Coaching practices for Solution Focused Coaching

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Solution Focused Coaching, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

• When someone I’m coaching brings me a topic, we just end up circling it and venting
• I keep solving the same person’s problems over and over, slightly different each time
• We spend the whole conversation working on the problem they walked in with, and I keep sensing the thing that’s really got them stuck
• I sit down to coach someone through what happened and they’re already braced, because they know I’ve made up my mind about how they did
• My one-on-ones sprawl and end with nothing decided

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. Clarify the Goal with precision
   Establish exactly what the person wants to achieve — not the presenting topic, but the specific, owned outcome.
   The GROW Coaching Model, Made Practical
3. 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
4. Ask "What’s the real challenge here for you?"
   The presenting problem is rarely the actual problem — this question cuts through to what really matters.
   The Coaching Habit: Seven Questions to Be More Coach-Like
5. Replace performance review conversations with feedforward conversations
   In coaching conversations, ask "what could you do differently?" instead of "what went wrong?"
   Feedforward: Future-Focused Feedback That Actually Changes Behavior
6. Set the Goal — establish what the conversation is for
   Begin every coaching conversation by clarifying what the person wants to achieve in this session.
   The GROW Model: Coaching Conversations That Actually Move People
7. Explore Reality — establish an honest assessment of the current situation
   Help the person see their current situation clearly and specifically, without judgment or premature solutions.
   The GROW Model: Coaching Conversations That Actually Move People
8. Use GROW in brief leadership conversations, not just formal coaching sessions
   Apply GROW structure to 5-minute hallway conversations and 1-on-1 check-ins — not only to hour-long coaching sessions.
   The GROW Model: Coaching Conversations That Actually Move People
9. Raise awareness and build responsibility simultaneously
   Help the person see their situation more clearly while also connecting them to their ownership of it.
   The GROW Model: Coaching Conversations That Actually Move People
10. Ask "What do you want?"
    People often know what they want but haven’t said it — asking directly surfaces it and shifts from complaint to intention.
    The Coaching Habit: Seven Questions to Be More Coach-Like

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