Nobody doubts the value in using compliments, acknowledgement and validation in solution focused work. But sometimes it doesn’t work as well as we would like. Not everyone in every situation responds well to compliments. It might feel or be experienced as tacky or patronising. Another problem with compliments is that they are short-range. The compliment depends on the leader or coach giving it. It is, in a sense, from the outside or above. The nature of relationship also affects how and if compliments work. If a person do not trust me, why would they trust my compliments? If they feel threatened by me, they might feel that the compliment might be a trick of some kind. What to do in those instances? One way is to use questions instead: a particular type of questions I call “Affirming questions”. makes a similar point in a , where he talk about acknowledging and complimenting in an implicit way by using questions. In this blog, I hope to extend a bit on these ideas by introducing the “affirming question” concept

The affirming questions are a category of solution focused questions that:

(1) develop knowledge of successes
(2) contains implicit compliments which affirms resources

You can say that the questions contains a positive statement about how I see the other person. Affirming questions are often much more effective than simple direct compliments. On reason for this is that they are not experienced as a compliment but has a similar uplifting quality. Another reason is that they affirm by inviting people to explore and develop successes, choices and achievements.

A wonderful example is the seemingly ordinary question: “How did you do that?”. Using this question as a response to a person having done something successfully we are actually doing several things at the same time. Firstly, we help the person describe how they did it, which will be helpful knowledge if they should want to do it again. Secondly, we get information, which we would get if we had just said, “well, done, splendid!”. We now have a dialogue about success. Thirdly, I give the person a hidden compliment, since the questions presupposes or affirms something about the person that tells them how I see them. The resource that is implicit is agency. The Implicit statement or affirmation is “To me, you are a person that can make things happen”. The resource that is affirmed is agency.

Take the questions: “How did you decide it was the right thing to do?” The implicit resources here are (1) the ability to make well-grounded choices, (2) ability to draw useful conclusions, and (3) the aspiration to do the right thing. The implicit statement is: “I see you as a person who does things carefully, you are the kind of person who makes well-grounded choices and commitments”

Another question: “What did you learn from that?”. An implicit statement here is “I see you as a person how learns from you experiences. Someone who uses their experiences constructively” Naturaly, this affirms the resource learning ability
Or this one, one of my favourites: “What was helpful”. This actually presupposes the complex statement: “I see you as a person who is smart enough to see that you need help sometimes, and not only that, you are smart enough to get help, and if that wasn’t enough you also use that help. That’s really impressive”

As you can see, these small question do much more that is apparent on the surface. You actually give a compliment by the way of a question, at the same time as you unfold useful knowledge, experience and skills. The answers can be useful for you as a leader too. When a person or team in your organisation achieves something. How he or she did it is highly valuable information for you, your organisation and your projects.

These questions are most often seen as follow-up questions. But I have found them so valuable that I want to see them as a special category of questions in solution focused work: Affirming questions. On par with scaling questions and miracle questions. 
And, don’t forget, straight compliment are important too, are work well in combination with affirming questions. The late master of SF Insoo Kim Berg often said: “Wow, that’s amazing…how did you do that?”