A Case for Videorecording Practice

For therapists or coaches and their clients, talking matters. It is through talking that practitioners learn about their clients, perhaps eliciting their clients’ hopes for the future or discovering what they might find useful. By listening carefully, practitioners can discern much, perhaps evidence for the client’s current strengths and resources. Through talking together, they might draw the client’s attention to what is already going well. In the process, they encourage the client to articulate the next small step towards a preferred future and signs of progress. In these conversations, clients may gain insights, come to understandings, and make decisions. One arena for talking is face-to-face dialogue: Practitioners and clients sit down together, watch and listen to each other, and have a conversation. Dialogue, whether face to face or on the telephone, has a few unique characteristics. These are worth considering, because they have implications for practice. Here, I introduce four of these characteristics as apparent contradictions