The tools of the Méthode Dolfino® are valuable means for reaching your personal goals. However, when you position yourself as a guide, you offer this support to other people. You guide them through their own world in pursuit of their goals. In that case, certain elements are important to respect. You cannot change others or force them onto a particular path. Still, you can inspire them by making them want to explore new routes. In this sense, there is no session without a request: it is the first step someone being guided must take if they are serious about reaching their goal.

As a guide, be aware when another person’s experience touches you emotionally and draws you into your own vulnerabilities. Without question, you will not, for the moment, be a good guide in that specific context. When you find yourself resonating with someone you are guiding, take a step back and use the tools that work for you to work on your own feelings and heal your own wounds. In that case, do not hesitate to direct that person to another competent practitioner.

Keep constantly in mind the importance of showing humility as a guide. This means you must bear in mind that it is always the person being guided who acts, and that you have very little to do with their successes. Your role as a guide is in no way to rescue, but rather to collaborate with the other person.

Since the person being guided holds all the credit and responsibility for their own transformations, it is essential to appreciate their journey, their involvement and their achievements. In doing so, you acknowledge their efforts, their abilities and their commitment: successes nourish self-confidence, a sense of competence and resilience. The flip side of this is also very relevant in many situations. For example, when someone lives with a significant problem and the approach you propose does not seem enough to help them move past it, it is up to them, not you, to choose other strategies.

Speaking of responsibility... If you decide to build a career in private practice, inform yourself thoroughly about the laws in force regarding the practice of helping relationships, adopt a code of ethics that you share with your clients (you will find an example of this in the appendix). Also make sure to take out professional liability insurance.

Although the Méthode Dolfino® favors exploring different solutions rather than long conversations before guidance, certain questions are useful. They help foster awareness, move reflection forward and gain a clearer picture of the likely origins of a problem.

Knowing how to ask the right questions will help you better target the appropriate techniques and tools and maintain good synchronization throughout the session.

Clarify your emotions. What are you feeling: fear, joy, sadness, anger, etc.?

Identify who is linked to this emotion. Your spouse, your son, your friend, your aunt, etc.?

Identify who the vague accusations or resentments are directed at. You say that no one listens to you. Who doesn’t listen to you?

Get specific about your experience. You say you don’t trust yourself, be more precise in explaining how this shows up in the different areas of your life.

Avoid normalizing. You claim that communication between you is always bad. Can you clearly explain when communication is difficult? Give a concrete example highlighting “who” wants to communicate “what” to “whom”?

Work around generalization. You say your partner never listens to you. Never? What would be different if she listened to you? What might be stopping her from listening to you?

Stick to observable facts by ruling out distortion and assumptions. You claim that if he gives you a dirty look, it’s because he hates you... How does the way he looks at you prove that he hates you? Have you ever looked at someone that way without hating them?

Stay alert to all nonverbal cues (gaze, posture, changes in tone of voice, etc.) that can guide your choice of questions. Your master card as a guide will be your attitude of openness and non-judgment. Remember that a sense of mutual understanding, safety, and welcome feeds quality synchronization and, in turn, increases the effectiveness of the process.

With this in mind, keep honing your active listening skills. Active listening, also called compassionate listening, is a communication technique developed by American psychologist Carl Rogers. It is grounded in the art of questioning and rephrasing so that the other person feels heard and understood without being judged. For Carl Rogers, the emotional meaning of an event matters far more than its intellectual rationalization. It’s the heart and soul you need to listen to, not the reasoning.

Practicing active listening means respecting the following five principles:

Welcome the other person by accepting them as they are, without ulterior motives.

Stay focused on what the other person is feeling rather than on what they’re saying, meaning go beyond the words and the mental reflections.

Respect the other person by remaining in a relationship of equals.

Be a good mirror by highlighting the emotions hidden behind the other person’s words. To do this, learning to properly rephrase what the other person says proves essential.

Finally, still according to Rogers, non-directiveness and empathy are both essential to active listening.

Non-directivity presupposes not influencing the other person and not interpreting their experience, so as to leave the person you are guiding the space to find their own solutions.

Empathy determines your ability to enter the other person’s subjective world in order to understand it from within. This attitude allows the person you are guiding to express themselves without fear, setting aside their usual defense mechanisms.