Introduction Given the high population prevalence of mental health issues, more and more coaching professionals are being called to support people who want to improve psychological well-being and are encountering a shortage of mental health professionals. This article briefly chronicles the 25-year history of the distinctions, overlap, and collaboration of mental/behavioral health professionals and coaching professionals, enabling an evolving collaboration, a beautiful duet going forward. Phase 1: Distinctions in scope of practice Over the past 25 years, clear distinctions between the scope of practice of mental/behavioral health professionals and coaching professionals have formed the basis of their work with different, although overlapping, populations. In the US, mental/behavioral health professionals invest in years of education, including Master's and PhD degrees, followed by rigorous state licensing and insurance credentialing requirements, in order to be skilled and qualified in helping people restore or improve their mental health. They routinely roll up their sleeves to deal with tough challenges that impair daily functioning, including past trauma, depression, anxiety, addictions, grief, and relational disturbances. Behavioral health professionals work with addiction, substance abuse, eating and mood disorders etc. This work is intense. It can be fraught with risk, especially when people are harming themselves or at risk of harming themselves, or their situations are straining their significant relationships. This sacred work, hidden from view, helps people heal and stabilize their mental and emotional health. It is a calling that is not for the faint of heart. On the other hand, coaching professionals in leadership, business, and health and well-being are trained to work with people who have stable mental health and want to improve themselves, their work, and their lives. Coaching helps people expand their internal and external resources to self-actualize and reach their greatest potential. Coaches are not trained nor qualified to help people better manage and overcome trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or loss/grief. They refer out to mental health professionals when they encounter such mental health challenges. Occasionally a client works with both a mental health professional on their mental health issues as well as a coach on their path forward to positive growth in parallel. Phase 2: Overlaps in interventions This simple distinction - mental health professionals working with people suffering with mental health challenges, and coaches working with people to realize their full potential, began to get blurry over the past decade or more. Both professions began to get training in interventions that can be applied in both contexts. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy was repurposed as cognitive behavioral coaching; similarly, solution-focused therapy as solution-focused coaching. The immunity to change model was developed for coaches, and is based on a cognitive behavioral framework. Acceptance and commitment practices are used in therapy and coaching, as are motivational interviewing, readiness to change, mindfulness, and self-compassion practices. Internal family systems practices are now taught to coaches who have embraced working with the multiplicity of mind. Going the other way, positive psychology interventions are now used by mental health professionals. Psychologists are trained in behavioral strategies and interventions now also used by coaches to support lifestyle change as a treatment for chronic psychological disorders. All in all, the new and emerging interventions have enriched the work and increased the flexibility of therapists and coaches. There is indeed a symbiotic relationship here. While coaches and therapists still work with distinct populations – the overlap is becoming more fluid and common. Phase 3: New Collaboration Emerging developments are launching a third phase of opportunities – a collaboration phase: The epidemic of mental health conditions in recent years has led to a serious shortage of mental health professionals. Coaching interventions are showing promise in improving psychological well-being, including autonomous motivation, efficacy, and forward growth, including those with burnout and recent suicide ideation. The evidence for lifestyle medicine (exercise, plant-forward nutrition, emotional resilience, healthy sleep, and social connections) to address the harm to the mental health of metabolic issues, has opened the door for coaches in health and well-being to work with this population. Addressing all of the recent trends, large health insurance companies Cigna and United Healthcare have begun to support “behavioral health” coaches and coaching for employees with mental health conditions. What then is important to the flourishing of this new collaboration? First and foremost, the responsibility for clinical evaluation, diagnosis, creating, and implementing treatment plans for mental health conditions rests with mental health/behavioral health professionals. Ideally, a client or patient who is willing, ready, and able to engage in lifestyle medicine is offered the option of a coaching program by mental health professionals or physicians, which would then be supervised by the referring professional. Having basic training in mental health literacy, coaches are able to collaborate effectively with mental health professionals. That said, coaches focus on the coaching process that moves people toward positive well-being goals, not focused directly on the mental health diagnosis and treatment plan. Supervising mental health professionals would lead regular check-ins to monitor and support progress and other resources that might be needed. Similarly, mental health professionals are beginning to get trained in coaching methodologies and some are offering a hybrid model that involves the resolution of past traumas and the movement towards goals and aspirations going forward. The opportunity for lifestyle medicine coaching to improve mental health is a new frontier. In a time of great population need, shortage of mental health professionals, and evidence for lifestyle medicine in improving mental health, a new collaboration of mental health and coaching professionals will help more people than ever to both restore mental health and move onto a path toward well-being. Margaret Moore, MBA, NBC-HWC Simon Matthews, MHlthSc, NBC-HWC Randy Kamen, EdD, Licensed Psychologist

