Treating every coaching moment as if it were the last

Solution Focused Brief Therapy treats every session as if it were the last session. There is no expectation that the therapy will continue, and therapists try to get out of clients’ lives as soon as life is good enough for them. Of course, in coaching this is a bit different – clients come because they want to develop themselves (as people, as leaders, etc.) and that is always easier done in conversation with a trusted coach than without.

What is important about “treating every session as if it were the last” is not that it is actually the last, but it is about the influence this has on the session. If we expect not to see the client again, we want them to leave with something useful, an insight or an experiment. We definitely don’t want to leave them more vulnerable than they came. Therefore, during the session we take care to invite strengthening conversations about past or desired progress.

Now, I think that we might not even think about treating every coaching session as the last session but also treat every moment of the coaching conversation as a possible last moment. After all, the client may be called to attend to an emergency every moment. Not that this will happen a lot, but assuming that it can, again has an impact on my stance as a coach.

There are things that I won’t do and things I would do instead:

- I will not invite the client to talk about negative past experiences without listening with attention to their resilience and strengths. If a client wants to tell me about how their self-confidence was eroded by a former colleague, I will invite a focus on how they were able to still get to where they are today or what they know about themselves that allowed them to be who they are today.

- Also, I won’t invite negative descriptions of other people the client is in relationship with or join in with their (understandable) anger. Instead, I will invite language about how the behavior of the person is difficult and what the client has already tried successfully to deal with the difficulty.

- I’ll try to avoid going down the road of hopelessness and stuckness. Of course, coaching conversations get stuck, clients get stuck, coaches get stuck. Rather than remaining there, I will acknowledge the stuckness and collaborate with the client on descriptions of what is wanted: “Ok, you really don’t know what to do here – can you describe what it would look like if the situation was different?” I will assume that it is not hopeless – if it were hopeless, the client would not have come to see me.

- I’ll not leave despair without a connection. If the client is in a really bad space and is feeling down and desperate, I will acknowledge their emotions and connect with them. I’ll let them know that there experience is valid, human and normal. Sometimes things are bad and I am there with them – which is much better than if they were alone. And, of course, I’ll then go back to listening with an ear for resilience and strengths.

- If the client has an insight or comes up with a great experiment during the session, I’ll invite them to “harvest” it right away and won’t wait until the end of the session. I’ll appreciate it right now and maybe will even ask the client if and how they would like to capture it.

What would happen if you treated every coaching moment as the last? I am curious – do come to our free coaching meetups and exchanges to let us know.

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