Sawsan has her notebook open on her knee and her best opening question ready, the one from her module on agreements.
"So," she says. "What would you like to have by the end of our time today?"
Her younger sister Taghreed, curled at the other end of a sofa in Al Qusais with a bowl of pistachios, looks at her for a long second and laughs.
"You're doing the voice."
Sawsan laughs too. Then they settle in, and for twenty minutes it goes well. Taghreed has been offered a promotion that would move her to Riyadh, and she can't decide. Sawsan asks good questions. She leaves good silences. She writes down three of Taghreed's sentences word for word.
Then Taghreed says, "And you'd miss me, wouldn't you?"
"Of course I would," Sawsan says, before she can stop herself, and the session quietly turns into a conversation between sisters.
Sawsan and Taghreed are composites, and four words were enough to turn a coaching session back into a family one.
Can you coach friends and family?
You can, but it's rarely the best place to start. Coaching someone you're close to puts two relationships into one conversation, and the older one usually wins. In our experience, it can work for short, agreed practice on everyday topics, and it tends to go wrong on decisions where the coach has something at stake.
The question comes up for almost every trainee, and for an obvious reason. You need people to practise with, and friends and relatives tend to say yes fastest.
If you're about to start training, or still deciding where, put that decision to an RS Method Master Practitioner. The call is free, it asks whether either of our programmes suits you, and by the apply page's reckoning it runs "Approximately 20 to 40 minutes". Request a free call. Or read on.
What does the ICF Code of Ethics say about coaching people you know?
The Code's word for this ground is conflict of interest. It defines one as "a situation in which an ICF professional is involved in multiple interests where serving one interest could work against or conflict with another."
Standard 3.1 asks coaches to "discuss with all involved parties the implications of having multiple agreements and relationships, and the potential for conflicts of interest." Standard 3.3 names three ways through when a conflict arises: "working through the issue with relevant parties, seeking professional assistance, or suspending or ending the professional relationship."
These quotes are from the 2025 ICF Code of Ethics, as our guide to the ICF Code set them out after checking coachingfederation.org on 19 October 2026.
Read with a sister in mind, standard 3.1 describes the situation from the first minute. She's a sister before she's a client, and she'll still be one long after the coaching ends. What the Code asks is that you say so out loud, together, before you begin, and that you agree what you'll both do if the two relationships start pulling against each other.
That's harder than it sounds, because the person you'd have the conversation with is the person you least want to disappoint.
What tends to go wrong when you coach someone close?
In our experience, the same five things, in roughly this order.
You want an answer. Sawsan would like Taghreed to stay in Dubai. She'd never say so in a session, and she doesn't need to: it leaks into which sentences she writes down and which questions she asks next. A coach with a preference about the outcome is steering, however gently.
The session follows you home. What a sister says on the sofa on Thursday is still in the room at the family lunch on Friday. You know it, she knows you know it, and one of you will be careful for a long time.
The client can't fire you. A paying stranger who finds the sessions unhelpful can say so and stop. A friend usually keeps coming, to be kind, and the coaching turns into a favour you're both doing for each other.
Old roles come back. Coaching asks the coach to stand alongside. Families have usually settled long ago who leads, who advises and who gets advised, and a sofa is full of those arrangements.
The hours question arrives late. Trainees often realise only afterwards that they'd like to count these sessions toward a credential. Check before you log anything. Our ICF certification page puts the requirement as "Hours you log coaching real people" and says, "Requirements also change from time to time, so verify current ones with ICF before you apply."
None of this means you can never coach someone you know. It means the coaching has to be agreed more carefully than with a stranger, not less. The parts to agree, in writing, are set out in our coaching agreement template.
Why is it so hard to stay a coach with your own sister?
Sawsan has been the level one in her family for as long as anyone can remember. When an argument starts at dinner, she leans against it until it settles. When someone talks about a big change, she's the voice that wonders, kindly, whether it's wise.
She's the family's ballast. Whenever anyone leans hard one way, she leans the other until the boat sits level again, and she does it without deciding to.
On the sofa, Taghreed leaned toward Riyadh. Sawsan's questions didn't push her back, exactly. They just kept arriving from the other side of the boat: "And what would you miss here?" "How would Mum take it?" She didn't choose that. The ballast moved on its own.
That weight was never Taghreed's to carry. It's Sawsan's to put down, and when she's free of it, a sister can lean as far toward Riyadh as she likes, and the questions stop arriving from the other side of the boat. Sawsan can ask one that leans nowhere, and stay where she is.
Sawsan's leaning is the kind of material our Inner Work First principle is about: the practitioner is transformed before the practitioner is trained. Riyadh is a decision for her sister; the leaning is Sawsan's own work.
Where you train shapes the coach you become, so it's a choice worth talking through. The free call is a conversation with an RS Method Master Coach about whether that place should be RSCI. Choose when to talk.
How do you decide whether to coach a friend or relative?
Run a closeness check before you say yes. Allow fifteen minutes, alone, with a page.
One note first. Coaching isn't therapy or medical care. This check isn't either. If the person asking is under a doctor's care, or in recovery, all of that carries on: the doctor, the programme, the people around them. Any coaching, from you or anyone else, sits alongside it and never replaces it. If what they're carrying sounds like more than a coaching question, our guide on when to refer a coaching client to therapy covers how to raise it with care.
- Write what they want to work on, in their words. If you can't, ask them before you go any further.
- Write the outcome you'd prefer. Be specific. If you have one, circle it. That circle is your conflict of interest, in your own handwriting.
- Picture the next time you're together after session three. Write one thing you might know by then that you'd have to keep to yourself at that table, or that walk, or that lunch.
- Ask yourself whether they could stop the coaching easily. Then ask them directly: "If this isn't helping, would you tell me, and stop?"
- Decide the frame. If steps 2 and 3 were clear, agree a short run of practice sessions on an everyday topic, with confidentiality spelt out, including what stays out of family conversation.
- Agree the way out before you start. How either of you can end it, kindly, without it costing the relationship.
- If step 2 or 3 worried you, refer. Offer a name, not only a no: another coach you trust, or a coursemate who's further along. Then go back to being what you were to them before.
You'll find the circle in step 2 more often than you'd like. Treat it as information, not failure.
Is RSCI a good place to learn the line between coaching and closeness?
Three things are worth asking of any training. Our answers are below.
- Boundaries taught as part of the craft. Our training page's description of RS Method Complete includes "understanding the boundaries of professional coaching practice".
- Practice inside the programme, with supervision. Supervised practice is built into both programmes, and RS Method Complete's list includes "Advanced supervised practice", so early practice happens where a supervisor can see it, not only on a relative's sofa.
- An ICF route built into the price. RS Method Coach carries ICF Level 1 education, which points to the ACC; Level 2 sits in RS Method Complete, pointing to the ACC or, later, the PCC. The ICF-accredited education inside our programmes is designed, delivered and certified by the Institute of Coaching and Mentoring (IICM), an ICF-accredited organisation. The ACC and PCC credentials are awarded only by the ICF.
Each fee is published with ICF education included: AED 18,000 for RS Method Coach, and AED 35,000 for RS Method Complete.
Whoever sits in the client's chair, we train coaches to one standard. To witness. To hold. To walk them home.
Mais Mohammed, from her own RS Method story: "The best decision I took for myself in my entire life."
The steps from coach-specific training to logged hours, mentor coaching and the exam are laid out on our ICF certification in Dubai page.
Robert Simic, training the next generation.
P.S. Coaching a sister and coaching a stranger use the same questions and very different nerves. The road from training to an ICF credential is mapped on our ICF certification in Dubai page.