Priorities, priorities, priorities! Mark Twain said that to change your life, you need to change your priorities. As an executive coach whose job it is to focus on change, personal, team-focused, and organization-wide priorities come up in every coaching conversation. Priorities are how we match our ambitions with our capacity. Priorities shape organizational effectiveness, departmental focus, and individual contributions. And priorities aren’t limited to industrial focus, they are also essential to spiritual life. In spiritual practices we refer to this as discernment, the ability to judge well and select among options. Discernment is at the heart of spiritual discipline, moral living, and raising consciousness; it’s about making choices. And priorities are just that, clear choices grounded in awareness. Priorities signal to everyone what to pay attention to, where to deploy their Units of Attention. Here’s what I mean by that. Every day we wake up with an inventory of Units of Attention, and wherever we deploy a Unit of Attention is where we spend our energy and our time. If I give Units of Attention to making breakfast, my energy and time go to menu, cooking, eating, and clean up. If I spend Units of Attention on morning news, my energy and time go to thinking about weather and stock market and war. You get the picture. When you deploy a Unit of Attention, you spend energy and time on that Unit – whether a person, idea, process, or object. And that spent Unit of Attention is non-refundable and non-transferable. This is really, really important. You cannot reclaim or reverse the time and energy you spend by deploying those Units of Attention. This is key. Priorities tell us where to place our precious Units of Attention. In the words of Stephen Covey, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” And to schedule your priorities requires both wisdom and power. Wisdom to discern what’s aligned with your values and enriching to your life. And power to set boundaries and advocate for yourself. Wisdom and power establish your priorities. Priorities harness attention. This also works at group level. Team and organizational priorities direct how everyone applies their time and energy. And when we collectively attend to the same priorities, our collective efforts turn to amplification – power drawn from, “the whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.” Well-articulated priorities have the power to heal one of the most crippling organizational maladies – silos. When departments don’t focus on organization wide priorities, they spend their Units of Attention – time and energy – on their own ideas, and miss the power of amplification. Establishing priorities gets people and functions to collaborate, and effective collaboration is the key to amplifying power. Here, for your consideration, are six elements for your priority process. 1. Align on a clear picture Get alignment on what the key business challenges are and how to solve them, this begins alignment on priorities or what defines success. Get everyone on the same page and define your guiding light, your “north star.” (For coaches, it’s helping clients create a wellness vision that serves as their north star. You and the client are aligned in the direction to move) * 2. Signal collective propulsion Because department heads tend to prioritize their departments, they can be a little myopic of the bigger picture. Help functional leaders understand the big-picture goal and how they are going to help achieve it, so they can be connected to what’s most important. (As a coach, set aside your ideas about the next best step. Listen to your client. Defer to their genius. They know the way.) * 3. Set the pace and sequence Priorities combine pace and sequence, and near-term and long-term balance. Step onto the balcony and review priorities with the lenses of: running the business better today, building capability for tomorrow’s business, and growth bets for the future. (Your client likely has big dreams and goals, but it all takes time. Know your client's direction, then help them break that down into the now. Help orient them to how the goals they have for today, this week, feed toward the vision.) * 4. Communicate to resonate If people can’t relate their jobs to what you’re saying the company needs, and what they can do to help, they will automatically disconnect. So make priorities accessible and understandable in the context of daily work activities. (Clients need to have resonance for what they are working toward.; those goals and activities need to relate to their values and their lives.) * 5. Set in-process milestones We don’t just track priorities at the end, but along the way, too. Set “in-process” milestones for people to see if they are “on track” or “off track” that’s how they can make corrective action. (Weekly or bi-monthly coaching sessions help clients keep their focus while attending to the other day-to-day demands of life.) * 6. Celebrate wins, then rapidly move on It is essential to create momentum, and even a movement, by celebrating early successes and leveraging this success to other areas. And then challenge the status quo by running rapid experiments and capturing the learnings of successes or failure. Oh, and celebrate these, too. (No success is too small for acknowledgment. Take the win, however small or big!) * Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, once said, “I learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything… at least not at the same time. So, think of your priorities not just in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.” Do this not just for your sake, but because as a leader you are a steward of your people. Without priorities, people pull in different directions, give their Units of Attention (their precious energy and time) to different tasks, and weaken the overall effectiveness of the collective. By making your priorities explicit you are guiding attention, effort, and direction; you enable your people to pull together and generate positive power toward achieving meaningful results. Reprinted with permission *Information in parentheses are Wellcoaches additions.

