Relationship Coaching

The theory and practice of coaching with singles, couples and parents

Yossi Ives, Elaine Cox

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415737951
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317581642
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Relationship Coaching provides a comprehensive guide to coaching to achieve relationship success and enrichment in three main areas: to help single people to form and secure stable relationships, to assist couples seeking to enhance their relationship and to support parents looking to improve their relationships with their children.

Yossi Ives is an experienced relationship coach and Elaine Cox is an expert on developmental coaching approaches. They explain how the fundamental elements of coaching are customised and adapted to meet the needs of relationship enhancement. The book introduces specific coaching theories, processes and techniques through the use of practical case studies, which provide insight into a range of applications and contexts, and introduces new ways of approaching marriage and singles coaching.

Relationship Coaching combines an accessible, practical guide with a strong theoretical underpinning. It will be an essential guide for coaches, counsellors and students, as well as other professional helpers including social workers and ministers.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315740935-1

The sad thing is that the people who would most benefit from coaching may not know of the existence or the availability of coaching.

Whitmore 2009

Whitmore’s observation applies most aptly to relationship coaching. Many people experience difficulties in forming relationships or in keeping, managing, or enhancing their relationships and would benefit from relationship coaching. However, they are often unaware that such coaching exists or how it could help them. Even amongst coaches, there is a lack of understanding about the application of coaching to relationship issues. Therefore, this book combines a theoretical and practical guide to relationship coaching to deepen the perception of how relationship coaching works and to increase awareness of how it can help clients improve their key human relationships.

The desire for close personal relationships is regarded as a basic human motive and need (Baumeister and Leary 1995; Deci and Ryan 2002) and is a key factor in quality of life. Baumeister and Leary (1995: 497) stated that ‘human beings have a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships’. Not surprisingly then, success or failure with regard to such relationships significantly affects life satisfaction (Myers and Deiner 1995), psychological well-being (Schwarzer and Leppin 1992), and physical health (Kaplan and Manuck 1994). Romantic relationships are the cause of great joys, such as a deep sense of connection and fulfilment (Hatfield and Rapson 2002); however, when they go wrong, they are also the source of some of life’s greatest difficulties, including depression and homicide (Cupach and Spitzberg 2011). As an aspirational discipline fostering human flourishing, coaching is naturally suited to support people in their pursuit of relationship fulfilment and success.

Coaching has been usefully described as a human development process that entails ‘structured, focused interaction and the use of appropriate strategies, tools and techniques to promote desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the client and potentially for other stakeholders’ (Bachkirova et al. 2014: 1). In this book, we illustrate how such a framework for helping people can be used in three main relationship contexts: coaching for single people seeking to form relationships, coaching for couples who want to enhance their relationships, and coaching for parents desiring to create better relationships with their children and teenagers. Often, people make the transition from being single to being part of a couple to being a parent in a short span of time, so we address this key development arc, during which many people need support.

Brennan and Wildflower (2014: 438) explained that the role of the coach is ‘to facilitate the client’s learning to find his/her own answers’. They pointed out that there could be times when coaches need to strategise or brainstorm with clients or offer ideas, but these ideas should not be proposed as solutions. Rather, they should always only be offered as possibilities.

If the client’s expectation is that the coach will have the solution to their concern, perhaps the client does not understand the coaching relationship. If coaches feel they need to offer advice to give value to the client, they may need to step back to examine the relationship with the client and their own understanding of coaching.(Brennan and Wildflower 2014: 438)

In goal-focused and developmental approaches to coaching, coaching is nondirective in the way that Brennan and Wildflower described. Similarly, in relationship coaching, advice-giving should be offered selectively and with caution. It is not the role of the coach to advise the client on his or her goal, but it is appropriate to share ideas around development and learning and propose new perspectives for the client’s consideration.

