26-27 September 2024
Two full days of workshops, panel discussions, and networking
Hosted by the Academy of Solution Focused Training in celebration of their 20th Anniversary of coaching and training for twenty years in Asia!
General Information
Register for a two-day conference with plenary panel sessions and four workshop sessions. With over 20 presenters covering a wide range of Solution Focused approaches in many contexts it is assured to be an enriching time full of learning, professional development, collegial engagement, and celebration.
Venue: Furama RiverFront, Singapore
Register
Full registration fee is $790.00 SGD | Early-bird fee is $690.00 SGD until end of May
The early-bird registration will open soon. Follow on LinkedIn and/or subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.
Anniversary Celebration with Dinner & Dance
Get your tickets for the Dinner & Dance when you register.
Agenda
Day One
9:00 – 9:15 am Welcome & Best Hopes
9:15 – 9:30 am Agenda & Announcements
9:30 – 10:15 an Panel: Looking Back: What Has Worked?
10:15 – 10:45 am Break for Networking
10:45 – 12:30 pm First Workshop Session
12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 – 3:30 pm Second Workshop Session
3:30 – 4:00 pm Break for Networking
4:00 – 5:00 pm End of Day Review – Reflections
Day Two
9:00 – 9:15 am Welcome & What Went Well?
9:15 – 9:30 am Agenda & Announcements
9:30 – 10:15 an Panel: Looking Forward: What Are Our Best Hopes?
10:15 – 10:45 am Break for Networking
10:45 – 12:30 pm Third Workshop Session
12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 – 3:30 pm Fourth Workshop Session
3:30 – 4:00 pm Break for Networking
4:00 – 5:00 pm End of Day Review – Reflections
Workshop Sessions
Choose one workshop per session in your preferred track!
Click on the workshop title for more information.
| First Workshop Session | Second Workshop Session | Third Workshop Session | Fourth Workshop Session | |
| Day 1: Morning | Day 1: Afternoon | Day 2: Morning | Day 2: Afternoon | |
| Coaching Track | Leaders are human too! | Strengthening Organisations Through Team Coaching | Innovative Applications of Solution Focused Coaching in Asia | Mastering Solution Focused Coaching: A Live Coaching Demonstration and Deep Dive |
| Therapy Track | Practical Ways to Apply SF in School Settings | Empowering Youth the SF Way | Thriving Through Transitions and Dealing with Dilemmas | The Art of Masterful Communication Client Experts |
| General Track | Solution Focused Approach to Empowerment in Low Agency Contexts | Leadership Development With Solution-Focused Coaching | Mediating High-Conflict Dispute for Lasting Solutions | Micro-Skills in a Macro-World |
Coaching Track Workshops:
Leaders are human too!
Presenters: Abhishek Mehta, Sandeep Joshi
This session will be focused on sharing an approach to drive solution focused coaching for leaders and scaling it across enterprise. We’ll also share the challenges of leadership in Asian context and some techniques that helped us in driving sustainable coaching culture.
Strengthening Organisations Through Team Coaching
Presenters: Debbie Hogan, Dave Hogan and Jane Tuomola
In Southeast Asia, the rapid growth of team coaching, is driven by organizational, cultural, and global trends emphasizing effective teamwork, better work-life balance and meaningful engagement. This workshop starts with an overview of the Solution Focused team coaching process, outlined in three phases. The process is tailored to the region’s diverse cultural landscape including awareness of nuances like group harmony and modesty as well as the post-pandemic workforce context.
This interactive workshop with practical exercises, will help participants gain an appreciation of both the concepts (e.g. the “Wisdom of the Geese” metaphor), the processes (e.g. And What Else?), and the transformative impact of Solution Focused team coaching in fostering positive organizational change such as improving cohesion, engagement and clarity on goals, infusing hope amidst despair, uncovering strengths, and fostering gratitude and collaboration. The requirements for the ICF Advanced Certification in Team Coaching will also be outlined for anyone interested in learning more about being trained and certified as a team coach.
Innovative Applications of Solution Focused Coaching in Asia
Mode: Facilitated Panel
Presenters: Edwin Choy, Dian Handayani, Steven Nicaud, Ng Yee Lin, Benny Tan, and Dennis Welch
Organizer & Facilitator: Adele Pucci and Michael Pucci
Synopsis
The six experienced coaches presenting in this workshop will each share the innovative ways they use Solution Focused Coaching in their practice. There will be a Q&A session after the presentations along with small group discussions to reflect on what inspired you and how you might take some of the ideas forward in your own practice.