Let me start this piece with a confession. I am addicted to watching Penn and Teller. There. I said it. If you haven’t seen one of their TV shows or their live shows (I’ve seen both), you’re seriously missing out on one of the greatest experiences of wonderment of the modern age. Their magic is incomparable and having been a performing duo for nearly 50 years, they have a capacity to entertain and amaze like no other. Entertainment and witty banter aside, the thing I love most is their capacity to completely fool me. I simply do not know how they do what they do. I watch. I watch again. I replay in slo-mo. I see nothing. And nothing gives me greater joy than not knowing. It’s that experience of not knowing that I really relish. If I knew how all their tricks were done, I think it would be a little tedious to watch quite frankly. Not knowing has an enchanting quality to it. It’s the place from which questions can be asked. It’s the place from which discoveries can be made. It’s the place from which new ideas can be considered, without having to commit to any of them. It’s the place from which anything might be, because nothing is yet known. Not knowing is also the position from which I’ve endeavoured to carry out my professional work as both a psychologist and coach for 30 years. This means I must ask; and I must be prepared to hear anything in response. Furthermore, I’ve learnt that the best questions to ask are those that are difficult to answer – those questions which first elicit a response of: “I don’t know – I’ve never thought about that…” In the practice of coaching, inquiry and questions are one of the basic ingredients we use – a little like flour to a baker, if you will. Powerful questions can ignite self-reflection, insight, awe, motivation, realization, and a host of other responses. But how do you get to the point of being able to ask questions that can do this? In the 1990s I was fortunate to study with and be taught and supervised by some very talented family therapists. That experience really has been a great foundation for my career since then. I’ve never let go of the power of questions to ignite imagination. Recently, I took one of the ideas I was exposed to in the 90s and re-imagined it. The result is an article just published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, entitled (it’s a mouthful!): The Question Cube Re-imagined – A 5-Dimensional Model for Cultivating Coaches’ Capacity for Curious Inquiry in Health Behaviour Change. I describe there a model for understanding and deconstructing the elements of a question. A common understanding of questions in coaching (and therapy!) really revolves around just one dimension – how open the question is; and even this dimension is often oversimplified into “open” and “closed” questions. In fact, the openness of a question really moves on a continuum from where a question may elicit a lengthy narrative response (open) all the way through to a single word response (closed - for example, yes or no). In the space between, there are wonderfully useful question formats such as rating or scaling questions (On a scale from zero to 10, how excited are you?) or ranking questions (Which of these appeals to you most? Which next?) and even forced choice questions (Which of those two emotions do you feel most strongly at the moment - anger or relief?). The next dimension relates to the focus of the question. We all likely have an intuitive appreciation of this dimension, but don’t necessarily realise the powerful way in which we can use it to shape the meaning and intent of a question. Questions may focus on what someone is doing (action), what they're feeling (emotion), as well as the quality of a particular relationship that they have, beliefs that they hold and meaning that they ascribe to their own actions, or the actions of others. For example, there are a number of ways in which I could inquire about a single event - a friend giving you a gift. I could ask: What was the gift? What feelings did you experience when you opened it? How important is this person in your life? What does the giving of this particular gift signify to you? What does this action say about your friendship? The third face of the question cube relates to the subject of the question. I could ask you a question about your own beliefs and values. I could also ask you about your perspective on another person’s beliefs or values and I could even ask you what views you imagine that other person might have about you. It's that last perspective that I find particularly useful because it invites the client to step out of their own frame of reference and consider a different perspective. It's much like crossing the road to look at your own front garden. When you sit inside your house, you can see your front garden, but you only have your own perspective of it. If you cross the road, you now get to see your front garden as people on that side of the road get to see it. If you've ever tried this in real life (go on - give it a go now) you will almost certainly notice different things in your front garden that were previously obscured from the view you have within your own house. The fourth dimension is fun - it's the dimension of time. Again, we probably know and use this intuitively, however it's really valuable to recognise that we can frame questions focused on the present, the past and the future. The usefulness of this is immediately obvious - it gives our clients (and us) a means of observing changes across time. If you ask me what I believe my best quality is, and you also ask me what I considered my best quality was two years ago, I'm now invited to engage in self-reflection on what those differences might be, and more importantly - what they might mean. The final dimension is that of reality and possibility. The things we do, the things we have, the people we are, are all real. They might be in the past, present or future. For example, I was born in Australia; I love watching Penn and Teller; I will be warmer later today when I light the fire. But we also inhabit a world of possibility - a world in which we are free to imagine actions we might take and parts of ourselves that have not yet been called into being. For me, this is one of the most exciting parts of coaching: to be able to explore all the possibilities that conceptually exist; all the things that might be. And of course we can frame questions focused not only on “What is?” but also “What might be?”. So the re-imagined Question Cube allows us to understand questions as ranging from “fully open” to “fully closed” as well as consider to whom the question is addressed, about whom, the subject matter, the timeframe and whether or not the question explores something that is or something that might be. As with anything in life, once you’ve deconstructed something and really understand how it works, you can reconstruct it in almost any way you like. I’ve written this in the hope that it might inspire you to engage in powerful inquiry; and if you are a teacher of coaching, counselling or therapy skills, my hope is that you’ll find this framework a straightforward and powerful means of teaching the compelling impact of well-crafted questions. Questions are like keys to rooms you’ve never been in. If you approach with an open mind, a recognition that you don’t know what’s behind, you may just open the door to one of the most extraordinary adventures you could have. What might be the best question you could ever ask? Matthews, S. M. (2023). The Question Cube Re-imagined–A 5-Dimensional Model for Cultivating Coaches’ Capacity for Curious Inquiry in Health Behaviour Change. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 15598276231172910.

As coaches and exercise professionals, you are in the unique position to accompany our clients through the ups and downs of their lives. What a gift it is to be with them in the moments of success– that first 5k, a successful week of workouts, the discovery of a new physical activity. It’s fun to be included in the celebration and to cheer them on. But lasting relationships include the whole of a person’s experiences – the losses, challenges, fears, and anxieties. To truly support our clients in achieving their goals (big and small), we need to have the skills to be present to a range of feelings. It’s easy to smile along with clients when they are happy; we are well-versed in affirmative statements and high-fives. The not-so-happy feelings, however, can feel intimidating – even scary. We can be tempted to avoid (change the subject), change the channel (try to talk them into feeling better), or hyper-focus (fix it/them). Here are some strategies that will prepare you for creating a connecting space with your clients without letting those “negative” feelings swallow you both whole. 1. Don’t mix up your story with theirs. When someone is suffering, it’s human nature to be reminded of the similar ways we’ve experienced the same feelings. We might recall when we went through the same circumstances. Take a breath and shift your focus to their story and their circumstances. Your story isn’t the antidote to their pain. 2. Make a guess. Most people don’t want or need to, be “rescued” from their feelings, they want to be heard. Sometimes, all it takes for the intensity of a feeling to be reduced if for it to be named. Take a guess about what your client is feeling and ask them about it. “Are you feeling disappointed?” or “It sounds like you are feeling anxious” gives them an invitation to say what they are experiencing. Most importantly, don’t rush past this. Discomfort is okay and part of working with humans. 3. Ask what they need. Your client knows best about what is helpful, and unhelpful, to them. Allow time in the conversation to explore strategies. Resist the temptation to take over and be the hero. Your client has ideas and experiences to draw from; encourage their ideas and their capability to find a resolution if there is one. 4. Let it go out the door. As a caring professional this can be the most difficult step – letting go of the need to take responsibility or fix it. When your time with your client is over, allow yourself to release any of your own intense emotions. Step away, take a breath, find whatever you need to reconnect with your work, and be fully present for your next client. Steps 2 and 3 above can be useful for you too!

