A Relational Approach toA Relational Approach toTherapy and CoachingTherapy and Coaching

Juan Muñoz 2000

Sills 2012

Why focus on the Why focus on the relationship?relationship?

Evidence from:

What works in psychotherapy?

'Hope’15%

Approach15%

CommonFactors30%

ChangeOutsideTherapy40%

(Lambert 1992; Asay and Lambert 1999)

neuroscience

Post-modern physics

And philosophy

feminist psychology

relationship and subjectivity as valid epistemology

….a continual flow of reciprocal mutual influence.

Stolorow and Atwood 1992p.18

Central tenet of relational practice

Relational coaching and therapy see the process of relating – to self, to others, to the organisation - as the key channel of self-expression and as the main vehicle for change.

•The organisation seen as community of interactive processes

•The importance of the coaching/therapy relationship as the core vehicle of change

•The two-way street – bi-directional process in which both people are touched and changed by the encounter

•The usefulness of the practitioner owning his/her own counter-transference and responses – not just for understanding but for a collaborative dialogue

•The co-construction and multiplicity of meanings

Relational PracticeRelational Practice

•Takes us beyond both psychoanalysis and humanistic approaches. It could be said to be a product of the relational dialectic between the two ‘forces’

• It integrates the humanistic understanding of the interpersonal with the psychoanalytic attention to unconscious processes

• And also acknowledges the pragmatism of the cognitive behavioural approach

• And the mystery of the wider relational unconscious

Transactional Analysis Theory is ideal as a relational approach:

It is underpinned by the humanistic philosophy of I’m OK – You’re OK and self responsibility

Ego states provide a model of object relations offering the possibility of exploring the relationship to self and complex levels of transference and countertransference experience

Transactions and Games are ways of understanding the process of relating with others including the repetition of old relational patterns, both conscious and non-conscious.

Script describes a person’s relational expectations of the world.

Many of its theories and methods have the clarity and robustness of CBT

These theories are developed within a relational methodology as relational transactional analysis.

Hargaden, H. & Sills, C. (2002) Relational Transactional Analysis – a relational perspective. London: Routledge

Cornell, W. & Hargaden, H. (eds) (2006) From Transactions to Relations Chadlington: Haddon Press.

De Haan, E. & Sills, C. (eds) (2012) Coaching Relationships. London: Libri.

… many articles in the TAJ IARTA – www.relationalta.com

Fowlie, H. & Sills, C. eds. (2011) Relational Transactional Analysis – Principles in Practice. London: Karnac.

THE CONTRACT IN RELATIONAL PRACTICE

THE 3 CORNERED CONTRACT

CoachCoach IndividualIndividual

OrganisationOrganisation

© Ashridge Consullting adapted from F. English 1975

Administrative Contract

Includes agreement about:•Time; place; frequency; duration; fees etc.•Confidentiality and potential limits to it•How it will be evaluated•The broad purpose of the coaching• …and…

Administrative Contract

Administrative contract

Types of Contracts

Observable, outcome-focussed ‘hard’

Clarifying - ‘the main thing is to let the main thing be the main thing’ Igwe (1997)

Behavioural Change – ‘I know what I want and what I need to do’

Exploratory – ‘..till we have faces.’ C.S. Lewis (1978)

Emergent – ‘I want more of myself’

‘soft’ subjective, process orientated

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Sills 2006, 2012

ITA CONFERENCE 2012 – HARROGATE, UK

Charlotte Sills contact@charlottesills.co.uk