Last Thoughts on Resilience

This is the last of my posts on resilience, for now at least. Hopefully these posts have given you chance to better understand the concept of resilience and how it applies to careers. You should have some tools now to explore resilience with your clients and find out what strengths they have that they could amplify, and also ways that they might be vulnerable or not making best use of their resources. You should be able to help your client prepare to deal with setbacks, change, problems and uncertainty. You will have some ideas about how to help them develop more resilience thinking habits.

I would like to leave you with mnemonic developed by Helen McGrath, and introduced to me by Jayne North.

• B – Bad times don’t last, and things get better.
• O – Other people can only help if you share with them.
• U – Unhelpful thinking only makes you feel worse.
• N – Nobody is perfect – not you, not your friends, not your family, not anybody!
• C – Concentrate on the good things in life, no matter how small.
• E – Everybody suffers, everybody feels pain and experiences setbacks; they are a normal part of life.
• B – Blame fairly – negative events are often a combination of things you did, things others did, and plain bad luck.
• A – Accept what you can’t change and try to change what you can.
• C – Catastrophising makes things worse – don’t fall prey to believing in the worst interpretation.
• K – Keep things in perspective. Even the worst moment is but one moment in life.

If you want to explore the concept of resilience more, and try out some techniques from positive psychology and cognitive behavioural coaching in a small supportive group, do join me for a two hour workshop on the 5th July 2021.

In the workshop, there will be a chance to meet on Zoom with like-minded career professionals in a small and supportive group, and to discuss how career resilience applies to your clients. There will be a chance to explore ideas from positive psychology, and to practice some techniques from cognitive behavioural coaching in small break out groups and then feedback. There will also be a video with some background theory to watch in advance and keep.

Further Reading:

If you would like to read further, there are lots of interesting books on the topic of resilience, though not so many on career resilience.

Liane Hambly and I include a couple of chapters on resilience in our book, “Creative Career Coaching: Theory Into Practice”. One chapter explores developing career resilience with clients, and the other looks at building our own resilience as career practitioners.

“Luck is No Accident” by Krumboltz and Levine is an excellent introduction to Planned Happenstance, and although they don’t mention resilience particularly, this approach is in many ways all about building resilience.

Donald Robertson’s Build Your Resilience is a great introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and how both approaches can be used to build resilience. It’s written as a self-help book, but there is a lot you can take and use with clients, and it is very grounded in theory.

Martin Seligman is a father of the Positive Psychology movement, and so has to be worth a read. He has many books, but the one that I found quite life changing when I first read it was “Learned Optimism”.

Planned Happenstance and Resilience

The concept of Planned Happenstance is particularly useful when we are trying to help our clients plan to be more resilient, since it helps people to proactively plan for an unknown future. Planned Happenstance is an approach (developed by Krumbotz, Levine and Mitchell) that enables us to help customers take advantage of unplanned events.  Just has bad things can happen that test our resilience, so too, good things happen, but sometimes we are not ready to take advantage of them.

“Happenstance” refers to things that happen to us without us planning.  They might include meeting someone on a train, being in the right place at the right time, stumbling across an interesting job advert, having the right skills for a new work project, volunteering that turns into paid work, or the hobby that becomes a little business.“Planned” refers to all the actions we can take that increase our changes of these good things happening to us.  We can do lots of planning without actually knowing what the end goal or result will be.

Actions to increase our changes of positive, unplanned things happening to us include:

• Learning new skills
• Meeting new people
• Being active on social mediaT
• aking up new hobbies
• Researching things we are curious about
• Getting work experience
• Doing evening classes
• Doing volunteer or community work
• Taking up leadership roles
• Getting involved in work projects
• Doing secondments, internships or sandwich years
• Getting out of our comfort zones
• Trying again when we fail the first time
• Travelling
• Telling teachers/bosses about our ideas and dreams.

After all, lucky things don’t tend to happen when you sitting on the couch! Think for a moment about the last time something lucky happened to you in your career. What were you doing that made that lucky thing more likely to happen?

Perhaps you were friendly and got chatting to someone, and they offered you an opportunity.  Maybe you made the effort to learn a new skill, and a project or job came along where you could make use of that skills.  Perhaps you got a job as a result of work experience or voluntary work.  Maybe you were taking the trouble to flip through job adverts, a college prospectus or local newspaper.  Perhaps you were researching something you were interested in.  Maybe you were doing a leisure activity when you came across an opportunity. The chances are you were doing something proactive, even if it was just chatting to a stranger at a party.

Important characteristics for those who want to take a planned happenstance approach include:

• Courage,
• Curiosity,
• Optimism
• Humour
• Energy
• Friendliness. 

For more on this subject, do check out Krumbottz and Levine’s book, “Luck is No Accident”.

