About a year ago, I felt a mix of professional exhaustion and wanderlust, leading me to take on a new professional development opportunity. I decided to pursue a Level 5 apprenticeship in Coaching, a programme my organisation had started investing in.
I qualified 11 years ago with a diploma in Mental Health Nursing and later completed a BSc in Cognitive Behavioural Therapeutic (CBT) Approaches I’d been toying with the idea of furthering my education; I thrive when I have a diverse workload and I can feel stagnant without new challenges. However, I wasn’t keen on returning to academia while also holding a demanding nursing leadership role.
The Level 5 Coaching program sounded like a good way to grow and add a valuable new string to my bow without the stress of a full-blown academic commitment. The fact that few other organisations were offering this kind of coaching qualification also piqued my interest.
Coaching, with its roots in CBT, involves asking questions to help individuals reflect on their situations rather than providing direct answers or advice. This approach differs from traditional nursing culture, which often relies on giving instructions due to time constraints and a focus on patient outcomes. Despite the prevalence of techniques like behavioural activation and motivational interviewing in mental healthcare, their application still seems underused at times, and coaching's non-directive style was a welcome new approach for me.
During the course, I had the opportunity to practice coaching with people outside of healthcare. This was a refreshing change from my usual environment, where I'd spent over a decade immersed in healthcare and the past eight years in middle and senior nursing leadership roles. It was liberating to step into a role where I wasn't bound by job titles, where there were no emergency calls to disrupt sessions, and where I could focus entirely on the coaching process.
While the experience was challenging at first, requiring me to let go of my professional identity and embrace a coaching mindset, I soon found my stride. I utilised curiosity and open-ended questions to help my coachees work through their barriers. It was a unique opportunity to explore problem-solving and emotional intelligence without the constraints of my usual role.
One of the most valuable aspects of the course was the coaching I received myself. Meeting with a coach every six weeks and engaging in self-coaching in between sessions helped me identify and address some of my own unhelpful behaviours. It was a transformative process that made me question why traditional supervision in nursing often lacks the impact that coaching can have.
After 12 months of honing my coaching skills and attending coaching sessions, I found that my perspective on my professional relationships had shifted, leading to a significant reduction in work-related stress. My experience made me wonder if coaching could offer nursing staff a non-academic path to learning practical skills, fostering a culture of problem-solving, self-sufficiency, and more meaningful supervision.
Investing in coaching skills could not only empower nursing staff but also promote a more supportive work environment. By focusing on practical problem-solving and personal growth, could coaching have the potential to transform the way we approach professional development in nursing?
