Family Conflict Resolution and Communication Coaching

Are you an adult child who has been distant or estranged from your parent(s)?

Are you a parent, and you are distant or estranged from your adult child? 

Are there unresolved or stressful conversations, conflicts, or situations that are interfering with healthy connections between you and your family members?

Are there conflicts that need to be respectfully aired, childhood issues that need to be named, or hurtful dynamics that need to be changed?

Are you part of a family that has complicated stressors, painful divisions, or family-related events that are increasing tensions between family members?

Are there conflicts between two or three family members that are negatively impacting the family as a whole?

Do you want a trained neutral party to help you interrupt unhealthy communication patterns and learn how to address differences and conflicts more respectfully, problem-solve collaboratively, and clearly communicate needs and boundaries?

I work with families that want to address specific issues or family dynamics, and they want guidance to improve their communication and conflict management skills so they can more respectfully address those issues.

Family conflict and communication coaching is for people who want help and guidance with any of the following:

• to be heard
• clear the air
• name your truth and experience about painful and unhealthy interpersonal dynamics
• learn concrete communication strategies and skills to express anger and address conflicts more healthily
• directly address painful interpersonal dynamics and conflicts with a third party present
• shift out of stuck patterns
• develop a more productive communication style
• work together to resolve or manage a problem
• improve relationship connection and increase compassion
• define and clarify healthier boundaries
• sort out and identify your role in the conflicts, take responsibility, and identify what changes you need and are willing to make

Outcomes family members may seek can be different: Family members who choose to do this work typically seek a neutral space to air their grievances, anger, hurt, and perspectives. Some family members may enter the conversations seeking clarity, amends, understanding, acknowledgment, or changed behavior. Other members may want to repair issues to deepen their relationships. Sometimes, family members agree there isn’t a resolution to a conflict so much as a desire for an agreed-upon plan on how to move forward. Sometimes, family members desire a sense of respectful closure because they realize they need to take a break from each other. Some family members want to develop healthier ways of communicating with each other.

I bring a unique perspective and skill set to my family conflict resolution coaching. I incorporate my twenty-nine-plus years of counseling and coaching experience, my relationship and positive psychology coaching skills and training, my master’s degree in counseling, and my certification trainings in trauma, stress management, and family mediation.

My Approach

Coaching humans to build and sustain healthy and honest relationships is a very enjoyable, gratifying, and humbling aspect of my life’s work. I have several years of experience helping adult family members develop stronger and more honest relationships. I offer family members balanced, mediated conversations to address their conflicts and provide guidance, education, and practical tools to help them move forward and build healthier communication patterns.

Three reasons my family conflict communication process is unique and successful:

(1) Intentional individualized preparation with each person on the front end:

Before we meet as a group, I meet individually with each person and listen closely to and address their particular concerns about the process. I want to understand each person’s perspective, needs, and hopes. These individual and confidential appointments also serve to help each family member gain clarity about their specific goals for the outcome of the meetings, discuss their communication strengths and challenges, and identify their specific helpful and unhelpful coping strategies when they feel escalated and upset. Family members report feeling more equipped and ready to enter the family meetings and begin the conflict resolution conversations.

(2) Conflict and communication education and guidance as a family:

We often don’t have the skills or a shared language to express our opinions, perspectives, feelings, and needs or to really listen to others when they express theirs, especially when the situation is emotionally charged. I have developed Family Conflict Communication Guidelines for Engagement that I will teach and ask each family member to follow during our meetings and, ideally, carry forward once our work together is done.

When we meet together as a group, the family will learn and discuss the practical conflict-resolution skills that I ask everyone to agree to. This learning together in real time helps family members develop a common understanding and language for healthier communication throughout the family coaching and thereafter. 

(3) Families choose their timeline for the process:

My family conflict resolution process offers the option of intensive, longer family meetings over a few days or weeks or shorter meetings that are spaced over several weeks or months.

First option: Spacing the meetings out over several weeks: Depending on the size of the family, family meetings are scheduled for 90 minutes each and spaced one to three weeks apart. I request that the participants commit to a minimum of three 90-minute meetings. After we meet together one or two times, I will make recommendations for the number, member composition, frequency, and length of future sessions. Depending on the issues to be addressed, on average, the number of meetings families find helpful is three to eight. 

Second option: Family intensives: This option is a variation of the process previously stated. The main difference is that the meetings are scheduled in three to five-hour blocks (with breaks) and over one or two consecutive days. Depending on the needs of the family, there may be one to three sets of these longer meetings. This option works well if the family members want to really dig into the work, the work is time-sensitive because of an upcoming family event, or it will be challenging to find several overlapping meeting times because of family members’ busy lives or living in different time zones.

