As a child, I was always involved in playing or competition in sport. So it was no great surprise that after spending a couple of years playing full-time tennis I migrated into sports coaching. For me, sport represented a microcosm of life with all its ups, downs, joys, and failures. Obviously, helping people meet these challenges raised more questions than answers. This lead me to an intense period of study (still ongoing some 29 years later) in an attempt to understand more. Despite qualifying and becoming certified in dozens of fields and disciplines it was not until I came across the work of Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg that things began to fall into place.

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The proverbial penny dropped when I read this one simple statement, "the therapist isn't the expert, it is the client who is the expert in their own lives".  This changed everything for me because it is an incontrovertible truth, a truth that I always knew deep inside but had yet to fully recognise. This lead me to study the work of Steve, Insoo, and other Solution-Focused exponents. The Solution Focused (SF) approach enabled me to pull all my experiences together into a coherent and effective approach.

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Of all the practices that I have studied the SF approach is the only approach that can offer a quick remedy for a wide range of different needs. It is beautifully simple (but not necessarily easy) and can be hugely empowering for the individual. The recognition that you and you alone have the answers to all your problems is a significant shift when compared to other forms of coaching. Through the simple act of noticing and recognising "what works", you can begin to navigate a more successful strategy to all that life throws at you.

 

As my coaching career evolved the importance of effective questioning became clear. And this was further confirmed to me as I began to explore SF Coaching. Questions are a central component of this approach, but what is revolutionary about SF questions is that unlike other approaches in which questions are asked to elicit information in SF questions are asked to help the client recognise their own solutions. This is groundbreaking in coaching terms because now the relationship is turned on its head, in terms of coach and client relationships.

 

As the coach is no longer the expert, the role that they play is one that facilitates the coachees' journey to self-awareness.  A phrase that I often use is that "the coachee has all the solutions, the only problem is that they sometimes forget what works best for them, I as the coach, am there just to help remind you of what you already know."

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