Coaching is a useful adjunct to the many different facets of Stress Management. It works on the entire person, creating an environment for clients to grow and shift rather than asking them to change. Coaching does not analyse. It helps normal human beings achieve their goals faster and more efficiently. A coach listens and encourages, without telling clients what to do. The whole concept of coaching is that clients already have the answers they need and a coach helps them find those answers by listening and asking pertinent questions. A coach works with people on
their problems, their challenges and whatever feels stressful to them at that moment. A coach stays with the client until the process is completed. A coach works with clients in all areas of their business and personal life. A coach assists people to achieve what they really want, providing fieldwork, new things to try, different perspectives and encouragement to help them stay focused.

An apt example of the art of coaching is the analogy of learning to ride a bike.

When you decide you want to ride a bike, a coach will run along beside you to provide support.

A coach encourages you to ride the bike, stays with you and helps you to implement your new skill. The coach will ask lots of questions, to determine whether you have everything you need to succeed. Coaches encourage you to practise and help you when you’re stuck. They will listen to what feels right for you, understand you and then work with you to form a plan of action. Coaches will share their knowledge with you, applaud your success and add fun and laughter to the process. They will be there with you, encouraging you even when the road gets tough and bumpy.

Coaching is an ongoing partnership, enabling clients to achieve fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Throughout the process, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance, and enhance their quality of life. Coaching accelerates their progress by providing greater focus and awareness. It concentrates on where the person is now and where they want to be.

Coaching shows people how to get to the root of the issues which are causing stress in their lives. Rather than simply managing stress, coaching helps uncover permanent solutions. Effective strategies can then be developed to assist clients to make permanent changes. With the assistance of the coach, an action plan is devised to suit them and their lifestyle. Coaching is very action-based and when I’m coaching clients, I want the process to be light-hearted. I want us to have fun with it and we'll often create a game to play in a particular situation. For instance, one business client who was feeling stressed by the amount she'd taken on and was therefore struggling to do it all, decided to play the game of counting how many times she said “no” to something in a particular week. She created a chart for her office, bought some coloured star stickers and I challenged her to collect 100 stars before our coaching session the next week. For her, this was fun instead of feeling like a chore she had to complete.

Another client, a manager in a large company, was finding it very stressful working with a particular member of the team. She seemed to find fault with everything he did, trampled all over his ideas and wouldn’t stop to listen to him. My client was finding this very difficult to handle and through coaching, he realised that he would often retreat and do whatever he could to escape this situation. He felt there was something wrong with him. We discussed many different aspects of what was happening and when I asked him how she treated other people in the team, the focus was moved off him and he realised that she treated others in exactly the same way. We then worked on how he, as a person, could take steps to respond better to this team member. One of the areas he identified was a lack of confidence in himself and a need to feel valued, so we worked on this aspect through coaching. These characteristics were revealed not only in the work situation, but in other areas, including his personal life. As he concentrated on building up his confidence and his need to be valued, he didn't just achieve a quick fix for his conflict within the team. His whole life started to improve.

Discovering how to keep herself grounded was one of the first steps a female business client took for herself after being coached. She's a very successful business woman with a lot on her plate and she'd always handled this easily. She then noticed that she wasn’t coping as well as she had previously, her stress levels were rising fast and her GP told her to make changes in her life. One of the first things we identified was that she often felt she wasn't in control, particularly of business situations and this had often gone too far before she realised her inability to cope. We coached around this and one of her solutions was to give herself a little time, perhaps only 5 seconds while she was talking to someone. Long enough to stop, take a breath and evaluate the best response, rather than jumping in and regretting it later. We talked about reconnecting with her body at these times, to stay grounded and she decided to touch a certain part of her body as an anchor to remind her to slow down and give herself a few seconds. She used this approach in many different settings, in business, in relationships with her partner and children and in personal and social commitments. She found it an effective way to make a difference to her life and she was then able to concentrate more thoroughly on the specific items which were causing her stress.

An area which I find causes many clients stress is having so much to do and being so busy. The belief that you have to keep doing more to achieve your goals, often has people running faster and faster, but not getting very far. One of the keys to achieving a lot more, but in an effective manner, is to slow right down and stop for a while. As a coach, one of the things I encourage my clients to do is to take 15 minutes each day, to stop, relax and quieten the mind totally. I suggest that they let all their thoughts go and just be at peace with themselves. It may take a while to get used to doing this but I find that with support and encouragement, most people will give it a try. We start gradually and build up at a pace which feels right for the client. As coaches, unlike some professions, we will also share our own experiences and I’ve found that clients appreciate that we're just normal human beings. We still work on some of these things and practise many of them ourselves, rather than just expounding theories which we've learned.

