Coaching practices for Solution Focused Brief Therapy Building on What Works in a New Job

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Solution Focused Brief Therapy Building on What Works in a New Job, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • All day my attention goes straight to what went wrong
  • I know everything I want to get away from, but if you asked me what "better" actually looks like
  • It feels like this is just how I am
  • I finally tried something and it only half-worked, and my whole brain went "see, nothing I do ever works"
  • I don’t believe I can actually pull this off, and the things I do that take real grit I just wave away as nothing

Practices that may help

  1. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
    Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), developed by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, directs attention to what already works — client strengths, past successes, and desired futures — rather than to analyzing problems. Meta-analyses report small-to-moderate positive effects across a range of presenting issues, with particular strength in behavioral problems and depression in adult populations.
  2. The Formula First-Session Task and Between-Session Noticing
    Assign between-session observation tasks that direct attention toward what’s already working.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  3. Preferred Future: Describing Life When the Problem Is Solved
    Ask the person to describe in concrete, behavioral detail what life looks like when things are better.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  4. Exception Finding: When Is the Problem Already Less Severe?
    Identify times when the problem was absent or less severe — these are evidence that solutions already exist.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  5. Evaluate the outcome and adjust
    After implementing, honestly assess what worked, what didn’t, and what to do next.
    Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical
  6. Complimenting Strengths Throughout the Session
    Deliberately name real strengths, efforts, and resources the person displays — not as praise but as information.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  7. Coping Questions
    When things seem terrible, ask how the person is managing at all — acknowledging and excavating their resilience.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  8. Debrief each session with a structured reflection
    Write a three-question debrief right after practice to convert experience into learning.
    Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability
  9. Narrow the scope: a smaller problem space is a richer one
    Restrict the problem to a specific user, use case, or scenario — the narrower the brief, the richer the possible solutions within it.
    Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical
  10. Coach the person, not just the problem
    The most important thing a manager can work on is the person’s capacity to handle future problems, not just today’s.
    The Leader as Coach: A New Management Paradigm

Related concerns

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice