Suppose you set out to find what actually helps a person change, and you were willing to discard anything that didn't survive the test.
Where would you start?
Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg started behind a one-way mirror, looking for what worked.
That's important because most approaches to helping people change begin somewhere else: with a theory of change. A theory proposes why people struggle, what makes change happen, and therefore what the practitioner should do to help produce it.
Solution-Focused practice takes a different route.
De Shazer and Berg, who developed the evidence-based Solution-Focused Brief Therapy approach from which Solution-Focused coaching derived, began by watching what actually happened between therapists and clients.
They approached the work with open curiosity rather than a theory they were trying to prove.
They didn't observe so they could eventually construct a theory of change. They simply stayed curious about something far more practical: What worked? What helped the client make progress toward the future they wanted?
De Shazer was explicit that Solution-Focused Brief Therapy wasn't a theory. He described it instead as a way of talking with clients, developed by paying close attention to the kinds of conversations that actually helped people make change.
What they actually did
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, de Shazer, Berg, and their team at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee spent thousands of hours observing therapy sessions.
Dr. Deborah Teplow, our co-founder, describes what made their work so unusual:
"They spent thousands of hours doing something almost nobody else was doing at the time. Sitting behind a one-way mirror watching session after session in real time, making suggestions to the therapist conducting the session as it happened, and watching the immediate impact those suggestions had."
Note the phrase "as it happened."
They weren't starting with an explanation of what should work and then trying to confirm it. They were curious about what actually helped. When something appeared useful, they tried more of it. When it wasn't useful, they did something different.
As Deborah puts it:
"Other approaches start with a theory of how people change and build their practices from that theory. Solution-Focused practice developed differently. Practices came first, from watching what actually worked, case after case."
That's still one of the foundational principles of Solution-Focused practice: if something is working, do more of it. If it isn't working, do something different.
Curious and purposeful
That history helps explain something that can be easy to miss when you first learn Solution-Focused coaching.
A Solution-Focused coach is intensely curious, but that curiosity has an explicit purpose.
You aren't trying to uncover the hidden cause of the client's problem or decide what the client really needs. You don't arrive with a theory about why they aren't changing. But you are purposeful about where you direct the conversation.
A core element of all Solution-Focused conversations is the questions coaches formulate that help clients think about themselves and their circumstances in new and different ways. The questions are remarkably simple and reflect the three parts of every Solution-Focused conversation:
- Want: What does this person want for their future?
- Have: What do they already have that can help them get there?
- Next: What would they have done to get there, and how would they have done it?
The coach's job is to move the conversation through those three parts by formulating questions that help the client develop their own answers in useful detail. The coach doesn't decide or advise on any of these because the answers come from the client, who has knowledge of their own life that no one else can have.
Central to Solution-Focused coaching is a clear division of roles: the coach drives the conversational process, while the client supplies the content.
You need a destination
There's a practical reason Solution-Focused conversations begin with what the client wants.
Think about getting into a taxi. The driver can't pull away from the curb until they know where you want to go.
Telling the driver where you don't want to go isn't enough.
The same is true in coaching. You can't help someone move toward a better future until you have some idea of what that future is.
So get curious. What would they notice that would tell them things were getting better? How would that show up in everyday life? What would be different?
Then become curious about what they already have. When are things already going even a little bit better? What are they already doing that's working? When are aspects of their preferred future already happening? What did they do that made the difference?
And finally, help them imagine that they've moved a little farther toward that future. What would they have done to get there? How would they have done it?
As Deborah teaches in Foundations in Solution-Focused Health Coaching, those three parts can be remembered simply as: What do you want? What do you have? What's next?
And "What's next?" doesn't mean asking or telling the client what to do. It's helping them imagine that progress has already occurred in the near future, then becoming curious about what they would have done along the way to get there and how they would have done it.
