Reviewed Piece of SF work: Mari Juote

HRD-Team development process (2012)

The piece of work was carried out with a small HRD-team in a public organization. The aim of the process was to support change process of the team. The process lasted for six months including five half of a day workshops. The goal was to provide a co-creation process in which the HRD-team could co-construct its own desired future and appropriate work procedures. In addition, the team members wanted to learn and develop their individual facilitation skills and create new HRD-products. I was privileged to work during the process with my solution focused colleague and coach Kerttu Autio from Turku University.

Client’s Summary:

Our aims were to develop our own work and work procedures, to clarify the work-roles and creations of new products. At the same time we wanted to learn how to guide and facilitate this type of co-creation workshops. I think we achieved all these aims really well! The process gave us a vision where to go, and the workshops strengthened and build our team spirit. I liked the way how you made us work together and how you broaden our thinking by various facilitation tools.

Candidate’s Summary:

The process was very interesting since it involved coaching the team of their future perfect and also building a smoothly going learning process that was based on a richness of facilitation techniques, and yet being sensitive to the client’s process itself. The review process provided a great opportunity to reflect up on my work more deeply and gave me possibility to explore my own way of guiding the solution focused learning process. To hold as few pre-assumptions as possible about the client was one of the key aspects. Another important feature was to let the client fully own the process. We had great discussions with my colleague Kerttu Autio about how we could apply solution focused ideas – not as technique – but as a way of working with the emerging issues in positive atmosphere. During the review process I discovered that I actually use many more solution focused tools than I was conscious of. I realised how trusting the SF process is in itself a powerful tool. Many thanks to Marika and Peter for their work and time spent in the review process. Their feedback made me really aware of those subtle ways how to create positive, solution focused leaning environment. It was rewarding to hear how Marika and Peter had appreciated my efforts.

Reviewers Summary:

I was truly impressed by Mari’s ability to keep up a fruitful and target oriented process during a constantly changing situation with the client. That spirit of continuity combined to a broad variety of creative working methods providing possibilities for re-framing obviously helped the team a lot. She made use of every type of contribution and was ready to agile adaptations leading to both budgeted and unbudgeted results for individual group members and the whole team. This piece of work is a great example of solution focused facilitation for emerging change.

Second Reviewer summary:

Mari showed in her case remarkable skills in creating an appreciative, inclusive and trusting climate, especially when knowing that the group she was working with at the start was quite confused and loosely connected. The boss and a member were even replaced in the middle of the process. I was particularly struck by the way Mari combined a very sensitive touch to where the participants were in their change process with a creative Solution Focused ‘what to do next’-approach. She listened in a candid way, used small talk, gave everyone possibilities to say, checked what their words and metaphors meant in practice and then very smoothly moved from here and now to the next steps with well chosen activities, like scaling, building on their workplace story, making their road map, using playful Google-search etc. It was interesting to note how the initial goal to develop new products for the group developed into something of a team being established. This raises the question: How much time and efforts is it worth to put into getting clear goals in situations like this?

• Lead Reviewer: Marika Tammeaid
• Second Reviewer: Peter Sundman

About The Candidate:

Mari Juote-Pesonen works as a trainer, coach and educational specialist at University of Helsinki Palmenia Centre for continuing Education. She designs and delivers training and development programs and applies solution focused ideas widely in her work. She is also a mindfulness teacher.