Geoff Montgomery, NBC-HWC Health Coach WellSpark Choosing Wellcoaches is the best decision I made when I decided to pursue a new career as a Health and Wellbeing Coach. The methodology they teach is easily recognized in the Health Coaching profession and brings instant credibility when looking for a job in the industry. Wellcoaches experienced staff are extremely professional and offer continued support throughout the curriculum, helping ensure success and a feeling of community. Additionally, I have been able to take advantage of the continuing education and monthly offerings to stay up-to-date and continue my education. The Wellcoaches program helped me prepare for the National Board exam, and was instrumental in my getting hired by Well Spark as a Health Coach. I would highly recommend the Wellcoaches program to anyone looking to pursue a career in Health Coaching.

While we could write a book about the 14-year journey from 2009-2022, I want to share the quick highlights to remember the countless hours and years invested by Wellcoaches that led us to the eve of applying for full approval of CPT codes for health and well-being coaching services, planned in early 2023. The original founders in 2009 were from Wellcoaches (me, Coach Meg), University of Minnesota (Karen Lawson), Duke, then Vanderbilt (Ruth Wolever), ACSM (Dick Cotton), Wisdom of the Whole (Linda Bark), CIIS (Meg Jordan), Real Global Wellness (Michael Arloski), Duke Integrative Health (Linda Smith), and Vanderbilt (Roy Elam). Our biggest accomplishment was the journey of the founding team from being competitors to making deep friendships and a collaborative agenda. We all transcended, moving past self-interest and our own organizations and even personal and financial interest to say, “This is for the betterment of the coaching industry and the world.” That energy, that collaboration of serving a larger cause, is the life force behind NBHWC. Here's a quick gallop through our journey together: 1. Co-chaired by me and Karen Lawson, we gathered 70 stakeholders for a fall 2010 summit in Wellesley, MA, titled: Summit on Standards & Credentialing of Professional Coaches in Healthcare & Wellness. We used an appreciative inquiry process to align on a shared agenda to make a big impact on healthcare – developing the new profession of Coaching in healthcare and wellness. One of our many accomplishments? New lyrics for the song – I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing: The Change that’s Sure to Last We used to teach the world to do, Exactly what we said. It didn’t bring them health or joy, And gave us jobs we dread. But now we’ve learned just how to coach, Results are coming fast. This brings them health and gives us joy. The change that’s sure to last. View the Executive Summary of the Summit here. 2. By 2013, the expanded team agreed on one job definition: Health and Wellness Coaches are professionals from diverse backgrounds and education who work with individuals and groups in a client-centered process to facilitate and empower the client to achieve self-determined goals related to health and wellness. Successful coaching takes place when coaches apply clearly defined knowledge and skills so that clients mobilize internal strengths and external resources for sustainable change. Our collaborative and hard-won breakthrough meeting weekly over our first two years was to build one set of standards – for one coach - the health and wellness coach (not different standards for different coaches, e.g. health coach, integrative health coach, or wellness coach). We formed a nonprofit legal entity and board of directors, and we raised $100k in donations. 3. 2014 was a big year. With Dick Cotton’s leadership, ACSM donated the services of a psychometrician to lead a job task analysis process, gathering 15 coaches with varied backgrounds for three days of discussion in Indianapolis to define the job tasks (tasks, knowledge, and skills), further validated by 1,000 practicing coaches. Armed with the job task analysis, and following the best practices DACUM process, we gathered 19 coaching leaders to collaborate in Minneapolis for three summer days on moving toward a consensus on the minimum training and education standards for the health and wellness coach. We invited advisors from ICF and other organizations to assist. The consensus and detailed minimum program standards evolved over the next six months to 60 hours of coaching skills training, 15 hours of healthy lifestyle knowledge, 3 mentor coaching sessions, and a pass/fail practical skills assessment, to be eligible for the national certification examination. We also agreed on a transition phase, ultimately from 2016-2021, with a lower standard - at least 30 hours of coaching skills training and a pass/fail practical skills assessment. We published the standards for public comment by May 2015. 