Action Planning

When we are action planning with our customers, we should help them identify actions that will build their resilience.  These actions could include:

• Asking for support
• Talking to people about their plans
• Researching a back-up plan
• Applying for more than one course or job
• Getting internet and computer access
• Learning to drive, lift share, use public transport or cycle
• Learning new skills
• Keeping up with digital technology
• Knowing what opportunities are available.
• Developing a “side-line”
• Building a profile on Linkedin and other social media
• Practicing positive thinking habits
• Managing feelings
• Raising their profile
• Developing relationships

The actions need to be meaningful to the client, so that they can see how taking these actions will put them in a better position if things don’t work out as planned or if there are sudden changes beyond their control. Building resilience may be part of long-term planning for an unknown future, as well as dealing with immediate challenges. Even when things are going well, building resilience can help your clients to stretch themselves and take sensible risks to reach their full potential.

The more transferable skills your client can develop, the more easily they can change direction if they need to, or find a new opportunity.  Having up-to-date skills, particularly digital skills, makes all of us less vulnerable to finding ourselves no longer needed in the workplace. Transferable skills are skills that can be used in many different jobs, sectors, organisations and situations.

To illustrate, here is an example of a client who didn’t put in place the building blocks of resilience. Steve had been working in a large finance firm for the past 25 years.  He had reached a level where he was fairly content, and intended to work there until he retired.  He didn’t enjoy learning new things, and he had not voluntarily taken part in any work place learning for the last 5 years.  He had the option to become qualified as a financial adviser or accounting technician, but didn’t take it up.   He finds new digital technology difficult, and this often caused him some stress but he felt that if he were to go on a course, they would be going too fast and he wouldn’t be able to keep up.  He liked talking to customers, but now more and more meetings take place on digital platforms and he didn’t feel comfortable with this. There is now talk of redundancies, as a restructure is planned for twelve months time.  Steve is now panicking because he is too young to retire at 52, but feels he isn’t in a good position to get another job. 

Even though Steve hasn’t done much to build his resilience, it’s not too late for him. A career development professional could help him develop a more optimistic attitude to the situation and remind himself firstly that he may not be made redundant, and secondly that he has time to develop his skills and be in a good position to get another job. They could then work with Steve to help him get on a course to improve his digital skills, and possibly access other training that would give him skills that are in demand. They could also help him develop his job search skills and develop a good CV, and find out where suitable vacancies tend to be advertised. He could gather some information about other companies he might like to work in. Finally, they could help him to reach out to people who might support him, both professionally and among his friends and family.

Transpersonal Approaches to Spiritual Resilience

Transpersonal simply means beyond the individual.  Transpersonal coaching is an approach that focuses more on deeper meanings, higher purpose or how we connect to the wider aspects of humanity, the cycle of life or the universe as a whole.  It’s a shift from an “all about me” mindset to a collaborative approach.   Transpersonal coaching focuses on how the individual being coached contributes to the wider community or how they can best use their talents for the benefit of all beings.  The transpersonal coach will help their customer to explore their sense of where they fit in the bigger picture and contribute to a purpose that is larger than their own individual ego-needs.

A transpersonal coach may explore what brings their customer a sense of joy, wonder, awe, fulfilment or compassion.  They may work with values such as truth, goodness, courage, justice, beauty or equanimity. They help the customer understand the complexity and interconnected nature of the world and themselves, and the way that some things cannot be controlled. They also explore how to find meaning in pain and difficulty.

This is a more spiritual approach to coaching (though not necessarily religious). Practices such as meditation, mindfulness, prayer, spending time in nature, contemplation or journaling can all support career resilience. Having a more spacious view of problems can help people to feel less overwhelmed by them, and see them as part of a something bigger than themselves.

Reflecting on values, and how to live in harmony with those values despite challenges, can also be an important way to build resilience. Donald Robertson, in “Building Resilience” defines resilience as “remaining committed to living in accord with your personal values despite encountering challenges or setbacks.”

Working with values can be a really effective and powerful way to help people reflect on the direction that they want their career to take, and whether their current position and choices are in harmony with those values or not. Many people may relate to universal values of non-harming, truthfulness, compassion, protecting nature, kindness, growth and equality, and may want their working lives to reflect one or more of these values.

Values are different to goals, in that values tell us something about the way we want to live and the overall direction we want to go in, while goals tell us the end point we want to reach. We may or may not achieve our goals, and focusing on goals keeps us future-focused. However, we can act in accordance with our values right now, and this brings our focus more into the present.

One of the ideas widely used in transpersonal coaching is to help the customer identify sub-personalities within themselves, for example, the part that likes everything to be safe and secure, and the part that likes to take a risk sometimes, or the part that is caring and motherly and the part that is angry with the world. Some of these parts may relate to universal archetypes such as a the mother, the warrior, the rescuer, the dreamer, the queen.

Exploring these multiple selves can help the customer gain a deeper insight into their own motivations and what is important to them. 

A powerful way to work with sub-personalities is to do two chair work. This method is often associated with Gestalt Therapy, and has been used extensively for career coaching by Liane Hambly.