My family relationship coaching is interactive, collaborative, educational, and balanced. As your family coach, I will provide feedback, observations, several tools, and practical strategies so you can better understand, talk, argue, problem-solve, and listen to each other—even when you disagree.

In our work together, I will:

• Customize and tailor the process to fit the needs and concerns of your specific family. I do not utilize a cookie-cutter model of interaction or conflict resolution.
• Listen carefully to each of your perspectives about your problems, hopes, needs, and concerns.
• Collaborate with each of you to help create a dynamic, safe, balanced, and comfortable setting for you to address your concerns
• Encourage each of you to envision together the kind of relationships you want
• Help you to resolve the issues that are interfering with your shared vision
• Compassionately and directly guide your family through the hard conversations
• Give feedback about the unproductive and unhealthy communication patterns I observe and offer in-the-moment strategies for more effective communication
• Help you (re)build trust and honesty by learning how to say and hear the hard stuff that otherwise, left unsaid and unheard, erodes connections and builds resentments
• Provide templates, homework, worksheets, handouts, resources, and new ways to look at yourselves and your relationship dynamics.
• Offer boundary-setting tips and specific language to convey needs and perspectives
• Provide your family with a written summary of our work together that includes the changes everyone has agreed to make and the healthier communication strategies you as a family are willing to incorporate moving forward.

The steps of the coaching process:

1. At the beginning of my work with your family (before we all meet as a group), I will meet with each of you individually for a free and confidential 30-minute Zoom consultation. These meetings give us the opportunity to meet and briefly discuss the coaching process.
2. If we all agree to move forward, the next step is for each family member to meet with me individually for a 50-minute appointment. In preparation for these appointments, I will design and distribute a list of written question prompts about folks’ goals and hopes for the all-family meetings.
3. In these one-on-one meetings, in addition to discussing the prompt questions, we will also review the communication guidelines I have developed: Family Conflict Guidelines for Engagement During the Family Group Meetings.
4. After the individual meetings, we will schedule the first three all-family meetings. Each member of the family will receive the meeting agendas and a description of the process.
5. Resources: I supply each family member with several communication and conflict-resolution resources, templates, and handouts. I will also include a carefully curated list of books, articles, podcasts, etc., about family conflict and estrangement from the perspectives of the parents and the adult children. 
6. The meetings will combine discussions of the topics each person has identified with opportunities to implement the conflict resolution communication guidelines. Depending on the nature of the conflicts and the number of family members involved, I will make recommendations regarding more meetings, or the family may choose to meet for more meetings.

Next Steps: If you are interested in more information or want each family member to schedule their complimentary 30-minute consultation, contact form: Irene Greene MSED

Other points and logistics:

• The outcome of the meetings is determined by the parties involved.
• The meetings are held on Zoom, using their HIPPA-compliant web and video conferencing platform.
• I work with families whose members live in different parts of the USA and beyond. (Before telehealth became a common communication tool, family members would fly to Minneapolis for weekend intensives and meet here in my offices.)
• The meetings are typically scheduled Monday – Friday during regular business hours CST. Evening or weekend meetings are also possible.
• Family conflict coaching is not family therapy, mediation, relationship counseling, or group counseling.

If you are interested in more information or want to schedule your complimentary 30-minute consultation, contact form: Irene Greene MSED

Irene Greene MSED’s Relationship-Related Coaching Certifications & Trainings

• Clinical Foundations in Gottman Method Couples Therapy, Levels I and II, The Gottman Institute, 2021

• Emotion Coaching: The Heart of Parenting, The Gottman Institute, 2021

• PREPARE/ENRICH Facilitator Certification, 2021

• Post-Graduate Certificate in Positive Psychology Well-Being Coaching (PPWBC) National Board Certification Training Program, College of Executive Coaching, 2016 – 2018
• Relationship Coach Certification (RCC), International Association of Professional Relationship Coaches, 2016 – 2017
• Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional (CCFP), 2016 – 2017, International Association of Trauma Professionals, Sarasota FLA
• The Power of Mindfulness as Practice Certification, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., 2016 – 2017
• Family Mediation Certification within the State of MN, Argosy University

To learn about the individual and relationship, group, and training services offered by Irene Greene MSED or to schedule your complimentary 30-minute consultation, contact form for Irene Greene