Edwin Choy will present a Solution Focused group coaching program in the Singapore Prison Service for incarcerated fathers called “I CAN CHANGE”. He will share how the sessions help build a growth mindset, envision a new future, and celebrate successes, which leads to rebuilding marriage and father-child relationships and empowers positive change.
Dian Handayani will share how she helps clients turn sexual shame into freedom through Solution Focused Sex Coaching. She will outline how to explore emotions in a culturally sensitive way within an Indonesian context and practical strategies for empowering clients, and facilitating positive change.
Steven Nicaud will share his experience of how Solution Focused coaching enhanced his ability to support others in his work as a Pastor. He will discuss how as his coaching skills evolved they enabled instances of spontaneous coaching encounters in everyday scenarios, revealing the power of SF techniques in facilitating personal growth and overcoming challenges in the unlikeliest of situations.
Ng Yee Lin will share how she designs Solution Focused programs and coaches C-suite leaders and organisations on their Diversity and Inclusion journey in the Hong Kong context.
Benny Tan explores the integration of Solution Focused coaching principles into sales conversations through his G4PS™ framework. When sales is seen as a problem-solving journey centered on customer needs and outcomes, the importance of empowering buyers, enhancing client engagement, can result in collaborative solutions and stronger relationships.
Dennis Welch will share his work as a Faith-based trainer, mentor and coach in Cambodia. He will outline diverse examples that illustrate the application of Solution Focused coaching in Asian Christian ministry. He will show how through culturally sensitive SF questioning, coaches can help clients navigate spiritual life struggles and pursue growth towards Faith-informed outcomes.
Mastering Solution Focused Coaching: A Live Coaching Demonstration and Deep Dive
Presenter: Kirsten Dierolf
Facilitator: Sukanya Wignaraja
Synopsis
This unique workshop, structured around a live one-on-one Solution Focused coaching demonstration, by a seasoned coach with extensive experience, followed by an in-depth facilitated discussion, offers an unparalleled opportunity to witness masterful SF coaching in real time. Participants will gain insight into the nuanced interaction between coach and client, theory and practice, process and competencies, and experiencing first-hand the power of the SF approach in fostering positive change, which we hope will enhance their own coaching skills, broaden their methodological toolkit, encourage them in their certification and professional development journey, and make a lasting impact in their clients’ lives.
Therapy Track Workshops
Practical Ways to Apply Solution Focused in School Settings
Presenters: Edwin Choy, M.S., CSFT, CSFC, MSFC, PCC, and Melioris an effective team of teachers from Raffles Institution
Facilitator: Edwin Choy
Synopsis
This workshop covers the practical ways in which the Solution Focused approach can be applied in four main areas of a school setting including: leadership, teaching, discipline, and parent engagement.
Solution Focused is a powerful philosophy that uses a common set of skills and language that can be readily learnt and implemented and which results in school leadership that empowers the teachers they lead, teaching that adopts a transformative belief in a child’s potential for growth mindse for every pupil to realise the best versions of themselves, student discipline that focuses on positive change, and steers conversations away from offending behaviours towards outcomes students desire and parent engagement that crafts a mutually beneficial relationships with parents to collaborate on ways to support their children’s journey. Educators and anyone who is involved in training, coaching, and counseling within the education sector will benefit from sharing best practices and co-creating new possibilities for integrating Solution Focused approach in their teams and institutions and their own work.
Empowering Youth the SF Way
More information coming soon.
Thriving Through Transitions and Dealing with Dilemmas
Presenters: Dr Jane Tuomola and Sukanya Wignaraja
Synopsis
The first part of the workshop outlines common life transitions such as changing job or moving country or transitioning to a new stage of life such as marriage, becoming a parent, or retiring. Navigating both the opportunities and losses can be a challenge, especially when there are strong emotions involved. The boundaries between coaching and therapy for these situations will be explored. Specific Solution Focused questions that are particularly helpful for clients in transition will be shared along with listening techniques (e.g. such as the Chinese character tīng). We will explore how to balance acknowledging client struggles and losses with signs of progress towards their desired future in a culturally sensitive way.
The second part of the work illustrates how Solution Focused techniques can aid clients in navigating dilemmas and making impactful decisions. Using a case study will highlight the unique aspects of the SF approach, including coping questions, scaling questions to gauge clarity and confidence levels, exploring past successful decision making, and separating controllable from uncontrollable factors to facilitate effective decision-making, will underscore the SF approach’s emphasis on collaboration and assumptions that the client has inherent strengths and capabilities to navigate the decision-making process.
