Uk

Alan has practiced as a professional psychologist for over 20 years. He belongs to both the Division of Work and Organisational Psychology and the Division of Counselling Psychology within the Psychological Society of Ireland. Alan is a qualified coaching psychologist and a founding member of the Society for Coaching Psychology within the British Psychological Society. He is also a recognised professional member and accredited sport psychologist by the Irish Institute of Sport where he works with high performance elite athletes.

Alex works with leading international business schools and organisations throughout the world, and he is well known for his work which blends leading-edge practices in leadership, organisational change and innovation, with the art of improvisation. He applies solutions-focused approaches throughout his broader work in environmental and social sustainability, and within a range of humanitarian programmes in Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, Colombia and Venezuela. Alex is the Founder and Director of Improwise, which draws its inspiration from the wisdom of improvisation, an approach to connecting with others which requires trust, empathy, humility, curiosity, leadership, creativity and a passion for experimentation.

I am truly blessed to have found Solution Focused Practice, and to be part of this amazing global community. The early part of my career was spent almost entirely in a problem focused world. I studied Engineering for my first degree, then joined Unilever as a management trainee in 1989. I learned so much about business, sales, marketing, finance, but very little about people and teams. My learning there was experiential, and when I look back on my early career, I realise I was coaching as a survival skill! Following roles in Manufacturing (ice cream and frozen vegetables) and then National Accounts, I moved to join Bass Brewers and started selling beer. In 2000, I was asked to run a project. Bass’ IT team had linked their stock and order system with the world wide web – an industry first – and I was tasked wit running a 6-month pilot project. At the end, I submitted my board paper and it was signed off in 2 weeks – another industry first! Two weeks later, barbox.com was launched which became the on-line ordering platform for the UK Licensed on-trade. In 2007, I made a choice to leave.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR Ayse Adil and Joe Lettieri founded Family Based Solutions in 2012 after they came across a family experiencing child to parent abuse. They have since expanded their services to include family domestic abuse recovery and working with adult offenders of domestic abuse. In their workshop they invite four parents who been through the service to discuss their experience of solution focus coaching. The parents all named after fictional characters were asked to be very honest about the approach and explored not only what went well but also what could be better.

Chris Iveson worked as family therapist and social worker before he co-founded – together with Evan George and Harvey Ratner - the BRIEF therapy practice in London. The long-lasting cooperation with Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg and their many innovations in SF practice have made BRIEF a leading center for the development and teaching of SF Brief Therapy and Coaching. Chris has authored several books, among them “Brief Coaching. A Solution Focused Approach”.

Dave McKenna is a solution focussed practitioner with 20 years local government experience and a PhD in local politics, based in the UK. He specialise in public governance; particularly local government scrutiny, partnership working, public participation and digital democracy. He helps councils and other public bodies with improvement, design and research work. He is an active member of Notwestminster - a volunteer network of people who want to redesign local democracy.

I am Professor of Sustainable Business at the University of Southampton, UK. I have published widely in the academic realm and also in fiction. My eco-themed rom-com ‘Habitat Man’ was published in 2021, followed by ‘the Assassin’ and ‘No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save the Planet’ in 2022. My most recent research explores the use of storytelling to promote green behaviours, looking at how readers respond to eco-themed stories. In 2018, I set up the Green Stories Writing project that challenges writers to embed green solutions in their stories via a series of free writing competitions. These are open to all, and 20 competitions have been run so far, which have resulted in several publications.

Edwin is a Master Solution Focus Practitioner (IASTI) and also a Solution Focused Coach certified at the PCC level (ICF). Edwin co-founded Centre for Fathering in Singapore, which won the best new initiative award in year 2000, to inspire dads to be more involved with their children. He appeared numerous times on radio and conferences to speak on fathering issues in Singapore. He delights in equipping dads to be a coach to their children.

Evan George is a co-owner of BRIEF. He set up BRIEF in 1989 with Chris Iveson and Harvey Ratner and they have worked together ever since. Their core interest has been not just the solution focused approach itself but also the remarkable differences that the application of the approach can make to people’s lives, to organisations, to performance, to well-being, to energy and to creativity in teams. And all of this achieved within strikingly short time-spans.

Gill is the manager of Learning Space, a children and young people’s mental health charity based in Surrey, England. She is a trained secondary school teacher with a background in special educational needs. Gill achieved her MA in Emotional Factors in Learning and Teaching at the Tavistock and Portman Clinic. She is one of the founding members of the Learning Space team and has been using solution-focused approaches to support children, young people and families since the beginning of the charity in 1997.