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How Resilience Coaching Can Transform Your Life

Last updated on February 25, 2024

Life has its fair amount of challenges. Every once in a while, it throws us curve balls without so much as making a courtesy call or serving us a notice to prepare ourselves in advance.

It could be hurdles related to our personal lives, such as relationship problems, financial difficulties, a health issue, accidents, or loss of a loved one. Other times, it might be work-related challenges such as a toxic work environment, difficult clients or unmotivated employees, lack of a sense of belonging, or a failing business.

Regardless of the form, challenges can feel daunting to overcome, and some even find it nearly impossible to pick themselves up after a bad setback.

This is where resilience coaching comes in.

What is resilience coaching?

Resilience coaching is a special form of coaching that helps empower individuals to deal with challenges and recover from setbacks more effectively. It involves working with a professional resilience coach who helps individuals develop a resilient mindset through practical strategies, guidance, and support.

As humans, we have an incredible power within us that allows us to endure hardship and emerge on the other side stronger. Some call it grit, others call it mettle, but I prefer to call it an irrepressible mindset—the will to carry on no matter what, because there is nothing to be gained from throwing in the towel or submitting to fate.

Whatever the term, resilience is a quality that empowers us to overcome whatever challenges that come our way. 

Woman standing over the edge of a cliff

Sure, bouncing back from low moments—let alone thriving post-challenges—is not easy. But it is not impossible either.

This is the mentality that resilience coaching espouses and aims to instill, and it achieves that by equipping individuals with the necessary tools and strategies.

Benefits of resilience coaching from a personal context

Cultivating resilience as an individual can improve your life in more ways than one.

1. Equips you with better coping skills

One of the key things that resilience coaching teaches is how to effectively deal with problems. People with low resilience are more likely to feel overwhelmed by circumstances or helpless when they run into hurdles.

This can lead to some resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms: substance abuse, for example, isolation, negative self-talk, self-harm, and so on. Research has shown that rates of suicide tend to be higher among individuals with lower resilience.

By cultivating resilience as a skill, you’ll likely find it easier to navigate challenges and bounce back from setbacks.

2. Contributes to mental and emotional well-being

Another recent study established a correlation between resilience and overall quality of life and mental state. Individuals with higher resilience—and, by extension, better coping skills and emotional intelligence—tend to enjoy better life satisfaction and overall well-being compared to others.

Emotional intelligence—which relates to how people deal with emotions and frame problems—is one of the things resilience training helps individuals cultivate. As such, resilience can help you develop positive coping mechanisms, resulting in reduced anxiety, stress, and depression.

3. Makes you more adaptable

A core part of resilience involves dealing with change and adapting to new circumstances. Adaptability, therefore, is one of the things that resilience coaching trains individuals to embrace.

This involves encouraging flexible thinking and cultivating a growth mindset, two qualities you’ll typically notice in highly successful individuals.

The beauty of it is that anyone can adopt this mindset with the right guidance and techniques.

4. Provides reasons to be optimistic

Resilience coaching encourages people to view things from a more optimistic stance. It achieves this not by promoting delusion or denial of reality, but by training on techniques that help individuals identify unhelpful thinking patterns and reframe negative thoughts.

Resilience coaching sessions can train you to find the silver lining in the dark and develop a more hopeful perspective, which empowers you to confront challenges with confidence and take proactive steps in the pursuit of your goals.

5. Key to achieving goals and realizing your purpose

Resilience is a powerful ingredient in the recipe for success, an ingredient with a significant sway in people’s ability to achieve long-term goals. I am living proof of how far an irrepressible mindset can take you, no matter how much the odds seem to be stacked against you.

Developing resilience helps you to do more than just bounce back from the inevitable setbacks. You adopt a unique mindset that allows you to view the difficult times as part of the journey. You become more persistent and—like many people who become successful after overcoming failure and setbacks—are not easily deterred by adversity.

Benefits of resilience coaching from a professional and organizational context

While there exists a common thread between resilience coaching benefits from a personal vs. professional angle, there are many ways professionals and employees in different industries, as well as organizational leaders, stand to gain from onboarding the services of a trained resilience coach.

1. Better work-related stress management

The modern workplace is a high-pressure environment where results take precedence above all else. At a time when organizations find themselves operating in a climate of disruption and challenges galore, it’s understandable.

