Successful individuals use coaching and mentorship to help them unlock their potential. Not all
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of coaches at Idemics. Welcome to Coaches You Need brought to you by Idemics.
Welcome to Coaches to Know a podcast short designed to deem as divide coaching
and help you our audience understand what coaching is and how it can help you.
I'm your host, Jamie, and today I'm here with Coach Leslie discussing
returning to work. Coach Leslie has been coaching for five years, but not
only is she a certified executive and leadership coach, she has over twenty years
of experience and human resources and leadership development within Fortune five hundred companies where she
has held senior management roles and is trained in brain based coaching from the Neurological
Institute. Her clients are mid to senior level leaders who want to achieve more
by showing up to work and home as the best versions of themselves, and
they're looking for support to figure out what they want and how they can get
there. So thank you, Coach Leslie for joining us today. I look
forward to discussing returning to work with you, and I would love to start
by first defining what do we mean by returning to work? And you know,
is there sort of a period like what is the defined period of break
that is implied when we're talking about returning to work. Okay, first,
I just want to thank you Jamie, thanks for the opportunity to speak and
good to see you again. So returning to work at popular topic these days,
even from a return to work to go back to an office versus working
from home, it's created a lot of uproar and confusion for people and really
kind of created a situation where there's a little bit of unevenness or lack of
certainty. So returning to work can be a variety of things. As I
said, it's just taking an extended period of time and ultimately planning to return
to a job. So most commonly we see that in maternity leaves. You
know, people take off three four months now some organizations even longer and they're
pulling them saves out of the day to day workforce. But also it could
be somebody who takes off for personal reasons. Sometimes it's health reasons, sometimes
it's caring for a member of your family when there's no one else too and
suddenly becomes ill or other reasons. But basically, it's you're out of the
office. You're away from the office for longer than standard three week or four
week vacation, which is also a long time, but usually it's for at
least a couple of months, and then they choose to go back into the
workforce. Okay, thank you for sort of latting the groundwork. So you
know, we'll say it's a period significant enough where people feel like sort of
they're out of the groove of what it is to be in the flow of
the day to day. As you said, I really like thinking of it
in that way. So you've extracted yourself from the the in and outs,
the checking of emails, the knowing what's going on, and so let's talk
about let's dissect that a little bit and talk about what tends to be the
most challenging part of transitioning back from being out of that day to day to
getting back into that day to day. Yeah, I mean, in general,
transitions are hard. Change is hard for people. It's a situation where
you feel a little bit less control. So you're going back into an environment
with a lot of uncertainty and doubts can surface from a number of places.
It's my making the right decision. Should I go back? In the case
of a new mom, it's like, oh, my goodness, who's going
to care for my child? Will it be the same? Is this the
right thing to do? Am I being selfish going back to work? Will
your children be self be safe? I'm sorry if I go back? Will
they be Will they accept me like what's gone on in the period that I'm
out? Will I even be able to do the work? So there's this
whole sense of uncertainty that just makes people particularly uncomfortable. And again, in
the case of a new mom, there's a whole sort of physical and hormonal
changes going on. So it's being able to acknowledge the fact that you are
going through some significant changes and figuring out how to kind of navigate those changes
in a way that you feel a little bit more in control. And so
that's interesting. So it's implied then that a coach can really help you navigate
the changes, probably by first developing a self awareness of them, writing an
acknowledgement that this has happened and I am either identity wise no longer the same
person or I have this this additional mental load of concern and you know,
and so talk about your process and how you help your clients navigate from getting
from the self awareness phase to you know, almost probably managing the uncertainty with
confidence. Yeah, there's lots of different ways of approaching it, and it
does vary slightly by client and what their needs are, where they are in
terms of their personal lives, their professional lives, and what they're trying to
accomplish. So coaching is typically what are we trying to move towards and helping
to unravel that is step one. So as a coach, I'm a partner,
I'm an ally and I'm a confidant. I help my clients to navigate
through the change and help them return to work feeling a greatest sense of control.
