Sometimes coaching will succeed only if your client can get to grips with aspects of their issues that are tricky to put into words. For example, one client was describing her goals, and mentioned a feeling that she said she wanted to experience more often - a feeling of intense connection to the universe.
She'd had this feeling, she recalled, once or twice over the previous few years, but she found it difficult to say more about it.
Getting this feeling described was important, as we shall see. Yet doing so was an intricate process; we were trying to pin down something subtle, elusive and frustratingly ephemeral.
She'd had this feeling, she recalled, once or twice over the previous few years, but she found it difficult to say more about it.
Getting this feeling described was important, as we shall see. Yet doing so was an intricate process; we were trying to pin down something subtle, elusive and frustratingly ephemeral.
Solutions Focus offers tools and questions that make more detailed descriptions possible - in ways that are respectful and that keep the client positioned as experts in their own lives.
Why is it worthwhile describing such feelings? If you cannot, it's fair to say that you know nothing useful about this feeling - you cannot, for example, teach yourself to experience it more often or begin to show other people how they might have the feeling.
If, on the other hand, you can describe it in some sort of relationship - for example, what other people may notice about you when you have the feeling - then you (and others) can be more alert to its contexts (where it pops up), its antecedents (when it happens), and can begin to create conditions in which it is more likely to occur (which is what we want).
So here are 7 typical solution-focused questions about how feelings of this sort manifest:
If you’d like to experience SF coaching for yourself, book a session today. Or join one of our training courses to learn how to add an SF edge to your practice.
Why is it worthwhile describing such feelings? If you cannot, it's fair to say that you know nothing useful about this feeling - you cannot, for example, teach yourself to experience it more often or begin to show other people how they might have the feeling.
If, on the other hand, you can describe it in some sort of relationship - for example, what other people may notice about you when you have the feeling - then you (and others) can be more alert to its contexts (where it pops up), its antecedents (when it happens), and can begin to create conditions in which it is more likely to occur (which is what we want).
So here are 7 typical solution-focused questions about how feelings of this sort manifest:
- What prompts this feeling?
- What do you know about what you do that makes this feeling arise in you?
- When you get the feeling, what keeps it going, what strengthens it?
- What's different for you when it's present (compared with when it's not)?
- Who is the first other person to notice when you have this feeling? What is it that they notice?
- What is it you see on other people when they notice this about you? (A question that completes an interactional circle of noticing).
- What can you do when you feel even the slightest bit of it happening, that helps you to pay attention to it, to give yourself a rewarding ritual, to help yourself to become more familiar with it?
If you’d like to experience SF coaching for yourself, book a session today. Or join one of our training courses to learn how to add an SF edge to your practice.
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