There’s no question that one of the most common and significant challenges in coaching is what to say to your client when they return from a previous session that had seemed so productive, but they report that they’ve done little or nothing since.
They say:
“I know I should have, but . . .”
“I wanted to, but . . .”
“I thought about it, but . . .”
Here’s a question coaches often ask. What do I do when a client who knows exactly what they need to do, but still doesn’t do it? They say something like, “I know I need to move more, eat better, sleep more, but I just can’t seem to make myself do it.” It’s easy in that moment to begin fighting for the client. It’s almost effortless to slip into doing the work for them, encouraging, explaining, asking more questions and trying to make the case for change. After all, we’re helping professionals and we mean well.
Make Room for the Client to Fight for Themselves
But this also creates a familiar problem. You’re now working harder than the client who’s gone passive and may even have disengaged.
The Solution-Focused strategy is to stop doing the fighting for your client and instead make room for them to fight for it themselves. Sometimes that begins with a blunt question:
“So, should we just quit?” And then you stop. Don’t rush in to soften it. Don’t explain what you mean. Simply let the question sit there long enough for the client to respond.
More often than not, the client will push back. They’ll say, “No, of course not.” After all, they’re meeting with you. In saying no, they begin to tell you why changing behavior matters to them. They start taking a stand for themselves.
And that is the moment the conversation shifts. What had been passive starts to become active. Your client is no longer sitting there while you try to generate enthusiasm, confidence, and motivation. Your client is beginning to claim the issue and the solution as their own. This is as true in a five-minute patient encounter as it is in a fifty-minute coaching session.
From there, the conversation can move in a more useful direction. You might ask:
- So what made you decide to come in today?
- Of all the things you mentioned, which one matters most to you right now?
- If this conversation were helpful, what would be different when you leave?
- What would we need to have done today so that by the time you left, you felt our talking had been useful?
The aim of Solution-Focused coaching is not to supply motivation or to make a more persuasive case than the client themselves can make. It’s to stop taking the responsibility for change on their behalf so that the client has room to speak for what matters and why it matters. That’s a very different kind of work from encouraging, persuading, or cheerleading. But it works because it puts the ownership for change where it belongs, where it has the best likelihood of success with the client.
Dr. Deborah Teplow
Editor, The Solution-Focused Practice
Worked with Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, creators of the Solution-Focused approach.