Coaching Tips

Coaching tips are tactics, techniques, questions, and other useful tools that coaches have discovered in the coaching process.  If you have a Coaching Tip and would like to share it with everyone, send it to MarriageTeam and we will add it to the page.  Updates will be made on a periodic basis.

Coaching Tips From Marriage Team

You don’t need to have the answers, just the questions.
Resist the urge to give advice. Coach couples are not expected to the answers. What works for you might not work for your team. CMarriage coaches guide the team to discover its own solutions by facilitating the coaching process.

When you do not know what to say, ask a question.
Your careful observations and insights will enable you to ask questions that can have a significant impact. If you’re really stuck, you could ask, “What could we ask that would be most helpful to you right now?”

You cannot fix a couple’s marriage.
You are creating an environment where teammates can reconnect and work on their issues so each one feels understood and has an opportunity to contribute to a solution.  If a relationship fails to improve or the couple decides to divorce, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

You are the mirror to reflect the team’s relationship back to them.
Coaches must be tough and identify the “elephants” in the room. Call it to the team’s attention as an observation and give them an opportunity to work on it in a safe environment.

All questions lead to the main issue facing the team.
This truism pertains to the marital inventory that each couple takes. We have found that it does not matter what question you ask in a given content area, the team’s discussion will very quickly gravitate to the main issue that is frustrating at least one of the players in that area and probably in the whole relationship.

Coaching Tips from Coaches

Follow the emotions. Paul and Cheryl Lantz
The emotions will lead to the root cause of the issues that the couple are facing.  Do not be afraid to have them get in touch with their feelings and share them with each other.

Put on the big boy/girl pants. Gordon and Lorna Dobberstein
This is a light hearted way of telling a teammate to buck up and do his or her part.  It can be shared as a direct observation or as a witness about a time when the coach had to take the right actions instead of letting his or her emotions control the response.