Why Work Feels Harder Now

Speaker 0:13

Hi, and welcome. I've come to believe that work has become increasingly challenging. In conversations I've had with colleagues, with friends, and clients over the past few months, I hear stories of this change. Coaching colleagues are asking me if it's just them or are all coaching clients describing a working environment that's becoming harder? And I imagine that you will recognize the context. Complexity of roles, volume of work, challenging market conditions, and a lack of clarity about what work looks like in the future are just some of the things contributing to this. Never mind all the additional work AI is generating at the same time as the threat that it is here to take our jobs. I have clients who are happy and fulfilled at work and in corporate jobs, but even they will observe that the environment is presenting many challenges. Burnout rates seem to be rising and finding career growth is harder. And so in this situation, I think we need all the help we can get, and the way we get that help needs to change a bit. And one way we can do that is to learn to be our own coach. Not an AI coach, although there is some benefit there, but your own coach. In the podcast today, I'm going to share my thinking behind this self-coaching concept, some of my own story with self-coaching, and share how you can learn to do this. I've come to see that the most important professional development we'll ever do is about understanding ourselves, how we respond under pressure, what drives our behavior in relationships, and knowing where our sense of worth really comes from. And one thing I've learnt in my career, and what I've spent the last 30 years helping others discover, is that even in the toughest time, growth matters. The more I grow, the more I overcome my inner obstacles, the more I study those who've come before me, the more happy and fulfilled I become at work.

What Self-Coaching Actually Means

Speaker 2:37

And one way of creating this growth is through self-coaching, something we seldom talk about, and yet I think can be a really powerful to- tool in these challenging times. So how does self-coaching work? Well, let me start with what we do when we teach people to coach. We start the training by helping them learn to listen, to ask questions, and to reflect back. And as the training goes on, we offer tools and techniques that the coach can share and use with clients. But we don't really teach how to hand those tools over to clients, and actually then the power sits in the coach's hands. And especially if a coach needs to earn a living, which we all do, it can be scary to help our clients to be independent, to share with them all the tools they need. But in the meantime, self-help is a massive industry, and we see that people are actively looking for ways to self-coach. My own thinking on this was challenged when my therapist started actively teaching me the tools she was using with me. She was handing them over to me to use myself. She didn't keep them for her to use in sessions. She was actively encouraging me to use the same tools between sessions. In the jargon, this is called psychoeducation. This is a very different approach to how we have approached coaching, and in fact, it goes against the main teaching of our main accrediting body, which is that we are firstly there to help someone think for themselves, and if you started by teaching tools, this would lead you to failing your coaching assessment I've been struggling quite a lot with this in my own coaching practice. I noticed myself offering tools, books, strategies that I use for myself to clients, but then I would have a thought that I wasn't being a proper coach, that I was teaching. And I know some of the coaches I've trained have also struggled with this because they talk to me about their concerns that they are teaching too much in their coaching. They felt that they were doing something wrong and that they should just be asking questions and listening. And through all this, I began

Teaching Tools Versus Pure Coaching

Speaker 4:56

to wonder what would happen if we could hand those tools over to people directly, missing out the coach in the middle, so that people could use these to coach themselves, to self-coach. After all, when we're teaching people to coach, we invite them to use the tools on themselves first, and I really don't believe you have to be a coach to use them. Now, I'm not saying that we don't need coaches. Coaches are hugely valuable and, of course, I work as a coach. What I'm saying is that I think that we can also help people to self-coach, and that this increases accessibility to these coaching tools. I've told the story on the podcast before of a taxi driver showing me a model called The Choice Point. Now, this is a model that I've also been sharing with clients for years, and you can find it in the book that I recommend the most, The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. This driver wasn't a coach. He was someone who had read the book, seen how helpful this tool was, and wanted to share it with everybody so that they could apply it in their own lives. They could use it themselves. He was offering something so that people could self-coach. And it was when he did that that I realized that that was where I was. I was ready to do

