Language as Co-Creation: How Small Shifts in Wording Change the Space Between

Coaches and coach educators often think of language as a tool for clarifying what our clients mean. But from a social constructionist perspective, language doesn’t simply describe reality — it creates it. Every question, reflection, or acknowledgment we offer contributes to the shared conversational world that coach and client inhabit together.

In this view, coaching becomes less about finding the right words and more about noticing how what we say shapes what becomes possible between us.

Language as Action, Not Description

When we speak, we don’t report on an inner state of mind; we act in the world. “I want to change” is not just a statement it is already an action that opens a future. It is a bit like when you say “I do” standing together with another person, or put a signature on a peace contract: words change lives. When a coach says “Tell me more,” they are not gathering data; they are inviting a new reality to take form. The reality that emerges depends on what the client is invited to speak more about. “Tell me more about how this is difficult for you” establishes or strengthens the difficulty in the world. “Tell me more about how you are coping” establishes and strengthens the emergence of coping. Each sentence shapes the conversational space differently. None is “right” or “wrong,” but each enacts a distinct relational world.

The Shaping Power of the Space Between

When we attend to language in this way, we begin to notice that meaning doesn’t live inside either person. It lives between us — in the space our words and listening co-create. Coaching reflect not just the client’s thinking, but also the shared patterns of language that sustain or transform their world.

As coaches, our task is not to engineer those patterns but to stay curious about them. What possibilities are we enacting together? What identities are taking shape in our shared talk?

Reflective Questions for the Coach

Try exploring these questions after your next session:

• What is my curiosity inviting my clients to describe?

• Which realities become visible and which disappear through my phrasing?

• How do my clients’ words shift mine in return?

• When I echo, paraphrase, or summarize, do I reproduce their frame or open new ones?

Writing a few lines of reflection after a session can reveal recurring habits in our speech  perhaps a tendency to soften agency (“would it be okay if…?”) or to assume consensus (“we both know that…”). Analysing a transcript in a supervision session can be invaluable (and: shameless plug – you know where to find great supervisors on our site https://www.solutionsacademy.com/contact

A Supervision or Self-Reflection Exercise

Take a short transcript or recording — perhaps five minutes of dialogue — and highlight every occurrence of “I,” “you,” and “we.”

Now look at what these pronouns are doing:

• When “I” appears, who is acting?

• When “you” appears, is it empowering, inviting, or prescribing?

• When “we” appears, what kind of partnership is being created?

This simple exercise may make visible the patterns of agency embedded in our ordinary talk. It helps us see where responsibility, possibility, or authorship are being located in the conversation — and how that distribution might shift through even the smallest linguistic move.

You might also look at:

• Which words of the client am I keeping in my responses?

• Which am I omitting?

• Which am I changing?

• What does that tell me about which reality I am preferencing as a coach?

Closing Thought

In coaching, every sentence builds or reshapes the world we and our clients momentarily share and also influences the world the client is experiencing after our conversation. By listening not only to our clients but also with them — attuned to how our words and theirs dance together — we cultivate a practice that is less about technique and more about dialogue, discovery, and mutual becoming.

If you want to co-create a space together with us, why not join one of our free meetups and exchanges?

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