4. In early 2015, Wellcoaches coach Leigh-Ann Webster joined the team as the first paid staff member, serving as the NBHWC operations manager. Now Leigh-Ann is the NBHWC Executive Director – a spectacular rise of a brilliant leader who has built an incredible team of rising leaders. We set out to find a partner to build a certification examination and reached out to several organizations. With great foresight, David Eisenberg introduced Don Melnick, then president of NBME, to me in spring 2015, which evolved into a 2016 MOU, and then a complex, multi-year negotiation, multi-million dollar investment, and formation of NBHWC as a non-profit NBME affiliate, starting up in January 2019. In parallel, we created a certification competency blueprint (team of 6, with Ruth Wolever and me doing much of the heavy-lifting), and creation of the first 600 certification examination items (team of 20+ coaching leaders). 5. Fast forward to 2022, NBHWC is now a financially healthy and growing organization, in its sixth year in delivering the national board certification examination for health and wellness coaches. NBHWC has approved 100+ programs to train health and wellness coaches eligible for the examination and certified 7,000 coaches, including nearly 1,000 Wellcoaches coaches who have accomplished a 93.1% pass rate. 6. Since 2019, my focus has been building the Healthcare Commission that is forging the path to billing and reimbursement of coaching services in healthcare, generating the economic foundation for the role of the coach. In 2019, with the VA’s leadership, we earned approval of Category III codes for health and well-being coaching services. In 2021, we established a taxonomy code for the health and wellness coach to work in healthcare, as well as guidance for coach use of various CPT codes. Erika Jackson, Chief Coaching Officer @ Wellcoaches is a member of the Program Approval Commission, assisting in the ongoing evolution of national standards. Through my 14 years of volunteer leadership and contributions, frequently two or more days of my workweek, I have helped lay down the foundation for our beloved profession – the vigorous teamwork and multiple intense retreats that led over five years to the standards and job task analysis, the rigorous weeks and months invested to meet the NBME certification standards and build a high-quality examination, a demanding three years of negotiations with the NBME legal team, starting up a five-year collaboration with the CDC on group coaching, the creation and execution of a robust business plan and high-functioning NBHWC board, and now the many hours and days preparing for the AMA CPT Panel meetings. My deepest gratitude goes out to the many friendships and rich collaborations with the top leaders across our field that continue to grow as we now have an NBHWC team that is more than 70 – 7 staff, 13 board members, and 30 volunteer leaders on four commissions, as well as a large team of 20+ that continues to evolve the certification examination. We really can move mountains together! Onward & upward! Margaret Moore, aka Coach Meg Founder/CEO, Wellcoaches Corporation Co-Founder, Board member, NBHWC

Featuring Dr. Sonal Ullman A Beautiful Story of Coaching and Collaboration Wellcoaches & Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital In 2018, I led a grand rounds session on coaching skills for physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Needham Hospital. Among the participants was GI physician leader Sonal Ullman, who now leads the hospital’s physician group. That auspicious session spawned a close collaboration of Wellcoaches and the hospital’s administrative, physician, and nurse leaders, giving life to a variety of initiatives: since 2019, an ongoing senior leadership/coaching program for around 50 leaders, including an annual retreat 2020-2021 - an intense burnout group coaching program at the height of the pandemic of 15+ early morning group sessions 2020-2021 - private burnout coaching of 30+ physicians by nine Wellcoaches coaches Along with four other hospital leaders, Dr. Ullman went on to complete the Wellcoaches