Call It What You Want

Super sharp-eyed people might have spotted that I’ve changed the name of my business from ‘Chris Ward Solution Focused Brief Therapy’ to ‘Chris Ward Solution Focused Services’.

This is one tweak amongst many that I’m making, which are all to do with communicating accurately what I offer.

A lot of people I’ve spoken to about marketing recently have commented ‘people aren’t looking for a therapist’. Seems counter-intuitive at first, but when you think about it, it’s absolutely true – what people are looking for is the thing they hope to achieve through seeing a therapist. Also, people are looking for the thing they hope to achieve through seeing a coach, or a supervisor, or a consultant, and so on.

The type of thing people typically type into a search engine that can then direct them to, for example, a therapist, or a coach, is something along the lines of ‘how to overcome anxiety’, or ‘changing career’, or ‘how to quit smoking’. These are things that people think about trying in order to become what they really want (‘confident’, ‘fulfilled’, ‘healthy’, ‘happy’ etc.)

The Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘therapy’ (typical of any definition), is ‘the treatment of a physical problem or an illness.’ and its definition of ‘coaching’ is ‘the process of training someone to play a sport, to do a job better, or to improve a skill.’

Anyone who knows a bit about Solution Focused practice, and/or who has read a few of my blogs, will probably recognise, then, that it isn’t really quite what is generally being referred to by ‘therapy’ or ‘coaching’ – the process involved just doesn’t quite fit with ideas of ‘treatment’ or ‘training’. But it absolutely does deliver what people hope for through engaging with either.

One of the best things about Solution Focused practice is that it is an approach that can be applied to any context in which someone wishes to engage in conversation in order to propel themselves towards the change they want to experience. Whether, depending on the context, this is considered to be most appropriately described as ‘therapy’, or ‘coaching’, or ‘reflective practice’, or anything else, the activity is exactly the same – so you really can call it whatever you want (the catch-all term I’ve opted for is ‘services’).

Instead of introducing myself at the outset as a therapist or a coach, then, it perhaps makes more sense for me to say what I offer (for example, at the moment I’m tending to say ‘I help creative people find happiness and success’). I might go on to define myself as being a therapist, coach, or mental health nurse when people ask about my credentials (generally the next question after I’ve answered ‘how do you do that?’)

So, if you know anyone who is looking for some help to achieve anything, to come to terms with anything, or to change anything about themselves or their life, don’t worry too much about what type of professional they should look for, and do please bear in mind that you’ve read a blog by someone who is able to help them with that!