Our consultants graft hard for themselves and for us. It’s because of their unparalleled delivery of Leadership and Team facilitation and coaching that we have experienced rapid growth over the past two years.
But their hard work also makes us conscious of the lack of time they have for themselves. Just like anyone else, they deserve time out to reflect and reboot.
“At Co-Creation we recognise the importance of looking after our own wellbeing and the real benefits this brings for ourselves and our organisation. We wanted to create a day which enabled our own consultants and coaches with the time and tools to focus on themselves and their own wellbeing.”
Our recent CPD Day at the beautiful Manley Mere was an opportunity for them to pause, share and reflect. So they could take their professional and personal development to the next level and grow closer as a Co-Creation community. It’s also part of our commitment to ‘give back’ to our community, to help the team develop new skills and techniques that will not only help Co-Creation clients but also help them in their own businesses too.
Additionally, it’s an opportunity for us to practice what we preach. We spend all our time helping clients transform their businesses through coaching and personal/professional development and it’s important that we also take time out to reflect and develop.
Here’s what happened on the day, plus some employee wellbeing tidbits you can use to maximise your team’s performance and happiness.
Walk With Purpose
Mindfulness isn’t just a buzzword. It’s an essential component of survival in this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous) world we live in. It helps you live in the moment without being held back by past negative experiences or worry of the future. Our first activity was an exercise in mindfulness to help our consultants master this skill.
Inside Manley Mere’s serene woodland, we asked the delegates to take a stroll in nature and appreciate their surroundings.
The goal was to let their minds wander freely. And to check in with their body to notice how they were feeling physically or emotionally. Liz Needham, one of our consultants and coaches explains how valuable this exercise was to her:
“We are so busy helping everyone else to work effectively that we neglect to take time out for ourselves. Getting outside was the perfect way to really slow down, shift my focus and work on me and my business.”
The beauty of mindfulness is that once you understand how to do it, it can be practised anywhere – even in the office. See if you can incorporate a similar activity into your next team away day to help your employees master this skill and improve their wellbeing.
An Exercise in Resilience
After a relaxed lunch and time for networking and idea sharing, it was time for our second ‘walk with purpose’. The focus was now on problem-solving: previous to the event we asked our consultants to think of a particular problem or challenge that they were facing.
The walk was a chance for them to think clearly about this challenge and how to overcome it. They had to ask themselves the following questions to get to this point:
- What would you like to happen?
- When you achieve this, what will you be able to do?
- How would it make you feel?
- What haven’t you thought of yet?
- Who could help you?
- What needs to stop/start/continue?
By going through this thought process, our team could address their problems objectively. We then encouraged our delegates to share their thoughts in groups and worked together to come up with a solution.
Here’s what Michelle Pratt, one of our coaches, had to say on the value of this experience:
“I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to slow down and focus on my wellbeing. This, combined with support from the peer-to-peer coaching has helped me get more done than weeks of rushing about.”
This is key to building resilience. When you can face your challenges head-on and overcome them with support, your emotional strength grows and future problems don’t seem as daunting.
How can you build resilience within your own team and give your people the confidence needed to push through their personal challenges? Teach them HOW using the questions above can help them and encourage them to share their discoveries with their teammates.
Managing Energy, Wellbeing and Resilience
Next was our second CPD session. We shared three tools to help our associates in their own businesses:
Managing Our Energy tool – Delegates learnt how to be their most productive self by understanding their energies and the best way to channel them.
Managing Our Wellbeing tool – By identifying ways to be more mindful, our consultants can take consistent action to improve their wellbeing.
Managing Our Resilience tool – Delegates gained practical advice on how to build resilience to overcome personal challenges and maximise their potential.
These are resources we use for our clients to help them gain control over their emotional wellbeing so they can achieve their personal and business goals. The purpose was to help them uncover negative habits that are potentially holding them back and develop new positive habits to implement in their daily lives.
Giving our consultants the opportunity to master these tools means they can enjoy the same benefits. They can also harness what they’ve learnt for their coaching sessions to add even more value to their businesses.
Committed to Positive Action
Finally, we wanted our delegates to commit to one action in relation to their personal wellbeing and resilience. They had to write their commitment on a brick, and at the end of the session, those bricks were used to create a visual wall representing delegates’ promises to themselves.
For example, one delegate wrote: “To invest time in myself guilt-free.” While another pledged to: “Practice mindfulness every day in an outside space for a minimum of 15 minutes.”
It was a wonderful way to summarise everything our associates learnt during the day and give them a tangible way to commit to embedding positive habits in their own personal and business lives. It’s also an activity you could easily recreate for your team that gets them thinking about how to improve their emotional and physical health.
Over to You
Is there something you’re going to take from our CPD day and apply it to your own life or business? We’d love to hear about it, so please share with us on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Also, for access to more resources on wellbeing, mindfulness and resilience head over to Anxiety UK’s website, our chosen charity.
If you would like to explore further how Co-Creation can support you with your own wellbeing and team effectiveness, please do contact us and let us help you achieve your aspirations.