Coaching Demo with Kirsten Dierolf: Embracing Flexibility and Competence through Solution-Focused Coaching
with Kirsten Dierolf, Coach Supervisor
Transcript
Edited for readability: filler words removed, names checked. It may still contain errors. The audio is the source of truth.
Teaser
Kirsten Dierolf
As a coach, if you entertain this kind of philosophy, you can coach in a much lighter way. You can be super respectful to your client. You can connect to your clients. You are beyond right and wrong ways of interacting.
And it's just a much, much funner way to coach. So I want to seduce you a little bit to entertain: who are you as a coach when you drop your tools?
Intro
Tobi
Most coaches, and also myself, really enjoy learning new theories and methods. My guest today tells us that being that kind of framework-heavy psy expert, as she calls it, can be very much in the way of a good coaching session. Her name is Kirsten Dierolf, and she trains coaches in solution-focused and narrative coaching, building on a philosophy of social constructionism.
For me this really opened a new world, which I somehow had an idea existed, but I hadn't been aware of its power, especially in everyday and brief coaching. It's no wonder that the conversation was super impressive. Kirsten learned from the fathers of solution-focused coaching themselves. She has trained thousands of coaches at her Solutions Academy, and she has been the president of ICF Germany. In this first of two episodes with her we will not yet unpack her life and business story, but we'll discuss this social constructionist philosophy, and also see very practically and hands-on how it unfolds in a small coaching demo. To get started we used our picture card icebreaker tool, and I started by asking Kirsten to pick a card that describes her as a coach. She picked a photo that you can see on the episode cover.
A group of lifeguard swimmers standing in a circle at a beach. Let's hear from Kirsten how this describes her.
Early Coaching Days
Kirsten Dierolf
In the early days of coaching, coaching was very much linked to training, and this is a training group. It looks like people who are learning to dive, or learning to do a Baywatch type of thing. I guess that reference ages me.
My first coach training was in 2001.
So the first four or five years I was doing inner game
training and coaching, directly from the originator of inner game. I did one workshop with
Tobi
Timothy Gallwey.
Kirsten Dierolf
And I had also been trained by Pucco, who is still lovely. They're both still active in the coaching community.
And Frank is also an MCC of ICF now, and a great supervisor. What we did at that point was, we invited people to learning activities, for example how to juggle, or how to do archery with bow and arrow. And through this activity of juggling, you can't really learn to juggle without letting a ball drop.
Through reflection of, okay, what am I doing when I'm learning something, what are my emotions, do I want to be perfect, am I afraid to let a ball drop, am I enjoying the learning, am I stressing out. Using this as a metaphor for learning and leadership.
So while I probably wouldn't do this today, I'm still happy that I did it. I think this group engaging in an activity together is representative of how I started coaching, before coaching even was a thing in Germany.
Tobi
And it is this circle of people standing in the sand that for you resembles this environment, a group learning things together, having this group experience. Nice, thank you. Maybe going back in time: you are German, you come from the Frankfurt area, but your background is rather international and has also been shaped by living in the US during your childhood and teenage years. How has that background formed you?
Kirsten Dierolf
My parents sent me to guest families in the US starting when I was 11 years old. Maybe that's the explanation for why I don't have a huge accent. I can speak in a German accent if I must, but I usually don't have one. Apologies to all people who do have a German accent. Then I went to university in the United States, in California, for my master's degree years later.
But I think this early experience opened my eyes to the differences between cultures. Because I kind of felt weird on both sides of the Atlantic. I realized that there is weirdness attributed to cultures. When I was in Germany and then went to the US, I remember for example, when I was 14 I came to the US for the summer and my guest family said, we're not taking you to the pool unless you shave.
Going to the swimming pool when you were 14 was a big thing in the 1970s. That was like, oh, cool. And then my friends saw that I had shaved armpits and they were like, ew, are you a porn star or what? So experiences like these opened me to the idea that how things are done in different places can be very different.
And also to this experience that if you are not the way they are expecting you to be, you might encounter judgments that you probably are not 100 percent responsible for. I think what I became is a third culture kid. There is a concept, there are a couple of books around that, which I find very helpful. Because if you've been a monocultural person and have never left your country, then it is very, very difficult for you to see the water that you're swimming in.
