J Health Behav Med Hist 2025-19
Coaching in practice: The relational interaction techniques that shape the alliance
Robert C. van de Graaf, MD
Director, MEDTCC Institute for Health, Behaviour, Medicine and its History, The Netherlands
Abstract
This second paper in the series on Interaction Techniques (ITs) explores the relational dimension of coaching. While structure provides clarity and direction, relationship provides safety and trust. Relational interaction techniques shape the emotional and communicative field in which behavioural change becomes possible. Integrating insights from coaching, psychotherapy, and communication theory, the paper argues that relationship is not a personality trait or coincidence but a set of learnable professional actions that sustain connection, regulate tension, and transform dialogue into alliance.
Introduction: relationship as context
Coaching is often described in terms of questions, models, and interventions. Yet beneath these visible techniques lies something quieter and more powerful: the relationship between coach and client. It is within this relational space that safety arises, reflection deepens, and new behaviour takes root. A well-designed structure may create order, but relationship gives it life.
Relational interaction techniques form the second cluster in the model of effective coaching interactions [Dijkstra, et al., 2025]. They focus on the quality of the connection—how coach and client meet, listen, and respond to each other. Just as structural ITs provide the external framework, relational ITs provide the emotional framework: the felt sense of safety, mutual respect, and shared purpose that underpins the coaching process.
Relationship as the medium of change
The relationship between coach and client is not an accessory to the process—it is the process. Change occurs through interaction, and every interaction carries emotional and cognitive meaning. When trust is present, clients explore more freely, tolerate discomfort better, and engage more deeply in reflection. When trust is absent, defensiveness rises and learning collapses.
Research across helping professions consistently shows that the quality of the working alliance is among the strongest predictors of success. This alliance rests on three interdependent elements: bond (emotional trust and empathy), goal (shared purpose), and task (collaboration on agreed activities). Relational ITs sustain these elements through deliberate, moment-to-moment action.
They are not abstract attitudes such as “being nice” or “showing interest,” but professional behaviours—forms of listening, attunement, and presence that translate goodwill into reliability and empathy into safety. Relationship, in this view, is an active practice rather than a passive state.
The function of relational interaction techniques
Relational ITs regulate the emotional and communicative field in which all other techniques operate. Their effects can be understood on three levels.
Creating safety
At the foundation of every coaching relationship lies psychological safety. Clients must feel accepted, respected, and seen before they can take risks. Relational ITs establish this safety not by promise but by consistency: the coach’s tone, timing, and responsiveness signal reliability. Safety allows the nervous system to relax, making curiosity and openness possible.
Maintaining Connection
As the process unfolds, tensions naturally emerge. Doubt, frustration, or ambivalence are part of change. Relational ITs maintain connection through these moments by modulating emotional intensity, recognising resistance, and preventing rupture. Connection is not the absence of tension but the ability to stay in contact while navigating it.
Enabling Influence
Once safety and connection are established, the relationship becomes a medium of influence. The client allows themselves to be guided, confronted, or challenged precisely because the relational foundation has proven trustworthy. Through this channel, behaviour change techniques can do their work effectively. Without it, even the most powerful BCTs lose traction.
Thus, relational ITs are not about warmth or empathy alone—they are about effectiveness. They transform coaching from a series of conversations into a living system of co-regulation and collaboration.
Relational presence and professional distance
Relational work requires both closeness and distance. Too much closeness risks over-identification; too much distance creates detachment. Relational ITs guide coaches in maintaining this balance.
Professional warmth is not the same as personal involvement. It means being emotionally available while maintaining clear boundaries around the coaching role. Clients sense authenticity in this balance: the coach is fully present but not absorbed, empathic yet steady. This allows emotions to emerge safely without overwhelming either party.
Relational ITs thus sustain both connection and containment—holding the emotional field of the conversation within respect and steadiness. The relationship becomes a vessel strong enough to contain complexity, resistance, and insight.
From rapport to alliance
Many beginning coaches equate a good relationship with pleasant rapport—a sense of comfort or friendliness. But rapport alone is not enough. The coaching alliance is more than liking each other; it is a working partnership built on equality, honesty, and shared purpose.
Relational ITs move the relationship beyond comfort toward collaboration. Through transparency, reflection, and attuned communication, the coach invites shared ownership of the process. Responsibility becomes mutual: both contribute to direction, both can voice discomfort, both adjust the course.
This shift from rapport to alliance marks the transition from personal connection to professional effectiveness. It turns conversation into cooperation and empathy into agency.
The neurobiology of connection
The effectiveness of relational ITs is rooted in the body as much as in the mind. Human communication is a biological process of co-regulation: tone, eye contact, and posture signal safety or threat long before words are processed.
When a coach listens with genuine presence, the client’s nervous system perceives calm. The parasympathetic system activates, and cognitive functions—reflection, problem-solving, creativity—become accessible again.
This is why relational ITs cannot be faked. Clients respond not only to content but to signal. Authenticity matters because the body recognises congruence. The coach’s grounded presence, consistent timing, and attuned rhythm create a physiological environment in which change can occur. Relational work is therefore both psychological and biological: it allows the client’s system to move from defence to openness.
The coach as relational instrument
If structure is about designing the space, relationship is about inhabiting it. The coach becomes the primary instrument of interaction. Every gesture, pause, and expression shapes the atmosphere.
Relational competence requires self-awareness. Coaches must observe and regulate their own emotional responses in real time. This reflexive capacity—to stay centred while attending to another—is not innate but trainable, developing through reflection, supervision, and experience.
Mature coaches read not only what clients say but how they say it—the tempo, tone, and micro-expressions that reveal underlying states. Responding appropriately to these cues integrates empathy with discernment and transforms listening into influence.
Relationship within the broader interactional context
Like structure, relationship cannot stand alone. The four clusters of interaction techniques are interdependent. Structure gives shape; relationship gives warmth; motivation provides energy; ability ensures focus and readiness.
Without structure, relationship drifts into sentimentality. Without relationship, structure becomes mechanical. Together they form the lower foundation of the coaching process—the physical and emotional architecture in which motivation and ability can develop.
Relational ITs do not replace structure; they animate it. They transform a designed space into a lived space—a place where trust and collaboration can take form.
Conclusion: connection as craft
Coaching succeeds not only because of the tools it uses but because of the quality of the space between people. Relational interaction techniques shape that space. They create trust, sustain connection, and transform dialogue into alliance.
For the beginning coach, the lesson is simple but profound:
relationship is not something you have—it is something you do.
Every interaction, from the first greeting to the last reflection, is an opportunity to strengthen or weaken the alliance. The coach’s task is to cultivate relational presence as deliberately as any other technique—with awareness, practice, and care.
Just as structure provides the skeleton of coaching, relationship provides its heartbeat. Together, they form the living foundation upon which motivation and ability to be coached can thrive.
References
Dijkstra A, Van de Graaf RC, Kootstra Y. Hét praktijkboek voor de leefstijlcoach. Evidence-based technieken voor langdurige leefstijlverandering. Academie coaching en leefstijl 2025.