1. Collaborative influence: Achievable goals towards preferred outcomes
Chapter 10
Collaborative influence: Achievable goals towards preferred outcomes
By: Noah M.P. Spector and Shaofan Bu

2. In the client’s favor: Collaborative Influence
Clients and counselors are partners in making meaning of the client’s life.
This process of meaning-making aims to alter some aspect of present circumstances.
This change is directed towards clients’ preferred outcomes.

3. In the client’s favor: Collaborative influence
Responsive counselling is like being a co-pilot in the client’s journey.
It involves establishing a balanced positioning between two extremes:
Excluding the counselor’s point of view.
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Telling client what they need
And

4. Collaborative influence
How do we determine what a preferred outcome would be for the client?
What can we do to ensure that we have a clear and concrete picture of what this would look like?

5. Advice giving versus facilitative questioning
“The right questions are the ones that emerge from being immersed in the client’s world.” (Freedman & Combs, 1993, p.148)
In contrast, advice giving can give clients the message they can’t handle the challenge they are facing.
Clients may honor their dignity by subtly resisting this sort of intervention.

6. Advice giving versus facilitative questioning
Sometimes clients ask for advice.
This is often an opportunity for inviting reflection on the purpose the desired advice might serve.
The point is to keep client knowledge at the centre of the therapeutic conversation.

7. Scaffolding client learning through questions
Scaffolding involves “leading from behind”, using questions to join clients in considering what is possible to know.
This might include questions which invite clients to take a stand on the counselor’s observations.

8. Scaffolding client learning through questions (examples)
 Advice Giving through Direct Statements
 Collaborative Influence through Scaffolded Conversation 
You should get more exercise; research shows lack of exercise is a factor in insomnia.
You shouldn’t talk to your teen like that; it will only make them push back harder.
Are there any differences in your sleep patterns at the end of an active day?
Would you say your son tends to get more, or less, cooperative when you talk to him like that?

9. Change in manageable increments
Questions about client experience should strike a balance between not sufficiently “unusual” and not too “unusual”.
This involves building a structure through questions to move with your clients from the known and familiar to what is possible to know.

10. A collaborative relational posture
Decentered counselor stance, infused with curiosity
Invokes clients’ expertise and personal agency
Learning through participation
Counseling conversations as a meeting between two or more experts.

11. Resistance and Collaboration
Sometimes clients and their counselors do not see eye to eye.
It is at these moments when impasses can turn into opportunities
When clients are not interested in the same things as their counselor it is important for counselors to learn more about client preferences.

12. Preferred outcome as destination
Clients and their counselors are constantly creating and re-creating a map of their journey together.
By defining problems and preferences, counselors and clients create waypoints along the way of their journey.

13. Exceptions: Fragments of preferred outcomes
Exceptions are what clients are doing which is working despite the problem.
These exceptions are often overlooked; instead they can be explored to discover abilities the client may already have.
Counselors find exceptions through their curiosity about what is working in their clients’ lives.

14. Exceptions Times when problems are absent or diminished
Gaps in a problem-saturated story
Instances of clients living aspects of previously described preferred futures
Moments when clients experience what is valued by them or important to them
Clients’ enactments of personal agency

15. Where goals fit in Problem definition Preferred experience Goals
Description of current concern, challenge, issue etc.
Preferred experience
Description of experience in absence of problem …future situation, final destination.
Goals
Steps on the journey to a preferred outcome.

16. Where goals fit in
Descriptions of problems provide hints of preferred experience (how the client wants things to be)
Description of preferred experience—e.g. through Miracle Questions--hints of problems (what is distressing the client)
Goals are milestones in the journey from problem present to preferred future

17. Miracle question and goals
The Miracle Question solicits a detailed account of a future where the problem is absent, or no longer problematic
This is not the “goal” but the preferred outcome
Goals are the steps the client may now take to reach that destination
Goals are not preferences...they are actions that lead to preferences

18. Martha’s goals: A meandering journey
Problem: conflict with sister.
Sad about lost connection
Worried family is unraveling
Distressing to Martha’s boyfriend
Preference: harmonious relationship.
Civil, if not friendly connection to sister
No conflict
More family togetherness
Goals:
Steps to get here there…the milestones change as the journey unfolds

19. Martha, 23 To get along better with sister Take risk of
Destination
Steps (ie goals)
To get along better
with sister
Organize & finish paintings
Create portfolio
Mount a show & invite people
Visit sister regularly;
Call weekly;
Refrain from judgment
Find common activities
Take risk of
sharing her art
Talk to mother
about unfair treatment
Share accomplishments more
Meditate on loving kindness
To deal with feeling
“less than”

20. Well Defined Goals Positive Representation
What you will be doing/feeling/thinking etc. in explicit terms rather than the absence of a problem. “I will phone friends more” vs. “I won’t be lonely”.
Process Form
Verbs are better than nouns…they bring the picture to life. “I will jog every morning” vs. “More fitness”.
Here and Now
What can the client start with when they walk out of the session, or even in the session? “I will research universities” vs. “I will decide where to I want to go”.
Specific as Possible
Generalizations blur the picture. “I will watch videos with my kids” vs. “I will connect with my children more”.

21. Well Defined Goals Achievable
Reaching too far backfires. “I will take time to meditate” rather than “I will attain enlightenment”.
Measurable Frequency
How often? “I will jog for half an hour three times a week” rather than “I will go for more runs”.
Within the Client’s Control
Something the client can do, rather than something different in the world. “I will say ‘no’ more often” vs. “The pace of life won’t be so fast and hectic”.
In the Client’s Language
Based on client’s--rather than therapist’s--worldview, preferences, and ways of speaking. “I will develop my own circle of friends” vs. “I will become less co-dependent”.

22. Invitation to critical reflection
Critical reflection involves a mindful orientation to experience in the moment…“getting a distance” on things
Can include considering the consequences of present or future actions.
Critical reflection is also important for counselors to evaluate where they sit in relation to their clients.
Both sorts of critical reflection involve ongoing inquiry into one’s experience.
Critical reflection involves questions that counselors pose to themselves and to their clients.

23. The role of theory in collaborative influence
“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”
As opposed to intervention based on theory, collaborative influence is an intervention based on what clients bring to the conversation.
Collaborative influence helps us avoid turning our theories into hammers and therefore our clients’ problems into nails.
Theory can therefore be introduced in a way which invites the client to accept or reject it.