We have discussed elsewhere (Ives 2008, 2011; Ives and Cox 2012) that approaches to coaching can be usefully categorised into three broad paradigms: goal-focused, developmental, and therapeutic. This book proposes that relationship coaching is, in fact, a fusion of goal-focused and developmental coaching, with the need for an understanding of therapeutic concerns. Relationship coaching focuses on a combination of the client’s self-management skills, together with the development of different attitudes and perceptions, while acknowledging the interplay of certain psychodynamic factors. Given that people will come to relationship coaching with a clear aim in mind, such as a lasting and rewarding relationship (with a new partner, an existing partner, or with their children), relationship coaching needs to harness the strengths of the different types of coaching – especially goal-focused coaching, with its emphasis on achieving tasks and developmental coaching, which uses reflection and critical analysis to foster shifts in perspective. In this book, these elements of goal-focused and developmental coaching are incorporated into an effective relationship coaching methodology.

The relationship coaching paradigm

Most support for people in their relationships has, until recently, been undertaken by counsellors or therapists. People tend to go to a counsellor or to a marriage guidance specialist when their relationship with their child or with their partner is in trouble. Less frequently, people may seek therapeutic assistance if they are struggling to form or secure a lasting relationship. The counsellor will then work from a single theoretical approach or a variety of approaches that have their genesis in psychological theory. For example, a counsellor may favour the person-centred approach (Rogers 1959) or a humanistic position (Maslow 1998), or may deploy family therapy (Nichols and Schwartz 1995) or adopt a psychodynamic approach (Jacobs 2004). Eclectic counsellors and integral therapists will select any number of approaches tailored to their clients’ needs, especially because there is currently little to suggest that one approach is significantly more effective than another. In fact, some researchers (e.g. de Haan et al. 2013) claim that the quality of the relationship between the counsellor and the client is more important than the approach the therapist uses, and that it is the trust built during the counsellor–client relationship that is central to progress being made.

Amongst the choices counsellors make is to use a coaching approach. Indeed, within counselling, as Nelson-Jones (2006: 20) pointed out, the rise of cognitive behavioural approaches has given rise to ‘an increasing emphasis on psychological education or coaching’. However, Nelson-Jones’ definition of coaching is somewhat different to our own. He put the emphasis on people learning to ‘improve and maintain their mind skills and communication/action skills’, whereas we believe that in relationship coaching there has to be a change in mindset as well. In relationships, people often have to transform their outlook and even change their feelings, which requires a developmental approach. So, relationship coaching is about more than skills development and more than goal attainment. It often includes a change in the ‘way of being’ for the client.

Bachkirova (2007, 2011) has discussed how the difference between coaching and counselling is often one of purpose and initial motivation, highlighting a fundamental paradigmatic variance between the two approaches. According to this definition, counselling and therapy focus primarily on ‘eliminating psychological problems and dysfunctions’, whereas coaching has an overriding focus on ‘enhancing life, improving performance’ (Bachkirova 2007: 357). For this reason, we detect a difference between coaching and therapy in their approach to client ‘assessment’ and ‘treatment’. Coaching, as most commentators will attest, is necessarily free of assessment or judgement and this, they claim, is what distinguishes it from counselling or therapy. We like the way John Rowan (2014: 150) explained coaching:

The role of the coach is that of a companion along the way. There is no assumption of expertise, or leadership, or superiority in any way. It is more like a wise companion on a journey, who does not argue about the way, does not criticize any mistakes, encourages the weary, witnesses the struggles, offers a presence that is nourishing and warm.

Within such a definition, psychological theories, with their sometimes inherent assessment focus, may not at first glance seem appropriate. However, coaches’ psychological knowledge contributes vital insight and adds significantly to their capacity to help clients understand and manage their relationship situations. Indeed, in recent years, the practice of integrative coach-therapy, where the aim is to integrate coaching and therapy for the benefit of clients, has increased (Passmore 2007; Popovic and Jinks 2014; Lee 2014).

Such integrative interventions are driven by the coach’s understanding and skill and the client’s needs, irrespective of which disciplinary knowledge is being tapped. Thus, coaching – as we conceive it – belongs to a pragmatic paradigm rather than a medical paradigm (Cox 2013). As Grant and Cavanagh (2014: 298) explained, it involves the client ‘examining and evaluating his or her life’ and then making systematic life-enhancing changes with the support of the coach. In this paradigm, the coach is the client’s equal. There is no superior knowledge or ‘treatment plan’: the coach is just present for the client and focuses on the client’s articulated agenda.

