What would you notice in your practice if follow-through stopped being the hard part? That's the question our co-founder Dr. Deborah Teplow explored this July at the Coach Catalyst Nutrition Summit, a virtual gathering of nutrition and fitness coaches. Her starting point: your clients are motivated, they agreed to the plan, and they meant it. Motivation was never the missing piece.
The session is called Beyond Motivational Interviewing. Many of the coaches in the room were trained in MI, and Deborah's case is built with respect for it: what Solution-Focused coaching does differently, where the two part ways, and why that difference shows up exactly where coaching gets hard, in what clients do between sessions.
The full session is below, including the live demonstration and the Q&A with coaches in the room.
What you'll hear
Deborah's history with both approaches goes back to the source. She worked with Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, who developed the Solution-Focused approach, and Bill Miller and the psychologists who created MI were on the faculty of the continuing education institute she ran. This session is her account of what three decades with both approaches taught her, and why she now practices and teaches Solution-Focused coaching.
In the session:
- Three stories from three continents, from elders in Uganda to mothers in Vietnam, and the principles of lasting change they share
- Why a conversation that starts with the client's preferred future engages a different brain state than one that starts with the problem
- The three-part structure of every Solution-Focused conversation: what the person wants, what's already working, and what's next
- Four points of departure between Solution-Focused practice and MI: motivation, structure, language, and follow-through
- How follow-through gets rehearsed before real life tests it
- A live example from Stamina Lab co-founder and CEO Glen Lubbert of a Solution-Focused conversation in his own practice
And for coaches already trained in MI, her reassurance from the session holds here too: you don't have to abandon any of it.
The conversation Deborah demonstrates in this session is the skill practitioners build in Foundations in Solution-Focused Health Coaching certification.
See the Difference in Action
Watch the Free Training Demonstration
See the three-part conversation from this session taught step by step, with the exact questions ready for your next client.
Watch the Free Training → This 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.