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Solution-Focused Coaching: What It Is, the Questions, and What the Research Shows

What is solution-focused coaching?

Solution-focused coaching spends most of a conversation on what you want instead of the problem, on the times the problem is already smaller, and on the next small step, rather than on why the problem exists. It borrows its questions from solution-focused brief therapy. This page explains the miracle question, exception questions, scaling and the other core moves, how the approach differs from problem-focused and GROW-style coaching, what the research does and does not show, and where it is the wrong tool.

Solution-focused coaching is coaching that spends most of the conversation on what you want, on the times the problem is already smaller, and on the next small step, rather than on why the problem exists. It borrows its questions from solution-focused brief therapy, which Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg and their colleagues developed in Milwaukee in the early 1980s. The best known are the miracle question, exception questions and scaling questions.

That is the short version. The rest of this page goes through each of those questions, how the approach differs from problem-focused coaching and from GROW-style coaching, what the research does and does not show (most of it was done on the therapy, not on coaching), and the situations where it is the wrong tool.

Where it comes from

According to the SOFIA research project at City St George's, University of London, solution-focused brief therapy began in the early 1980s at the Brief Family Therapy Centre in Milwaukee. De Shazer and Berg, with colleagues, studied hundreds of hours of therapy to see which questions and answers were followed by real change in clients' lives. They noticed exceptions to problem patterns, times when the problem was less apparent or absent, and exploring those became a central part of the approach. De Shazer's 1985 book, Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy, is one of the early published accounts.

Two things follow from that history. First, the approach was built from watching what people said and what then happened, rather than from a theory of why problems form. Second, it is a therapy by origin, and the research behind it is mostly research on therapy. Solution-focused coaching takes the questions and leaves the clinical frame: it is for someone who is functioning and wants to get somewhere, and it does not diagnose or treat anything.

Explore: solution focused brief therapy

The questions it is built on

A published meta-analysis of randomized studies sorted the approach's techniques into three groups: cooperative language and the working relationship, strengths and resources, and future-focused questions. In a coaching conversation these show up as a handful of recognisable moves.

The preferred future, often asked as the miracle question. The coach asks you to imagine that the problem were gone and to describe what would be different, in detail you could film: what you would be doing, who would notice, what the first small sign would be. An encyclopedia overview describes the miracle question as asking the client to make believe their desired future. The purpose is to turn a vague want, such as I would feel better, into a target specific enough to move toward.

Exceptions. The coach asks when the problem is a little less bad, or absent, even briefly, and then spends time on what was different: where you were, who was there, what you were doing. The idea is that you already do some of the thing that would help, under certain conditions, so the work is finding and extending those conditions rather than inventing something from scratch.

Scaling. You rate where you are on a scale of numbers, typically up to 10, where the top is where you want to be. A common follow-up is to ask why you are at that number and not lower, which draws out what is already working, and then what one point higher would look like, which makes the next step small and concrete. The number is a prompt for precision, not a measurement.

Coping questions. When things are hard enough that asking about a better future would feel dismissive, the coach asks how you are getting through each day at all, and treats the answer as evidence of a strength you may not have counted.

Noticing between conversations. Instead of homework that demands change, you may be asked to notice what is happening in your life that you want to continue, and to bring that back. The aim is to move attention, which usually sits on what went wrong, toward what is working so it can be repeated.

Explore: the miracle question · solution focused brief therapy · mental contrasting

How it differs from problem-focused coaching and from GROW

A problem-focused conversation tends to go: what is wrong, what caused it, how do we remove the cause. That is a sensible route for a broken process or a technical fault. For a personal pattern, such as procrastination or a stalled career move, the analysis can run for a long time without the person being any closer to doing something differently. A solution-focused conversation does not deny the problem; it just spends its minutes elsewhere, on the want, the exceptions and the next step.

GROW, the Goal, Reality, Options, Will structure, is a different kind of thing. It is a sequence for a coaching conversation, while solution-focused work is a set of questions about where to point attention. They combine easily: the Reality stage can be explored through exceptions as well as through obstacles, and the Goal stage can borrow the preferred-future question. Our guide to the GROW model covers the stages, our comparison of coaching models weighs GROW against alternatives including the miracle question, and our page on goal-setting coaching covers the research on turning a goal into a commitment, including where researchers disagree.

Explore: the grow coaching model

What the research shows, and what it does not

Most of the evidence is about solution-focused brief therapy, a therapy, delivered to clients, not about coaching. It is worth reading as the nearest evidence for the questions, not as proof that a coaching session works. In 2000, Gingerich and Eisengart reviewed all 15 controlled outcome studies of the therapy then available. Five were well controlled and all five reported positive outcomes, and the authors concluded that the studies gave preliminary support for the approach but did not permit a definitive conclusion.

