Resilience as a Framework for Coaching

A Cognitive Behavioural Perspective

Michael Neenan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429886959
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In Resilience as a Framework for Coaching: A Cognitive Behavioural Perspective, Michael Neenan presents an in-depth understanding of resilience and shows how coaches can help their clients to develop and enhance their own resilience.

By focusing on the beliefs, emotions and behaviours that promote or hinder the development of resilience, Neenan provides coaches with plenty of discussion points for inclusion in their sessions. The book, written in an engaging and accessible style, includes a chapter showing the unfolding of a five-session course of resilience coaching with lengthy dialogue excerpts between the coach and the client, accompanied by a commentary on the coach's interventions. Throughout the book there are plenty of case studies and examples of resilience in action. The book ends with a recap on resilience pinpointing some of the key features of a resilient mindset.

Written by an established expert in the field of resilience and cognitive behavioural coaching, Resilience as a Framework for Coaching represents an essential resource for those wishing to train in this discipline. The book will appeal to coaches, coaching psychologists, psychotherapists and clinical, health and counselling psychologists with an interest in coaching, human resource professionals, counsellors and trainees in these disciplines.

1Reflections on resilience

Vaillant (1993) suggests that we all think we know what resilience is until we attempt to define it, and ‘there is little consensus among researchers about the definition and meaning of this concept [despite studying it for the last six decades]’ (Shaikh and Kauppi, 2010: 155). So, along with other writers on resilience, I will make a stab at defining it: marshalling your resources (e.g. psychological, spiritual, social) to cope adaptively with tough times, however long they last, and emerging from them sometimes a stronger, wiser and more capable person. Some points about the definition.

• ‘Cope adaptively’ is making adjustments in your thinking and behaviour to deal with the unwelcome circumstances that have intruded into your life, but this doesn’t mean that this adaptation will be automatically straightforward, quick or easy.

• ‘However long it lasts’ might be a workplace crisis lasting 24 hours, or it might be coping over the long term with a partner’s progressive mental deterioration caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

• The qualifier ‘sometimes’ indicates there is no inevitability about these character changes occurring or, if they have occurred, holding on to them, as any lessons learnt from facing adversity may be forgotten once it has passed. For example, the freedom achieved by struggling free of an abusive relationship is short-lived, as the person overrides the warning signs about her next partner’s controlling and possessive behaviour and finds herself back in the same position as she was in two years earlier. Sustainability of gains results from holding on to one’s hard-earned learning.

Grotberg (1999) divides adversities into: external (e.g. earthquakes, violent crime, terrorism); within the family or relationship (e.g. sexual abuse, loss of home, job or loved one); and within the person (e.g. loneliness, fear of failure or rejection, loss of love).

A widespread definition of resilience I heard while running courses in companies was ‘sucking it up and moving forward’ – tough individuals withstanding the hard knocks of corporate life and learning valuable lessons in the process to be carried forward into their next task or project. I also often saw ‘sucking it up’ being used as a mantra, a reflexive response to others’ enquiries as to how the individual was coping, as if he had an unlimited capacity to absorb everything thrown at him. In reality, sometimes there was no real psychological processing of events, which meant that some of these hard knocks acted as roadblocks to moving on. For example, Sally said, following some harsh criticism from her boss about a project she was overseeing and which was falling behind schedule, ‘I took a verbal bruising from him and now I’ve moved on’. Her colleagues congratulated her on her enviable coolness under fire. Sally always liked to present an unruffled exterior, as if she were stress-resistant. A week later, her personal assistant (PA) made a scheduling error in Sally’s appointments diary, and

I tore into her with a ferocity that shocked me and reduced her to tears. When I calmed down I apologised profusely, took her out for a very expensive lunch to try and make amends for my outburst and told her the real story behind it. I hadn’t sucked up the criticism but, instead, it had been eating away inside of me. Luckily my PA didn’t report me or resign.

One of Sally’s core values was that people should be treated fairly; another one was to be self-reliant. So there was an internal clash between her seething indignation at being unfairly criticised (from her viewpoint) and her reluctance to tell others how she really felt because this would be, she thought, a sign of weakness, as it ‘demonstrated the criticism got to me’. When she was no longer able to contain this conflict within herself, her PA became the unwitting target for her anger. She felt ashamed for losing self-control publicly and guilty that her insistence on being treated fairly didn’t always extend to her treatment of others. In our coaching sessions, we focused on:

• accepting, without liking, that a core value of being treated fairly does not have to be supported or respected by others, and she can choose on which occasions to speak up when she perceives she has been treated unfairly;

• learning how to take it (criticism) on the chin sometimes is a useful attribute to acquire – you demonstrate you are not easily rattled by criticism – but pretending to take it stoically when she’s been badly shaken by it is living a lie, and this pretence certainly won’t add to her reserves of resilience; and

• self-reliance is an admirable quality, but when taken to extremes – compulsive self-reliance – it becomes self-defeating as you’ve reached the limits of self-help but won’t admit it to yourself. Support from others offers emotional release from pent-up feelings, and this support may have assuaged Sally’s angry feelings, thereby stopping her from unleashing them on her PA. So a balanced view of self-reliance is both self- and social support.