Ask the customer to identify two sub-personalities that are in conflict over their career decisions, and give them names e.g. Oscar the Optimist and Sally the Secure.  Ask the customer to sit in the first chair and speak from the first sub-personality.  Then they move to the second chair and reply from the second personality.  After some time, see if the two characters can compromise or meet in the middle. For example:

• Oscar the adventurer (in first chair) – you should set up a business.  If you don’t do it know you never will.  You have all the skills and experience to make it work.
• Safe Sally (in second chair) – but what if it doesn’t work out?  The kids still need some financial help and you have a mortgage to pay.  You could have a secure job at the moment and you would be a fool to give it up.
• Oscar – lots of people make more money running their own businesses once they have got started.  And if you are your own boss, you will work as hard as you need to to make it work.-
• Sally – but what if it doesn’t work out? You will feel like a failure.  And you might not be able to get back into a secure job again.
• Oscar – I understand your fear but I think if you don’t do this, you will feel like you missed your real purpose in life and wasted your time working for something you didn’t really believe in.
• Sally – I get that, I just want to protect you and the family from danger.  I wonder if there is a way of starting a business while keeping a foot in the other job? 

You might be surprised at the conversation your two characters have. Maybe they argued, but maybe they were able to find a way to compromise or learn from each other.

You can use creative writing to explore sub-personalities in a similar way, by writing a dialogue between the two characters.

If you are using two chair work to develop resilience, you might work with a sub-personality which is resourceful and able to find meaning and purpose in the midst of crisis, and a sub-personality which feels anxious and overwhelmed, or unfairly victimised, for example.

If you would like to carry on the discussion about resilience, and try out some techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural coaching and solution focused coaching, do join me in a workshop on the 5th July 2021.

Building Resilience By Working with the Emotions

Difficult emotions are a normal part of human existence. Even the most resilient of people still experience unpleasant emotions as they face challenges in life, from the every day hassles of stressful jobs and the work-life juggling act, to the more serious events such as job loss, poor health or bereavement.

Whilst both positive and negative emotions are a normal part of human life, we often compound our suffering by ruminating over things that have happened in the past, turning them over and over in our minds without moving to any conclusion, or by worrying about things that might or might not happen in the future. Rumination and worry are only helpful if they lead us to take some action to improve our situation; most of the time they are just a waste of energy and create unnecessary suffering, and they can even be used to avoid acknowledging the emotions we are feeling right now in the present.

Rather than trying to avoid emotions, resilient people are able to be with stay with them and tolerate them. They are able to stay in the present moment. This ability to tolerate unpleasant emotions means they they are able to complete tasks that they don’t enjoy in the service of a future goal, keep their cool when provoked by a colleague or boss, perform in public despite feeling anxious and work through the pain associated with loss.

Let’s imagine two people who are applying for a new job and need to prepare a presentation. They both feel anxious about it and hate watching themselves make on video. Jonathon feels nervous every time he thinks about the presentation so he distracts himself by going running and then having a beer and watching TV. Lisa also feels nervous but she practices anyway, and then she replays the video looking for ways to improve, despite cringing as she watches herself. Lisa improves her skills, while Jonathon does not. Lisa eventually gets the job.

Difficulties in education or the workplace can also be created by an inability to tolerate uncomfortable emotions. For example, if your client is given feedback on a task, and cannot tolerate the discomfort associated with negative feedback, they may react by losing their temper or starting a conflict, as a way of suppressing this negative emotion.

Avoiding or surprising emotions can be the cause of more serious mental health problems, whilst developing the ability to recognise and dispassionately observe our thoughts and emotions leads to greater psychological resilience.

More recent approaches to cognitive behavioural therapy have incorporated ideas from mindfulness practices, and may be combined with what is now known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, an approach that encourages clients to accept their emotions rather than try to change or avoid them.

A common practice is to close the eyes and imagine that you are looking at a river, with many leaves floating down the river. Each leaf holds one of your thoughts, bodily sensations or feelings. As thoughts or feelings arise in your mind, put each one on a leaf and let it float away. If you get involved in a thought and distracted from the exercise, just notice this as soon as you can, put the thought on a leaf and continue. Noticing when you get distracted and what distracts you is a really important part of the exercise.

Eventually we can develop the ability to be a witness or an observer for our thoughts, rather than being fully involved in them. We can develop a sense of ourselves as the container for our emotions, rather than imagining that we actually are our emotions. We learn that emotions come and go; they are simply mental events and do not define who we are.

This might seem like a difficult approach to take in a time limited career conversation, but we can help our clients to recognise their emotions, and also recognise when avoiding difficult emotions might be getting in the way of achieving their career goals. For example, if your customer is nervous about approaching employers with their CV, you can help them to acknowledge that it is normal to be nervous and this doesn’t necessarily mean they shouldn’t go ahead with the activity.

Another customer may be in a dilemma about whether to quit their job and start a business or apply for a challenging promotion. Again, there may be difficult emotions around these decisions including fear ad anxiety, and acknowledging that these emotions are normal during a time of intense change, and don’t last forever, can be very helpful. Redundancy situations also bring up powerful emotions, including loss and anger which need to be acknowledged and worked through.

Encouraging your client to just name their emotions, describe how they feel right now in the body, and then take some deep breaths and remember emotions are transient and do not define them can be very helpful. You could also recommend that your client tries some mindfulness activities, ideally by taking a course with a trained teacher. However, research shows that even a few minutes of mindfulness practice can be helpful, so you might want to recommend an app such as Insight Timer.