And going back to what I said earlier, control is the big piece
of it. You know, the uncertainty creates like a natural threat response in
the brain, and you know, we don't have control of what's going to
happen. We don't know what's going to happen. All that is creating this
upheaval in the brain really, and we're trying to calm the brain by creating
some certainty, so they know I'm on their side and they know that everything
they tell me is confidential. The process helps them to deepen their awareness as
you brought up earlier, like what's going on with me both internally and what's
going on on the external environment, and help I help them to gain greater
clarity about what they want and to feel empowered to move forward by gaining that
knowledge. So again, depending on how the situation, it might vary,
but typically I start my clients with some goal setting. I understand a little
bit about where are they now. What's going on is some situations they've already
gone back to work and they're just feeling completely overwhelmed. And in some situations
they're planning to go back to work and just they're emotional, there's tears,
they're scared but they want to and feeling a little bit of sense of guilt
should I want to go back and so forth. So there's lots of things
going on. So a little bit is kind of narrowing that down for them,
is helping them to look at what their emotions are, what's going on
for them physically mentally, and what's most important to them, is it what
is the goal they're trying to reach, and to help them visualize that goal.
So the more they could visualize your goal there, the more capable you
are of kind of saying, so where am I now or what steps might
I need to move forward to get to that goal. So it's creating clarity
around your goals, gaining increased self awareness, and figuring out strategies to help
you to move forward. But typically my clients have two to three primary goals
that they're working towards in a six month coaching assignment. And the reason we
go to that we narrow it down so much is really that too many goals
and I think when we're in that state of transition and confusion and so forth,
we have a trilliet things going on in our head. So part of
it is just narrowing that down and the clearer we are on what it is
we're trying to accomplish and not have too many things that you're trying to reach.
Right, if you have too many goals, it just becomes overwhelming.
So narrow down your two to three top priority and then work through towards get
what are the steps to getting towards that I talk talk a little bit about
the identification process because obviously, you know, part of it the generating of
a self awareness, Like how long does that take? Right? How long
does it take for a client typically to become And I know everybody's different because
this is a very bespoke type of arrangement, but how long does it take
typically for someone to get clarity? You know, honestly, there's no science
to that. It's an evolving process. And some people have clarity when they
walk in the door. They know they need a coach. They have very
specific goals they want to work towards, and you know, I don't necessarily
take them exactly as face value. Initially we kind of dig into why are
those your goals? What makes them important to you? How important are they?
But you know, what would happen if you didn't achieve these goals?
And would with the benefits be if you did? So really trying to unravel
what about that objective is so important to you? What's it going? What
are you hoping it changes? So it's a combination of mindset, actions,
thought processes, and so forth to figuring out why is it I'm going there
and having a clear vision of what that somewhere what it looks like. Yeah,
and so once they have the clarity and they have the why does it
is that that's what brings them maybe a level of confidence to the people that
you're coaching so that they can move forward or in like, you know,
do you help outline for them here are the steps you should take? Or
does the client help outline those steps for themselves? Yeah, no, Jamie,
that's a great question, you know, depending why the circumstance. Sometimes
I give them some little assessments as well, so it gives them some more
self awareness. I often, in the case of people going back into the
workforce, off recommend they do like a values assessment and get really clear on
what's important to them and what their values are. I might do some self
awareness things kind of assessments as well, just to give them broader insight into
what their objectives are, what might be triggering them, why, and so
forth. So it varies, again based on what the needs are of the
person. But so there are tools that I use during coaching to help create
increase self awareness. I also do that through a combination of asking probing questions,
you know, I dig in with the person. They may say something
face value, It's very easy to say, oh, this is what I
want to do, and through my questions of tell me what it is about
that that's important to you, tell me why it is you want to do
that, what would happen, what would the benefit be to you of going
in that direction, what might hold you back from going in that direction?
And then ultimately the clearer you are and the more sense of what it is
you want to do it because you do feel a little bit more empowered to
I understand my needs, I understand what I want to accomplish, and I
know why, I know why this is important to me, which creates a
sense of clarity, a sense of empowerment, and a better sense of control.
So if you remember we start with a transition is a feeling of a
lack of control. Through the coaching process, it helps them to feel more
in control and be more aware of their own needs. That's very interesting.
I have yet to hear anybody define transition in that way. A transition feels
like a lack of control, and the idea of getting to the other side
is really to to gain back that control and confidence and a feeling of sense
of empowerment. Like you can do it. Yeah, exactly exactly. That
is that's that's amazing, and that's a wonderful note for us to end on
today. Coach Leslie, I want to thank you so much for your time
and speaking with That's today about returning to work. If you to my audience,
if you would like to work with Coach Leslie or one of our other
qualified coaches, please visit us at the idemix dot com and thank you very
much for listening today. Thank you, Jamie, it's great talking to you.
Thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review.
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