However, a stressed workforce cannot be expected to be productive or competitive. Many companies are realizing the importance of ingraining a resilience culture.

Less stressed employees are likely to take less time off work due to illness or burnout. The positive effects of this include improved productivity and lower costs going towards healthcare, among a host of other benefits.

2. Improved mental health

Mental health cases at work have become the norm the world over, with the World Health Organization estimating that incidences of anxiety and depression cost the global economy around $1 trillion every year in lost productivity.

Coaching empowers individuals to be proactive with regard to their mental wellness. Therefore, nurturing resilience skills in employees can help them manage their emotions better, adopt a more positive outlook, and seek support when needed.

3. Enhanced productivity

One study found that highly resilient workers miss work less often and are more productive than workers with lower resilience.

Training employees on resilience means employers will benefit from a more efficient and effective workforce that is able to show up to work, maintain focus, and achieve set goals.

4. Healthy team dynamics

One of the notable results I have gleaned from my coaching sessions is that teams that undergo resilience training tend to have better synergy and are more driven towards a common purpose.

Resilience coaching improves communication and promotes healthy interactions within organizational teams, leading to healthy team dynamics.

Resilience training for teams looks to tap into individual talents and strengths for the benefit of the whole while promoting teamwork at the same time. There is less friction among coworkers; and leaders have avenues of resolving differences or issues amicably without things getting in the way of performance.

That can only be a winning formula.

5. Better problem-solvers

Resilience coaching encourages a solutions-oriented mindset that is more about embracing failure and discomfort rather than avoiding them. That’s because resilience is rooted in the notion that the path to solutions (and success) almost always is not a straight and smooth one.

As such, training employees and leaders on resilience ensures everyone adopts a culture of problem-solving characterized by an analytical approach to problems and creative solutions.

Man-writing-on-a-table

Who can benefit from resilience coaching?

Anyone can benefit from resilience coaching, provided the will is there. It will prove particularly useful for anyone:

  • Experiencing difficult challenges in certain aspects of their life
  • In the midst of a transition and not sure how to handle or deal with it
  • Looking to grow from a personal development or professional context and to achieve related goals
  • Dealing with chronic stress and anxiety
  • Looking to improve their overall emotional well-being
  • Aiming to develop healthier and stronger coping mechanisms

Resilience coaching can prove beneficial to all—students, employees, managers and senior executives, teachers, nurses and healthcare workers, police officers, you name it.

The role of resilience coaches

The role of a resilience coach is to act as a guide and facilitator for individuals or teams looking to cultivate resilience.

In a nutshell, part of their role in that process involves the following:

Assessment and goal setting. A coach works with you to understand your unique challenges, needs and goals. Based on their approach, they can help establish your coping mechanisms, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. They can also work with you in the goal-setting process.

Support. In addition to providing a safe space for open communication, a resilience coach acts as a guide that encourages you to explore your inner strength and break thought patterns that work against you.

Training. A resilience coach will also equip you with strategies that can be useful for emotional regulation, stress management, reframing, and problem-solving. They also provide training that promotes adaptability, a growth mindset, and more.

Providing accountability. A resilience coach will closely work with you to develop an action plan unique to the you to help you achieve your goals. Typically, they will track your progress and provide accountability, along with the necessary guidance as you set out to reinvent yourself.

It is worth highlighting that a resilience coach is neither a counselor, nor a therapist. It is also not their job to provide a solution for every problem you have. These need to come from you. A coach only acts as a facilitator and a guide to assist you in achieving your desired outcome.

Conclusion

There are plenty of benefits that come with resilience coaching. However, it’s good to point out that cultivating resilience is an ongoing process: the benefits do not manifest immediately after completing the coaching sessions.

However, consistent effort on your part coupled with ongoing support from a qualified coach—ideally one with any of these resilience coaching certifications—can see you gradually start to unlock the incredible power of resilience and enjoy the myriad benefits that come with it.

Like all growth, building resilience needs to not only be deliberate, but also something you continually build upon. The good news is that the more you put it into practice, the better you become at overcoming obstacles and finding ways where there seems to be none.

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Jillian Haslam - Coach
Jillian Haslam

Jillian Haslam is a motivational speaker and resilience coach who trains individuals and corporates to overcome adversity and master resilience. When she's not doing speeches or coaching, the philanthropist and Mother Teresa Memorial International Award recipient is likely dedicating time to her six charities that she runs through Remedia Trust.

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