But if you've been in different water and with different fish, you're like, oh, by the way, it's interesting water that you have here. And people will go, what, which water? No, there's no water. I think that's one of the reasons why I'm very interested in different normalities in different environments. And maybe it also shapes my philosophy of seeing things in a social constructionist way, where there isn't one right way of doing things.
Tobi
So in a way, being exposed to a different culture, swimming in new waters, makes you aware that you are swimming in water. Otherwise you wouldn't have that self awareness that society is doing things like this or that around you. And just by putting yourself into another society, you become aware of what your own society is doing.
And you also connected this now with your social constructionist worldview, if I caught that correctly. Can you briefly explain what you mean by that?
Kirsten Dierolf
Radical constructivism is this idea that we are all creating our own realities in our own heads, that each individual constructs their own reality, this idea that there is no objective reality, just perspectives on reality.
So that would be radical constructivism, for example von Glasersfeld, and to an extent Watzlawick. Social constructionism has a different premise. The premise is not, I am constructing my own world in my head, but, we are constructing reality together.
So I am not 100 percent free in constructing my reality. My perception, my desires, who I am, are very much shaped through my environment. I can choose different environments.
I can figure out with a coach what the stories in this environment are that make me stronger, what the stories are that I want to tell, what the stories are that I want to attach myself to, and who the people are that I want to attach myself to. So we have liberties and we have freedom in choosing where we are and what we do, but it's always influenced by who we were, how we became, who we interacted with and what we interacted with.
So this idea that we co-construct our realities together. I think for coaching it's a great philosophy, because it explains how coaching works.
Tobi
So bringing it back to this water metaphor: constructivism means I am aware that I'm in water, but nobody can objectively know what this water is like. We all just experience it through our own swimming in there.
Kirsten Dierolf
Through our own swimming in there, and through our conversations with other fish. You can conceptualize a human being as a monad, an atom, as one individual, and then usually with this individual comes the idea that the individual has a mind and a body. If you want to find the argumentation for that, the Meditations of Descartes, really good book, very interesting to read, very wrong, but a very interesting read.
Anyway, that's the idea. I think, therefore I am. I am thinking in my own head. And the picture of social constructionism, how I like to create it, and maybe some others might disagree, is that we are all the ocean, and I'm a wave in the ocean. There are things that contribute to me being the wave, and there are other waves, and we all flow into one another.
There isn't really this differentiation between me and you. We're all part of the same soup.
Tobi
So I have two more questions to make this a bit more practical. What would be an alternative to this view?
Kirsten Dierolf
The alternative is the classical psychological view that we are seeing in coaching today. There's a really interesting book by Simon Western, and he's identified four dominant discourses in coaching. One of them is the psy expert, the expert on psychology. So it's someone who sees another human being, let's say a leader, and they would be running a battery of tests that would categorize and measure this person.
Then they would use a targeted intervention to change that person, and measure again to see if that works. This is a mixture between a managerial discourse and a psy expert discourse. And when you look at a lot of the tools,
it's a tool. If you're a company, you want to know, did I spend my money in the right place?
But by doing that you're creating a system that's actually not going to help. From a social constructionist perspective this doesn't make any sense. To look at a person outside of their context sounds a little bit like hubris. I can find a tool, then I can noodle you through that tool.
Pop, pop, pop, outcome. Human beings, Heinz von Foerster said, are not trivial machines. You can't say input, output. No noodling machine, no pasta machine, not possible. In the human world everything is too complex, environment plays such a role.
Why does this individual psychology approach still work? Could be the question, because it does, right? People are having interesting conversations based on these quote unquote tools. So I think from a social constructionist perspective you can see why this is working, while we would really not agree with the premise.
But in the coaching world, we're not having these conversations.
Tobi
Maybe just quickly going back to the social constructionist question. How does that very practically materialize in coaching? If you compare it to the psy expert approach, what would they do very tangibly differently in a conversation?
Kirsten Dierolf
Maybe I can speak from the experience that we're having with our courses for non-accredited coaches who want to become accredited. A lot of people, especially in the German and Austrian space, have learned a battery of tools. They know lots of things that they could do in a coaching session.