For us, then, coaching is different from some types of therapy that adopt a more scientific/objectivist approach and determine appropriate techniques or ‘treatment’ via formal assessment of the client. In coaching, assessment is merely a tool that enables the client and the coach to understand the context of the coaching, including the client’s values and aims. The use of assessment in relationship coaching is therefore based on a pragmatic paradigm, in which the objective is for the coach to facilitate exploration of the lived experience of the client in order to improve his or her life in some way. Of course, many person-centred counsellors also resist assessment. They are influenced by Carl Rogers’ belief that people have a ‘directional flow’ (Kirschenbaum and Henderson 1989), and so clients are trusted to make progress without being guided or influenced. For these counsellors, assessment could be seen as making some sort of diagnosis, which could contaminate this natural progression.

The results of the pragmatic use of assessments are used as a guide for the client and to ensure that targeted outcomes are appropriate and realistic to his or her overarching goal. With its focus on enhancing life, coaching involves generating ideas and developing strategies. In this process, it is from the objectives set by the client that ‘strategies are developed, methods are selected and this is followed by the chosen interventions and actions’ (Bachkirova 2007: 361). Thus, while coaching interventions can be enriched by the use of carefully chosen therapeutic methods, as Bachkirova noted, strategies are only selected through a process of open communication and sharing between the coach and the client, and they are strictly focused on achieving the goal set by the latter.

Bachkirova (2007: 360) also explained that, to use developmental coaching, the coach will need to understand the theories that underpin adult development and the processes involved in facilitating such development, including the dynamics of the coaching relationship itself. She makes the case for coaching practitioners to have an understanding of psychological theories so that they can ‘notice and interpret developmental phenomena and blocks to development’. However, a distinctive feature of relationship coaching is that where theories are used to facilitate development, the coach will always share such knowledge very openly with the client. The knowledge and understanding of psychological and developmental theories is important for coaches because, in supporting the achievement of the coaching task, all knowledge is ‘grist to the mill’, but such knowledge does not dictate the way in which the coaching proceeds and it does not generate a ‘cure’. In Chapters 2–4, we discuss the main theories that underpin relationship coaching.

In relationship contexts, Nelson Jones talked about three levels of well-being of clients: those requiring remedial help, those who have a fairly normal relationship, and those who are seeking growth. Using these levels will help to clarify the function of relationship coaching, as described in the following.

• Remedial: Until recently, most people only sought outside intervention when they were experiencing a relationship crisis. For people needing help to remedy a significant problem in their relationships, counselling may indeed be the most appropriate intervention. It would benefit them to explore in detail the root causes of the problem and so begin to explore where a solution might be found. There may be underlying psychological issues for one or the other partner that impact the relationship and that are serious enough to require some psychological intervention. However, in some instances, coaching could also be useful, especially to help someone to get around a specific challenge that blocks their progress towards securing a lasting relationship.
• Normal: Until something prompts them, people in this category typically do not consider that they need to change anything or that the struggles that they are experiencing merit any form of intervention. A majority of single people, couples, and parents might suppose that everything is ‘normal’ for them, even if they are experiencing considerable difficulties. Perhaps they recognise that something is not working out in one or more areas of their relationship, but their frustration does not amount to them feeling they are in crisis. They may initially view coaching as unnecessary, because in their mind there is nothing majorly wrong with how their relationship is functioning: they accept routine annoyances and a measure of dissatisfaction. These people generally do not need counselling because there is no profound problem to be understood or overcome, but they could benefit from coaching to help them address the issues they face in their relationships.
• Growth: Beyond the status quo created by the ‘normal’ relationship is another level of happiness, which entails increasing people’s sense of well-being and enjoyment within a relationship. Here, coaching can be leveraged to enhance and develop a relationship to achieve its full potential or to improve a person’s ability to form or secure a lasting relationship.

Relationship coaching: a fusion of approaches

Throughout this book, we demonstrate how relationship coaching is a fusion of different types of coaching, particularly goal-focused coaching and dev...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Working towards personal development in relationship coaching
• 3 Working to achieve the goal
• 4 Psychological approaches and relationship coaching
• 5 Relationship coaching in practice
• 6 Coaching single people for relationship success
• 7 Coaching couples
• 8 Coaching with parents
• 9 Professional and ethical issues
• 10 Conclusion
• References
• Index