Your definition or description of resilience should allow you to access a range of responses and resources to deal with difficult times rather than mentally shackle you to only one response, such as ‘sucking it up’ (rather than admitting at times, ‘I’m stuck’), and only one resource (yourself instead of seeking help when needed).

Understanding your interpretation of events

The crucial importance of how our thinking about events powerfully influences our behavioural and emotional reactions to them is the basis of cognitive behavioural coaching (CBC) and will therefore be emphasised throughout this book. Examining our thinking provides an entry point to our inner world to discover whether our attitudes and beliefs are helping, hindering or harming us in our struggle to deal with difficult times. Uncovering a person’s attitudes and beliefs may not reveal straightaway who is demonstrating resilient behaviour in times of misfortune: a snapshot of a particular moment in the struggle may not provide a reliable prediction of who will and will not make it in the longer term. For example, two men who have been made redundant are both bitter and dejected because they have the same view of the situation. If a snapshot is taken at this point, can you really say which one will fight back or give up – or will they both put their lives back on track? Incidentally, if you admire someone for her upbeat, positive attitude to life, this doesn’t prove she’s resilient, as she may not have faced tough times yet and her character may not have been put under the spotlight to see how well or poorly she copes in these circumstances. In other words, your level of resilience can’t be assessed if you’re not facing adversity.

Showing mental robustness in response to present misfortune doesn’t mean you will always be robust no matter what happens to you. Similarly, falling into despair doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck there forever. Meaning is not static and is therefore likely to change depending on how you’re assessing unfolding events. For example, you can keep moving between ‘Why me?’ bafflement, ‘I can’t take much more of this’ despair and ‘Get on with it!’ grit in your time of struggle.

Bouncing back vs coming back

The bouncing back model of resilience is inviting but misleading, as it provides only one speed of recovery (bouncing) from adversity. This model is ubiquitous in the resilience literature, but I’ve yet to see someone put very specific time constraints on the bouncing back period, e.g. ‘Bouncing back means returning to normal functioning within forty-eight hours’. Are you supposed to bounce back from every adversity, no matter how severe it is? Whether you bounce back or need longer to recover has to take into account a number of factors, such as your individual capabilities, your current reserves of resilience (plentiful or near depleted), the level of social and community support available to you, your present physical and psychological health and the severity and duration of the noxious situation you’re facing.

Additionally, who draws the line between resilient and non-resilient responding to hard times (unless the person says he’s struggling unsuccessfully)? It doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination to realise that some grim events will require slower periods of recovery or self-righting (i.e. putting your life back on track). When does slower become too slow and thereby labelled as non-resilient responding? Masten and Wright (2010) suggest that if the period of resilience following adversity is set within a short timescale, the person who takes longer to recover would be identified as non-resilient but that his resilient responding may become evident if he was followed-up over time; conversely, someone described as resilient within this short timescale might crumble at a later date – would she still be described as resilient? So, who is and isn’t resilient would be determined by whomever sets the time periods for assessment of resilience: ‘Our approach focuses on understanding different pathways of resilience over time’ (Masten and Wright, 2010: 221). I agree with this statement; different pathways lead to different outcomes, which can suggest in parts of the resilience literature, whether intentional or not, a pecking order of the value of the outcome:

• ‘I’m just glad to have got through it, that’s all’ (bronze star);

• ‘I realise now that I’m stronger than I think’ (silver star); and

• ‘I’ve become a more capable, caring, better, wiser person and have reordered the priorities in life as a result of my experiences’ (gold star).

Bouncing back suggests a rapid and near-effortless recovery from adversity, which leads to the question: how does the person define adversity if he always bounces back from each one (and deciding what constitutes an adversity is another bone of contention in the resilience field)? Probably most people would agree that being caught up in a plane hijacking would count as a genuine adversity but is, for example, a much looked forward to day out in the countryside spoilt by constant rain an adversity? Obviously the person can reply, ‘An adversity is whatever I say it is’, but if he’s taking disagreeable events in his stride (e.g. reluctantly but efficiently covering the work of a colleague who’s on holiday, going to a dinner party he’d rather avoid to placate his partner and making the most of being stuck in a traffic jam for several hours), this demonstrates his usual competent functioning, not a resilient response to presumed adversity.