They could work with the inner team. Do a values audit. Use this NLP tool, or that tool coming from Gestalt therapy, they could use an empty chair. You have all the tools in your bag, and the idea is, client comes,
or you have a diagnosis, or an idea. Aha, now I'm taking the right tool out of my bag, and I'm presenting the client with this right tool. We are using the tool, and ta-da, out on the other side we have someone coming out who is in a better space. It's this idea of diagnosis, problem, treatment plan, solution. A bit of a medical type of model. I'm not saying that everyone is doing it that way, but if they're not, they are probably closer to a social constructionist view. Solution-focused, or narrative, or collaborative, or discursive practices, which all fall under the umbrella of social constructionism, would focus on the
conversation between coach and client, rather than on anything that the coach does.
We would collaborate in designing a customized process for the client. As a solution-focused or narrative coach I have zero assumptions, or try to have zero assumptions, about the client, other than that they are resourceful, they are whole, and they have very good reasons for being in the place where they are at the moment.
So those are the only assumptions I try to have. Maybe I have a little bit of hope that something can change. And then I have some conversational preferences.
I have a preference for talking about things that are possible. I have a preference for talking about things that strengthen the client. I have a preference for inviting the client to tell their stories in ways that make them
stronger. I have a preference for talking about what it is that they want to achieve, and how that will make a difference in their lives.
I have a preference for helping people understand what they think, feel and value, and how that can fit into how they want to be in this world.
Tobi
It also sounds like that actually makes me as a coach a lot lighter, in the sense that it takes away a lot of cognitive load, if I'm not thinking about, okay, he's saying that, and maybe he has this issue because there's this underlying belief there. So if I understand you right, I would let go of that and not make any hypothesis.
Kirsten Dierolf
Cognitive load is replaced, I would say, by a humility load, because it's not easy. It's not easy to not have assumptions. It's not easy to not identify with the tools. And it's not easy to not feel like an expert. The work that you're doing as a coach, of course, you learn the techniques and the things that you can do to invite people to tell stories in ways that make them stronger,
I don't want to say work on yourself, but letting go of tools is work. It doesn't happen naturally, because people want to be helpful. They're good people. They want to do everything to help other people. And then letting that go, and having your identity be different, that's hard.
Tobi
So let's try to make that a bit more practical. We started out at this place of a social constructionist worldview. How does that reflect your attitude, maybe the way you listen as a coach? And then you are transitioning that very practically into solution-focused coaching, right?
Kirsten Dierolf
Solution-focused, narrative, discursive, collaborative. There's a bunch of practices that fall under that hat.
Tobi
Okay, can you walk us through that?
Kirsten Dierolf
So we have solution-focused coaching, that was started by Steve de Shazer. Solution-focused coaching is a very minimalist type of coaching. The idea in solution-focused practices is, let's focus on what you really, really want, what you already have, and how you would recognize signs of improvement.
And the coach really stays outside more and just works on their artistry of questions. Narrative is much more firmly based in philosophy, and in social constructionist philosophy. Michael White is quoting Derrida and Foucault a lot, and this was initiated by Michael White and David Epston.
And there, I would say, feel free to disagree, but I would say that in narrative the coach is more present. The idea is that the client is the center of the conversation, but the coach is decentered but influential, and the decentered nature makes it possible for the coach to be a human being, and not a question asker, but
a co-creator of the session with a client who's in the center. They're fully there with their emotions. I don't even believe in separating emotions and the rest, but they're there as who they are. The idea behind narrative is this invitation to tell stories in ways that make you stronger.
And also, what solution focus won't do but narrative will, is looking at the dominant stories around the client that may influence the life of the client, and inviting the client to design ways of how they would like to respond to these dominant narratives. For example, if you are coaching a woman leader living in a male dominated world, you might ask the leader, what kind of relationship would you like to have with this male dominant culture?
That's not a question you would find in solution focus. Solution focus would be much more minimalist and pure.
Tobi
Collaborative practices focus on the collaboration between coach and client, and the partnership of
Kirsten Dierolf
the client being the expert on the client, and the coach, or the practitioner, helping the client figure out ways of changing in
ways they want to change. But there isn't a structure of, this is what you do, in collaborative practices.
