授权与约束的矛盾——焦点解决实践的本源3

高德明团队 译编

        自组织谈话的概念引导我们关注社会互动，包括谈话中的话轮转换。通过这种方式，交谈者会考虑到对方的存在，并建立对话关系。对话可以被设想为一个双人舞，与搭档一起做动作。有时一方引导，另一方跟随，有时则相反；有时搭档离开，同时继续把对方考虑在内；有时互相密切协调动作。舞蹈／对话伙伴还可以根据公认的规则或脚本前后移动，并通过他们正在进行的活动和社交关系中即兴“改变”规则。

　　讲话者所具有的多种行动的可能性定义了授权与约束的矛盾。矛盾的焦点集中在每个合作伙伴的行动如何限制其他人可能会说或做什么，然而这些限制措施也使他们有创造新的对话的可能性。再一次，我们看到复杂的反应过程如何破坏或构建社会交往和人际关系。它还指出了焦点解决实践者很少谈论的对话的可能性。其中一个就是权力，权力通常仅仅意味着约束，但其实还包括了授权的可能性。权力代表了个人主体性的要求。通过他们的权力行使，组织成员产生了变化从而为他人和自己进行制约和授权。

　　这种权力的指向符合焦点解决实践中的许多问句。问句的设计是为了鼓励客户谈论通过个人主体性使问题发生改变的可能性。焦点解决实践者经常把授权的问题，与要求客户评价不同行动方针可能带来的结果的问题相结合。这些提问邀请客户去想象未来，包括权力的决断可能产生的约束。通过这种方式，焦点解决实践者培养深思熟虑的计划和决策的能力。

　　毫无疑问，许多焦点解决实践者认为持续问这些问题就足够了。然而，对我来说，把这些问题放在一个更广泛的语境中是很有用的，包括授权约束的概念。在使用这一概念时我提醒我自己和我对话的伙伴，复杂性与我们之间简单的关系是相关的。我们作为主体，在情境中使用权利，并且是未来的建造者，包括那些非意愿的约束。谈论授权的约束并不能大大增加我们控制未来的能力。相对的，它有助于预期未来的不可预测性，看到将来约束得到授权的可能性。

——高德明焦点解决高效教练督导团队译编

附：原文　

Paradox of Enabling Constraint

The concept of self-organizing conversation directs our attention to how social interaction involves making and taking turns at talk. In this way, conversationalists take account of each others’ presence and build conversational relationships. Conversation might be envisioned as a dance-like activity in which the partners move together. Sometimes one partner leads and the other partner follows but other times this pattern is reversed. Sometimes dance/conversational partners move apart while continuing to take account of each other and other times they closely coordinate their moves. Partners in dance and conversation may also move back and forth between following recognized rules or scripts and “bending” rules by improvising within their ongoing activities and relationships.

The various moves available to speakers (and dancers) define the paradox of enabling constraint. The paradox turns on how each partner’s actions set limits on what others might say or do, but these constraining actions are also enabling because they create new possibilities for conversation. Once again, we see how the complex response processes perspective undermines either/or constructions of social interaction and relationships. It also points to conversational possibilities that solution-focused practitioners seldom talk about. One such issue is power, which is often defined as only constraint but it also involves enabling possibilities. Power is enabling because it is the assertion of personal agency. Through their exercise of power, organization members create changes that constrain and enable others and themselves.

This orientation to power fits with many of the questions asked by solution-focused practitioners. The questions are designed to encourage clients to talk about the possibilities for asserting personal agency to change problematic situations. Solution- focused practitioners also often combine their enabling questions with questions asking clients to assess the probable consequences of different courses of action. The questions invite clients to imagine the future, including the constraints that their assertions of power might create. In this way, solution-focused practitioners foster thoughtful planning and decision-making.

No doubt, many solution-focused practitioners will decide that it is sufficient to continue to ask only these questions. For me, however, it is useful to put these questions in a broader context that includes the concept of enabling constraint. In using this concept, I remind myself and my conversational partners of the complexities associated with our otherwise simple interactions. We are simultaneously agents asserting power within situations and constructors of future conditions that include unintended constraints. Talking about enabling constraints probably does not greatly increase our control over the future. Rather, it helps in anticipating the unpredictability of the future and in seeing the enabling possibilities in constraints encountered in the future.

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