“I have totally rebooted myself since I started working with the Resilience Dynamic.”
Diane Williams, Accredited Resilience Dynamic Practitioner since 2020
Diane Williams of Captura Coaching is a Cheshire-based professional development coach and Accredited Resilience Dynamic Practitioner since 2020. With 11 years of experience as a managing consultant across a range of industries and 15 years in sales and marketing within the motor industry, Diane’s experience working within highly target-driven and often stressful environments has given her the insight to understand what drives performance; where slowing down to speed up can often be more effective and where compromising wellbeing for high performance is unsustainable. Working mainly with organisational leaders to improve overall performance, Diane uses a combination of performance and resilience coaching tools and techniques and behavioural profiling and analysis.
Read below about Diane’s Resilience Accreditation Programme experience and the impact of resilience on her coaching practice and clients.
Having previously worked in management positions in the automotive industry, what led you to resilience coaching and the Resilience Accreditation Programme?
I was looking for some interesting CPD and was looking through Coaching at Work magazine. I saw an AoEC advertisement for various courses and a one-day workshop in resilience coaching really appealed. I thought it was relevant and I thought the content would give a different perspective to my coaching. I was not planning on the full accreditation. I found Jenny Campbell and Alison Kane’s approach so refreshing and I was asking so many questions of myself by the end of the day that I had made the decision to join the full programme before I completed my journey home. I could see immediately how the resilience work could enhance my coaching and give me additional skills to be more successful.
The Resilience Accreditation Programme is delivered virtually – what were some of the positives and challenges you experienced with this way of working?
I was positively surprised at how well we all connected. I also learnt valuable skills and gained the confidence to continue my own consultancy and coaching on-line too. The random nature of the allocation of breakout groups was the biggest positive for me because we got the opportunity to work with so many different people in the group, we really mixed. In my experience, in a face-to-face situation where you can choose your work groups, you have a tendency to stick to who you have already connected with and don’t often move out of that circle.
What does your coaching model look like and how has this evolved since completing the Resilience Accreditation Programme?
My coaching tends to be quite structured and often quite challenging – very goal-focused. I use the resilience lens implicitly now in all the coaching work I do. I now have a different perspective on the connection between wellbeing and performance and I truly believe we have been able to accelerate and enhance my coachees’ progress by bringing the resilience toolkit into my programmes.
Tell us about your work at Captura Coaching and Captura Automotive. How are you using resilience in your coaching practice and who are you working with?
I had the opportunity during lockdown to work with a very busy group of senior managers in a logistics business who were coping with a huge amount of change. They were all working remotely and facing uncertainty in workload and customer demands. I was able therefore to practice resilience coaching with all of them. We created strategies to help them to pace themselves, manage their new working environments, create and implement new boundaries and successfully navigate the changes and challenges they were facing. It has been a rewarding experience on all sides. I am currently using the resilience toolkit in some professional development coaching where we are working simultaneously on behavioural change goals and performance targets.
Resilience coaching is also opening new doors for me too. I am about to launch a new brand, working in collaboration with a health and fitness professional who specialises in breathing techniques and core and postural strength. We are combining her skills and my resilience coaching, making that powerful link between mental and physical wellbeing.
What are the typical challenges you have been asked to help clients with?
Those facing significant change from the impact of the pandemic. ‘Stuckness’ where clients should be progressing and weren’t and couldn’t see why. Individuals preparing for the next career milestone, where we have needed to build self-awareness and address professional development goals requiring substantial behavioural change. Senior teams that have lost their focus and ability to collaborate, where chimneys had formed and the emphasis had been on self-preservation.
You completed the Resilience Accreditation Programme in 2020 – have you seen the need for resilience coaching change as we have gone through the pandemic?
Absolutely, I think the pandemic has brought more awareness to wellbeing and I think people in general now are more focussed on balance and fulfilment. The pandemic has forced huge change in a lot of businesses and those businesses have needed to adapt significantly and quickly to survive. Employee resilience and adaptability has played a huge part in this.
What impact is resilience coaching having for your clients?
I have seen significant personal growth and have seen people able to unlock themselves when they were really quite stuck. I’ve worked with people to build their resilience first which has then given them the capacity to work on aspects of their professional performance that they hadn’t previously been able to address. It has been incredibly rewarding to observe how once they have addressed resilience, they are able to set goals for themselves that previously they felt were unattainable. Sometimes they even look different, their posture, complexion, demeanour can all change for the better.
What has your work as a resilience coach taught you personally?
I honestly can’t tell you how much I have benefitted both personally and professionally from this process. I have totally rebooted myself since I started working with the Resilience Dynamic. I’m trying to rebalance my portfolio (a work in progress!) and promote myself better. Do what I enjoy more. I feel like I have undergone the coaching process myself and it has given me the belief and confidence in the methods and techniques to use them successfully with my clients.
What do you find most rewarding about your work as a resilience coach?
Walking someone through the process and seeing them become more balanced and able to take on things they/we never would have thought possible.
A big thank you to Diane for sharing her inspiring story of resilience training through the Resilience Accreditation Programme.
If you are an experienced coach or internal practitioner interested in supporting the performance and wellbeing of your clients and colleagues using transformational coaching models, apply to join our yearly Resilience Accreditation Programme. Accredited by the ICF for 60 hours CCEU.
Interviewer: Lee Robertson – AOEC