Human Relationship Skills

Coaching and Self-Coaching

Richard Nelson-Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134171040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

Human Relationship Skills: Coaching and Self-Coaching presents a practical 'how to' guide to relationship skills, showing how readers can improve and, where necessary, repair relationships. This thoroughly revised and updatedfourth edition reflects the increased interest in coaching, showing how it can be applied to everyday life.

In this essential book, Richard Nelson-Jones takes a cognitive-behavioural approach to coaching people in relationship skills. These skills are viewed as sequences of choices that people can make well or poorly; covering a range of skill areas the book assists readers to make affirming rather than destructive choices in their relationships. It begins by addressing the questions of "what are relationship skills?" and "what are coaching skills?", and follows with a series of chapters which thoroughly detail and illuminate various relationship skills including:

- listening and showing understanding

- managing shyness

- intimacy and companionship

- assertiveness and managing anger

- managing relationship problems and ending relationships

The book concludes with a chapter on how users can maintain and improve their skills by coaching themselves.

Accessibly written and using activities, the book will be appropriate for those involved in 'life coaching' as well as general counselling and therapy. It will be essential reading for lecturers, coaches and trainers as well as students and anyone who wishes to improve their relationship skills.

1

What are human relationship skills?

Chapter outcomes

By studying and doing the activities in this chapter you should:

• gain some knowledge into what are relationships

• understand more about changing patterns of relationships

• be introduced to a skills approach to relationships

• be introduced to communication skills

• be introduced to mind skills

• understand the role of feelings and physical reactions.

Human relationship skills are the skills involved in human connection. All human beings are biologically programmed to need other people, both for the acts of conception and birth and then throughout their lives. Relationships come with no guarantee of happiness and can be for good or ill, for pleasure or pain. However, the more skilled you are at relating, the greater the likelihood that you will maximize your own and others’ happiness and contribute less to the sum of human misery and pain. We all like our relationships to be rewarding. The following are examples of people who relate in rewarding ways.

Whenever Jim and Tricia come home from work, they may rest for a short time, but then they always check with interest how each other’s day has gone.

Chloe and Paul do not just enjoy their sexual relationship, they also enjoy the companionship that comes from regularly kissing, hugging, putting an arm over each other’s shoulders and holding hands.

Though initially Lucy did not like visiting her partner Tony’s parents regularly, she now goes over with him every other weekend and gets along well with them. Tony greatly appreciates the effort she has made.

The following are examples of people relating in unrewarding ways.

Tom gets jealous because his wife Emma is having an animated discussion with their friend Pete at a party. Later Tom angrily accuses Emma of flirting with Pete, despite this not being the case.

Often when Susan wants to make a point with Joe, she comes on very strong which has the effect of making him withdraw from any real discussion of situations.

Dave and Sophie rarely listen properly to each other any more, even when one of them is trying to say something important in a reasonable way.

In each of these examples, people used varying degrees of relationship skills. Those who were giving and getting rewards in their relationships used their relationship skills effectively to attain these ends. Those behaving in unrewarding ways failed to use good skills. In reality, people often use a mixture of good and poor skills, though in good relationships skilled behaviour predominates.

WHAT ARE RELATIONSHIPS?

Connection is the essential characteristic of relationships. People in relationships exist in some connection with one another, be it marriage, kinship, friendship or acquaintance. Isolation or being placed apart from others is very different from relationship, though even in isolation people can mentally relate to others. John Donne, the Elizabethan, wrote in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624: 17): ‘No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main’. In short, humans are social animals who cannot avoid relationships. We are condemned not only to exist, but to relate. However, in an existential sense, humans are also condemned to isolation: for example, no one can die another’s death for them. Out of their human separateness, humans strive to relate.

Though relationships can be very brief, the term can imply a broader time frame. Personal relationships are often long term and contain the expectation that they will continue into the future. Feelings of attachment, commitment and obligation, as well as of hatred and despair, can run very deep in such relationships.

Inevitably relationships involve change. Over time, all people change in varying ways and degrees. For instance, they age and develop different interests. Furthermore, how partners relate can contribute to changes in each of them, such as greater or less self-confidence. In addition, change can be deliberately initiated in relationships, for example, getting married, buying a flat and having a baby. Sometimes external circumstances precipitate change, for instance, unemployment or an inheritance. Relationships need to accommodate changes. Given the imperative in life of change and challenge, relationships can grow and strengthen or wither and die.

Levels of relationships

When two people relate, they do so on differing levels. First, there is the intrapersonal level. Each individual is in a relationship with herself or himself. As a simple illustration, shut your eyes for 30 seconds and try to think of nothing. Most people will soon become aware that they are talking to themselves and possibly getting visual images as well. Your relationship to yourself can be of varying levels of psychological wellness. For instance, some people may be quite isolated from themselves. Such isolation may stem from a mixture of their biological make-up and unfortunate early learning experiences that psychologically they have not moved beyond. The results of this can include insufficient sense of identity and poor access to feelings and thoughts. You also relate to yourself not just in terms of your past, but also in terms of your present and future: for instance, you think and feel about current and future relationships with others. The inner game of relating is another expression for the intrapersonal level of relationships.

Second, there is the interpersonal level of relationships. This is the level of relationships alluded to in the previous discussion on connection. People outwardly relate to others in terms of their thoughts, feelings, physical reactions and how they communicate and act. In all relationships, people have roles, for instance, spouse, partner, parent and child. A distinction may be made between role relationships and person relationships. Role relationships tend to be heavily influenced by traditional expectations of behaviour for the role. Person relationships allow for spontaneity. Though a simplification, as relationships progress, people move beyond relating as they should be (their roles) to relating as they are and choose to become (as persons).