The Taxi Driver Turning Point

Speaker 6:18

that, and I was ready to create somewhere that I could teach people all the tools that I've gathered and that I share with clients so that they, you, can use them to be your own coach. Because in these times, we need all the help we can get. And this was the beginning of the creation of my new community, Flourish, and the doors are now open. Flourish is much more than just

My Career Story And Ambition

Speaker 6:47

the tools. At its heart, it's a community, and I believe we need community in these challenging times. It's a space where we can learn how to find fulfillment and happiness at work again. But before I share more about Flourish, let me take you back to a bit of my own story and what I've learnt that brings me to this point. As may be completely obvious from the content in my podcast, what matters most to me in the world is personal and professional growth. I've been on a massive personal campaign all of my adult life to grow and improve myself, to overcome my internal challenges. And in my career I have had coaches, mentors, therapists, peer coaching groups, and at one point, all at the same time. I've devoured both self-help and organizational theory, leadership theory, and I've done plenty of training, both formal and informal. I've also been and am very driven. I think about work most of the time. And at the heart of everything I've done has been this thread of growing myself and helping others to grow, helping them to feel their own ambition, whatever that looks like for them, and to create a ca- career that helps them to realize that. I've seen in my own journey how having the right support at the right time can really help with this. One example was that I didn't always see myself as ambitious, but when I finally engaged with my ambition, I decided I wanted to work in the National Health Service in the UK. At that time, the NHS was well known for having strong career pathways to bring more women into senior leadership. But when I started inquiring about how to get a role there, I got a strong message, "If you don't come from healthcare, you can't get work there." But this was one of those just you watch me moments. I engaged a career coach, and she helped me find a senior healthcare mentor, and I became single-minded. I focused and learned everything I could about working in healthcare, and I got a little lucky. I applied for two roles, and I got the second role I applied for. I'm hugely grateful for that role. I was promoted twice in two years. I loved working in the healthcare sector, and I have very close friends I met now from that job over two decades ago. And what I learned from that experience was that it's okay to feel ambition and to create plans to do whatever we can to create the opportunities we're seeking, and that it's often with support from others that we can do that, that we can achieve our goals. I worked in healthcare for three years, and after a short consulting role, set out on my own to run the business, the business I still run to this day. Healthcare suited me really well, but as I got more senior, I became further and further removed from the work I love, which as we know, is helping people grow and develop. And I decided I needed to create a working life that does just that. I continued to coach and facilitate programs, leadership programs, women's career programs, And then 10 years ago set up Bailey Belfor Coach Accreditation, and we certified over 500 coaches. This was also really fulfilling work. The people we trained in that program have gained senior leadership roles. They've become professional full-time coaches, and alumni tell me how the program has changed their lives. They became better leaders, colleagues, parents, and partners. They learned more about themselves, and they grew in their professional lives, and they could see the impact this had on their career and on the lives of the people around them. I could see how the tools and the frameworks and the guidelines we were teaching on the program were impacting every part of their lives. For the last year, I've been working with individual coaching clients and absolutely loving that work. I have such a big passion for coaching and seeing the change that is possible for people. But something was missing again for me in my own fulfillment, and I could see that so many people wanted the help that coaching can offer, but couldn't afford the one-to-one fees. I also began to see how the tools I was teaching, the tools I was using in one-on-one could be shared more widely. And looking at my Dropbox full of techniques and frameworks and guidelines from the coaching program and all the leadership programs I'd run and began to think, "Hmm, I think we could use these for self-coaching." There was one more thing that was missing here for me, and that's that I've always kind of seen myself as a teacher. I trained originally as a teacher, and I was missing having opportunities to teach or to