For an excellent read on using ACT, CBT and mindfulness to build resilience, I really recommend Donald Robertson’s book “Build Your Resilience” (2012).

If you would like to carry on the discussion about resilience, and try out some techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural coaching and solution focused coaching, do join me in a workshop on the 5th July 2021.

Cognitive Behavioural Approaches to Building Resilience

Cognitive behavioural coaching developed out of the approach to therapy developed by Aaron Beck. Beck realised that simply becoming more self-aware was not enough to help people heal from depression, and they actually needed to the tools to change their thinking habits in order to feel better.

It can be very useful for helping client’s to build their resilience since it is a method of exploring thought patterns, examining how useful and accurate they are and then developing more helpful thought patterns. Thoughts have a significant impact on our emotions, so having more positive thought patterns also improves our mood and makes us more able to deal with adversity.

Learning to pay more attention to our internal dialogue can help us to challenge thoughts that take us into an unresourceful place.  The client’s internal dialogue might go something like this: “I am bound to mess up, I always do, there is no point in even trying this because it won’t work out for me, what’s the point, I give up.”  You can imagine how this client might not be very resilient; they would give up easily and talk themselves out of trying new things or learning new skills.

To help our customers become more aware of their beliefs, we can use the ABC model:

• A = Adverse experience or trigger event

• B= belief, thought or internal dialogue that then takes place

• C= consequence or the way we respond as a result of the belief

imagine your boss gives you some critical feedback (adverse experience) and you then believe that you are rubbish and useless, and that if you try to improve you will fail (belief) then your behaviour is likely to involve arguing with your boss, avoiding the feedback, or refusing to try to learn a new skill (consequence).  

If you can challenge and change your beliefs and your internal dialogue, then you will react differently, leading to a different outcome. So, in this case, if you believe that you are generally good at your job and are able to learn to new skills, you will react by listening to the feedback and attempting to learn the new skill that would help you improve.

Imagine three people, who all work for the same company, and have been told that due to the downturn in the economy, the company is downsizing, and their roles are no longer needed any more. Some people, however, have been kept on, and it’s not entirely clear why they were kept when these three weren’t.

• John blames himself completely – his thinks “If only I had worked longer hours, bigged up my achievements a bit more, taken on a high profile project, they would have kept me on. I’m useless, and I can’t even provide properly for my family. What will happen now? I’ll never get another job.” He has taken all the responsibility for what happened and blamed himself, so he feels sad and ashamed, and he is not likely to have the energy and motivation to find another job quickly.
• Tanya blames everyone except herself – she thinks “The economy is a mess, everyone is losing their jobs, and this company was really badly managed on top of everything – it’s no wonder they are doing badly.” She feels more angry than John, which may help her to feel a bit better, but she isn’t considering whether there is anything she could have done differently.
• Lindsey has a more balanced and flexible view. “It’s a tough economy at the moment, and our department probably was a bit overstaffed, so this was a bit inevitable. But maybe I could have been a bit more strategic – I could have done some training courses so I could be a bit more flexible, and maybe taken on some more high profile projects. I’ve learnt for next time.” She is not blaming herself for what happened, but she is thinking about what she can learn.

If we want to help our clients think in a more resilient way, we can help them to explore how realistic and accurate their beliefs are and what evidence they have for them. By gently disputing some of their beliefs and helping them to replace faulty beliefs with more useful and accurate beliefs, we can help them be more resilient.

Key skills for cognitive behavioural coaching include:

• Active listening
• Expressing empathy
• Curiosity about how the client thinks and what impact this has
• Identifying and reflecting back underlying beliefs about self/the world
• Problem solving around how to change beliefs
• Creative ideas for how to experiment with new ways of thinking about things.

Thinking traps are patterns of thinking that become habitual grooves.  These habits have become so deeply ingrained that we may not be consciously aware of them, but they trigger emotions and behaviour that are not always positive or helpful. If we can help our client to identify their thinking traps, we can then explore how to replace them with more positive thinking habits. Having more positive thought habits will help the customer to be more resilient, picking themselves back up after a failure or working effectively with feedback.

Knowing some of the most common thinking traps can help you to spot patterns of thinking or beliefs about the world that may not be serving your client well. You can then gently challenge them by exploring where these beliefs come from and how much evidence the client has that they are true.

If the client develops thinking habits that tell them they are able to cope with change and set backs, that change is normal, that they can be happy without everything being perfect, and then they will be more resilient. Optimism is also a key trait that helps people to be more resilient.

All Or Nothing. This is when you think that if you can’t have everything, there is no point in trying for anything at all. It can lead to giving up rather than exploring alternatives.“

I can’t afford to give up my job and go self-employed so I will just forget about the whole idea.”

“I won’t get a C so there is no point in trying.”

Overgeneralisation. This is when we use words like “always” or “never” to describe situations or events. This type of thinking is not helpful because it does not take all situations or events into account. For example, sometimes we make mistakes, but we don’t always make mistakes.“

“I always make mistakes.”

“I am never good at public speaking.”

“I am hopeless at maths.”

“I always mess up job interviews.”

“I am terrible at exams.”