Tobi
And I would say discursive is
Kirsten Dierolf
focusing on what happens in the discourse between coaching practitioner and client. But there are no real delineations, it's all fuzzy. You can't really say this is this and that is that. So I just gave you my idea, but philosophers and researchers might have a better idea on this.
Tobi
I will try to paraphrase, or summarize, what you just said. So there's this solution-focused coaching, which is a lot about getting the client away from the problem focus and the diagnosis to, where do I actually want to go and how does that look? Letting go of the assumption that to find a solution we first need to dig deep into the problem.
Then secondly, you said that is the aspect of narrative coaching, which means helping the client to reframe and become the owner of their own story.
Kirsten Dierolf
I think you could say that. To tell it in ways that make them stronger.
Tobi
And then there's this collaborative coaching aspect, which I think I saw a lot of from you, that is about partnering. So asking this question, who can I be for you? How can I be helpful? And really interpreting the coaching process not as, I am the expert and you are my client, but more as, let's do this dance together.
Kirsten Dierolf
Exactly.
Tobi
I really love this. Because with my coach training, coming from training firstly as a trainer, who's a lot into all these theories, and then building a model of the world with strengths, values, and building on top, NLP, which is very toolbox focused, which tool can I use for what problem. That's really the world I'm coming from, and I think those are also the tools I'm applying,
as a coach, but also on my own problems. We had briefly discussed, should we do a small demo? I've also seen you do lots of demos actually. I even have an issue that might be quite interesting to explore with that.
Kirsten Dierolf
We can do that. Should I just start, or how would you like to start?
Tobi
Okay. So, an area of development I recently became aware of, working a bit with Marcel, our very first podcast guest, a leadership consultant. I became aware of a lack of inner flexibility when it comes to facilitating conversations and meetings. Because I love to prepare things and I love to be prepared, because that gives me the sense of security, that sense of competency. I think I also come, if I look back at my employment history, from this world where it was always
important to present the issue holistically and on point. And so I really spent a lot of time preparing conversations in order to do that well and facilitate that well. But that also makes me very much stuck in my own cooking recipe that I prepared, and then it basically comes at the expense of attentiveness and flexibility to respond to what comes up in the meeting, because I know I want to get to this goal I have on my list here.
Navigating Leadership Challenges
Tobi
Our agenda is one, two, three, that's what we want to do. And then I have an employee conversation and a new issue comes up that I didn't foresee. It doesn't come easy for me to then adjust course and say, okay, let's dig into that, because that seems super relevant for you. And I approached that problem a lot with
this diagnostic sort of mindset, thinking, where might that come from? Maybe it's from my fixed mindset, because I identify as being this good student who's always competent.
And that's very important to me. And if I understood that right, now being a very young student of solution-focused coaching, that's not how we would approach that issue now, right?
Kirsten Dierolf
I can respond. But if that was helpful for you, maybe you want to say what already emerged that was helpful for you when you were doing the work on your own.
Interlude
Tobi
Hey, this is Tobi coming in from a meta level, and I would like to draw your attention to what Kirsten is doing here, or more precisely what she's not doing. Because she's not really asking me a question, not applying any GROW framework or something like that. But she's really working with what I bring as a client, where I think we can see very much this collaborative approach.
Back to the conversation.
Back to interview
Tobi
I think understanding where that might be coming from, and seeing that it is a bit connected with this, I am a person who is competent, so I need to comply with that image I have of myself.
Embracing Flexibility and Competence
Tobi
That's where this flexibility emerges. That helped me phrase a goal like, to become less dependent on other people's validation. Because that would actually give me the flexibility to respond to whatever comes up in a meeting or in an employee conversation.
Kirsten Dierolf
Oh, that's interesting. So you prepare to be a good student, to be competent. And now, through reflecting, you've come to the conclusion that maybe your competence isn't in sticking to the preparation at all costs, but maybe your competence is in something different? Or am I not capturing it the way you wanted to say it?
Tobi
That's actually a new insight, that there would be another way to achieve the goal of being competent, by having the flexibility to be able to respond to what's needed right now. That is also a path towards competency.
The Role of Validation in Personal Growth
Kirsten Dierolf
And then you said that there was this element of validation. How are this flexibility and competence and validation connected for you?
