This week has been really busy, really helpful and a bit challenging. My new colleague started this week which was wonderful and spending most of the week working with the wonderful and enthusiastic Amy has been so restorative. This week though has challenged me, firstly making sure I provided Amy with the support and direction she needed, was my first concern. She has been very proactive so that did make the first 2 days easier, however concentrating on Amy meant that some of my normal activity had to take a back seat, which means I am still catching up (mostly with emails). Secondly I have been doing a lot of delivery and facilitation this week, which always takes up a lot of my energy. I am naturally quite introverted to delivering training and facilitating team events does take up a lot of energy, and I always find myself ruminating about how I have performed. Thirdly I had my staff support commitment, visiting one of our wards that are still feeling the affects the pandemic. On Tuesday I spent 2 hours talking with two lovely nurses about their experiences and feelings. The whole week was in many ways really satisfying , however it did takes it toll. The toll is taken from delivering training and team facilitation. It always boils down to rumination over my performance and how I am perceived by others. I have noticed this is more profound delivering and facilitating virtually via video. Which I suppose is no surprise, as you just don’t get the rich feedback when you deliver in person. Saying that I use up a lot of energy when delivering in person too, as Amy witnessed this week (I do get a bit needy, before and after).
All this personal rumination got me thinking about my Connected Living podcast and my approach to coaching. Since I wrote the outline of this podcast and coaching offer, I have learned a lot about myself and others when faced with the challenges that all of us have confronted over the past 2 years. As a lot of you will remember last year I conducted a small piece of research on the reflections of leaders during the pandemic. The data I have collected has been really useful for me personally, although so far there has been no surprises it has confirmed what I thought and backed up what I have read around leadership and personal resilience. When I apply these findings to my connected living approach, along with elements of acceptance commitment theory, I realised that connected living as a coaching framework, and a framework for personal improvement it was too complicated.
So I have come up with a simplified model that takes into account the successful strategies used by leaders during a crisis along with elements of evidence based coaching. I have outlined the elements below, over the next few weeks I will write an updated podcast and record it. I will also do a series of webinars I will put on my facebook page. If you are interested in making some changes to your life then email or message me to arrange a discovery meeting to see if being coached by me will make the difference you need.
Connected Living: Value Based Living
- Connecting to your story: Listening to and understanding, your thoughts and emotions, where they are from and what they are telling you.
- Connecting with what you value: Identifying your core values.
- Connecting to the present: Learning to be mindful. Differentiating between your observing self and your doing self. Practicing noticing and letting go thoughts and feelings.
- Connecting with is helpful and disconnecting what is unhelpful: Appraising thoughts and emotions and keeping those that serve you well.
- Connecting with your future: Making value based changes that serve you well to make a long lasting difference to your life.
If this resonates with you and sounds like this could make a difference to you, watch this space a podcast and webinars will be here soon.
If you are interested in working with me to realise the changes you want to make to your life, and you are willing to commit the time you need to truly make a difference to your life, email me and lets see if we can work together.
Connected Coaching 