Broadening and building solution-focused coaching: feeling good is not enough

ABSTRACT

Past research has found that solution-focused (SF) coaching questions led to more positive outcomes than problem-focused (PF) coaching questions. Another body of research (Broaden and Build Theory; Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 300–319) posits that positive emotions promote AQ2the discovery of novel ideas and actions including goal attainment and positive change. These theoretical frameworks have influenced coaching practitioner literature, but no research has explored their conjoint effects. We explore these by randomly allocating 512 participants in comparing (1) PF coaching questions with (2) SF coaching questions with (3) positive affect (PA) induction with (4) a SF plus PA condition (SF + PA). The broad findings of this study were that PF questions performed the worst on all measures, and that PA induction and SF coaching questions were equally effective at enhancing positive affect, increasing self-efficacy, enhancing goal approach and developing action steps. These results show, that while positive affect makes a valuable contribution to coaching outcomes, combining PA induction with SF questions produces superior outcomes than PA or SF questions alone in terms of self-efficacy, goal approach and action steps. While this research supports the central tenets of Broaden and Build Theory in terms of coaching outcomes, just making people feel good is not enough for truly effective coaching practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Broaden and build theory
• solution-focused
• coaching
• positive affect
• evidence-based coaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Anthony M. Grant PhD is globally recognised as a key pioneer of Coaching Psychology and evidence-based approaches to coaching. In January 2000, Anthony established the world’s first Coaching Psychology Unit at Sydney University where he is the Director of the Coaching Psychology Unit and a Professor of Coaching Psychology. He has over 100 coaching-related publications. He is a Visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes University and Henley Business School; and an Associate Fellow at the Säid School of Business, Oxford University. In 2007, Anthony was awarded the British Psychological Society Award for outstanding professional and scientific contribution to Coaching Psychology. In 2009, he was awarded the ‘Vision of Excellence Award’ from the Institute of Coaching at Harvard for his pioneering work in helping develop a scientific foundation to coaching. He was a 2014 Scientist in Residence for the ABC – the Australian national broadcaster and in 2016 was awarded the Australian Psychological Society ‘Workplace Excellence Award for Coaching and Leadership’. In 2017 he was awarded the Henley Business School Award for his contribution to coaching. He enjoys playing loud (but unfortunately not particularly Claptonesque) blues guitar.

Dr Sean A. O’Connor is a practitioner, researcher and academic within the fields of organisational development, positive psychology and leadership coaching. He brings an evidence-based analytical, collaborative and solution-focused approach to helping others to develop. He has worked with senior executives and leadership teams to better deal with complexity in the workplace and to shift the climate through organisational change projects. He teaches, as part of the Masters of Coaching Psychology at the University of Sydney and supervises research into coaching, leadership and organisational change. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and written a number of book chapters on coaching, change and positive Psychology. His PhD research used Social Network Analysis to examine the Systemic impact of Leadership Coaching on the broader organisation winning numerous awards.

ORCID

Sean A. O’Connor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0380-2733

Notes

1 The GROW (Whitmore, 1996) model is a simple way of structuring the coaching conversation by dividing the conversation into four sections – identifying the Goal, discussing the Reality of the situation, exploring Options and finally Wrapping-up the session by delineating specific action steps.