Mental Filter. This happens when we only pay attention to the bad things that happen, but ignore all the good things. We might have done a presentation, and received several compliments, but only pay attention to the one person who looked bored. This prevents us from looking at all aspects of a situation and drawing a more balanced conclusion.

“A couple of people looked bored so I must have done a poor job with that presentation.”

“One of my evaluation sheets out of the fifteen received had critical comments on it, so the day must have been a disaster.”“One of my mock exams went badly so I must be on course for disaster.”

Catastrophizing

This is when we imagine that the worst possible thing is about to happen, and predict that we won’t be able to cope with the outcome. But, the imagined worst-case scenario usually never happens and even if it did, we are most likely able to cope with it.

“I’ll freak out and no one willhelp.”

“I’m going to make such a fool ofmyself, everyone will laugh at me,and I won’t be able to survive theembarrassment.”

“I will lose my job and never be able to get another one.“

Fallacy of Fairness This is when we expect the world to be a fair place, and experience a lot of anger and resentment when it proves not to be fair.

“I have put lots of effort into applying for apprenticeships so I should get one.”

“I should get promoted because I have worked hard.”

Perfectionism. This is when you believe that everything you do has to be 100% perfect.  It can lead to procrastination or a lot of self-criticism.

“I can’t take action yet because my plan isn’t totally ready.”

“I can’t apply for that job because there are a couple of things I can’t do yet.”

Fortune Telling. This is when we predict that things will turn out badly. But, in reality, we cannot predict the future because we don’t have a crystal ball!

“I know I’ll mess up.”

“I will never be able to manage my anxiety.”“

The company is going to go bust for sure.”B

Black and White Thinking

This is when we only look at situations in terms of extremes. For example, things are either good or bad, a success or a failure. But, in reality, most events call for a more “moderate” explanation. For example, cheating once on your diet does not mean you have failed completely. You had a small setback, and all you need to do is to get back on your diet tomorrow.

“Anything less than perfect is afailure.”

“I planned to eat only healthy foods, but I had a piece of chocolate cake. Now my diet iscompletely ruined!”

“If I don’t get all grade As in my GCSEs then I have messed up.”

“If I don’t get into my Food Science course then my life is a disaster”

Labelling. Sometimes we talk to ourselves in mean ways and use a single negative word to describe ourselves. This kind of thinking is unhelpful and unfair. We are too complex to be summed up in a single word!

“I’m stupid.”“

“I’m a loser.”

“I am a failure.”

“I am rubbish.”

“I am a terrible adviser.”

Over Estimating Danger

This is when we overestimate the danger involved in something. 

“I feel stressed; I am going to have a heart attack.”“

“I’ll go crazy.”

If you would like to carry on the discussion about resilience, and try out some techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural coaching and solution focused coaching, do join me in a workshop on the 5th July 2021.

Solution Focused Problem Solving to Build Resilience

Solution-focused coaching is an approach that emphasises the positive capabilities of the client, and their ability to solve their own problems.  Rather than spending a lot of time unpicking past problems and exploring things that have gone wrong, the solution-focused coach spends more time exploring the client’s desired future and helping them identify ways that they could use their strengths and resources to solve their problems and move towards their goal.

Sometimes the best way we can help our clients to be more resilient is to take a problem solving approach and focus on how to overcome practical barriers. For many clients, taking a practical problem-solving approach will help them to identify how they can develop their resources – their personal networks, their skills, their physical resources and back-up plans. We can help the client to take a positive approach and see their barriers as problems that can be solved, rather than insurmountable barriers.

Solution-focused work generates positive emotions and energy and can be very motivational.  It builds the client’s confidence that they can have an impact on even the most difficult situations and problems.

• The basic principles of solution-focused coaching are:
• Focus on customer’s hopes
• Recognise that everyone has expertise about their own life and knows what is important to them
• Everyone has motivation for something
• Focus on solutions not problems
• Every problem has an exception or a time when it is less severe
• Solutions are not always related to problems
• Change is constant – one small change can lead to a big change or be so meaningful that the need for big change goes away
• Empower customer to find their own solution
• Focus only on what the client thinks is important
• Amplify the customer’s strengths and the things that are going well
• If the current strategy is not working, try something different.

Key skills for solution-focused coaching include:

• Listening
• Expressing empathy
• Reflecting back
• Identifying strengths and resources
• Asking powerful questions
• Giving feedback on strengths
• Creatively helping the customer visualise a better future
• Being hopeful and believing in the client.

We can help the client to identify the resources that they already have, and which they might make use of. For example, we could ask:

• Who do you know who would be willing to help you?
• Where do you go to find out information?
• How do you get from one place to another?
• What personal strengths do you have that will help you?
• When you are having a good day, what are you doing that helps it to be good?

If the client is dealing with a difficult situation, we can help them recognise the resources they are using to manage that situation. These resources might be helpful when it comes to solving other problems.

• What do you do that helps you to cope?
• What have you done to stop things getting worse?
• When the problem is less severe, what are you doing then?

One of the most well known techniques in solution focused work is the use of the miracle question. It can be asked in various ways, but the idea is to get the client to visualise a future scenario where their problem has been solved, and to imagine the details that will help them to realise the problem is no longer there. By focusing on these details, the client may be able to move closer to the future they want.

