# 141 Bonus Episode - The Curious Inquisitor in Change Therapy.

The Action Factory Podcast - Youth Work that Lasts a Lifetime.

Welcome to another Action Factory Podcast with me, Michael Dawson.

Before we begin this episode, here's a quick reminder: Don't miss my 30-minute webinar 'The BIG 4 in Youth Work.' You'll also get two powerful tools and my popular 'Brief Therapy Toolkit' eBook—already a hit with nearly 40,000 youth workers. Click below to subscribe and watch!"

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If you're looking for the free NLP in residential youth work course, it will be back after the Christmas break, but in the meantime, I want to talk about a concept called the 'Curious Inquisitor.'

In this session, we will discuss a concept from the Solutions Toolkit training course called the 'Curious Inquisitor.' I place this concept at the center of everything we do in residential youth work training. As you know, the course adopts and adapts from the very best change therapy strategies ever created. One of those is, of course, Neurolinguistic Programming.

A central concept of NLP is

'The map is not the territory.'

My interpretation of this idea shows that each of us keeps our own map of the world around us; in doing so, we do not navigate the real obstacles or advantages but only the ones we see, the ones on our map.

This is why we often struggle to solve a problem for someone else when the solution seems glaringly obvious to us.

So how can we get around this in residential youth work?

I love the idea of being the 'Curious Inquisitor.' That is, to be curious about how our clients see the world. Instead of trying to steer their bus, we might simply ask them about preferred directions we could take. This way, we ensure that we stay within their map and in doing so, find solutions that fit into their world. Anything that doesn't fit into their perception will ultimately be rejected or sabotaged.

Staying Curious and resisting the temptation to offer solutions of your own is a tough ask. The attached audio is from my full team training course for residential youth workers called 'The Solutions Toolkit.' There's a free version here.