A Relational Approach to
Therapy and Coaching
Juan Muñoz 2000
Sills 2012
Why focus on the
relationship?
Evidence from:
What works in
psychotherapy?
Common
Factors
30%
Approach
15%
Change
Outside
Therapy
40%
'Hope’
15%
(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 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 nonconscious.
 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
Organisation
Administrative Contract
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…
Coach
Individual
Administrative Contract
© Ashridge Consullting adapted from F. English 1975
Types of Contracts
Clarifying -
Behavioural Change –
‘the main thing is to let the
main thing be the main thing’
Igwe (1997)
‘I know what I want and what
I need to do’
Exploratory –
Emergent –
‘..till we have faces.’
C.S. Lewis (1978)
‘I want more of myself’
Self understanding
Lack of self understanding
Observable, outcome-focussed
‘hard’
‘soft’
subjective, process orientated
Sills 2006, 2012
Charlotte Sills
[email protected]
ITA CONFERENCE 2012 –
HARROGATE, UK