The workshop will be interactive, and include demonstrations, case examples and small group discussions.
The Art of Masterful Communication Client Experts
Presenter: James Abraham
Synopsis
In this workshop, we delve into the beauty of the Solution Focused framework and how it allows you to facilitate a more open and client-empowering conversation. The value of a Solution-Focused approach extends beyond the bounds of the therapy room. It embraces a commitment towards open conversations because it allows the client to lead the conversation. The challenge of allowing someone else to lead a conversation conflicts against a human-being’s innate desire to be affirmed and to feel validated. So how then do we experts step back and allow the person sitting across from us to take on the expert role? How can an SF framework help us break bad habits that communicate, “I know best” or “I’m the expert, so listen to me”?
Through this 90 minute workshop, we explore simple methods that enable us to listen to understand rather than simply listen to hear. Simultaneously, we explore the art of speaking to be understood instead of speaking to be heard, thus enabling truly empowering conversations. We will provide simple methods to truly change the therapeutic roles and dynamic and create better dialogue for success!
General Track
Leadership Development With Solution-Focused Coaching in Asia
Presenter: Sam Chia
Synopsis
This workshop explores the application of Solution Focused coaching in the context of leadership development in a culturally diverse Asian region, considering cultural and historical factors that may shape leadership expectations and practices (e.g. traditional Asian values, such as harmony, collectivism, and humility) and underscoring the importance of empathy and understanding of cultural nuances when coaching Asian leaders. It highlights the unique challenges and opportunities that Asian leaders experience and how using a Solution Focused coaching approach can be a transformative tool for enhancing leadership effectiveness.
The chapter presents some case studies and real-world examples of Asian leaders who have benefited from Solution Focused coaching. It showcases how this approach has enabled them to navigate complex leadership challenges, enhance their communication and presentation skills, and build the confidence needed to excel in a multicultural and competitive business environment.
As coaches we come to better recognize how the Solution Focused methodology can be a relevant and useful tool to support leadership development contributing to the effectiveness and success of both individual leaders and the organizations they lead in Asia.
Solution Focused Approach to Empowerment in Low Agency Contexts
Presenters: Baijesh Ramesh, Adele Pucci, Michael Pucci,
Synopsis
This workshop explores the Solution Focused approach to agency empowerment in contexts in which clients have a low sense of their own agency and little evidence of their efficacy due to exclusion, exploitation, abuse, violence, and other unjust forms of power inequality. Especially in environments of externally enforced powerlessness, empowerment must go beyond merely acknowledging a dehumanizing injustice and verbally reasserting human agency. Agency must often be (re)built from scratch in clients who are not afforded permission to imagine, to set goals, and to enact a preferred future as most of us are.
Exploring extreme case studies in India, Africa and elsewhere, we highlight the ways in which Solution Focus, with its capacity to nurture internal clarity, motivation, and resources, and to recognize and affirm the tiniest glimpses of their agency within the scope of their world, is a very appropriate approach. Whereas other less open, more diagnostic, prescriptive, and directed therapeutic approaches partake themselves of the ethos of power over them, we find that Solution Focused is gentle, humble, and respectful, enough to not only meet clients where they are, but to afford them in the “unknowing” SF coaching relationship itself, exceptional evidence that a different power dynamic is possible. We invite participants to discover where the SF approach to agency empowerment might apply in their own contexts of practice.
Mediating High-Conflict Dispute for Lasting Solutions Using the Solution Focused Approach
Presenter: Kevin Lee, MCIArb, ASFC (IASTI)
Facilitator: Debbie Hogan
Synopsis:
The workshop aims at equipping participants with the skills to employ the Solution Focused approach in mediation, and to empower individuals in conflict to forge sustainable solutions by becoming aware of and harnessing their intrinsic resources, skills, and abilities. It is hoped that participants will, with the presenter, extend their expertise and passion for Solution Focused approach deeper into mediation and coaching conflicts, but also take away insights about how to craft constructive conversations in all coaching, and foster positive relationships in all areas of life.
Micro-Skills in a Macro-World: What do Solution Focused practitioners involved in large-scale change projects do that works?
Presenter: Mark McKergow
Facilitator: Dave Hogan
Synopsis
Mark McKergow and the Macroanalysis Study Group has been studying this question for the last two years. In this workshop Mark will identify some distinctive features of SF organisational development processes in large (>150 people) organisations and systems, as well as gather participant experiences, and insights. This workshop should provide a way to mutually benefit from shared ideas, skills and inspirations.