Tobi
I think I would be more flexible if I worried less about how I come across, and about needing to get this validation.
Kirsten Dierolf
And instead of worrying, what would you be doing?
Tobi
Being able to be more in the moment.
Developing a Playful and Learning Mindset
Tobi
That's approaching life more from this playful learning point of view. I don't need to comply with a certain image. It's not so important how other people see me, whether they validate what I do. Therefore I can actually learn. I can open up to the experience and say, let's try that and see how it goes.
And I can be present with you, my conversation partner, and we can learn together, getting into this stance of the collaborative coaching approach that we just discussed. I don't mean that only in a coaching practice, but also talking to a team member, or talking to my wife even. Having this sort of, I'm here, I can pay attention.
We do this dance together, and I'm allowed to learn, because I'm open to whatever result. Things can go quote unquote wrong. And I'm allowed to learn.
Kirsten Dierolf
And what difference does that stance you just described make to your life?
Tobi
I think I worry less, like you said. Being able to be present. So it's sort of a cycle: worrying less means I can be more present, means I can be more open to experience and learning, means I can be more present.
Kirsten Dierolf
So it's kind of a positive spiral, in a sense. And that's what you want to develop. Worrying less, being more present, open to learning. Is it that?
Tobi
And having it so clear, that is new. But overall I'm aware of that in theory. The question is how can I actually do that. Of course it's also
Balancing Leadership and Personal Agendas
Tobi
a dichotomy. As a leader I cannot be a hundred percent open in every conversation. I come in with an agenda of my own.
I have my own ideas of where we should actually go with the team. But still, I want to empower our leaders to determine their own agenda. And the question is, how can I strike that balance in the gray, dirty area of everyday life?
Kirsten Dierolf
How can you strike that balance? Would that be a useful question for the remainder of our conversation, or is there something else you might want to choose?
Tobi
It's good. I think that works well.
Kirsten Dierolf
What does it mean to strike the balance? I guess it's the balance between, I'm not sure actually if it's the balance. What is the actual insight here, because we now got away a bit from getting rid of the need for validation.
Tobi
Maybe that's actually the more relevant piece here.
Exploring the Impact of Self-Validation
Kirsten Dierolf
Let me try a question, and then you say if that's a direction you want to think in. Now suppose you were the Tobi who is present, open to learning, still a leader, and has said bye bye, right, validation. The need for validation and the worry have been parked somewhere. You're the version who can learn.
How would you notice that, and how would the people you interact with notice that you're now this version?
Interlude
Tobi
Hey, this again is meta level Tobi interrupting. Because I want to draw your attention to the question Kirsten just asked. It's, I think, a classic in solution-focused coaching, which is called the miracle question. She's basically saying, let's just assume that a miracle has happened and my desired state is achieved. How would I notice? How would people around me notice? What is possible?
Now, these are all variants of the miracle question, and I think that's a very powerful classic. Let's see how I reacted here.
Back to conversation
Tobi
That's a good question, thank you. I would be able to shut up. There's no need to be competent and share that idea that I have right now. Keeping that internal and maybe not even getting caught up in it, which means the other person can speak first and I can actually listen to the other person, instead of listening to my own monologue and my own idea. So that would be one way they would notice. I would notice it because I can get off a call that maybe didn't go so well and not be super frustrated. And maybe the other person would notice that by a lack of motivation afterwards, or by me not being in a good mood.
So I would be in a better mood if things don't go as I planned them on my neat agenda.
Kirsten Dierolf
What would you be saying to yourself when you're in this better mood, rather than when you're in the bad mood?
Tobi
I would say, interesting, that went differently than expected, and it's good, I learned X, Y, Z. Instead of being in this judgmental, that shouldn't have gone like that.
Kirsten Dierolf
Maybe that's the direction. I'm also interested. So we have two situations here. We have the situation where something didn't go as planned, and we have the situation in a meeting. Do you have a preference which one you would like to explore a little bit more, if at all?
Tobi
For me they are the same. So we can go with, didn't go as planned.
Kirsten Dierolf
Okay.
Recognizing and Responding to Challenges
Tobi
Oftentimes in my everyday life I'm in this spot of being the meeting facilitator. And afterwards I'm always thinking, ah, we didn't finish on time, I talked too much here, we didn't get to the core of the issue there.
