Help Employees Find Their Own Success Recipe

They’ve succeeded in similar situations before; coach them to do it again

Find something that your employee succeeded with in the past. Tell the story to make it real in their brain. Then reverse engineer the success recipe. The idea is that you go and try that again in a novel situation and see if it works the next time. If it works enough, you just start doing things that way.

You can use it with yourselves. You can also use it in coaching your leaders and your managers.

It’s a coaching technique called Appreciative Inquiry: A simple way to coach employees by finding a past win and reverse-engineering the success recipe

When to use it

Use appreciative inquiry when:

• an employee is stuck in the how
• confidence is shaky
• a recent conversation, meeting, handoff, or decision went well
• you want them to come up with their own answer instead of you just telling them what to do

Do not start by dissecting failure. Start by finding a real success, even a small one. A moment that felt good. A moment where the employee took ownership. A moment where the result was better, clearer, smoother, or had better accountability.

How to do it

Start with a story.

Ask:

• “Tell me a story of a time this went well.”
• “What’s a recent example of when you handled something like this successfully?”
• “What made that feel good moment happen?”

Your job is to help them make it real, not vague. Slow them down and get the story on the table.

Then unpack the success recipe.

Ask:

• “Step one, step two, step three.”
• “What made that feel good moment happen? Step one, two, three.”
• “There doesn’t have to be a step three, but was there a step three?”

Keep going until the employee can name what actually happened, not just what they felt.

For example, the recipe might sound like:

• We took a moment for ourselves to get clear on what the task was, what we were about to do.
• We communicated and verified that we were on the same page as to the result we wanted and who was going to take the lead.
• We talked about what the optics would be.
• We communicated privately away from others.

That is the success recipe.

What you are trying to produce

You are trying to help the employee say, in their own words:

• “This is what worked.”
• “These are the steps.”
• “These things are vital every time we have something that comes up like this.”

Once they can say that, they are much more likely to own it, repeat it, and use it without needing you in the middle every time.

How to finish

End by asking:

• “Okay, where do we try that again in a novel situation?”
• “What’s the next situation where you can use this same recipe?”
• “What would step one, step two, and step three look like next time?”

Now you are not just solving today’s issue. You are building judgment, pattern recognition, and repeatable behavior.

A simple script for owners and senior leaders

“Let’s not start with what went wrong. Let’s find something you succeeded with in the past. Tell me the story so we can make it real in your brain. Then we’re going to reverse engineer the success recipe. Step one, step two, step three. Once we’ve got the recipe, we’re going to try that again in a novel situation and see if it works the next time. If it works enough, we’ll just start doing things that way.”

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