomplish in supervision today?
- What would you like to have happen in the next hour, so you'd know it was worth your while coming?
- How will you know afterwards that today's meeting was useful?
Approaching a case or issue:
- What strengths did you demonstrate in the issue or case we're about to discuss?
- I appreciate your clear description of times when things with this client/family aren't going as well as you'd like. That is useful information for me. Also, could you tell me about times when you're not experiencing these difficulties?
- What's different about the times when you seem to be having successes with this or similar clients?
Listening to a case description:
- I'm impressed with the way you . . . .
- Interesting how the client responded to you when you said . . .
- How did you know that might be a useful direction to take?
When the practitioner focuses on the client:
- What would you like to have done instead?
- Tell me about times when you don't have that problem?
- What alternatives went through your mind before you did that?
- When you do that in the meeting (when that happens), what do you suppose the client or family is thinking?
- What, do you think, would the client like to see you do differently?
- How do you think the client might have responded?
At descriptions of specific interventions:
- What do you think you did there?
- What were you trying to accomplish there?
- How would that have been useful?
- With hindsight, what might you have done differently?
- How do you think the client might have responded if you had done that?
When noticing the client's improvement or change:
- What did you do that might have influenced this change?
- How did the client manage to do that?
- What do you think the client found helpful (in you) so that they could move forward? Do other clients find that quality helpful?
- How did you do that?
Near the end:
- On a scale of 0 — 10, where 10 = the best session you could possibly have and 0 = the opposite, where would you rate this session?
- What would we have done differently in supervision if the session had been at X + 1?
- How can we go on moving up the scale in the future?
- What do we each need to do to go on improving our clinical supervision sessions?
(Reference: Briggs JB & Miller G; Success enhancing Supervision, in Nelson T (Ed): Education & Training in Solution Focused Brief Therapy, 2005, Haworth Press — adapted by CW, 2008.)