Coaching Practiced

25 MI techniques: The Typical Day

Jonathan Passmore

Abstract

This article is the third in the techniques series which are drawn from the motivational interviewing approach. In this paper I will briefly review a technique called ‘A Typical Day’. Typical Day is a useful technique or more rightly an exercise, which is used at the start of a coaching conversation to encourage the coachee to talk about the key issue. It offers the coach the opportunity to demonstrate listening and empathy while also gaining a detailed understanding of the issue.

Original publication details: Passmore, J. (2012, June). MI techniques: The typical day. The Coaching Psychologist, 8(1), 50 51. Reproduced with permission of The British Psychological Society.

The ‘typical day’ exercise is a good way to start a coaching session and can follow on from the initial contracting and goal setting segment of the session which might dominate the first five to 10 minutes of the conversation. While this is a technique grounded in Motivational Interviewing (Miller & Rollnick, 2002), it is also a technique which can be used more widely in life coaching and for some organisational coaching conversations.

The technique offers the opportunity to the coach to demonstrate what coaching is all about and to get the coachee talking. The coach can use the technique to demonstrate that they are a good, non-judgmental, listener who really wants to understand. The coachee gets to talk about something they feel very comfortable ...