• Let’s imagine that the things you want start to happen.  What do you think you will start to notice that is different in your life?
• Imagine that you work up one morning and a miracle had occurred, so your problem had gone away.  However, you don’t know it has gone away because you were asleep.  What would be the first thing you would notice when you woke up?  What would other people notice?  What else would be different?

For example, a young woman who is unemployed, getting up late and fighting with her Mum a lot might imagine that if she had a job, the first thing she would notice is that she is getting up early because of her alarm, she is wearing different clothes, and she has breakfast with her Mum who is really happy with her. Although she doesn’t have a job now, she could start getting up earlier and wearing different clothes, which might help her move towards getting a job and getting on better with Mum.

Scaling questions are also used in solution focused work, to help the client gauge their progress and what they need to do to make small steps towards solving their problems.

• On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not at all, and 10 being all the time, how confident are you that you can solve this problem?
• What makes it that number instead of a lower number?
• What would it take for you to be two points higher?
• How could you improve that score?

Another useful tactic is to focus on good days or resourceful days, and identify what the client is doing, thinking or feeling on those days, so that they can amplify this.

• Tell me about the times you feel happiest?  
• What was it about that day that made it a good day? 
• What had you done to bring it about?
• What strengths do you have that are already helping you to improve your situation?

Working in a solution focused way can generate energy and positive emotions around the work that you are doing, and help the client to tap into more positive emotions. You can also use solution focused approaches to encourage the customer to invest in their support network and relationships, which will build resilience.

Sometimes the best way we can help our clients to be more resilient is to take a problem solving approach and focus on how to overcome practical barriers. For many clients, taking a practical problem-solving approach will help them to identify how they can develop their resources – their personal networks, their skills, their physical resources and back-up plans. We can help the client to take a positive approach and see their barriers as problems that can be solved, rather than insurmountable barriers.

A problem-solving approach can help with creating contingency plans.  You might help a young person think of a back-up plan just in case they don’t get the grades they need.  Or you might help a job seeker to identify how long they will give their job search strategy, before they consider other options, such as training.

If your customer tends to have difficulties with co-workers and has a short fuse, you could help them think about strategies for coping when other people are annoying him – for example, counting to ten or giving himself some time out before responding.

For people in rural areas, transport can be a significant barriers. Some young people may not feel confident using public transport. You could look at bus time tables together, or discuss options like cycling or lift sharing.

Building a strong support network is one of the best ways to help someone improve their resilience, and you can help your clients think about how to strengthen their network, by keeping in touch with people, using social media appropriately, and having the confidence to approach people to ask about opportunities.

Sometimes this kind of problem solving can feel more like social work, and we do need to be careful not to over step our professional boundaries. Career barriers are often life barriers, and we can’t look at someone’s career in isolation from the rest of their life, but most of us are not qualified to offer advice on financial matters, housing, drugs or health. We need to be willing to explore whatever is holding our client back from achieving their career goals, and then be willing to signpost or refer to other professionals who are better able to help them overcome some of their barriers.

If your clients is lacking resilience because they lack physical or practical resources, then this kind of problem solving approach will be a natural way to offer help and support. We do need to take care that we don’t go into “fix it” overdrive, and we still respect the client’s autonomy and encourage them to solve their own problems with support.

As well as working with the physical and practical aspects of resilience, we can also help our clients with the cognitive, emotional and spiritual aspects.

If you would like to carry on the discussion about resilience, and try out some techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural coaching and solution focused coaching, do join me in a webinar on the 5th July 2021.

Exploring Resilience

In the middle stages of the interview, when we are exploring the customer’s story and refining our mutual understanding of the needs, we need to find out more about how resilient our client is, before we decide how much work to do on resilience.  Well-chosen and sensitive questions can reveal our client’s strengths, which we want to amplify, and any areas of vulnerability where they may need more support.

We can then reflect back to the client what we are hearing, and work with them to offer support that is meaningful and welcome. Agreeing the guidance needs with your client before moving on from your exploration stage will give you a clear focus. Re-contract so that you know what to focus on, and the client is completely on board.

We can’t ask the same questions of every client – we need to tailor the questions to the person in front of us, what we already know about them and the rapport that we have built. Good questions are: 

• Appropriate to the situation
• Gently curious
• Sensitive
• Allow an open response
• Reveal useful information about the client
• Encourage the client to pause and reflect
• Reverberate after the interview.

Remember PIES from earlier posts? We can explore resilience in four domains – physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

We might want to start by exploring physical resilience – all the practical resources that the customer can draw on, and where they might need practical help.

• What address can you use for correspondence (for someone who doesn’t have a permanent home)?
• Do you have access to the internet?
• Have you got transport (especially for young people)?
• How are you with getting up early in the mornings?
• Have you thought about childcare?
• What practical support will you need at college?
• Do you have any health issues or disabilities?
• What reasonable adjustments might you need in the workplace (for anyone with a disability)?

We might then be able to explore thinking styles, problem solving skills and the ability to learn new skills – intellectual resilience.

