Blog

SolutionsAcademy

October 24, 2025

Adding (Self)-Insult to Injury

When life hurts, we often make it worse by blaming ourselves. This piece explores self-compassion — how to stop adding (self)-insult to injury, for ourselves and our coaching clients.

October 17, 2025

Practicing Coaching in Everyday Conversations

Everyday conversations are opportunities to practice a coaching stance — not to perform coaching without permission, but to live curiosity, presence, and co-creation in how we meet others.

October 9, 2025

Language as Co-Creation: How Small Shifts in Wording Change the Space Between

Language in coaching doesn’t just describe — it creates. Each question and reflection shapes shared worlds. Attuning to this co-created space turns coaching into dialogue, discovery, and mutual becoming.

October 3, 2025

Coaching ≠ therapy: What is the real difference?

Coaching ≠ therapy. But the difference isn’t just past vs. future or health vs. illness. A 2×2 matrix shows it’s about stance: expert vs. co-creation, causality vs. meaning. Surprising insight: postmodern therapies look a lot like coaching

September 26, 2025

Receiving Context in Narrative Practice: Why Stories Need Audiences to Last

“Receiving context” in narrative practice ensures new, preferred stories survive beyond sessions by building supportive audiences and relationships, protecting fragile identities from relapse into problem-saturated narratives and sustaining long-term change.

September 18, 2025

Summarizing, Mirroring, Paraphrasing… What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter?

Coaches often “do the same thing”: summarizing, paraphrasing, or mirroring what a client says. But the why behind it? That differs enormously — from empathy to reframing to co-construction.

September 12, 2025

They have so much potential… but they are not using it! What coaches and managers can do

When talented people resist growth, managers and coaches often feel frustrated. Instead of pushing, focus on acceptance, curiosity, and small “even better” steps aligned with their own preferred future.

September 4, 2025

Reflective Practice in Coaching Supervision - a Solution Focused Stance

Reflection in Solution Focused supervision is not about dwelling on deficits but amplifying what works, deepening awareness, and generating fresh possibilities for coaches to grow towards their preferred professional future.

August 29, 2025

How learning to coach can make you a worse human

Learning coaching builds empathy, listening, and curiosity—but overdone, it risks cold self-reliance, fake technique, or hiding in the coach role. True kindness means balancing skill with humanity, friendship, and compassion.

August 22, 2025

The ethos of quality

Japanese “full-assed” ethos inspires me: grounded presence over shaky effort. In music, dance, cooking, or coaching, practice builds quality. Distinguishing practice from performance enables true co-creation.

August 15, 2025

The cobbler's shoes, the teacher's children, the coach's...

Even coaches struggle in their own fields. Does that make them frauds? This blog explores what coaches need to know, how personal stories matter, and how to market honestly without overpromising.

August 8, 2025

When the coaching client wants you to be directive

When clients want advice, it’s tempting to give it. Yet coaching shines when we explore together, share knowledge carefully, and leave responsibility where it belongs—with the client.

August 1, 2025

The three dimensions of trust in coaching conversations

This post explores three intertwined dimensions of trust in coaching—client-coach, coach-client, and client-self—highlighting how trust evolves moment by moment and shapes the depth of transformational coaching.

July 25, 2025

Coaching Agreements vs Coaching Assumptions: Knowing the Direction, Not the Destination

In coaching, clarity on direction—not rigid outcomes—guides meaningful challenge and acknowledgment. Agreements shape emergent conversations, prevent assumptions, and ensure coaches amplify what truly matters to the client.

July 18, 2025

Can AI replace human coaches

AI can support but not replace coaching. Unlike humans, it lacks embodiment, empathy, care, and the co-creation of meaning essential for dialogue. Coaching remains a fundamentally human, relational practice.