Here’s a little exercise. Try and remember a time when someone approached you and tried to tell you that you were doing something wrong, or they tried to solve a problem for you because they thought you weren’t capable of solving it yourself.
How did you feel?
On the other hand, can you remember a time when someone acknowledged how good you were at something. Can you also remember how that sense of achievement and wellbeing prompted you not to give up on something else that you were struggling with?
When you focus on weaknesses, problems and faults (the experts call that a deficit approach) people tend to feel those weaknesses more acutely and the result is that the negatives become all embracing.
When you focus on strengths (they call this a strength-based approach) people will be encouraged and are more likely to find the strength to deal with the difficult issues.
I’ve been talking about person-centredness in the last few posts. The first principle was individual approaches, the second was self-determination. A strength-based approach is the third principle of person-centredness.
More about that in future posts. In the meantime try and remember what happened on those occasions when you were treated with a strength-based approach and how that differed from the deficit approach.
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