Change happens in everyday life
Another important influence on the development of Solution-Focused practice is that both de Shazer and Berg were social workers, and systems thinking was part of their professional world. People don't change in isolation. They live with partners, children, coworkers, friends, families, and communities.
As Deborah notes:
"Change never occurs to the client outside a social system, and their future always includes it."
That's why a Solution-Focused conversation doesn't stop when a client says, "I'd be more confident," "I'd be healthier," or "I'd feel more connected."
We stay curious about how that would show up in the context of their everyday life. What would their partner notice? Their children? Their coworkers? What would people see them doing differently that would tell them things were getting better? What would be different?
When you help clients develop rich details of their preferred future, it becomes something they can actually picture living.
What this means for coaching
The history matters because the same stance that shaped Solution-Focused practice in Milwaukee shapes the work today.
You don't have to figure the client out, diagnose the problem, do root-cause analysis to determine why they haven't changed, or decide what they should do. Instead, stay curious about the future they want, what is already working, and how they would have made further progress in that future place.
At the same time, curiosity doesn't mean simply following wherever the conversation happens to go. Solution-Focused coaching is purposeful. Every question has a reason for being asked. So, developing skill means becoming increasingly precise about what you listen for, which words you build on, what you leave alone, and what question you ask next.
As Deborah teaches in Foundations in Solution-Focused Health Coaching, that is part of what makes Solution-Focused practice simple but not easy. The coach isn't adding analysis, interpretation, or an explanation of what is really going on. The challenge is to remain genuinely curious while guiding a purposeful conversation that helps the client do their own thinking.
How this reaches you
For us, this history isn't distant.
More than thirty years ago, Deborah ran a continuing education institute for behavioral healthcare professionals. Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg were on the faculty, teaching the Solution-Focused approach they had developed.
At the same time, Bill Miller and Steve Rollnick were also on the institute's faculty teaching Motivational Interviewing.
Deborah describes the timing this way:
"My work with the Solution-Focused approach happened more than 30 years ago, at the same time I first learned MI, because Steve, Insoo, Bill, and Steve were all on the faculty of my institute."
Solution-Focused practice became part of her work for the next three decades. She continued studying it, using it, and adapting it specifically for health, wellness, fitness, and performance professionals.
So when you take Foundations in Solution-Focused Health Coaching, you're not simply learning a set of tools from years ago. You're stepping into a lineage that began with curiosity about what actually helps people change and a willingness to keep what works and drop what doesn't.
That same stance remains at the center of the course today: stay curious, be purposeful, pay attention to what works, and keep learning from the person sitting in front of you.
Foundations in Solution-Focused Health Coaching is approved for 6.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ through Indiana University School of Medicine and for 0.70 CECs for professionals certified by the American Council on Exercise.
You can also watch Deborah teach this in Beyond Motivational Interviewing, the full session this series comes from.
The Series
Drawn from Dr. Deborah Teplow's summit session, Beyond Motivational Interviewing.
- Your Clients Are Motivated. So What Builds Follow-Through?
- Every Solution-Focused Conversation Has the Same Three Parts
- Three Continents, One Pattern: Where Lasting Change Actually Starts
- Solution-Focused Practice and Motivational Interviewing: Four Points of Departure
- Select the Client’s Words to Formulate Your Next Question
- The Better Future Still Includes Hard Days
- Solution-Focused Practice Began With Observation, Not Theory (you are here)
Take the Approach Into Practice
The Foundations in Solution-Focused Health Coaching certification develops this distinct approach to client language through self-paced content and 1:1 live case consults. Approved by ACE for 0.70 Continuing Education Credits, applicable toward certification renewal for personal trainers, health coaches, and fitness professionals.
Explore CertificationThis post is part of a deeper comparison. For a full side-by-side breakdown of how the Solution-Focused approach and Motivational Interviewing differ in assumptions, conversational structure, evidence base, and when each fits best, read our complete guide: Solution-Focused vs. Motivational Interviewing.