So things don't go as planned in the meeting context. That is a very common area for me.
Kirsten Dierolf
So, going back to the Tobi who's already learned all this, and for whom the worry and the need for validation are parked somewhere, and who's able to say, oh interesting, we're learning from this.
Who, apart from you, would notice that you've developed into that person?
Tobi
I think most people that I interact with. Me being hard on myself also reflects in me being hard on others.
Even if I don't share it with them, I'm in these inner judgment cycles. By not being so hard on myself, I can let go of that judgment a bit and also be less judgmental towards life and other people.
How would they recognize that? I would just be more chill. How can I describe that tangibly? I'd be more light, more playful, more fun. More that kind of attitude.
Kirsten Dierolf
And as I'm listening to you, this playful, light, learning-inspired attitude seems beneficial both to yourself and to other people.
Tobi
Definitely.
How do you think they'd respond? They would also feel less judged and less under pressure, maybe. They would experience that pressure less, because there would be more playfulness, more kindness in a way. And that would allow them to be more themselves, to take more risks. So when I think of our leaders, maybe being less fearful and not having to ask, okay, can we do it like this or that, but just being confident to actually go ahead and embrace that learning mindset. That would
also be contagious.
Kirsten Dierolf
And if they then come with that attitude back to you, how would you respond?
Tobi
I think we would be more successful. But how would I respond? We are back to where we started. I could take things more lightly, more playfully. Be open, having this flexibility to see how this goes, this conversation, this meeting, this workshop. I would have to prepare less, because I'm more okay with the variety of outcomes. That would make life easier.
Kirsten Dierolf
It seems like a spiral that's self-supporting once you've started.
Tobi
Yes.
Kirsten Dierolf
Have we explored enough of what you want and how this looks, or is there another corner you want to look at?
Tobi
I'm very happy with this image of the cycle of playfulness and learning. How can I get this into the, when shit hits the fan, gray life? Because it's nice to be in that atmosphere once I talk myself into it. How can I actually get that vibe into the next difficult workshop? How can I anchor this now?
Kirsten Dierolf
That's a good question.
Tobi
Maybe I can draw myself an image of this loop of openness, lightness, learning, that leads to openness, lightness, learning on the other side, that allows me to go deeper into that. So it's sort of a spiral.
Kirsten Dierolf
Suppose there is a difficult workshop and you are in your lightness and playfulness, but you also have a lot of preparation, and it is starting to derail. Things start going wrong and you're like, oh no. And worry and need for validation come galloping back from their resting place. How are you going to respond, as the Tobi who values lightness and playfulness and learning? And if then worry and validation say things like, oh, but this is never going to end up right, and we are going in the completely wrong direction, and you as a facilitator should be able to prevent this. I don't know what they say to you, worry and validation, but you have an answer for them, whatever they say.
Tobi
Maybe noticing when I tighten, and I'm like, ah, this is not going as it was supposed to. Leaning back, breathing, and having that inner smile that can say, okay, it's not what we planned, let's see how it's useful, what we can do.
Let's see. There's the story of the farmer whose son goes away and the horse dies. We will try to link it in the show notes, but that's the story of, let's see if it's good or bad. A bit like that farmer who says, let's see.
So that means showing kindness, and hoping it's infectious in a way.
Kirsten Dierolf
What makes you confident that in the next difficult situation you can respond in the way that you prefer?
Tobi
I think it's a practice, and I'm sure there will be occasions when I don't manage. And then it's exactly that point, to say, ah, interesting, I didn't manage, what was there? And not being in this, ah, you didn't manage, you should have known, now we talked so much about it. But, ah, interesting, maybe next time.
So I think it's very much also this loop thing here.
Kirsten Dierolf
So it's not only a desire to be in this light, learning and playful engagement with others, but also with yourself.
Tobi
I think it starts with me.
Kirsten Dierolf
And even about the desire to learn to be light and playful and learning, you are being light and playful and learning with yourself. Or you try. That's lovely. I find it lovely.
Tobi
It's a nice meta issue.
Kirsten Dierolf
And you seem to be a person who likes meta issues. At least from our conversation before, I was grasping that meta things are something you enjoy.
