As a resilience coach my goal is to help people navigate life’s challenges so they can shift from merely surviving to thriving. We do this, together, by focusing on building resilience – the ability to face challenges head on, stay focused, and bounce back from adversity stronger. By listening to my clients' questions and concerns, empowering them with an environment that encourages their strengths, holds them accountable, and limits interference, and reflecting through feedback, I guide them in their journey toward the life they desire. Working in service of others is truly rewarding work that has a lasting impact. However, it can quickly become exhausting work both physically and emotionally draining.
In coaching, it is easy to overlook the importance of our own need for that same guidance and support that we provide our clients. This is especially true in the realm of resilience coaching where the nature of the work we do often revolves around subjects such as grief and trauma. To mitigate these effects, it becomes crucial for resilience coaches (and really any coach) to seek out our own mentors who can assist in continuing to foster and improve our individual resilience. Inevitably we will face hardships in our own work, whether personal or professional, that could impact our ability to coach our clients efficiently. A responsible and ethical coach, then, would need a safe space to address these issues; mentorship provides that avenue.
A mentor is an invaluable tool in any coach's arsenal. Meeting with a mentor regularly allows coaches to work on their resilience skills so they can see opportunities within the setbacks they may face, and how these can help them grow. A dedicated mentor can ask probing questions to gain clarity, provide a different perspective, help us sort through potential opportunities or solutions, and encourage us to rely on our strengths to assist us in pulling through. Not only does this make us better apt to support our clients but it empowers us to handle our own personal challenges effectively as well. What better way to show our clients the importance of having a coach in their lives than having one of our own? Leading by example.
Mentor Interview:
Acknowledging the importance of mentorship and resilience, I had the opportunity to chat with Lisa Michelle Smith last week to discuss her unique approach to resilience with her clients. Lisa is an award winning brain-based trainer and coach based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, focusing on brain-based training and positive intelligence. Speaking on resilience based work specifically, Smith notes that the focus should be on guiding clients to “direct their negative energy from being destructive to constructive.” Smith works with senior-level female leaders and their teams who may be experiencing performance issues, internal conflict, loss of key players, low or negative morale, etc. Her success in assisting her clients in handling these “people problems” comes from implementing proven strategies that utilize neuroscience techniques and tools such as the Positive Intelligence Framework and Emotional Freedom Techniques. She emphasized her connection with another renowned local coach, Suzan Thompson, a proponent of the Emotional Freedom Technique within resilience coaching. For Smith, Thompson’s introduction to the Emotional Freedom Technique provided her another neuroscience based approach to aiding her clients in achieving resilience. Lisa’s insights highlight the potential for professional and personal growth and development that having the right mentor can provide.
Next, I will highlight another local mentor interview and her insights regarding mentorship and resilience!
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