One of my clients, the MD of a fast growing company, was beginning to feel under stress about the decisions he needed to make. He thought he'd always been good at making decisions, but realised he was now feeling under pressure about this and wondered whether he still had the ability to make the decisions necessary for his company. One of the things we worked on together was his confidence level. This involved him outlining when, in the past, he felt he'd made decisions that were right for him. I listened to the context of what he was saying and it became clear to me that the decisions made had been based on his personal values, his vision and his own integrity. When I shared with him what I'd heard, he said it made a lot of sense and felt it was right, although he hadn’t been aware of it previously. We then spent some time coaching around his values and his vision, so that he could clearly identify what they were. This enabled him to gain clarity and become more aware of his own personal ethos, so that he could use it as a blueprint in the future. All this would form a basis for making decisions which he felt confident about. This awareness of his values and vision enabled him to follow a kind of road map so that he could move forward in the future. He reported feeling much less stressed now that he had a clear plan to work with and a firm basis upon which to make decisions.

Sometimes when an individual changes just one aspect of his life, this can have quite an impact overall on stress levels. Although one senior manager had a number of different issues causing him stress, he found that one change in particular brought great benefits. Through coaching, he identified that he found it really hard to switch off when he'd finished work. He used to return home to his wife and children still mulling over work-related problems and feeling quite uptight about some of them. We coached around this and one of the solutions was for him to spend 10 minutes in his car after work, to go over the day, finalise things in his mind and then be ready to spend time with his wife and children. I asked him to use this time to record his day and his thoughts in a journal. He resisted this very strongly, so we negotiated a compromise. At first, he would grab a pen and paper and just write down anything. This could be a list of what he wanted to do the next day or what he’d forgotten to finish that day. I encouraged him to write down almost anything to start with, because I felt sure that once this had become a habit, we could add to it and it would become beneficial to him. He soon eased into this writing and found it became easier the more he did it. As part of this process, I then encouraged him to write down the 3 things he'd achieved each day. When he saw it in writing, it became very apparent to him that he was actually achieving much more than he ever thought he did. He found it was really useful to focus on what he’d achieved, rather than all the things he hadn’t done. This left him feeling more of a success than the failure he admitted he had been feeling. He also found that by writing each day, he was able to identify things much earlier and deal with them before they became stressful. I feel that this is one area where coaching really helps clients because it enables them to stop, reflect and see much more clearly what's going on in their lives. They can then put strategies in place, which will lead to an easier, less stressful life.

Clients who are feeling stressed may come to coaching feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to do next. Through being coached, they can develop a clear plan of action for themselves.

Coaching is about defining what clients want for themselves and concentrating on that, rather than constantly focusing on what they don’t want. It gets to the source of the problem and the client shifts permanently from there. This impact encompasses the whole person. Coaching encourages individuals to focus their attention on what they really want to achieve for themselves. A coach offers people the opportunity to talk in complete confidence and work through ongoing situations which arise within organizations. A coach can stand back and offer a more objective view from their position outside the organization.

As a coach, I see one of the main causes of stress as either poor communication or a complete communication breakdown. Communication appears to be lacking through all levels at work and in life generally. There have been great advances in technological communication but I see personal communication failing or becoming less common. I hear many people say they don’t feel valued or appreciated, particularly in the workplace. I feel that an increase or an improvement in communication, however small, would make a big difference to many employees. It can be as simple as saying, “thank you” or “you’ve done a great job”. Even some management styles are causing stress to people at all levels. Adding coaching skills to management and developing a culture of real communication would, I believe, make a big difference to the stress levels experienced by many people. People need to be heard and when companies realise this, the culture and the business environment will be less stressful. Coaching meets an individual's need to be heard and to address this, the client can be coached around communication.

In what ways can coaching and stress management professionals work well together? A coach doesn't usually approach their work with a client as an expert. If an expert is what you’re looking for, then a consultant or a trainer is probably the answer. If a client needs to work with a therapist on deeper or more traumatic issues, this needs to happen first before a coach can work with them. Coaching complements the work which trainers or consultants do for clients. When clients have taken part in a training course, coaches can be brought in to work with individuals. They can then build on the information and skills which have been acquired. How often have you attended a training course and within a couple of weeks either forgotten or not fully implemented what you learned? What difference could it make to your business or personal life if your learning was fully integrated? What difference could it make to your clients, if they took what you've taught them or told them to do and really followed it through? A coach's role is to stay with you and help you implement these new skills in a way which works best for the individual. Coaches can offer new ideas and strategies for approaching life and business situations, so that it fits in with the client's agenda and after they've already explored different answers for themselves. A coach stays with you consistently through the whole process.