Scaling for Success

One way in which we support people in Solution-Focused work is using a technique called Scaling. Scaling is typically used to bring to light what someone is doing right in order to solve a problem or for professional development purposes.

Scaling is based on a concept familiar to us all: on a scale of 1-10 something is ______.  Recently, I was asked to scale on a health questionnaire for a work wellness program .  The questions went something like this:

On a scale of 1-10
...how happy are you with your overall health?
...how much stress do you experience in a typical day?
...how much do you value your personal health?

We are all very familiar with this kind of scale, often used on feedback forms and assessments to gather facts.  In Solutions-Focused work, the scaling questions starts out very much the same, but the heart of the technique lies in the follow up conversation. We ask the 1-10 question to get the baseline number which is noted and used to ask the more salient questions of:

• What did you do right to get to this number?
• What can you continue to do to make the number just a tiny bit better?

In the case of solving a problem, asking these two follow up questions shifts the spotlight from what's not working to what the person is already doing right as a foundation for progressing to the next level and solving the problem.  Let's make this very concrete now, and illustrate the steps:

1. Pose a question using a 10 point scale (1 being the absolute worst and 10 the absolute best) to assess where the person perceives themselves or the situation.
2. Repeat the number the person gave and said why X and not X-1? What are you doing right?
3. Based on what's working, what might you do to go from X to X+1?

Pretty straight-forward, right?  Now let's put this in a real-world scenario. Let's take a common situation in which one staff member is not getting along with another. Here's how a conversation might go:

Question: On a scale from 1-10 how would you rate the relationship with Sally?  1 is so terrible you can't even stand to be in the same room as her and 10 is that you have a relationship of mutual respect and you collaborate on a nearly daily basis to be better teachers.   How would you rate your relationship?
Answer: Probably a 3.  I haven't walked out of the room when she walks in, but I've been close a few times.

Question: 3, that's interesting.  Why a 3 and not a 1 or a 2, someone must be going right?
Answer: Well, like I said I haven't walked out of the room even though I wanted to.  And sometimes she has good ideas that I use in my classroom, but what bothers me is the way she talks down to me all the time.

Questions: So you said that you haven't walked out of the room, that tells me that you have some good self-regulation skills when it comes to managing your frustrations with Sally. And you said that she has some good ideas that you also use in your classroom, so that's another great thing to draw from.  How do you think you might use these 2 good things to move the relationship just one small step from a 3 to a 4?  What would that look like?
Answer: I guess I could ask her for some ideas on this unit I'm doing next week.  And I think that I might try telling her about how the activity I did last week went, since I got that idea from her classroom.

Of course the sample above is a concise best-case scenario, and despite your likely reservations (I know you're thinking it's too good to be true), it really is as simple as this. People new to this technique will veer into the negatives quickly and your role is to continue to quickly bring them back to illustrating what's working or might work.  Also very important here is to continue to bring the person back to what they can do to make this work, and stay away from the focus of how someone needs to change. I frequently remind my staff, "you can't change the other, you only have the power to change yourself, so let's bring this back to what you can do improve the situation."

As you see, with this line of questioning we’re intentionally not asking for a huge monumental change here, just for the person to start to imagine a teeny tiny inkling that something might change.  This bring us to a basic assumption of Solution-Focused work If something’s working do more of it. So with scaling we shift the person's thinking from the negative and problems and instead what works so they can do more of it.

Another basic tenant that sometimes arises from scaling is If it’s not working do something different. A Solution-Focused conversation can help bring to light new approaches to a situation that might also apply.  Solution-Focused practitioners believe that everyone has had experiences in their life that have been successful from which solutions can be derived.  Using the case illustrated above, this staff person must have some relationships that are successful, so we may be able to lead her to apply solutions from other relationships to this one.

Stay tuned for the next post - using scaling for professional development.