Increasing Your Effectiveness with Clients Using The Experts Themselves, Your Clients!

In this interview, Scott discusses how he came to his work focusing on Feedback Informed Treatment and deliberate practice. He discussed how when working with the Solution Focused Therapy founders, independent research found that the approach was effective, but not so significantly more effective than other approaches. He explained how this was surprising to him, and when he looked into it more, he found this finding was true when applied to all theories and techniques. He discussed his drive to improve as a clinician himself and his work with Michael Lambert and Lynn Johnson in looking at the common factors related to outcome and using client feedback to improve alliance and thus outcome. We discussed how continuing education is often focus on theory and technique, and how if a clinician would like to improve their effectiveness with clients, they need to focus on improving their relationships with clients. He discussed learning about Anders Ericsson's research related to deliberate practice, and how clinicians can use this to improve their work with clients. We discussed how research is often focused on symptoms, but it is actually the individual's functioning that is more important as functioning is often what brings clients into treatment, rather than symptoms. He explained that when working in drug and alcohol treatment, he often wondered why the clients had not sought treatment earlier, and it was often an effect on their functioning (e.g., losing their partner, losing their job) that propelled them into treatment. Scott discusses how often when people consult with him, he always returns to why the client is in therapy and what they want out of it, which many therapists forget about as they turn their attention towards the symptoms. Scott D. Miller, Ph.D. is the founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence, an international consortium of clinicians, researchers, and educators dedicated to promoting excellence in behavioral health services. Scott conducts workshops and training in the United States and abroad, helping hundreds of agencies and organizations, both public and private, to achieve superior results. He is one of a handful of "invited faculty" whose work, thinking, and research is featured at the prestigious "Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference." His humorous and engaging presentation style and command of the research literature consistently inspires practitioners, administrators, and policy makers to make effective changes in service delivery. He is the author of numerous articles and co-author of ​Better Results: Using Deliberate Practice to Improve Therapeutic Effectiveness, The Heroic Client: A Revolutionary Way to Improve Effectiveness through Client-Directed, Outcome-Informed Therapy, and ​Feedback Informed Treatment in Clinical Practice: Reaching for Excellence.