What coaching skill involves encouraging clients by reinforcing their positive choices and experiences?

Affirmation is a coaching skill that focuses on recognizing and reinforcing a client's positive choices and experiences. This technique not only boosts the client’s confidence but also encourages them to continue making healthy decisions, as they feel validated in their efforts. By specifically highlighting what clients do well and acknowledging their successes, affirmations help build their self-efficacy and promote a positive mindset.

Affirmations serve to empower clients, fostering an environment where they feel supported and motivated. This builds rapport and trust between the coach and the client, enhancing the coaching relationship and creating a foundation for further growth and development.

While other options like validation, challenge, and encouraging statements may seem relevant, they do not capture the essence of specifically reinforcing positive choices in the same effective manner that affirmations do. Validation, for example, is about acknowledging a client's feelings or experiences without necessarily encouraging continued positive behaviors. Challenge involves pushing clients to confront obstacles or limiting beliefs, and while encouraging statements can support a client, they lack the intentional reinforcement that characterizes affirmations.