Coaching Practiced

51 Positive psychology techniques – Three Good Things

Jonathan Passmore & Lindsay G. Oades

ABSTRACT

This short article is the last in a series of six papers exploring positive psychology coaching techniques. The previous papers have explored the concept of positive coaching psychology and how it may be applied. The focus of this paper is a technique that encourages the mind to pay more attention to good things and develop a mind more observant of the positive in life.

Keywords

Three good things; positivity; positive psychology coaching.

Original publication details: Passmore, J., & Oades, L. G. (2016, December). Positive psychology techniques – Three good things. The Coaching Psychologist, 12(2), 77–78. Reproduced with permission of The British Psychological Society.

THREE GOOD THINGS

Three good things’, like ‘active constructive responding’ (Passmore & Oades, 2014b) and the other techniques in this series, is a technique which can be used both in coaching conversation and, more generally, in one-to-one conversation where the coach, manager or facilitator of the conversation wishes to encourage more positive responses from their coachee (team member). It forms part of the wider approach to positive psychology coaching we discussed earlier in this series (Passmore & Oades, 2014a) and in other papers (Passmore & Oades, 2014c)

This technique starts with the use of a question: ‘What are the best three things about working here?’ (or ‘What are the three best things about today?’). ...