Welcome
Hi there! I’m Dr. Moira. Welcome to a new episode and a new week with the Coaching Hive. If you are new, welcome, and if have been listening since the beginning or somewhere in between thank you my friend. It is always a pleasure to have you here with me.
As we continue to journey through our Coaching Toolkit Communication Basics this week, I’d like to quickly recap last week’s episode. We talked about crafting “Quite a Question” and I’m curious. How did it go? What resulted in your successes and what is still feeling complicated? What are your plans for continuing to practice? Let me know. Reach out to me on social media and send me a DM.
If you have studied Miller and Rollnick’s Motivational Interviewing framework, you are familiar with OARS and recognize how that our month is focused on honing our skills with OARS. Last week was all about questions and it makes sense that this week would focus on Affirmation. If Motivational Interviewing, or MI, is new to you I highly recommend reading the MI In Nutrition and Fitness by Clifford and Curtis and Motivational Interviewing, 3rd edition by Miller and Rollnick. Our OARS, the focus of this month’s podcasts, stands for open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries.
When working with health coaches I have noticed something interesting in the questions I receive about affirmations. The first is to find out WHY they are so important and the second is HOW to make them easier. Let’s tackle those questions one at a time.
Introduction
To start, lets consider what an affirmation is. According to Miller and Rollnick, affirmations are designed to highlight client strengths and acknowledge their effort. Why are affirmations so important? The way I think about it is that a client needs to know their strengths in order to get through the difficult times or challenges that they encounter on the change journey. For example, if you have a client working to increase activity and stay consistent we know they are going to have challenges along the way. One day they might be sore, they might strain something that requires rest, or they might get sick and need to take it easy for a week. These all break that consistency cycle.
Imagine that this client has a coach who tells them, “Good job!” each week when they share their weekly success. What will happen when the client hits that bump in the road? Likely they will think back and recognize they were successful in the past, but not have any idea of what they did other than a, “good job!”. That doesn’t necessarily help them troubleshoot the challenge and get back on track.
Now imagine this same client has a coach who tells them, “You persisted even when you were sore this week. You were determined to make progress.” Now when the client hit a bump in the road they will remember that they are persistent and determined. In applying those strengths to their story, the client now changes their thinking and knows that they have done this in the past.
Same client, same situation, two different coach responses. Two different outcomes.
That is the power of affirmations. They are often forgotten, but so very powerful.
Awakening Affirmations
If you are ready to awaken your affirmations and invite them to the coaching conversation lets talk about a few simple techniques for incorporating them seamlessly, or at least a little easier.
The first step to crafting quality affirmations is to put the attention on the client using a “You” statement. In fact, that is one of the key components that Rosengren included in a 2009 practitioner workbook on MI. In fact, lets walk through Rosengren’s key components right now before going any further: