Is SF about always looking at the bright side?

13.6.2009 von kirsten.

The movie “The life of Brian” ends with a very cynical scene which is often quoted by SF practitioners: Brian (a Jesus spoof) and other people have been nailed to crosses to die a painful death over 3 days. Instead of doing something to save them, they and their followers start singing a happy song with the refrain: “Always look at the bright side of life”. As funny as this scene may be, it is quite ironic that this statement (and the song) are much en vogue in the SF community. However “always look at the bright side of life” is taken literally meaning that “Yes, whatever the situation, we should look at the bright side of life – SF is about identifying the good things, isn’t it?” and not “don’t gloss over what is an unacceptable situation – change something!”

SF is often criticized as an approach which does not take “the problem” seriously. We are seen as naively appreciating any effort and only looking at what works, ignoring serious quality issues and other undesired behavior. In the first session, managers in my SF coaching courses sometimes ask how they can possibly manage when it seems forbidden to notice what is going wrong or mention what can be improved (and I quickly dissuade them of that notion).

For me, SF is a method of helping people become unstuck, a method to move forward when you have a problem or when you want to improve something: it is not a way of life. When someone asked Steve in a workshop whether he uses SF with his family or friends, he always said “no” and advised against it. In fact, Steve seemed to many quite a grumpy old man. SF is a very special language game with a special setting: Someone wants to move forward and gives someone else the mandate to help him or her figure it out. In this setting it makes sense to mainly notice what gives you confidence that the client can reach his or her goals (note: not wildly complimenting anything that can possibly be complimented about the client).

Outside of this setting, there is “normal life” with “normal life” language games. If somebody does something you don’t like, it is a quite customary language game to tell them and ask them to do something else instead. This is very important in business life: If someone performs less than a manager expects, they can expect be alerted to the fact. If someone is an unhappy customer they can point out the problems of the product or the service. In none of these situations does it make sense to only look at the positive side of things and keep silent about what is not working. If you only say the things that you appreciate like in the old advice for Southern Belles: “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all” and think the rest – people in more direct cultures (like most business cultures) might interpret it as dishonesty or at least patronizing behavior.

We know from our experience with SF coaching that it is easier for people to change when they feel appreciated and taken seriously, so we might use this strategy in our communication in situations where we feel we need to point out a problem. Instead of leaving the hotel or restaurant when we are not getting the service we expect, we might opt to talk to the hotel manager in a friendly way, assume that he or she is trying to do a good job and ask what it is that they can do to help us be a happy customer. If we don’t mention it, the hotel manager has no chance to improve his service. In my view, it is not useful to ignore problems or make them look less bad than they are.

“The good is the enemy of the better” – this old saying seems to go against the SF tenet of “if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. In my understanding, “don’t fix what ain’t broken” mainly warns us against creating more problems for our clients than they came with: In therapy, the therapist has no business whatsoever to discuss with a client what could be better than “good enough”. It is the client who defines what is broken and what he or she wants fixed. In business coaching there are very different definitions of “broken”. High performers do not aim for “good enough” but for “top of class” and this means that they challenge things that are already working in some way but can be improved. Our clients’ goal is to be “top of class”, and they want us to help them get there. Of course, we still don’t create more problems for them than they came with – our business clients define what is “broken” and not we. Where in therapy we are in danger of finding more things in our clients’ lives that are broken than the clients themselves, we run the risk of appeasing a client to accept as “whole” what in fact is “broken” when coaching high performers in business. In my view, SF is about helping to create positive change in the desired direction of my clients whether it is a perceived “deficit” or a perceived “opportunity for even better performance”.

“Always looking at the bright side of life” is not an SF technique. But even in “normal life” ignoring what is broken has strange consequences for your language use. Let’s say you go to a workshop which is not well designed, the facilitator is boring, the participants are not engaged, you don’t think the argumentation of the speaker is very sound. If you are a believer in positive thinking, you will go out saying “what a nice workshop, there was good coffee!” – just like our Southern Belle who does not say anything if she cannot say anything nice. People who don’t know you might think you liked the workshop. If they do know you and how you communicate, they will realize what you are not saying: you are not commenting on the great content, the superb presentation etc. – the message lies in what you are not saying. Now imagine that a whole group of people agrees to “see and comment on the positive only” – what you get is a closed circle of people who communicate by what is not said. In intercultural terminology this would be called “high-context culture” which is very confusing to outsiders. Only commenting on the positive makes you somewhat incompatible to people who don’t know that this is what you are doing, especially to the world of business where open criticism and helpful feedback are widely spread.

Suppose you take your business client to the above mentioned horrible workshop. You consciously strive to “always look at the bright side” and see and mention only the positive. You have also often complimented your client on a lot of things: you mentioned how wonderfully they present, how smart they are etc. Now after this workshop which to your client was clearly sub-standard, you start conversations on how wonderful this was, how great and that you very much appreciated it. Imagine the cold shower for your client. Since the meaning of our words is in their use, the client suddenly realizes what you use the word “wonderful” for: a terrible performance.

Personally, I find creating an “inside” and an “outside” language dangerous – I’ve had my share of experience with Christian fundamentalists, and I saw similar distinctions of “insiders” and “outsiders” by way of inaudible and non-transparent subtexts to their communication. Those who are farther up in the “unspoken hierarchy” (because we are all children of Christ, aren’t we, there are no differences) use “love-bombing” (a term coined by Mr. Moon, the founder of the Unification Church) to attract and retain new members. Newcomers are not contradicted even if they say things that are not in line with the church’s teachings, everything they do and say is complimented indiscriminately. Soon the newcomer is integrated into the church, uses their language and becomes funny to the rest of his friends, who stop contact. The effect of this is that it becomes psychologically more and more difficult for the newcomer to dissent: if they disagree with the church’s teachings, they don’t simply disagree in one point and keep their friends – they lose their entire social network and have little hope of making new friends quickly since their “grammar” is quite incompatible with anyone else’s out there.

SF therapy and coaching as I understand it is much closer to the business culture than to the lovebombing, positive thinking culture. When SF coaches give “compliments” at the end of a session, they are not complimenting anything that comes to mind. They don’t generally appreciate clients in an overdone way – they comment on what they think will increase their clients confidence that they will reach their goals. It is not even about what the coach believes: it is about stating what the client said about him- or herself in his or her own words. When SF coaches are engaging in resource gossip, they are noticing the skills and resources that point to the fact that the client can reach his or her target. Lavishing clients with general appreciation on anything and everything is not effective: The coach looses credibility and his or her compliments loose their power.

I prefer to stay in the “every day language game mode” for every day things. I have learned a lot by people telling me I was wrong. I learned a lot by debates and heated discussions with my colleagues about who is “right” (knowing, of course, that from their perspective, they are as “right” as I am from my perspective). I would have become a real asshole if it weren’t for my friends who confronted me with my mistakes, told me what they would like me to do instead or helped me think about what to do better next time. I am very grateful for their helpful honesty.

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