Later meta-analyses give different sizes of effect. Kim's 2008 meta-analysis found small but positive effects (d between 0.13 and 0.26), with only the effect on internalizing behavior problems statistically significant. A 2024 meta-analysis by Franklin and colleagues pooled 28 randomized studies of community-based services, with 340 effect sizes, and reported a medium overall effect (g of 0.654, 95 percent confidence interval 0.386 to 0.922). The two reviews pooled different studies and the second counted only randomized trials in community settings, which is one reasonable reading of why the numbers differ; neither is a study of coaching.

There is also a small set of experiments on the questions themselves, using people who brought a real problem they wanted to solve. In a pilot study by Grant and O'Connor, 39 participants answered problem-focused coaching questions and 35 answered solution-focused ones, including the miracle question. Both groups increased in goal approach, but the solution-focused group increased more. Both kinds of question lowered negative affect and raised self-efficacy, but only the solution-focused ones raised positive affect and increased participants' understanding of the nature of their problem. A 2015 replication by Neipp and colleagues randomly assigned 204 students at a Spanish university and found larger gains in self-efficacy, goal approach and action steps, and a larger drop in negative affect, for the solution-focused questions. In 2021 Neipp and colleagues compared four conditions with 246 participants: the miracle and exception conditions reduced negative affect more than the problem-focused condition, scaling produced more action steps than the miracle or exception questions, and the authors added that solution-focused and problem-focused questions might be more similar than different in their immediate impact.

Read together, that supports a modest claim: for people with a real problem, answering solution-focused questions tends to leave them feeling more capable and more ready to act than answering problem-focused ones, in the moment. These experiments measured people before and after a single set of questions. They do not show that the change lasts, that people then did anything differently, or that a program of solution-focused coaching beats other approaches over months. Treat the approach as a well-motivated, reasonably tested set of questions, not as a proven method.

Explore: solution focused brief therapy · self efficacy

Where it works less well

Some limits follow from the design of the questions, and the reasoning here is ours rather than a research finding. If a person needs to be heard before anything else, skipping straight to the preferred future can feel like being told to cheer up, which is why coping questions exist and why a good coach starts there when things are heavy. If the problem is a fact that has to be understood, such as why a budget does not add up, analysis is the job and a miracle question is a detour. And questions that only draw out what is working can leave a real obstacle unnamed; asking about both what is working and what is in the way is more honest than either alone.

It also helps to know what it asks of you. The questions only work if you answer them concretely. A reply of I would be happier gives the coach, human or AI, nothing to build on, and a good conversation will keep asking until you can describe what you would be doing.

A first try on your own

You can run a small version of this without a coach. Write down, in a few sentences you could film, what an ordinary good day would look like if the problem were mostly gone. Then list the last two or three times the problem was smaller than usual and what was different about them. Give today a number from zero to ten against that good day, and write why it is not lower. Then write what one point higher would look like, and choose one step small enough that you would be surprised if you did not do it. Over the next few days, notice and write down what is happening that you want to continue.

If writing the first step makes you feel worse, not clearer, that is useful information too, and the section below is the place to look.

When coaching is not the right help

A solution-focused approach has a therapy lineage, but using its questions in a coaching conversation does not make the conversation therapy. Coaching, human or AI, is not treatment for depression, anxiety, trauma or any other condition, and a coach cannot diagnose one. Talk to a doctor or a licensed mental-health professional if low mood, anxiety or distress has lasted for weeks, if it is getting in the way of sleep, work or relationships, or if the picture of a better future feels impossible to form at all. Questions about the future can feel painful when you are depressed, and that is a reason to see a clinician, not to push through.

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, contact a crisis line now. In the United States, you can call, text or chat 988, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which states that it is available 24/7/365, free and confidential. In Canada, you can call or text 9-8-8. In the United Kingdom, Samaritans is free to call on 116 123 at any time. In Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists helplines by country. If someone is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number. IX Coach is not a crisis service and cannot tell when someone is in danger, so it is not a safety net for these moments.

Where IX Coach fits

IX Coach is an AI coaching system. It is not a human coach, a clinician or a crisis service, and it is a one-to-one conversation. Within the landscape above, it is designed for the thinking-it-through part: putting a want into concrete terms, looking for the times the problem was smaller, and choosing a next step. As of 2026-10-10, solution-focused brief therapy and the miracle question are both concept pages in IX Coach's practice library, which breaks each into individual practices with a note on how strong the evidence is for each, and you can read them before using anything.

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