Tobi
This was very nice and very useful. I'm hopeful. So thank you. Let's maybe step out of the demo coaching and go on a meta level.
Kirsten Dierolf
Okay. The first thing that I need from you is, is it still okay for you for this to be public? Because it was very personal. If not, I hope you're just going to delete it, and we can do another demo at another time.
Tobi
No, I think it's fine. I'm also learning on these issues by discussing them with friends and colleagues. So I'm very much okay with that.
Kirsten Dierolf
Okay. I'm glad.
Tobi
And to make that useful now, also to a listener, I would love to unpack the process, I would call it, you would maybe call it the dance moves, that we've been doing here. And what I noticed is there was a lot of, how would that look, if you brought me to the state where you assumed the problem is solved. And now, how does that world where the problem is solved look? I think this is one of these really simple but amazing things that I guess come from this solution-focused
aspect of coaching. Is that so?
The Power of Constructive Storytelling
Kirsten Dierolf
I think it's present most strongly in solution focus, but also in narrative, the idea of this preferred future. The idea is not to coach what needs to happen so that the problem goes away, but, who do you want to become? What stories would you like to tell, so that the problem automatically no longer occurs?
Tobi
So in my NLP mind I would say it's not an, I want to get away from, but an, I want to move towards.
Kirsten Dierolf
Yes.
I could see that once you were thinking that, that was already a little bit of an aha for you. It's like, okay, I don't need to get away from the need for self validation, I need to develop something different. And what's that?
And most often, understanding what it is that I'm moving toward is really cool for people.
Tobi
And getting into that state, how can I imagine this tangibly, when the world is as I would want it? I think it has two aspects. On the one hand, helping me get into this good state, which makes this whole process very pleasant. On the other hand, it helps to envision the future that I want to create. I think these two aspects go hand in hand.
Kirsten Dierolf
And I think a lot of meditation and even spiritual practice works that way, by connecting an observable visualization, observable stories, rather than abstract things. Because then we can recognize it also happening. Now, when you are in your next meeting, you can recognize, who's the Tobi showing up?
That's why we're talking a little bit about how are other people going to notice, how are you going to notice, putting yourself in the situation of, okay, when is it going to become really obvious that I have changed in the way that I want to be changing? In a sense, it's almost as if we're creating a memory from the future.
And that's the reason why I think telling a good story that has rich details is so important. Rather than, okay, what are my values, my values are abstract A, abstract B, abstract C. You see sometimes in organizations, they have some values that are plastered on the wall and nobody knows what they mean and nobody knows what they do.
Unless people engage in the activity of, how are we going to notice if this value shows up in our discussion? What difference is it going to make?
That just develops a stronger pull.
Tobi
What are the behavioral markers of my goal, of our values? How does it look in practice?
So there we have this narrative thing too, I'm putting myself into that story, which helps me imagine it. One thing I also thought was interesting: this is now from this world of partnering and collaborating, because oftentimes you ask, can I make you an offer, or how would that question feel? You give me the option as a client to take this question or another one. I have that co-ownership of the process in a way.
Kirsten Dierolf
Yes. And I think whatever I suggest as a coach, usually people are happy to go along with it. But I still find it important, because every once in a while somebody will say, oh, that's really not where I want to go, can we go here instead? This also showed where you were like, well, I was thinking, where does it come from?
Where does this inflexibility that I'm feeling come from? And then you identified, ah, probably the need for self validation. And that's not a solution-focused approach, but who am I to say? It's your process, it worked for you, or it has the potential of working for you, because otherwise you wouldn't be engaging in this process.
So I'm not going to evaluate or negate your experience, but I'm going to say, okay, what has it brought so far? And how can we build on what it brought? Even in cases where I really don't understand it, I can go along with them. That's the lovely thing about this way of working.
Somebody comes and says, oh, I have this information from my astrologer and I don't know what to do with it. I don't believe in astrology and I tend to be more of a scientifically oriented person.
I wouldn't go and create a horoscope for anyone if they asked. So if the next thing they need is another horoscope, I would say, well, probably wrong coach, you need to find yourself someone who knows how to do that. But I can work with whichever water, quote unquote, somebody's swimming in.
