How The Resilience Engine® models help Charlotte Hitchings work with leadership performance

Resilience Accreditation Case Study

Charlotte Hitchings, Accredited in the use of The Resilience Engine® models 2015

I initially came to resilience as an executive coach and senior leader interested in improving my own resilience. The models helped me identify where I am, how to know this and the steps I can take to be more sustainably resilient. I have already seen the benefits of proactively addressing my own resilience, for example, I am bouncing back much more quickly from setbacks.

As a coach, I was aware that many of my clients were also grappling with sustaining their resilience in the face of significant leadership challenges. I viewed the Resilience Engine™ (RE) model as a potential coaching tool for clients who wanted to work on this aspect of their experience. However, once I learned more, I realised that the concepts are relevant to most clients I work with, particularly those working on their leadership performance. Although other concerns are presented, for example work life balance, an unhelpful belief affecting confidence, a decrease in motivation or an inability to effectively manage pace or work load, resilience is often an underlying issue.

Accreditation (achieved mid 2015) gave me models both for diagnosing clients’ current resiliency (the Resilience Dynamic) and for supporting them in making changes to improve this (RE). By understanding the models and the implications of working with them in depth, I have become more consciously aware of, and attuned to, clients’ resiliency and able to bring greater value to my interventions when working with them.

A clients' positioning on the Resilience Dynamic has implications for their ability to achieve their goals, whether or not these are obviously connected to resilience. For example, someone might need to work on improved coping strategies before they can engage successfully with other leadership challenges. It also has implications for the way I work with individuals as they need different things from me as their coach, depending on their level of resilience.

I really like the fact that the Resilience Engine model takes into account all the complexity and uniqueness of individuals. There are many possibilities to explore using the model and many different routes to improved resilience, which is an achievable goal for everyone, no matter where their resilience currently is.

Resilience is an area of increasing interest to organisations and business leaders, who are looking for interventions that have a long term and sustainable impact on organisational performance. The RE approach is performance focused. Every client or potential client I have spoken to about resilience is immediately interested in learning more, so there are significant coaching opportunities from being accredited to use the models. Being an accredited practitioner also gives you an opportunity to be involved in the delivery of RE’s management and leadership programmes and to learn from, and contribute to, the ongoing development of the models and their wider application to the resilience of teams.

Charlotte Hitchings (ACC) has 20 years executive management and leadership experience in blue chip companies and is currently a non executive director and Deputy Chair of an NHS Foundation Trust. In addition to her ICF credential, she is a certified NLP Master Practitioner and holds a Certificate in Gestalt Coaching Skills from the AoEC and a Level 7 Certificate in Executive Coaching and Leadership Mentoring from the Institute of Leadership and Management.