• When you were really upset, what thoughts were running through your mind?
• Is there another way of thinking about this?
• What is the worst thing that could happen? And the best? And the most likely?
• What will you do if you don’t get the grades you need?
• Is there anything that might make it hard to settle in your new job? 
• How could you plan for that?
• Do you have any strategies for dealing with difficult people?
• Is there anything that might stop you achieving your goal?
• What did you learn from that experience?
• What skills do you need to learn?

If you have a good rapport with the customer, you may be able to explore their feelings about situations, how they relate to others and their emotional climate.

Who is in your support network?

• How do you feel about this change?
• How have you coped with failures in the past?
• How do you respond to critical feedback? 
• If you achieved all your goals, how would you feel? 
• Is there anything you could do to feel like that now?
• How will you feel if you don’t succeed?
• How many people would be happy to do you a favour?

You may then want to also explore spiritual resilience, finding out about any beliefs or guiding principles that connect your client to something bigger than themselves.

• Do you have any religious or spiritual beliefs that guide you?
• Are there any causes that you feel strongly about?
• How do your values support you in achieving this goal?
• What are you grateful for in this situation?
• What higher purpose is being served here?
• What lesson is life teaching you here?
• What makes you feel most alive/joyful?
• What is trying to happen through you?

Of course, there is often an overlap between these four areas. Thoughts can have a big impact on feelings, and we can use our cognitive abilities to learn more about wisdom traditions and how to manage our feelings and our environment.

Questions are more powerful when we have to think and reflect before we can answer them.  A well-chosen powerful question is asked with an understanding of the person and where the blocks in their thinking are.  It is a question designed to help the other person develop a new insight or perspective. A powerful question can cause the person to keep thinking and reflecting long after the question was asked – it can bring about that light-bulb moment when everything changes.

If you would like to carry on the discussion about resilience, and try out some techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural coaching and solution focused coaching, do join me in a webinar on the 5th July 2021.

Post Traumatic Growth Following Job Loss

Job loss can be a particularly tough transition.  Jobs provide us with an income, but also with a range of other benefits – social structure, collective purpose, status, identify and friendships. Job loss may lead to stress, anxiety and depression, and have a negative impact on self-esteem and physical health. There may also be wider impacts on the family, particularly on children’s mental health.

However, in some cases, positive changes may eventually occur, particularly for people who are more resilient.  A job loss can be the impetus to move someone out of a period of career inertia Some individuals find themselves in “better” jobs, whatever that means to them.  Post-traumatic growth following job loss may lead to enhanced appreciation of life, personal strength and new priorities. As people integrate the experience, they may radically re-assess their assumptions about life and their own identify. Being resilient increases the likelihood of positive changes occurring, and those positive changes are also likely to feed our resilience through personal growth.

Shepherd and Williams (2016) discuss the loss of identity that can come with losing a job or career.  Recovery may be dependent on the individual’s ability to create a new career identity (or change their story).  If you think about the questions you ask when you meet someone for the first time and make small talk, you will realise how important work is to our identify.  We so often ask, “What do you do?”  If we have always answered, “I am a ….” it will be hard for us to feel like the same person when we no longer have this job.  It’s hard to imagine a future, when you cannot imagine what your identity will be.

Loss of income may also have an impact on lifestyle and friendships.  If a well-paid professional loses their income, they may no longer be able to afford to join friends in restaurants or on holiday.  This has an additional impact on identity, since friendship groups also have to change.

Shepherd and Williams suggest there are two possible ways to respond. Some individuals may attempt to maintain a “numb” state, by avoiding painful reminders of what has been lost, and possibly using alcohol or other addictive activities to avoid feelings.  They may feel depressed, or cycle between numbness and negative emotions (even self-harm or suicide).  For example, someone who lost their job may sit around at home feeling numb, but when their wife tries to encourage them to applying for a new job, they lash out, before regaining the numb state by drinking.  This spiral be described as “cognitive deconstruction” and can become a trap that is hard to escape.

Others may explore new identities, trying things on in their imagination like new outfits, to see what suits. This exploration of new identities is also an escape from reality as it may involve day dreaming or fantasy, but it is more positive, since it allows the person to test out new ideas and ways of moving forward.  It is a creative and generative state of mind that allows this to happen.  With nothing left to lose, the possibilities can be endless – starting a business, developing a property portfolio, becoming a yoga teacher, doing gardening jobs, writing a book, childminding, opening a campsite, doing a plumbing course, running for office, volunteering, getting an HGV licence, teaching English abroad, offering consultancy services, working for a charity or becoming a driving instructor.  

The important thing at this stage is to allow day dreaming rather than ruling things out as unrealistic.  “Disciplined imagination” is important to be creative in exploring possibilities related to interests and transferable skills, rather than getting stuck thinking about things that are very similar to the job previously held.  “Thought trials” can be used to test out ideas in the imagination before deciding which to develop and which to discard.  There is nothing to lose by daydreaming!

Whilst exploring new ideas, it is important to recognise that positive feelings of excitement and hope can co-exist with negative feelings of loss or anger.  We can be in both spaces at the same time, and acknowledge both.