By being curious about what is working for them, and by inviting them to tell their stories within their frame of reference in ways that may be helpful for them. Steve de Shazer said that solution focus is not the right key for the right hole, but a skeleton key. So it's something that can open a wide array of doors.
And that's what I love about this way of coaching, because I can really be curious. And that links back to being a third culture kid. I'm fascinated by how people construct their worlds with others around them, what they value, what they think is important, and how things work for them.
I think I also asked a question like, how does self validation. And you had three important words: validation and competence and flexibility. I think those were the three important words at the beginning. I have no idea how they work for you, but you thinking, oh, how do they work for me?
It's almost like you're discovering your own philosophy.
Tobi
And that's actually what I'm curious about from your coach perspective. Because as a client who's coaching himself, or maybe in conversation with friends who are coaches, I do that a lot, this hypothesizing. Where does that come from? Maybe childhood, building these story arcs and reasons. And you didn't do that, you just mirrored my own hypothesis. How do you deal with this? How do you stay away from that mentally, not hypothesizing as a coach?
Kirsten Dierolf
I started with the solution-focused approach, learning from Peter Szabó, Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer. Sometimes I jokingly say I'm a one trick pony. I just know how to do that. I don't know how to do childhood explanations. But that doesn't mean I cannot work with them.
For example, perfectionism. A lot of people who were highly criticized in their childhood deal with this by wanting to be perfect, so as not to be criticized. And this perfectionism can be a friend in some cases and not such a good friend in other cases. So, developing your freedom of response to whatever happened, and being able to tell the stories that fit with what you want to do in your life.
Knowing that A causes B causes C, it's just a story.
Tobi
Yes, because that's a thin line, right? This narrative approach, enabling the client to construct this story in an empowering way, and at the same time not going into this hypothesis trap. So I'm wondering, how do you very practically do that? What sort of questions do you ask to help clients resurface these stories?
Kirsten Dierolf
I'm not going to resurface where it comes from, because I don't care. The only case where I would be interested in this kind of story is if a client brings it. And because our dominant idea is, experience in childhood A causes learning B, which becomes maladaptive in circumstances today, and causes behavior C, which is a problem. That's the dominant story that we're telling.
It is not a true story. Listeners, if you entertain this thought, that this is not a true story, it is not the truth, it is something we construct. There are a gazillion other stories this person could be telling about their lives. It's just the way
we explain one another to one another in the West.
So if the client brings it up, then I would ask, okay, so what kind of relationship would you like with, and they call it externalizing, so there's this perfectionism now, and it comes from, you explained it to yourself that it had a good reason to exist in the past, so now, what. Maybe if the client really wants to speak a lot about the problem, I could say,
is this perfectionism keeping you from doing what you would like to be doing?
Tobi
So, back to the desired future, actually.
Kirsten Dierolf
Yes.
Tobi
I think this is where we nicely close the loop, actually being back now at social constructionism. And I think now it became very tangible how the philosophy is applied in the coaching conversation.
Kirsten Dierolf
As a coach, if you entertain this kind of philosophy, you can coach in a much lighter way. You can be super respectful to your client. You can connect to your clients. You are beyond right and wrong ways of interacting.
And it's just a much, much funner way to coach than a mechanistic way. So I want to seduce you a little bit to entertain: who are you as a coach when you drop your tools?
Outro[00:53:31] Key Learnings and Final Thoughts[00:53:31] Advice for Aspiring Coaches
Tobi
This has been my coaching conversation with Kirsten Dierolf. If you are as intrigued as I was to look deeper into this thing called solution-focused coaching, I can recommend Coaching Plain and Simple, the book that Kirsten has helped transcreate, and that we linked in the show notes. Or of course you can go to solutionsacademy.com and find a training course with Kirsten.
If I was to go for another coach training, their online programs would be really high up on my list. That's it for today, but there are actually two more hours of conversation where I quiz Kirsten on how she has turned her philosophy into a one and a half million euro business. And our producer Justin is crunching the recording right now, to present you the most valuable insights of that part of our talk in another episode next week.
I'm Tobi from metaFox. I'm super grateful if you follow, rate and recommend the Making of a Coach. I wish you all the best. Until next week. Bye bye.