Third, there is the social context level of relationships. All relationships take place within social contexts. For instance, the social contexts of two people contemplating marriage include their families, friends, acquaintances, cultures, social class, race, religion, and so on. The arenas in which relationships take place provide important social contexts: for instance, homes, schools, workplaces and recreational facilities. An important aspect of such social contexts is that they provide rules and expectations about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.

Relationships as perceptions

All individuals exist in the subjective world of their perceptions (Rogers, 1951, 1975). Your perceptions are your reality. A Chinese proverb states: ‘Two-thirds of what we see is behind our eyes.’ Relationships do not exist independent of people’s perceptions of them. Two people in the same relationship perceive and experience it differently. Thus within a marital relationship, there are her and his relationships as well as our relationship. Your perceptions influence all aspects of your relationships: intrapersonal – for instance, not seeing some negative attribute you possess; interpersonal – seeing only good qualities in someone to whom you are attracted; and social context – the importance you attach to behaving in accordance with your culture.

Two of you in a relationship do not just relate to each other. Instead you relate to your perceptions of yourselves, each other and your relationship. These perceptions are of varying degrees of accuracy. Another way of stating this is that each of you develops a personification of yourself and the other (Sullivan, 1953). These personifications – literally making up or fabricating a person – are the mental maps that guide your relationship journeys. In distressed relationships, misunderstandings can begin and be maintained by partners developing and holding on to distorted pictures or personifications of each other and of themselves (Beck, 1988, 1999).

SOME FACTS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

Marriage and cohabitation

In 2002 the population of the United Kingdom was 59,229 people. Over the past 30 years or so there has been a distinct trend towards a decline in marriages and an increase in cohabitation. In 1976 there were 406,000 marriages in the United Kingdom, whereas in 2001 there were 286,100 marriages. Of the 2001 marriages, approximately 176,000 were first marriages. There is also a trend among those who do get married to marry later: for instance, the median (midpoint in a set of scores) ages for first marriages in 1976 were 25.1 for men and 22.8 for women respectively, whereas these figures in 2001 were 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women (Office for National Statistics, 2003a).

In the early 1990s, approximately 70 of first marriages were preceded by premarital cohabitation compared with approximately 10 per cent in the early 1970s. For those marrying in the 1990s and 1970s, the median duration of premarital cohabitation was about two years and one year respectively. In 1993, over 20 per cent of non-married men and women were cohabiting, compared with under 15 per cent in the mid-1980s (Haskey, 1995). This trend towards cohabitation appears not only to have continued but to have increased. In addition, growing proportions of men and women are living outside a partnership. The younger age groups, particularly those in their twenties, show the greatest changes in patterns of marriage and cohabitation.

In Australia, the population has been growing rapidly: 3.4 million in 1901, 6.6 million in 1942, 10.7 million in 1962 and 19.7 million in 2002 (Trewin, 2004). In 1971, the marriage rate was 9.3 per thousand, with the median age at first marriage for men being 23.8 years and the median age for women 21.4 years. By 2001 the marriage rate to 5.3 per thousand, with the median ages 30.6 and 28.6 for men and women, respectively. The crude marriage rate has been declining since 1970 and this can be mainly attributed to changes in attitudes to marriage and living arrangements that have occurred since then. In 2002, there were nearly one million people in de facto relationships. The rate of premarital cohabitation has risen from below 2 per cent in the 1950s to 71 per cent in 2001 (De Vaus et al., 2003). There is some evidence from Australia that premarital cohabitation does not pose any greater risk of subsequent marriage breakdown than not living together.

Relationship distress

In the last 30 years in Australia, marriage ‘rates have declined, there is less pressure to marry, it is easier to end a damaging relationship, fertility has sharply declined, women can more easily control their fertility, and the participation of women in the (part-time) workforce has steadily increased’ (De Vaus, 2002). The same is true for Britain. Though the proportion of cohabiting people has been rising, most people still get married and expect it to be permanent. However, as Shakespeare wrote: ‘The course of true love never does run smooth.’ In both Britain and Australia the divorce rates are high. In England and Wales, in 1991, there were 306,800 marriages and 158,700 divorces. In 2002, there were 249,200 marriages and 143,800 divorces (Office for National Statistics, 2003b). For both 1991 and 2002, when examining the ratio between marriage and divorce, the falling marriage rate needs to be taken into account, thus making the proportion of divorces seem higher than was the case.

In Australia, the percentage of marriages ending in divorce has greatly increased since the Family Law Act of 1975. This Act stated that there was only one ground for divorce, namely the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage measured as separation of the spouses for at least one year. By 1991, about 40 per cent of Australian marriages ended in divorce (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 1993) and this figure has probably risen to over 45 per cent since then.

The divorce figures underestimate the extent of marital distress and breakdown. If figures for the separated population were added to those of the divorced population to form a ‘dissolution index’, the statistics for marital brea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of activities
• Preface
• 1. What are human relationship skills?
• 2. What are coaching skills?
• 3. Listening skills
• 4. Show understanding skills
• 5. Manage shyness skills
• 6. Choose a relationship skills
• 7. Intimacy skills
• 8. Companionship skills
• 9. Sexual relationship skills
• 10. Assertiveness skills
• 11. Manage anger skills
• 12. Manage relationship problems skills
• 13. End a relationship skills
• 14. Coach yourself
• References
• Name index
• Subject index