Guest post by Coert Visser

Solution-focused principles and techniques, orginally developed in psychotherapy, have found their way into coaching, over the last decade. While an evidence base of solution-focused brief therapy is beginning to come off the ground, little research is done on the effectiveness of solution-focused coaching (one researcher who is already doing interesting research in this area is Anthony Grant). It is important that an evidence base on solution-focused coaching is built, too. Individual clients, client organizations and society at large rightfully demand that solution-focused professionals not only discover things that work but also justify what they do by scientifically testing their claims.

Standard effectiveness research approaches involve randomized controlled experiments in which the treatment of interest is compared with a reference approach and a control group. A recent review summarizes this type of coaching research, which is still in its infancy. While this approach is indispensable it is not the only useful approach and it is not without weaknesses. For one thing, this type of research requires the existence of generally accepted definitions of the treatments (coaching procedures) that are researched. This type of research comparing coaching approaches does say something about the relative effectiveness of these approaches but does not say much about the relative contribution of the constituent elements of these approaches because these are not examined separately in these types of experiments but in combination with each other.

Research aimed at a micro level of coaching can be an important addition to these standard research approaches. One example is micro-analysis research done by Janet Beavin Bavelas and her colleagues. Micro-analysis research will, in the near future, I predict, be supported by software to analyze language used in coaching conversations. As this type of research will develop a much more nuanced and specific kind of knowledge will emerge about what works and what not.

Survey based research also offers some interesting opportunities to analyze the specific interventions and behaviors of solution-focused coaches. Recently I published such a study: Testing the Association between Solution-Focused Coaching and Client Perceived Coaching Outcomes. I designed a web-based survey and administered it to 200 clients of coaches. The survey consisted of a list of 28 coach behaviors, 14 of which were solution-focused behaviors and 14 of which were behaviors solution-focused coaches would deliberately avoid. I asked clients to describe what their coaches had done and what they had not done (without referring to the solution-focused approach or any other approach, by the way). In addition to that, I asked clients to describe on several dimensions how effective the coaching had been. Solution-focused coach behaviors turned out to be were strongly positively correlated to positive coaching outcomes. Non-solution-focused coach behaviors, on the other hand, turned out to be moderately negatively correlated to positive coaching outcomes.

Then, I used a statistical technique called multiple regression analysis which gave insight into which specific coach behaviors were predictive of coaching success. This showed that the following 10 solution-focused coach behaviors in particular were associated with positive coaching outcomes:

• The coach responded with understanding to what I said (coach understandingness)
• The coach let me decide whether the coaching should be continued or terminated (client continuation choice)
• The coach focused on topics that I found useful to talk about (client topic choice)
• The coach encouraged me to describe how I wanted my situation to become (desired situation description)
• The coach encouraged me to describe what I wanted to be able to do differently (positive future behavior description)
• The coach gave me positive feedback (complimented me on what I had done well) (positive behavior feedback)
• The coach encouraged me to choose which step(s) forward I would to take (client chosen action)
• The coach used the same words as I had used (language matching)
• The coach checked several times whether our conversation was useful to me (client usefulness check
• The coach asked questions about what I had already done that had worked well (exploration of what worked)

The number of non-solution-focused coach behaviors that was predictive of positive outcomes was smaller. Three coach behaviors were, as expected, negatively associated with coaching outcomes:

• The coach told me whether the coaching should be continued or terminated (coach continuation choice),
• The coach gave me negative feedback (criticized me on what I had done wrong) (negative behavior feedback), and
• The coach chose what topics we talked about (coach topic choice).

Surprisingly (and interestingly), two non-solution-focused coach behaviors were, contrary to this study’s expectations, positively associated with coaching outcomes:

• The coach analyzed with me what the causes of my problem might be (problem cause analysis)
• The coach asked questions about when my problems were at their worst (problem peak focus)

I hope this is a good (while modest) beginning of survey based research into the effectiveness of solution-focused interventions in coaching. The details of the study can be found in the full article. Soon, I hope to publish a study into the effects of the coaching approach on coaches themselves

Tags: coaching behaviors, coaching questions, Coert Visser, Evidence-Based, Guest Post, paper, research, Solution-Focused coaching, Survey, What works

Tags: Darwinian algorithms, epistemology, InterAction, New Year, paper, practice, science-based, Solution Focused, theory

I am back from Texel, where the 2009 SOL conference was held. That was fun!

I was honored to meet many of the people I frequently interact with online and with whom I have very stimulating conversations about coaching and solution-focus. I was also happy to make new connections and new friends!

Anyway, many workshops were going on simultaneously – I know I wanted to be in 7 different places at once, and I know other people felt the same way: having to choose one workshop out of seven, that means saying no to some very good presentations and activity, and that is hard!

Hoping to do something useful, both for the people who attended my workshop and for those who could not, I am posting here the slides of my presentation with a recording.

A few notes here:

- I discovered that the presence of an audience does make a difference. It is easy to come alive in front of other people, who can encourage you with their presence, their approval or simply by interacting with you, verbally or nonverbally. It is much harder to sound engaging when you are talking to a computer screen, with slides playing in front of you. What I am trying to say is: forgive my droning on, that is the price to pay to have not just the slides but the whole presentation.

- I had to break up the presentation in 5 parts, to make it more manageable for youtube. Be patient.

