Reflection: How to help clients to identify their problems during Counselling sessions with  the Mind Mapping tool.

1. Challenge:

I am currently pursuing a counselling skills course my challenge is to document my work with  clients or subjects and apply whatever I am learning in the course in a practical way and provide  insights to my mentor. The practical assignments include listening skills, questioning skills, being  non-judgemental, helping clients in goal setting, re-phrasing the problem statements and several  other assignments. Clients in this context could be friends,peers,colleagues or complete strangers.  The Practical assignments are weekly in nature. All of us can tend to get stuck in certain thinking  patterns. Breaking thought patterns can help the mind unstuck and generate new ideas.   Trying to uncover the real problem, as well if possible identify the root cause of a client’s issue is  always a challenge as a counselor.

2. Selection

Since I am already facilitating several design thinking activities/tools, so I was ready to try the mind  mapping tool. Broadly speaking, the mind mapping tool is an excellent tool meant to unearth the  real cause of the problem.It also helps you learn more effectively, improves the way that you  record information, and supports and enhances problem solving creatively. It is also helpful to shift  the thinking and forces people to find a creative way forward.

3. Application

In this case I had a background of the clients problem. From my observations she was a pessimist  and it was obvious since she used to keep saying “This won’t work for me” or “I can’t do it” or I  don’t think It can ever happen”.  I started the process by asking the client to identify the symptom of the main problem she was  facing. To facilitate this brain storming / mind mapping exercise I provided her a plain drawing A3  sheet and sticky notes. As this is an ongoing engagement with the client ,I asked if she was okay  to brainstorm openly with me using this tool? With a lot of reluctance she agreed to do so.   Note : If materials are not available, then I conduct questioning interview to unearth the problem.    I am also inspired to share what Nicole Wise, a marketing professor Darton had to say in the  Mind Mapping tool session, “Mind mapping is one of the most powerful tools in the design thinker's  toolbox. It's used to look for patterns, it's used to look for insights, that lead to more creative  solutions to your design challenge. Your participants have to move from a theme that has probably

been more like a label, for example guilt or no time, which is easy to come up with. To an insight  statement.”

For the activity, I asked the client to name the problem on the circle in the center of the A3 page,  and use sticky notes to make connections. I gave her two questions to answer, such as: 1) What if  this problem had gone away, how would your life look like? 2) So What is the worst that could  happen if this problem persists? 3) What would be your life review summary to have a different  perspective about this problem?

I gave her approximately 15 minutes to discuss the questions and write the thoughts on the sticky  notes. Then I had her group her thoughts into clusters that made sense and some common  elements and keep aside the others. I asked her to draw branches stemming out of problem  statement on the sheet and expand on each one of them on the sticky note as keywords or  thoughts. As she grouped them and branched them out, I found that they were all correlating to  something very different, than her original problem and then additional insights came from a  deeper discussion on a A4 paper to jot down her thoughts and observations.

After the session, I asked her to review the sheet that combined the clustered thoughts,  observation notes and any new insights from the personal discussion, and then create a revised  view that incorporated her feedback and thoughts on what she thought could work for her.

4. Insights

What I personally learnt from conducting this exercise with this client is that while the sheet –  especially the revised review that incorporated her feedback – was important for reinforcing her  understanding of the underlying problem she is trying to resolve, the more valuable aspect of the  activity is the thoughts and insights and shared learning that occurs while they are working to  define the problem space together.as a counselor and counselee.

The mind mapping tool, thus, gives an opportunity for clients and serves as a focal point for  discussion that allows them to share their perspectives and develop insights into potential root  causes of their problems. They can quickly identify where they are in the mind mapping process –  or if any thoughts are missing – since it’s an iterative process, they can more quickly add more  thoughts on sticky notes and review.

They can also identify variables in the problem space – that is, it helps them to identify what they  don’t know, in what areas they need to obtain information or data to provide the values for the  variables. Since I discovered that the most valuable aspect is, next time I would use the mind  mapping tool activity as a starting point for a series of design thinking activities to discover  problems and root causes. This can further be applied into a group environment, group level  problem solving and facilitate brainstorming. The mind mapping tool also helps to challenge

assumptions. For every situation, you have a set of key assumptions. Challenging these  assumptions gives you a whole new spin on possibilities.

