Solution-Focused Interviewing: Applying Positive Psychology, a Manual for Practitioners

Too often doctors, therapists, and social workers ask “what’s wrong in your life?” rather than “what do you want?” Ronald E. Warner’s Solution-Focused Interviewing is a practical guide to talking to clients using a solution-driven and strength-based approach that empowers clients and helps them to find lasting solutions to their problems.

In Solution-Focused Interviewing, asking questions about clients’ goals and resources ­– the strengths that will let them change their lives – is the basis of a three-phase therapeutic process that builds empathy before helping clients to set realistic goals and build a plan to achieve them.

Based on more than two decades of solution-focused therapy workshops and Warner’s extensive clinical experience, Solution-Focused Interviewing is the first skill development manual based on this innovative tri-phase approach to interviewing.