Your Support Network and Your Coach

image:examiner.com
culled from:global-executive-coaching.blogspot.ch

Coaching is employed to make the good better.  It offers the client different perspectives; it challenges as well as supports; it enables the client to reflect on her thoughts in a safe environment when perhaps the workplace does not afford her this.
And it can go further.  What happens when the client reaches a point in her life and career where demands outstrip resources?  It’s a rather brutal way of describing stress, grounded more in economics terminology than in mental health, but it encapsulates the processes within perfectly.
A recent World Economic Forum report, “Charter for Healthy Living,” describes how “economic uncertainty has placed many families…under enormous levels of stress.”  Granted, the WEF’s findings of increased levels of stress should be taken with a certain level of scepticism: while life was universally better before the 2008 crash, I’d still choose life in 2013 over 1913 any day.  But modern living – and the demands we place on ourselves that accompany it – comes with its own problems.
Severe stress is highly debilitating.  But what do I mean by resources?  Naturally, the inability to pay the mortgage is an economic problem that can indeed lead to stress.  But what about non-monetary resources?  Well, there are family and friends.  And there are professionals.
Now, I’m not one to psychopathologise, but I certainly believe in dealing with small problems before they become big problems.  (Unchecked, small problems tend to do that.)  And, to illustrate this, the WEF report contains one particular paragraph that is worth reproducing in its entirety:
Our modern lifestyle, including changing social support networks and personal stress, is another type of social pressure for Healthy Living.  Modern living places pressure on the traditional social support structures and connectivity with families and the broader community (WHO, 2003).  Stress (at work) has also been associated with a 50% excess risk of coronary heart disease (Marmot, 2004; Kivimäki et al., 2006), and there is clear evidence that work-related stressors have a negative impact on both physical and mental well-being (Stansfeld & Candy, 2006).
Let’s think about this a moment.  The social network has evolved over time, and one significant change is that we are living more atomised lives.  For example, as the 2010 US Census found, more people are living alone than ever before.  While this is great for privacy and not having to queue outside the bathroom, it can however bring about its own problems.  And this is where your resources come in.  When times are good, we do not feel such a need for them; when times are hard, we tend to need to reach out more.
Demands for increased role flexibility, less career security, constant traveling, heightened workload, distance, a diminished support network – and generally asking yourself if these roles in life still mean to you what they meant a few years back: look out for these as potentially stretching your resources.  And talk about it.