Here is a short story that very well illustrates why I love Solution-Focus Coaching and its magic in bringing out clients’ expertise.

My Coaching Client is the Administration Manager for a small but fast-growing company, and we are having a Coaching session over Skype.

Topic of the session: he wants his co-workers to be “more motivated“.

I know that the concept of “motivation” is a tricky one.

Personally I am very skeptical about the whole construct.

And recently published works by Daniel Pink and by Dan Ariely show how the notion of “motivating someone” is little more than a myth.

However, operating under Solution-Focused assumptions, I am not supposed to share these recent insights from psychology with my Client. Even though the role of the “know-it-all” nerd fits me perfectly well, I have to bite my tongue.

As it often happens during tough moments in Coaching, I look at the card pictured above, that sits prominently on my desk. It reads:  “Slow Down, Calm Down, Don’t’ Worry, Don’t Hurry, Trust the Process.”

So I did just that: I relaxed, got my hands off the steering wheel and let the Solution-Focused process unfold, one question at a time.

“Suppose your co-workers are more motivated. What would you notice? What would they be doing differently? What would you be doing differently? What else? Have there been times recently when your employees behaved in the desired manner?…”

The client answers eagerly the first questions – however, as we go into more details of how things would be different, I can sense his frustration. A sort of tension simmering.

At some point he stops and says: “I am wondering… maybe I got it all wrong.”

Me: “what do you mean?”

Client: “well… I do not think I need to motivate them. They are already motivated! It’s just that they like to work in a different way -  each with his or her own area of responsibility rather than as a team! And to be working in this company as a team would mean a huge cultural change, given our history. This has got more to do with my expectation of how the company could grow in the future than with actual motivation or work performance!”

What an insight! Without me suggesting anything, the client got to the same conclusion as that of current cutting-edge research: you cannot “motivate” employees. You can only create the right conditions for them to be engaged in their work.

I looked once again at that card – and I smiled to myself.

Tags: biting your tongue, case study, Clients are the Experts, Dan Ariely, Dan Pink, Insight, motivation, Questions, research, Solution-Focused assumptions, Solution-Focused coaching, Solution-Focused Protocols, Trusting the Process

Since I am taking a short vacation, I will not be posting again in 2 weeks (my usual interval between posts) but in 4 weeks. To compensate for it, here is an extra-long post. Enjoy!

I am going to contrast and compare two different books: Dan Ariely’s latest, The Upside of Irrationality; and Daniel Pink’s  Drive.

Both books are terrific. They read very well. They are very engaging. The authors make an extra effort to illustrate their concepts in the simplest and most understandable way. They both use metaphors that are clear and effective in their power to explain. Not only these two books are a pleasure to read – they are also very informative.

Ariely’s book is sort of a sequel to his hugely successful Predictably Irrational: the Hidden Forces that Shape our Behavior. However in The Upside of Irrationality Dan Ariely’s takes a more compassionate stance towards the bias that make us irrational decision makers, a.k.a. humans. In keeping with this softer perspective, the book shines with many personal stories that are going to touch the reader. And it is no accident that the focus of this book is not “the consumers’” behavior but how people behave at work and in their own personal life. So we have 5 chapters about “how we defy logic at work”, and another 5 about “how we defy logic at home”.

Dan Pink’ s Drive feeds on the work of Ariely and many others on the science of motivation. Pink is a master in making the insights gained by recent research  understandable and readily usable by managers and businessmen. Drive is a call for a general and comprehensive rethinking of the ways in which we organize what we do.  Pink’s metaphor of assumptions that societies have about human behavior as being their operating system is brilliant and enlightening in and of itself! Moreover, the second part of the book is a treasure trove of practical advice - simple strategies to implement the ideas illustrated in Drive.
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Tags: book review, brief coaching, coaching, Dan Ariely, Daniel Pink, Drive, epistemology, marketing, motivation, psychological bias, science, The Upside of Irrationality, training