As you practice using the Solution-Focused approach in your coaching or patient conversations, watch for one common misstep: chasing strategies rather than helping your client define their preferred future.
This happens when coach and client organize the conversation around strategies like “work out more,” “eat less sugar,” “manage fatigue.” They treat these strategies as if they’re the future the client wants.
When strategies become the focus too early, the conversation loses its organizing center. Instead of being guided by a clear picture of the life the client wants to be living, the session gets organized around tasks and plans that may or may not matter in the long run. This is why developing the preferred future is so essential at the start of a solution-focused conversation.
Strategy talk is a starting point — but as soon as you hear it, slow down and explore the difference carrying out that strategy will make.
The Preferred Future Is the Organizing Center
Strategy is seductive. It feels productive. It signals seriousness. When a client says “I want to work out more consistently,” the natural pull is to start building a plan. But that pull is exactly what redirects the conversation away from what makes change stick.
The preferred future is not a goal statement. It is a detailed, lived picture of what the client’s life will look like when things are better: what they are doing, how they are doing it, what it means to them, and what others will notice. Without that picture, strategies float free of any real anchor. The plan may be sound, but the client has nothing to return to when momentum wavers.
This is as true in a five-minute patient encounter as it is in a fifty-minute coaching session. The question is not whether you have time to develop the preferred future. It is whether you can afford to skip it.
“Help your client create a detailed picture of their preferred future — what will be different in the client’s life when things are going better? What will be different about them? What will they be doing, and how will they be doing it? This kind of mental rehearsal makes change almost inevitable.”
Dr. Deborah Teplow, Co-Founder & Chief Program ArchitectWhen you hear a client name a strategy, you have a door. Your job is to walk through it and find out what is on the other side. Three questions that work:
From Strategy to Preferred Future
Client: “I want help figuring out how to work out more consistently.”
- “So suppose working out consistently became part of your life — what difference would that make for you?”
- “What would be better in your life if this were to happen?”
- “How would working out like this change things for you?”
When you hear strategy language, listen for:
- The outcome the strategy is meant to serve
- The difference it will make when it becomes real
- The version of themselves they are actually moving toward
- What small sign, in the next day or two, would tell them things are already shifting
Dr. Deborah Teplow
Editor, The Solution-Focused Practice
Worked with Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, creators of the Solution-Focused approach.