Question 1

What is Solution-Focused Coaching?

Accepted Answer

Solution-Focused Coaching is a future-oriented, goal-directed methodology that helps clients build solutions rather than analyse problems. It emerged from Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, developed in the late 1970s and 1980s by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg in Milwaukee, and was formally adapted to coaching in Berg and Peter Szabó's 2005 book Brief Coaching for Lasting Solutions. The methodology rests on a contrarian premise: the solution is not necessarily related to the problem. Rather than diagnose the problem, the coach asks the client to describe a preferred future and the small instances when that future is already happening, then amplifies them.

Question 2

How is Solution-Focused different from problem-solving coaching?

Accepted Answer

Most coaching approaches ask the client to define a problem, analyse its causes, and design an intervention. Solution-Focused Coaching skips problem analysis. The coach asks the client to describe the desired future state and to identify exceptions — moments when, even briefly, the desired state is already happening — then scales those exceptions up. The methodology was built inductively at the Brief Family Therapy Center, by removing traditional elements of therapy and observing whether outcomes changed. The core finding was that analysing problems could be removed without harming outcomes, which is the structural break with prior practice.

Question 3

What is the Miracle Question?

Accepted Answer

The Miracle Question is the methodology's most-cited single move. Insoo Kim Berg developed it after a client spontaneously said "unless a miracle happens." The coach asks the client to imagine that overnight, while they were sleeping, a miracle happened and the problem they came in with was solved — but they don't know it. The question then explores what would be different the next morning: what would they notice, how would others notice, what would they do differently. The Miracle Question routes the client around problem analysis and into a detailed description of the preferred future, which becomes the working terrain.

Question 4

What are scaling questions?

Accepted Answer

Scaling questions ask the client to rate something on a numeric scale, typically 0 to 10. The classic form: where are you now, where do you want to be, and what would 0.5 or 1 point higher look like? Scaling translates abstract progress into observable behaviour. It also makes the next step proportionate — the client is asked what would already need to be in place to be half a point higher, not five points higher. Scaling questions are used both to track progress across sessions and to break apart any abstract goal into concrete, tractable next steps.

Question 5

How long does Solution-Focused coaching typically last?

Accepted Answer

Most Solution-Focused coaching engagements run between three and eight sessions, with many concluded in fewer. The Brief in Solution-Focused Brief is structural rather than incidental: the methodology was developed at a Brief Family Therapy Center whose research found that brief therapy required not just fewer sessions but a different kind of conversation altogether. The methodology's emphasis on amplifying what already works and avoiding repeated problem analysis tends to produce visible movement quickly. For coaches and clients working within tight time horizons or budgets, this brevity is one of the methodology's defining advantages.

Question 6

Is Solution-Focused coaching evidence-based?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in the therapy literature substantially. Eight meta-analyses across SFBT outcome studies have shown effect sizes ranging from small to large across child, adolescent, and adult populations, covering depression, stress, anxiety, behavioural problems, parenting, and psychosocial issues. Close to 150 randomised clinical control studies in different settings and countries almost all show positive benefit. The coaching-specific evidence base is smaller but growing, anchored by Anthony Grant and colleagues at the University of Sydney; Grant and O'Connor's 2010 randomised study showed Solution-Focused questions produced higher positive affect and goal-approach motivation than problem-focused alternatives.

Question 7

When is Solution-Focused coaching most useful?

Accepted Answer

Solution-Focused coaching fits well where the client is stuck in problem analysis, depleted by repeated stress, ambivalent, or working within a tight time horizon. Burnout coaching benefits from a method that doesn't require additional problem analysis. Goal-momentum work — the gap between what the client knows to do and what they actually do — responds to scaling and exception-seeking moves. Behavioural change without psychological depth-work fits the methodology's structurally short arc. Cross-cultural coaching benefits from the methodology's avoidance of pathology language. Less suited for clients whose stuck point is identity, deep parts-based ambivalence, trauma, or developmental capacity.

Question 8

Can it be used with trauma or deeply emotional issues?

Accepted Answer

Solution-Focused techniques can be used carefully alongside other modalities, but the methodology was not designed for trauma work and is structurally short. For clients whose stuck pattern is genuinely about trauma, identity, or deep developmental themes, approaches like Internal Family Systems, somatic experiencing, or adult-development frames often do the heavier work better. Coaches working with trauma-impacted clients also need to operate within their scope of practice and refer to clinical providers when warranted. The methodology's risk in these contexts is premature closure — routing the conversation to future-construction before the client has been sufficiently heard.

Question 9

How is Solution-Focused different from Motivational Interviewing?

Accepted Answer

The two methodologies arrived in the field around the same time and share evidence-based, brief, change-oriented orientations — they pair frequently in coaching work with ambivalence. The differences are in how each approaches change. Motivational Interviewing works with the client's own ambivalence, eliciting and strengthening change-talk through reflective listening and rolling with resistance. Solution-Focused Coaching works around ambivalence rather than through it, asking the client to describe a preferred future and amplify exceptions. Many coaches integrate both: Motivational Interviewing for working with deep ambivalence, Solution-Focused for amplifying movement once direction is established.

Question 10

Where does Solution-Focused coaching come from?

Accepted Answer

Solution-Focused coaching descended from Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), developed by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg with their team at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, founded 1978. The methodology emerged through inductive observation: the team removed traditional elements of therapy one at a time and observed whether outcomes changed. The discovery that analysing problems could be removed without harming outcomes was the structural break that produced SFBT. The formal coaching adaptation arrived in 2005 with Berg and Peter Szabó's Brief Coaching for Lasting Solutions. Anthony Grant at Sydney and Mark McKergow in the UK then built the methodology's coaching-specific evidence and organisational practice.

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