Brief Coaching: A Solution Focused Approach

210 Pages·2012·0.914 MB·English

by  Chris Iveson, Evan George, Harvey Ratner

Brief Coaching
Brief Coaching: A Solution Focused Approach offers a new
approach to coaching by considering how the client will
know when they have reached their goal, and what they are
already doing to get there. The coach aims to work towards
the solution rather than working away from the problem, so
that the client’s problem is not central to the session, but
instead the coach and the client work towards the client’s
preferred future.
T his book employs case examples and transcripts of
sessions to offer guidance on:
(cid:129) looking for resources rather than defi cits
(cid:129) exploring possible and preferred futures
(cid:129) examining what is already contributing to that future
(cid:129) treating clients as experts in all aspects of their lives.
T his practical guide includes summaries and activities for
the coach to do with the client and will therefore be a useful
tool for both new and experienced coaches, as well as thera-
pists branching into coaching who want to add to their
existing skills.
Chris Iveson, Evan George and H arvey Ratner are
founding members of BRIEF, an independent training,
therapy and consultation agency in the practice of solution
focused brief therapy.
Essential Coaching Skills and Knowledge
Series Editors: Gladeana McMahon,
Stephen Palmer & Averil Leimon
The Essential Coaching Skills and Knowledge series provides
an accessible and lively introduction to key areas in the developing
fi eld of coaching. Each title in the series is written by leading
coaches with extensive experience and has a strong practical
emphasis, including illustrative vignettes, summary boxes, exer-
cises and activities. Assuming no prior knowledge, these books will
appeal to professionals in business, management, human resources,
psychology, counselling and psychotherapy, as well as students and
tutors of coaching and coaching psychology.
www.routledgementalhealth.com/essential-coaching-skills
Titles in the series:
Essential Business Coaching
Averil Leimon, François Moscovici & Gladeana McMahon
Achieving Excellence in Your Coaching Practice:
How to Run a Highly Successful Coaching Business
Gladeana McMahon, Stephen Palmer & Christine Wilding
A Guide to Coaching and Mental Health: The Recognition
and Management of Psychological Issues
Andrew Buckley & Carole Buckley
Essential Life Coaching Skills
Angela Dunbar
The Coaching Relationship: Putting People First
Stephen Palmer & Almuth McDowall
101 Coaching Strategies and Techniques
Edited by Gladeana McMahon & Anne Archer
Group and Team Coaching: The Essential Guide
Christine Thornton
Coaching Women to Lead
Averil Leimon, François Moscovici & Helen Goodier
Developmental Coaching: Life Transitions and Generational
Perspectives
Edited by Stephen Palmer & Sheila Panchal
Cognitive Behavioural Coaching in Practice: An Evidence
Based Approach
Edited by Michael Neenan & Stephen Palmer
Brief Coaching
A Solution Focused Approach
Chris Iveson, Evan George
and Harvey Ratner
First published 2012
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
Copyright © 2012 Chris Iveson, Evan George and Harvey Ratner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Iveson, Chris.
Brief coaching: a solution focused approach / Chris Iveson, Evan George
and Harvey Ratner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–415–66746–3 (hbk.) – ISBN 978–0–415–66747–0 (pbk.)
1. Brief psychotherapy. 2. Personal coaching. 3. Counseling psychology.
4. Counseling psychologist and client. I. George, Evan. II. Ratner,
Harvey. III. Title.
RC480.55.I94 2012
616.89’147—dc23
2011026539
ISBN: 978–0–415–66747–0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978–0–415–66746–3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–0–203–14441–1 (ebk)
Typeset in Century Schoolbook MT by
Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
1
Contents
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3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
Preface viii
4
Acknowledgements x
5
6
1 Introduction 1
7
2 Basic principles 11 8
9
3 Establishing the contract 25 20
1
4 Preferred futures 37 2
3
5 What is already working? 59 4
5
6 Scales 79
6
7
7 Closing a session 99
8
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8 Second and subsequent sessions 113
30
9 Back to work 133 1
2
10 The manager–coach 163 3
4
11 Last words 183 5
6
Appendix: Solution focused questions 189 7
8
References 195
9
Index 199
40
1
Preface
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3
4
5
6
7
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9
10
1
2
3
We hope this book will be a practical guide by which both
4
new and experienced coaches can add to their skills.
5
Deceptively simple in its basic principles solution focused
6
conversations are far from easy to conduct. For one thing
7
they are counter-intuitive: they lead us to be curious about
8
what is adjacent to the issue rather than the issue itself; they
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lead us to look at the apparently insignifi cant small print of
20
life while largely ignoring the headlines; and they lead us to
1
look back, not from the present, but from the future.
2
I t is almost impossible to appreciate the apparent
3
marginality of a solution focused coaching conversation
4
without actually showing one and to this end the book
5
contains many illustrative portions of transcript. It will
6
often seem as if very little is happening. There are no epipha-
7
nous moments, no life-changing insights and little drama
8
beyond the kitchen sink. A coaching client might not even
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remember much of the conversation. Yet only two or three
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sessions – and often only one – are likely to have an enor-
1
mously creative impact.
2
O ne of the most common solution focused mantras is
3
‘leave no footprints’. By staying on the edge, keeping out of
4
the client’s business and trusting to the solution focused
5
process the coach becomes a witness to successes that may
6
not otherwise have happened and in which he or she appears
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to have played no visible part. As one client said at the end of
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three sessions, ‘I know I would be dead if I hadn’t come to see
9
40
PREFACE ix
you but it is important that I say that you have played no part
in my life’. The coach was touched and replied, ‘Thank you.
And you have played no part in mine. But I will always
remember you’. ‘And I’ll always remember you’ she said with
a smile.
1
Acknowledgements
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W e originally taught ourselves solution focus from Steve de
4
Shazer’s early books, K eys (1985) and Clues (1988). These books
5
had been heavily criticised as ‘cookbooks’ with the implication
6
that therapy neither could nor should be so simply codifi ed,
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but 25 years on these self same books have been the basis for
8
the solution focused cookery classes, dinner parties and restau-
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rants that can be found all over the world. The solution focused
20
approach is being used and adapted wherever change is needed.
1
de Shazer always, with huge diffi dence, claimed that all he did
2
was watch his wife Insoo Kim Berg working with clients and
3
write down what she did and both of them in their different
4
ways continued to infl uence our work until their deaths. Of the
5
many other colleagues around the world one who has helped
6
and infl uenced our thinking (and began his solution focused
7
journey even earlier than we did) is Harry Korman in Sweden.
8
Through his management of the international Solution
9
focused therapy email forum (SFT-L) Harry has brought
30
together an immensely creative gathering that has also been a
1
support and a generator of helpful ideas.
2
We have also been inspired, especially in this venture, by
3
many colleagues from the business world who have so ably
4
shown that a solution focus applies as well to coaching and
5
leadership as it does to therapy. Of these Mark McKergow
6
and Paul Z. Jackson have been both supporters and leaders.
7
Lastly, huge thanks to our former colleagues, Yasmin Ajmal
8
and Guy Shennan, who, over many years, contributed to the
9
discussions, debates and arguments that helped shape the
40
ideas presented in this book.