Anatomy of an initial interview: The importance of joining and structuring skills

This paper reports on a study of the therapy process of 63 initial interviews. The purpose of the study was to determine if the therapists' use of executive and joining skills had an effect on whether families continued in therapy until family and therapist agreed on termination. In addition, we tested for the effect of solution-focused interviewing. We found that executive skills accounted for the majority of variance in outcome. Family members' discussion of solution information was significantly correlated with outcome, but did not enter into the regression equation.