Visualising SF

Rod Sherwin

Introduced by John Teager

Rod Sherwin is a self-styled Solution Detective, Change Catalyst and Professional Coach based in Melbourne, Australia. For several years, he has successfully employed SF techniques with a broad spectrum of clients. He also draws on his extensive experience as a qualified business analyst and Agile Change Agent.

Rod regularly contributes to SF24, an online and continuous 24 hours of solution-focused presentations, workshops, networking and idea-sharing that annually embraces the SF community worldwide. In this brief SF24 Conversation, Rod explores the concept of visualising SF and shares his personal ‘scrapbook’ of visual SF examples.

Inspired by his reflective question as to how a vision-impaired person might visualise SF, Rod takes us on a short journey. He guides us through a selection of practical tools and techniques that bring the written word to life. These tools and techniques help clients ‘see’ their problems and solutions in both a ‘mind picture’ and a physical sense. This exploration leads them towards a different, possibly unfamiliar, yet inspiring perspective and a solution-focused mindset.

In walking us through his own experience, Rod draws helpful parallels between the corporate and therapy worlds (he operates in both). He provides numerous examples of how the visualisation of SF concepts has initiated or enhanced interaction for his client participants. This visualisation led them to focus on what’s worked, what continues to work, what they can build upon, and the amount of progress they have already achieved. Rod’s example techniques help us visualise a change of seat - and how changing where we sit and look changes what we see.

As with so many SF conversations, Rod invariably triggers our creative imagination by sharing personal experiences and how he has applied, modified and evolved SF techniques. This leads us to create more innovative ideas to share with the wonderfully generous SF community. Rod’s thoughtful insight into visualising SF did precisely that for me and could, I’m sure, do the same for you. In Rod’s words, try ‘walking over the threshold’ and see what happens. You might be pleasantly surprised.