What does a relationship coach do?

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Relationships are everything. They make up every career, every business, every family – including extended families which can be intensely intense – they make up your finances, they make up your connection with spirituality and have a big impact on your health.

Everything is relationships.

Above all, we want our relationships to work. Deep down, no matter how strained, stressed or resentful we might feel, above all else we hate the thought of a relationship failing, or being beyond repair which is why so many people cling to a relationship that gets more and more bitter and estranged, or why they keep going back to a relationship or family member who hurts them. They want things to be different, they just don’t know how.

Many relationships can be saved or strengthened with a relationship coach’s help, as together you uncover new solutions to old problems.

People are looking for guidance, motivation and encouragement to make their relationships work. A relationship coach helps identify a client’s relationship goals and develop action steps to make those goals achievable.

That’s why relationship coaching is one of the biggest types of coaching out there. Everyone -and I do mean everyone – is looking for relationships and striving to make connections, but most of us don’t have the tools and knowledge to know how to go about it. In most cases, every failed attempt only reinforces the negative patterns that are keeping us from the connections we are struggling to make.

How does relationship coaching work?

A relationship coach focuses on the patterns displayed through individual behaviour, emotions, and communication to find and bring to the surface the core of the issue. Simply knowing what is going on and seeing the situation clearly is usually enough to assist someone in improving their relationships by changing either their behaviour or expected results.

Rather than analysing and providing theories on hurt, a relationship coach helps clients access the resources they need to change their habits and align what they want with what they are doing.

When you consider how many people are asking for help and relationship advice on social media, you can see just how valuable and needed qualified coaches are in this sector. Especially when much of the internet advice can be inaccurate, spiteful or even damaging to a person’s self-esteem and ability to meet their relationship goals.

Everyone wants relationship advice, either because they are in a relationship, or because they can’t seem to keep one.

What can a relationship coach do?

Probably the first thing you thought about when the idea of starting a business as a relationship coach came up was marriage support. That’s a fair thought. Marriage breakdown is a huge part of our current social environment and puts incredible stress and strain on a lot of people.

Since 1960, the global divorce rate has increased by 251.8% – data collated by Unified Lawyers, 2017

Addressing marriage needs is a big part of the relationship process and something lots of couples out there are actively looking for. If that isn’t what you are looking for, or if you are curious about what else a relationship coach can do, there are far more options you can own as your niche as a relationship coach:

Family relationships and forgiveness
Relationship with self, self-love and self-nurture
Building positive friendships
Coping with death and dying
Family relationships especially with troubled kids and teens
Being a carer – to adults, kids or disabled family members
Teamwork and office relationships
Coping with change – pregnancy, pregnancy loss, moving in together, blended families, job loss, newlyweds

As well as working with private clients and running your own coaching business you can look at employment opportunities or being a contracted consultant to other organisations including:

Residential care
Hospitals, hospice and treatment facilities
Corporate offices
Women’s refuge centres

And don’t discount the importance of working with relationship issues in other coaching areas as well.

Yes, relationships are in everything we do

Healing relationship challenges and breaking old and unhelpful patterns has a follow-on effect in other areas of your life. Everything is connected so how you perceive relationships will be limiting everything else you do. Once a person is able to solve that puzzle through the assistance and new perspectives of a relationship coach, they can apply their newfound learning to other areas of life and see themselves rocket ford in their finances, career, friendships and connection with self.

I always find that no matter what coaching subject I’m on, if I’m working with business executives around their business issues the subject of relationships always comes up, usually around session three or four. And it’s always groundbreaking for them to see the connections.

I actually had one client bring it up really casually. He is a really successful business owner looking to break into the multi-millions, so our initial discussions had nothing to do with his marriage, of course, it was all business goals, business plans and action around increasing his empire. Come session three he made a throwaway comment when I was asking him about how his glass ceiling business patterns showed up in other areas of his life.

He said the pattern did show up in his marriage but it wasn’t a problem, his wife understood where he was coming from.

I suggested that changing this pattern in his relationships might have a positive impact on how he addresses his business issues and help him see things differently. I set him the challenge of using open-ended questions and taking an interest in what his wife was saying by giving her his full attention, being a one-way street of communication in her favour.

He accepted the challenge and took her out to dinner that night. He did amazingly well at the activity and listened attentively, made eye contact and agreed with his wife the entire evening. At the end of the meal his wife was overwhelmed. With tears in her eyes she pulled out an envelope she had taken with her to the dinner, held it in her hand and said, ‘I was going to give this to you tonight, but this dinner has changed my mind’. They were divorce papers.

He had no idea how serious the lack of relationship had been for her, he had no idea she was so unhappy, yet just the simple act of listening, for one dinner, was enough to turn it all around. The bigger lesson was of course that how he treats people has huge ramifications on how they respond.

This is what gave him the incentive he needed to change his business approach and get to the next (and next) level of his business success.

How do I become a relationship coach?

Some of the learnings are so easy. Getting even basic training in how people are different:

DISC personality
Values
Learning predicates (visual, auditory, kinesthetic)
Love languages
Language chunk sizes
Internal filters that delete, distort and generalise what we see, hear and feel
Metamodel filters that determine how we sort and compare information

All of these trainings show us how we can communicate with other people more effectively through flexibility and paying attention to the information other people are putting out there. Once you learn these techniques and how they apply to you, you can then use these life skills to help guide others and provide suggestions on how they can improve their relationships. And guys, it really works!

All we need to do is match the other person’s learning, communication and even physical traits, to gain cooperation, trust and understanding which open incredible pathways to better relationships through direct communication, no BS (that’s bullshit and belief systems).

My free Live It Now event is the starting step for all my coaching and training programs. It introduces all these concepts in a hands-on and easy to relate to way to give you a taste of what you might like to learn next. You can go to NLP to get hands-on practical training in changing your neural pathways and helping to assist change negative patterns in others, Coaching training to become a certified coach, Entrepreneur training to learn how to run your business with ultimate success and Influence training to become more confident and learn the skills of public speaking.

This weekend on it’s own is fantastic at healing wounds and allowing people to start over. I’ve had marriages from Live It Now, divorced couples getting back together, even babies born, all from attending our Live It Now weekend and seeing how the world can be different. I even had one attendee complete the weekend and return with 11 family members – and that I can tell you is still one of my all-time favourite weekend events – the transformation in the room that day was incredible.

The other BIG key in helping others improve their relationships is knowing it’s all about your client. As a coach you need to gently guide your client to take responsibility for how they feel, both how they feel right now, which might be negative, and how they want to feel when they fulfil their goals.

It’s not up to someone else to bring them happiness. When they can understand that everything that is happening to them comes from their patterns, their actions and their communications, they can take fast and rewarding steps to see immediate and long term change.

Relationship coaching is all about teaching people how to connect and make relationships work. It shows people how they can see different points of view, understand different needs, approach situations with more flexibility and take more responsibility for their own actions, thoughts and responses.

If you’re looking for a relationship coaching course in Sydney, check out our course Coach Now, which will help you create freedom in life and business!