If subjective labelling of events as adversities is taken to an extreme, then anything you feel uncomfortable or upset about, no matter how small or trivial the incident may seem to others, can become, in your mind, overwhelming or traumatic. For example, misplacing your smartphone for a few hours and being temporarily ‘out of the loop’ on social media, having to listen to a viewpoint you don’t agree with and should be protected from or having to wait in a telephone queue until your complaint is dealt with. If these are the ‘adversities’ the person gets upset about instead of learning to cope with them in the normal course of events, psychological fragility is likely to develop and little, if any, resilience reserves will be built up; so, when a genuine adversity strikes (e.g. being mugged), her coping capacity is likely to be non-existent.

An adversity can be viewed as an unpleasant experience that temporarily destabilises you or leaves you feeling vulnerable, as you don’t know how to respond to it at the current time or your usual coping response is ineffective in this situation, so you have to search within yourself (and with the help of others, if they’re available) to find a constructive way forward in this time of disruption and uncertainty. Resilience is developed through finding courage, enduring distress and showing determination – ‘struggling well’, as Higgins (1994) calls it. In Sally’s case, she had dealt effectively with many disagreeable workplace events in her career but, on this occasion, harsh criticism from her boss turned her usual tough-mindedness into crumble-mindedness (not just a ten-minute rant about him in the privacy of her office and then back to work). This internal collapse, the fear she had lost control, put Sally face to face with adversity, not a disagreeable event. She was horrified and preoccupied with her response, unable to make sense of it (‘I shouldn’t be acting like this. This is not me’), and that’s why she sought coaching. As I mentioned in the introduction, I often see clients whose natural reserves of resilience have become depleted in certain situations and require restocking with new beliefs and behaviours. Therefore, there should be no assumption on the part of the coach that resilience coaching is just about building on the existing strengths of the client.

Another point to consider with the image of bouncing back is this: does your life automatically return to the status quo ante (pre-adversity state)? Your struggle to overcome adversity may have changed ­considerably the way you view yourself and your life: a steely determination has emerged which surprises you; values are revised (‘What’s really important in my life? What am I no longer going to waste my time on?’); friendships revisited (who were your fair-weather and all-weather friends during your term of trial?); and a new career path is plotted (‘I never really liked my job’). Recovery from the adversity and making sense of what’s happened to you takes time to process; bouncing back suggests little time would be allowed for this to occur – only rapid processing of emotionally charged material.

Bouncing back may be the ideal that a person aspires to but if this ideal is expressed in rigid terms (‘I must always bounce back no matter what’), the person is likely to feel emotionally disturbed when his latest ‘bounce’ doesn’t take off, and self-depreciation (i.e. seeing oneself as inadequate or a failure) usually follows.

For the above reasons, I prefer to use the term ‘coming back’ with my clients, as it allows for different speeds of recovery, including bouncing back, depending on the severity and duration of the adversity as well as coaches encouraging clients to fashion their own recovery plan, taking into account, for example, age, personality/coping styles, personal strengths, social support available, cultural differences – in other words, customised resilience, as there is no one, fixed way to be resilient. This is important to remember if someone keeps pestering the person with their ‘haven’t-you-got-over-it-yet?’ accusations of tardiness in pulling herself together.

Resilient but not invulnerable

Another unhelpful idea about resilience is that hard times have tempered the steel of your character and it will never break, whatever life throws at you. No matter how robust you’ve become, you still remain vulnerable to coping poorly with future adversities. Vulnerability is not a sign of weakness; no one has an absolute resistance to adversity – even elite soldiers can reach their breaking point (Taylor, 2017). I saw a Royal Marines Commando (elite amphibious forces) who said he loved military life and no challenge, within a military context, was too much for him – ‘You’ve got to crack on and do it’. What did prove too much for him was the ordinariness of family life: he said it drained the vitality out of him, he felt he’d lost his sense of who he was and moderately depressed about it (he wished he’d stayed in the Royal Marines). Coaching focused on him stepping up to ‘execute competently the responsibilities of family life’ (his phrase) as well as setting himself challenges (e.g. running marathons in the UK and abroad) to recover ‘my lost vitality’. As Masten and Wright (2010: 215) point out:

Resilience should not be conceptualized as a static trait or characteristic of an individual. Resilience arises from many processes and interactions that extend beyond the boundaries of the human organism, including close relationships and social support. Moreover, an individual person may be resilient with respect to some kinds of stressors and not others.

There is no automatic transfer of resilience attitudes and skills from situation to situation, so the person may demonstrate varying levels of resilience in each one, as well as during different life stages (Rutter, 2000). For example, he copes w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Reflections on resilience
• 2 Attributes associated with resilience
• 3 Resolve to be more resilient
• 4 Non-resilient ideas
• 5 A course of resilience coaching
• 6 A recap on resilience
• References
• Index