Enhancing Personal, Relational, Professional, and Community Change for Socially Conscious Humans

Friend Conflicts

Friend Conflict Resolution and Communication Coaching

Are there unresolved stressful differences that are interfering with healthy and honest connections between you and a friend?

Are there conflicts that need to be respectfully aired, issues that need to be named, or boundaries that need to be clarified?

Do you and your friend have social-political differences that are interfering with your connection, and you don’t know what to do about it?

Are there unhealthy communication patterns that need to be identified and changed?

Are there conflicts between two or three friends that are negatively impacting your friend group?

Have you and your friend reached the point where you are willing to invest the time, emotional discomfort, and effort into addressing your differences? 

Do you want a trained and highly experienced neutral party to help you and your friends problem-solve collaboratively?

Do you want to work with someone who is trauma-informed, respectful and affirming of a variety of friendship and relationship configurations, and knowledgeable and affirming of the intersectional dynamics of marginalized communities, including those that involve gender, sexual identity, race, class, and physical ability?

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

  • to be heard
  • to learn how to understand the other’s experience even when it differs from yours
  • clear the air
  • name your truth and experience about painful interpersonal dynamics
  • learn concrete communication strategies and skills to respectfully express anger and address conflicts
  • 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
  • address or resolve differences and together, figure out your next steps
  • redefine or transition your friendship to move forward together or intentionally go your separate ways
  • interrupt unhealthy communication patterns
  • address differences and conflicts more respectfully
  • clearly communicate needs and boundaries

For more information, contact Irene Greene MSED

Various outcomes the participants may seek: Friends who choose to do this work typically seek a neutral space to air their grievances, anger, hurt, and perspectives. Some may want help identifying unhealthy communication patterns and an opportunity to learn new communication strategies. Some folks may enter the conversations seeking clarity, amends, understanding, acknowledgment, or changed behavior. Others may want help to repair wrong-doings in their friendship. Sometimes, folks agree there isn’t a resolution to a conflict so much as a desire for an agreed-upon plan on how to try to move forward. Sometimes, participants desire a sense of respectful closure because they realize they need to take a break from each other or transition out of the friendship. Some folks want to end their friendship and seek a space to meaningfully honor their memories and connection. Some folks aren’t exactly sure what they want, but they know they want to try to reduce the stress and tension.

My relationship coaching is interactive, collaborative, educational, and balanced. As your conflict resolution 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.

I work with adults who want to respectfully address their conflicts and they want guidance to improve their communication and conflict management skills.

Conflict and communication coaching for different types of relationships: I offer conflict resolution coaching for families, friends, and partners.

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 adults develop stronger and more honest relationships. I offer  a time-tested, balanced, and objective structure and intentional process to address conflicts and provide guidance, education, and practical tools to help people in conflict move forward and build healthier communication patterns.

 

Three reasons my 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 their particular hopes and concerns about the process. I want to understand each person’s perspective and needs. These individual and confidential appointments also serve to help each person 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. Participants report feeling more equipped and ready to enter the meetings and begin the conflict resolution conversations.

(2) Joint conflict and communication education and guidance:

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 Conflict Communication Guidelines for Engagement that I will teach and ask each participant to follow during our meetings and, ideally, carry forward once our work together is done. I supply each person with a packet of communication and conflict-resolution templates, tips, and articles.

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

(3) The participants choose their timeline for the process:

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

First option: Spacing shorter meetings out over several weeks: Depending on the size of the friendship circle seeking coaching, the 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 six. 

Second option: longer intensive meetings over a shorter period of time: 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 and over two to three consecutive days. This option works well if the friends want to really dig into the work, the work is time-sensitive because of an upcoming event, or it will be challenging to find several overlapping meeting times because of participants’ busy lives or living in different time zones.

For more information, contact Irene Greene MSED

I bring a unique perspective and skill set to my conflict resolution coaching. I incorporate my twenty-nine-plus years of counseling and relationship 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.

In our work together, I will:

  • Customize and tailor the process to fit the needs and concerns of your specific situation. 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 relationship you want
  • Help you to resolve the issues that are interfering with your shared vision
  • Compassionately and directly guide you 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

Next Steps: If you are interested in more information or to schedule each person’s complimentary 30-minute consultation, contact 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 friends and families whose members live in different parts of the USA and beyond. (Before telehealth became a common communication tool, participants 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.
  • Conflict resolution coaching is not family or couples therapy, mediation, relationship counseling, or group counseling.

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