Beyond SF coaching

Janine Waldman, alison-abington

Abstract

In 2008, John Laing Integrated Services (JLIS) embarked on an SF coaching programme with The Solutions Focus (TSF). The partnership was underpinned by a simple philosophy: if we view conversation as the fundamental unit of change, then it follows that “(…) if you change the conversation then there’s every chance you’ll change everything that surrounds it.” (Jackson & Waldman, 2010, p. 7). Since then, TSF has worked with JLIS to grow and evolve the programme, with significant results: Staff are using solutions-focused (SF) tools and techniques in ways that go far beyond coaching, and SF is now an intrinsic part of what JLIS calls ‘the JLIS way’, with managers applying SF to their teams, meetings, client projects, performance manage- ment processes, 360 appraisals, strategic planning and more. This two-part case looks at how this change has come about and what impact it has had. The first part focuses on the most recent phase of the programme (Phase 4, 2011), where accel- erated results were achieved through just a few significant alterations to the design. The second part shows how SF eval- uation captured the real grass-roots impact of the programme on the business and how the evaluation became, by the very nature of SF, part of the intervention as a whole.

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