ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the practices of setting the coaching agenda and clarifying the client's narrative as part of connecting with and engaging the client. It focuses on setting the agenda and clarifying the client's narrative as a part of Support-for-Thought. Although bridging from one session to another is common practice, setting the agenda is usually the point of departure for most coaching conversations. It begins by asking what the client wants to discuss or work on during the session. The purpose of recovering deletions is to assist clients in restoring a fuller linguistic representation of their model-of-the-world. There are three categories of deletions in particular that, when recovered, magnify a client's linguistic map in order to retrieve the detail needed to better understand their stated narrative: Unnamed References, Unspecified Actions, and Unstated Reasoning. Unspecified actions occurring in a client's narrative during Support-for-Thought serve as springboards into either Challenge-for-Thought or Challenge-for-Action.