Why I Built Flourish

Speaker 11:51

be with groups of people. I'd find myself reading a book or listening to a podcast and thinking, "Oh, I could teach about that," or, "I could create a handout about that," or, "I could run a workshop on that." And I realized that I wanted a space to do that. And so Flourish was born. It is my new membership community for ambitious professionals. And I've created this space with two key elements. The first is providing you with all the tools and the frameworks you need to be your own coach, and providing opportunities for you to learn how to apply these through live workshops, hot seat group coaching with me, and the book club. I will also share how to apply my own self-coaching model, which is at the heart of my upcoming book, which will be published early 2027 The second element is community, that we have a space where we can learn all this alongside others, and that we're able to share ideas, ask for help, and together create strategies for navigating these really challenging times. The community aspect is really important to me. I believe that community matters more now than ever, and I have created an environment where we can come together and learn and grow, because we weren't built to do hard things alone. Research has shown that we're often experiencing

Community As The Missing Support

Speaker 13:24

isolation at work, and I don't think remote working has helped this. But we are hardwired for relationship and to be with other people, and modern work life sometimes doesn't allow this. Through community, we create the safety, support, encouragement, but also the challenge and accountability which can help us to be the best we can be at work. In community, there's no power dynamic and there's no agenda beyond us just learning and growing in our career together. There's no competition, just mutual support. One of the reasons I started coach training program was because I wanted to go on a long journey with people where we learnt and grew together, and we built long-term relationships with each other. That certainly happened. I know there are many people from the program who still are connected and have friendships with each other, and in fact, two of the alumni have just written a book together. We created some great bonds, and there was so much rich learning in the coming together, and I'm really hoping that we can continue that learning in the community in Flourish. I've also personally had some amazing growth experiences in community, and I know that without them I wouldn't be here today. I've talked before about my amazing peer coaching circle with Val and Milene, and the three of us met a few times a year for nearly 20 years to help each other in our career, and I know there's things that I wouldn't have done without you, Val and Milene, by my side. I've also set up peer coaching groups in organizations, and I know that one of those groups is still meeting 30 years later. So a core part of

Tools Library Workshops And Book Club

Speaker 15:14

Flourish for me is in actively supporting the sense of community The self-coaching approach will come from the tools, the frameworks, the strategies, and the guidelines that I have from all of the teaching and training I've done. Rather than just sitting on my computer, these will be increasingly added into the membership, and I will offer them to you so that you can use them in your own working lives to self-coach. You'll learn psychology and neuroscience, career development tools, resilience strategies, and frameworks and models to help you apply it all. And this will happen in a structured way with handouts and guides to help you apply the learning. My dream for Flourish is that this is a space where you can come together, we can come together, and build strong relationships in which we help each other with the incredible challenges that we have facing us in work at the moment. It will be in the peer support and learning that growth happens, and you will have a growing library of tools to help you to be your best at work. This won't happen without me. I will be very present. I will be there coaching in the group. I will be teaching. I will run the book club, which of course thrills me because I love books, and I'll answer questions and provide support in the chats. And as we go along, there will be other ways to learn and grow together, and we'll identify these as the community grows. For example, we will have occasional intensive months two or three times a year where we'll choose a topic and do a deep dive period. For example, I'm thinking in November this year that we do four weeks on planning to have an outstanding career year in 2027. In those months, there will be weekly teaching and a lot of resources and handouts. The book club will start in October. We'll spend two months reading a book together and sharing insights and how we're applying the learning. And there'll be chats. You can ask me questions anonymously. You can ask each other. You can share insights, articles, podcasts, books. You can ask how to handle a work situation or share an insight from a learning experience. We'll also create special interest groups, for example, for people who've recently made redundant. I've had a request that we have some co-working time where you come and work together but alone for an hour. We might have accountability groups. We will create these as we move along together, so there will be plenty

How To Join And Early Bird Bonus

Speaker 17:44

more besides all of that. What we will do together is support each other in our ongoing continuous career growth, and I really hope you'll come and join me there. You can head over to jenbelfor.com/flourish and all the information is available And if you join before twenty first of September, you'll have access to the early bird rate along with a free thirty-minute coaching session with me I hope to see you there