- During the actual workshop in Texel there were interactions with the participants, there were questions, there was some brainstorming, there was sharing of experiences and a live demo; that is what we cannot reproduce using this medium.

- The topic would require further elaboration, and a brief talk can only outline the basic idea. However, fear not! I wrote a paper to fully articulate this idea; I am now in the editing stage, and the paper will be hopefully published in November. I will keep you posted.

- Last but not least: credits! My live demo, kind of summarized in video number 3, originally comes from this great video about evolution. The flashing pictures in the last segment come from the Department of Psychology of the University of British Columbia, Canada. You can find them here. The quote of Darwin’s critic comes from this TED talk by Daniel Dennet.

And… what else… ah! enjoy!! :)
And fire off an email if you have any comments, suggestions or questions!

Update:

I wrote a paper based on this presentation, addressing the issue in more detail.
I submitted the paper to the InterAction Journal, hopefully it will be published in the November issue.

Tags: paper, presentation, SOL2009, Texel

My new paper is in the final stages of editing.

Sneak Peek from the abstract:

This paper suggests the relevance of Solution-Focused training for military personnel and decision makers. More specifically, training in Solution-Focused protocols could help military leaders to acquire the set of skills and attitudes necessary to implement Counter-Insurgency strategies.

I will keep you posted about developments.

For comments on the topic, or for further insights, please do no hesitate to contact me!
I will be happy to include any interesting comment in the paper, as long as it is relevant to the subject.

Tags: COIN, military leaders, paper, Solution Focused, US Armed Forces

September and October have been pretty busy…

- Workshops: I have been leading several editions of my conflict management / negotiation skills workshop. At clients’ locations VM Motori (Cento, Fe), Crif (Bologna) and at Festo Industrial Business School (Assago, MI). I am very happy with the results: participants were very satisfied and my evaluation ratings were hard to beat :) I am also happy because I have finally found an effective way to introduce the conflict management theme and to give it a coherent logical structure. The negotiation part of the workshop (day 2) was set and well – scripted, and it worked very well: building on the distinction between integrative vs. distributive negotiation and progressing through the different negotiation strategies and tactics, using 2 very effective simulations to give participants a chance to experience negotiation situations.
It was day 1 that needed some fine tuning, an over-arching structure that could different techniques in a coherent way. Now day flowed beautifully, meshing together techniques taken from NLP, NVC and social psychology, in an evolutionary framework that is relevant to what participants define as “conflict”. It is true that in each workshop I learn as much as the participants do! Every workshop is different: each group of participants has different expectations and different needs and it develops different dynamics. That allows me go gain more insights into the issues and to see things from yet another different angle. And when we say good-bye and go home, I get back to my mindmaps, which are my “drawing boards. I add a few notes here, a comment there, a new branch or a new grouping. In this way the workshop takes on a life of its own, growing, developing, adapting – ready for the next clients.

- Assessments: the People Development Project for Burgo is still in full swing; I was an assessor for 4 sessions and now there are 3 more to go. Being part of this project gave me the opportunity to freshen up on the theory of personality, especially the Five Factor Model. I have been using the Big 5 Questionnaire for a long time now. But there is always something new to learn. I recently read the book Personality by Nettle, and it gives a new and very interesting perspective on the topic – he book strives for a neuroscientific foundation of the 5 traits and an evolutionary explanation of their usefulness. I applied these insights in the interviews with candidates, with good results. I also did some additional research on the effectiveness of different interviewing techniques, and that radically changed my interviewing style. No more “Barbara Walters interviews”! Everything is behaviorally based. In the unfolding of these Development Centers I’ve noticed how willing people are to experiment with new behaviors, and how open to change they are. This is the good news; the bad news is how hard it is for other people who know them to notice the changes: we assessors do observe people adopting new behaviors and new attitudes after our first feedback conversation, but these first baby steps towards new behaviors are often lost on the other participants – not always, but often.
Change is easy. Making other people see change is a little more difficult.

The assessment centers in SAME, with their focus on young talents and a more traditional structure, are running as planned. One more to go…

- Coaching: I am working with my coachees in Molmed and in Saes-Getters. The solution-focused protocols work extremely well. I am looking forward to going to Basel next week and to having yet another opportunity to improve my techniques by performing live coaching with real clients under the supervision of Peter Szabo and his team of seasoned professionals. I am also very excited because I am putting together, in the form of a booklet, a coaching program aimed at increasing Life Satisfaction. Basically I am condensing into coaching protocols all the activities and forms to be used by clients and all research in Positive Psychology that I have done within the past 2 years. tThe booklet includes only evidence-based material: for example, I am adopting verbatim instructions used in actual research that had increased life satisfaction as an outcome for the participants. I am aiming for a January rollout of the program.

- Articles, books, presentations: as you can see below, I posted a widget for SOL 2009, the next conference for Solution-Focused professionals. This is the venue in which I will present my paper on the foundations of Solution-Focused activities and their shared assumptions with evolutionary thinking. The paper is ready, and I want to thank again Peter Szabo, Mark McKergow and Michael Hijert for their very encouraging feedback. Now I need to prepare the presentation! In the workings I also have a paper for the USMC and a draft for my new book… stay tuned!!

Tags: articles, assessment, book, coaching, paper, updates, workshops