Why not try this out? Allow yourself to daydream.  What if you were an Olympic athlete, an MP, a writer, an activist, a carpenter, the owner of a Bed and Breakfast, a market stall holder? What would your life be like?  How would you feel?  What would you wear?  What would you enjoy doing?  What would you tell people about your life? What would other people say about you? What would you value? This can be a good exercise to use with customers, either in groups or one to one. My thanks to Julia Yates for introducing me to to this Possible Selves activity.

If you would like to carry on the discussion about resilience, and try out some techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural coaching and solution focused coaching, do join me in a webinar on the 5th July 2021.

Stages of Transition

A transition can be defined as any significant change in our lives that requires us to reassess our identity and make changes to how we live, work, behave and relate to others.

Some transition are expected (leaving school/university), whilst others are not (redundancy, accident).  Some are welcome (having a baby) whilst others are not (getting sacked).  

Schlossberg also includes “non-events” (expected changes that do not happen) as transitions, for example, not getting a coveted promotion.

Many theorists (including Kubler-Ross, Hopson and Adams) have studied how we cope with change and transition, and identified typical stages.  These stages are often shown as a graph or “transition curve”.  

Typical stages include:

• Shock, denial, numbness, finding it hard to process that the change has happened.

• Relief, minimising it’s importance, feeling inappropriate emotions such as euphoria or excitement, honeymoon period

• Depression, anger, grief, a sense of futility, low energy, low mood, loss of confidence, apathy

• Resignation, gradual acceptance, 

• Letting go, return of energy, recognition of the need to move on

• Testing out ideas, exploring, a sense of possibility, new activities, making plans

• Integration, finding meaning, moving on, personal growth

Of course, people don’t move neatly through these stages; they move back and forth between stages, and sometimes get stuck at one stage or pass over a stage.  An awareness of these stages, however, will help you to identify where your customer may be emotionally and what they may be ready for. 

You should not be surprised if you talk to a customer who has just found out they lost their job, and feels quite upbeat, and then find them a few weeks later feeling very depressed and taking no action.

There are a number of factors that may influence how people manage transition well (and how likely they are to get stuck at a certain point. Perception of the transition is key – whether it is seen as positive or negative, welcome or unwelcome, gradual or sudden, chosen or imposed.  

Contextual factors can be important – the length of time the person had been in the previous role, financial resources, social support and having information about why the change happened.

However, even when a change is negative, unwelcome, imposed and sudden, some people possess characteristics and resources that make them more likely to navigate the transition successfully. They are the resilient people.

Other people may get stuck at a particular stage, and not move on.  This is more likely when they don’t have resilient personal characteristics, habits that build their resilience and good support networks.

Next time you are working with a customer in transition, see if you can identify what stage of the transition they are in.  You will then be able to plan strategies to move them onto the next stage. If you customer is still numb or minimising the impact of the transition, you can give them time and space to process it.  If they are feeling depressed, you may need to use motivational interviewing techniques to build them up.  If they are starting to explore new ideas, you can work with them to develop their confidence and create tentative plans to test out ideas.

Here are a few examples:

Bevan has just been sacked from a job, after his employer discovered that he hadn’t been working his full hours, and had been going to the pub when he was meant to be visiting clients.  This happened yesterday. He says it doesn’t matter, he didn’t like the job much and he thinks he will soon find another.  He says he is glad not to have to work for them any more. He seems quite casual about this imposed and unwelcome transition, and it is quite likely that he is still in the early stage of minimising the impact of the transition. He probably has not fully processed what has happened. He may be feeling quite differently in a few weeks time, especially if he doesn’t find another job quickly.

Joanne had a baby and whilst she was on maternity leave, her employer restructured and left her with a completely unsuitable post. She hates the new job, but says she feels exhausted with juggling her parenting responsibilities and a job she hates, so she can’t look for another.  She has really lost confidence as her new role has far less responsibility and she is excluded from meetings that she used to be part of. She is experiencing a lot of negative emotion, and has very little energy to try and make a change. She is probably in the depression stage of the cycle, and needs a lot of empathy and support to get her to the point where she can start to explore ways of making a change or taking action against her employers.

Mo was made redundant from his job as a garage manager.  At the time, he was angry about it, but he has since focused on his transferable skills and what he has to offer, and he has since found a better job as a warehouse manager. Heenjoys learning new skills related to this area of work.  He has benefitted from a really good support network in his friends and family, and feels this has been strengthened as he leaned on them for support. He also feels more confident that he could find another job quickly if he needed to. Mo is at the integration stage – he has navigated the transition successfully and has experienced some personal growth as a result.

Beth has recently left school with the hope of finding a job.  At first she felt really down as all her friends were going to college or starting new courses in sixth form, and she didn’t know how to get a job.  Although she hadn’t enjoyed school, she wished she was back there with her friends every day.  Now she is starting to ask people to help her, and she is drafting a CV.  She is also starting to wonder if she might need to do some training first. She is at the stage of testing out some ideas – she is starting to explore ways of moving forward although at this stage they are tentative.

If you would like to carry on the discussion about resilience, and try out some techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural coaching and solution focused coaching, do join me in a webinar on the 5th July 2021.