FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What kinds of family challenges can Bowen Theory help with?

Bowen Family Systems Theory has proven useful in many family challenges such as parenting, couple relationships, and relating to aging parents and in-laws.

1) Parenting challenges including symptoms in children, conflict with children, worries about children, and the challenges of step-parenting.

2) Couples challenges including marital dissatisfaction, conflict, distance, resentment, and couples where one spouse is ill.

3) Problems between parents and adult offspring including distance, blame and conflict, the challenge of in-laws, and aging parents.

What kinds of business challenges can Bowen Theory help with?

1) Leadership development
2) Succession planning
3) Emotions in family business
4) Vital mentoring
5) Employee retention
6) Developing an emotionally mature team

What is coaching guided by Bowen Theory like?

Coaching guided by Bowen Theory emphasizes seeing the problem in new ways, using a broader systems lens. It guides people to take responsibility for their own emotional experience and their part in a complex interaction. It offers a way to engage in disciplined thinking about the nature of a relationship challenge, followed by disciplined action that is focused on managing self. It emphasizes gaining a multi-generational viewpoint on the family or business. It commonly recommends supplemental reading and education in Bowen theory. It seeks to evoke an atmosphere wherein creative solutions to the problem can emerge. It can help people discern ways they are unknowingly contributing to problem behaviors in others and helps them create a list of things to avoid doing that stimulate the very behaviors they are trying to get others to stop.

What kinds of questions do coaches guided by Bowen Theory commonly ask?

A few examples are:

1) What are people up against when dealing with you?
2) What is your best thinking about the nature of the problem and how it has evolved?
3) How does your emotional reactivity display itself?
4) What are you doing that simulates emotional reactivity in those associated with you?