Consciously "creating" positive emotions and collecting data - the future you want

The well-known methodological tool of brief coaching is the miracle question, miracle sequence: after signing a contract, we ask the client about the details of the desired future, and we incorporate the future desired content brought in by the client into our own questions and reflections, acknowledging what we have heard. The client in a brief session up to the conversation 90% in the new, desired reality practical, observable "micro descriptions of" will formulate: 1. changes in their own behaviour that can be observed from the outside, 2. who will notice them, and 3. what will be the impact and repercussions of these changes - after the change, even tomorrow.

An example: after a contract signing (as a mother of a senior client close to burnout, she wants to find concrete steps to find a voice with her teenage son: to "see" each other and live in peace), in the 5th minute of the meeting, the miracle question is asked: 

Coach: "What is the first point when, for example tomorrow, you realize that you have found a voice, you "see" each other, and you are at peace with Peter?"

With great silence, with breathless breath, the mother cries out:

Customer: "The first difference is when you come out of your room in the morning."

Coach: "What do you notice about him, on the day when, as you said, you found the voice, you see each other and you live in peace?"

Client: 'You notice how calm and kind your face is. That he is a sensitive boy."

Coach: "And what else?"

Client: 'I can see how important it is for him to see that he can count on me and that I love him. How fragile he really is."

Coach: "What is the first sign you notice about yourself?"

Client: "I'll step up to give you a hug, but first I'll ask if you'd like one."

At this point the tears are flowing, she is shaking with sobs.

Coach: 'Your tears are flowing and you're crying. What does this change you are talking about mean to you?"

Client: "It's a huge relief for me. I thought I'd never be able to imagine that I could love my son well."

So what happens in the micro descriptions of the future we want? 1. for the changes you want we ask. In Brief literature terms: we work on the "surface": who notices what changes - and for whom the concrete noticeable impact of the noticed signs. 2. As a coach, we notice and reflect the client's emotional-physical changes as he or she talks about his or her desired reality.

We collect data - in the future, and we build very precisely on what the client says and on our concrete coach observations. According to both my experience and international research based on micro-analysis of brief sessions, if we can get the client to talk a lot and in detail about specific signs of their desired future, they will start to emotionally live and experience their own desired future in the session (again, I stress, in detail: who, when, how, where do noticeably differently), it is a create a realistic experience of him: as image, sound, action, his future is revealed to him - emotionally, the future version of himself is revealed: his posture, his physical presence, changes. He enters his future described in detail ("on the surface") and lives it in the session.

How do we continue to work with the client in the future they have lived?

3. We can also ask questions of identity about what all this means for him: the changes he has talked about and now the emotional changes he is experiencing. 4. As a Brief Coach, we don't ask "How do you feel?" about the future you want, because the client would start to think about their feelings and get out of the intensity of the feeling. Instead, as a brief coach, we use the energy of the positive feelings and emotions that are awakened to formulate possible courses of action for the desired future:

Coach: "With that relief, with that knowledge that you can love your son well, what will be the next sign tomorrow that you've really seen each other, found your voice and lived in peace?"

Goal- and resource-focused issues in the troubled past and the dreaded future

Sometimes, the client wants to spend time in the past that they perceive as problematic and wants to spend time in the future they dread. Brief coaching offers an opportunity to work with the client in a "compassionate" way, acknowledging their feelings with compassion AND moving them forward.

We can acknowledge with compassion the experiences, the feelings, the sometimes upsetting, stressful, uncomfortable, "negative", "toxic", etc., in other words, trying experiences that he mentions, e.g., "He reports trying days in which, he says, it takes all his strength to stay afloat, and he doubts if it will be enough next week."

Rather than asking "What do you feel?" and analysing problematic experiences in terms of the causal links of the past listen to the client's content in the lower quadrant with a focus on goals and resources, and we can hear in the complaints and fears what he really wants, even if at the moment he can only talk about it in the form of a complaint:

"Client: my results are there, but I can't feel like a valuable leader: anxiety comes over me, I feel like I'm not good enough, what if I'm wrong, it's desperate and exhausting.

Coach: as if it's desperate and exhausting enough to change things. I hear you are aware of your achievements - and you want to feel like a valuable leader too. Is that it?"

We can also listen to the client in the lower quadrants with a resource funnel: again, after acknowledging his or her experiences, we can ask about his or her learning in the midst of difficulties,

Coach: what has become clearer from these experiences or what has this situation and the struggles so far taught you? How have you managed to cope? Who or what has helped you along the way?

"Client: the inferiority part of me jumps out, the anxiety comes over me, I'm better than everyone else at everything, then I'm sure no one will get hurt.

Coach: what does this minority-feeling part really want?"

The solution to the dilemma of "solution" versus "mercy" can therefore be found in a way of thinking that "problems", "traumas", strong "negative" experiences are perhaps not obstacles, "stuck", enemies to be overcome, but messengers: messengers of solutions from the past, now out of date, where the original goals cry out for a renewed "how".  

The article appeared in Magyar Coachszemle, 21 December 2023.