Keep, delete, or change
A client says this:
"I've been trying to eat healthier for years. I always start and then stop. Last week I meal prepped some vegetables for lunch, but I only ate them twice. The trouble is I have no time. My schedule is packed and work is overwhelming."
Which words would you respond to?
Dr. Deborah Teplow, our co-founder, puts the stakes plainly: "How a coach responds to a client's own words turns out to matter as much as anything else in this work."
Every time a client speaks, a practitioner keeps the client's words, deletes them, or changes them.
Researchers have measured this directly. Korman, Bavelas, and De Jong compared the opening portions of Solution-Focused, MI, and CBT demonstration sessions, looking at what practitioners did with a client's words when they formulated what the client had just said. In the Solution-Focused formulations, 46% of the words preserved the client's exact words, compared with 23% in the MI and CBT formulations. Words added by the practitioner accounted for just 10% of the Solution-Focused formulations, compared with 35% in MI and CBT.
So does keeping a client's exact words actually matter? In Deborah's words: "Yes, it's how a coach shows they're seeing the world through the client's eyes, not their own."
Solution-Focused practice keeps the client's own words about what matters to them, what's working, and what they want. These are echo words, the client's exact words that we can use to build later questions. Solution-Focused practice deletes, too, "simply by not following up on whatever doesn't help the client make their better future a reality. There's no correction, reframing or redirection."
What it never does is change them.
Listen, select, build
Keeping the client's words is one part of a three-part process: listen, select, build. Deborah walks through that process in its own piece, Listen, Select, Build. Here we're staying with one question: what happens to the client's actual words along the way.
Solution-Focused practice listens with purpose. As Deborah describes it: "We hear everything the client says, but we listen with purpose for the first word or phrase that points toward what the client wants, what's already working for them, or a small sign of progress." In most helping conversations, practitioners listen to the whole story instead, which usually starts with problems and setbacks.
Then select that word or phrase, and do it early. "We don't wait to get the whole story, nor for the biggest or most emotional moments, just that first useful piece." Selecting early is purposeful and efficient: "The earlier we select, the more easily the conversation moves toward the future the client wants."
Then build. The next response, almost always a question, comes directly from the word or phrase you selected. The conversation expands what the client has already said instead of starting somewhere new.
Deborah sums up the skill this way: "In listen, select, build, the skill isn't in hearing more. It's becoming more precise about which moments you pursue, and which you let pass."
Back to the meal prep
Go back to read what that client said at the start of this piece. There's a lot in it. As Deborah notes, "It's sure easy to get hooked by the drama of the packed schedule and overwhelming work."
The first useful phrase comes almost immediately:
"I've been trying to eat healthier..."
That's where you get in.
"So what would you notice that would tell you you were healthier?"
Now the client is describing what "healthier" means to them before the conversation moves on to everything that has gotten in the way.
Later, if the client says, "Last week I meal prepped some vegetables for lunch," that's another useful phrase:
"How did you decide to do that meal prep in the first place?"
Or:
"How did you pull that off?"
And if they say they ate the vegetables twice:
"How did you get yourself to eat the vegetables those two times?"
"What vegetables did you choose?"
"How did you prepare them?"
The point isn't to wait for a long answer, collect all the useful phrases, and decide afterward which one to pursue. Solution-Focused conversation works much closer to the client's language. You listen for the first useful word or phrase, select it, and build from it before the conversation moves on.
None of these questions asks about the packed schedule or the overwhelming work. None corrects or reframes what the client said. Each builds from the client's own words.
Deborah puts it this way: "It's like using a yellow highlighter. The moment something points toward what will help the client move toward their better future, you highlight it and build on it before anything else covers it up."
Who's doing the talking
Keeping a client's exact words isn't the only thing that sets a Solution-Focused conversation apart from others. The difference also shows up in what Deborah calls verbal real estate: how much talking the client does compared with the coach.
Deborah uses roughly equal talk time as one marker of shared power, with client and coach talking about the same amount. That balance can be lost in either direction. A coach can talk too much. Or, in Deborah's words, the balance can be lost "when the coach loses control of the conversational process and the client dominates, such as when the client launches into ventilation expecting the coach to politely listen."
When that happens, the coach is no longer managing the conversational process, and the conversation can lose direction.
So part of the Solution-Focused art is managing the flow of the conversation. Deborah compares it to a relay race: "It's like handoffs in a relay race, in which the legs of the race are short and no one holds the baton very long before passing it back again."
Note too, that as we pass the baton, we run together for a bit. Solution-Focused coaches "run together" with clients with frequent tiny utterances such as, "uh-huh," "okay," "ah."
Why we don't change a client's words
When a client says they're exhausted, a Solution-Focused practitioner doesn't reframe or minimize by responding with "really tired." When a client says they're enraged, we also don't use "angry." Substitutions like these can seem harmless, even helpful. As Deborah puts it: "Changing is not neutral. It's the coach's worldview standing in for the client's."
Letting a word pass is different. When we don't follow up on something, the client's words stay exactly as they offered them. When we change a word, we replace the client's description with our own.
Because of the power difference between practitioner and client, the client may allow the substitution to stand even if it's not right for them. They may even begin using the practitioner's wording themselves. What gets built from that point can then be built on the practitioner's worldview rather than the client's.
When the coach echoes the client's exact words, the client has reason to trust that they were understood on their own terms. For the longer case on why paraphrasing costs more than it looks like it does, see Select and Preserve: Why Your Paraphrasing Might Be Blocking Client Progress.
Practicing listen, select, build
Reading about this is the easy part. Catching the one useful phrase inside a sixty-second answer, while the client is still talking, and then building a question from it before the moment disappears is a skill, and good skills can be developed only with practice and feedback.
That's what the practice element in the certification is for. You'll work with actual coaching transcripts and client language, and get feedback on which words you selected and the questions you asked from them.
You can also watch Deborah teach this live 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 (you are here)
- The Better Future Still Includes Hard Days
The skill in this post is one of the things practitioners build in Foundations in Solution-Focused Health Coaching certification.
See the Difference in Action
Watch the Free Training Demonstration
Watch a Solution-Focused conversation run start to finish, with the exact questions ready for your next session.
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.
References
- Korman, H., Bavelas, J. B., & De Jong, P. (2013). Microanalysis of formulations in solution-focused brief therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and motivational interviewing. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 32(3), 31-45.
- Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2023). Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change and Grow (4th ed.). Guilford Press.