certification and become a physician coach In early 2022, one of Dr. Ullman’s patients, Dana Martin, died of gastric cancer. In deep gratitude for her services, Dana donated $100,000 to the hospital for a project of Dr. Ullman’s direction. Her story of working with Dana is a beautiful one of deep service and impact. She published the story in a Stanford Medicine newsletter. Dr. Ullman used the donation for an internal professional coaching program to support hospital employees, named the Martin Family Coaching Program (more details at the end of the blog). Both Coach Meg and Erika Jackson are supporting the Beth Israel team of physician and nurse coaches. What happens when coaches and physicians come together? More well-being in healthcare. Onward and upward, Coach Meg MARTIN FAMILY COACHING PROGRAM DESCRIPTION A new workforce development program for staff and providers at BID Needham Collaborate, Cultivate, Partner, Foster Possibilities, Co-Discover, Broaden Thinking The Martin Family Coaching Program is a philanthropically-funded program and part of BID Needham's commitment to workforce development—one of the hospital's top strategic initiatives for 2022—with the goal to maximize your professional potential. This structured staff and physician coaching program provides you the opportunity to meet one-on-one with a professionally trained coach who is also a BID Needham employee or physician for up to six hours over the course of six months. A well-being coach is a trained facilitator of positive habits, change and growth who partners with you in a thought-provoking and creative process. This program is open to all staff—both clinical and non-clinical—and to physicians. Benefits of the coaching program · Increase self-awareness, insight and creativity as you set goals for your career development · Tap into your strengths and experiences to help address challenges · Become an expert in your wellness and personal path · Collaborate with a coach who understands your work environment · Increase quality of life at work through better use of internal and external resources Could a well-being coach help you? A coach will be your partner in professional development, helping you set goals and maximize your opportunities for growth. In addition, a coach can help you learn from difficult situations, as well as develop and practice tools to address workplace challenges. What you will gain Resilience, Engagement, Clarity, Meaning, Future, Connection, Strengths, Strategies, Vision, Confidence, Gratitude, Leadership, Flow, Purpose, Learning, Meaning, Fulfillment Connect with a coach today! If you would like to learn more about how you might benefit from the Martin Family Coaching Program, email BIDN-coaching@bidneedham.org.

I imagine I'm not alone in my fantasy of being a drummer... ...living in the flow of sensing rhythm, creating rhythm, tapping into rhythm, or simply being the rhythm. Alas, like many of us, I don't have a natural aptitude for drumsticks. I look for rhythm, finding my groove, mostly in my work. What's a groove? Merriam-Webster describes a groove as a situation suited to one's abilities and interests, an enjoyable experience or rhythm, a sense of harmony with one's world. Most people who find their groove, find it through work. Gallup authors reported in the book Five Elements of Well-being that career well-being (liking what you do at work) matters the most. In positive psychology, Martin Seligman's PERMA model could be described in terms of grooving - we engage and expand our strengths in activities that bring higher meaning and enable achievement, thereby generating the positive emotions we get from grooving. Self-determination theory is another model of grooving - we have autonomy-supporting relationships, the social nutriments that enable our adventurous pursuit of interesting activities that make us feel ever-more competent through mastering new challenges. Let's give thanks to grooving job crafting scientists, translating positive psychology and self-determination theory into everyday work. They have shown through 100+ studies that we groove when we get to shape our work so that: it's meaningful uses our strengths grows our competence generates nourishing relationships brings interesting opportunities, and supports our non-work well-being - mind, body, and life. Labor Day 2022 If there was ever a moment to find our groove, to reinvent the experience of work, it's now. Those at Gallup who groove in gathering and analyzing data have been telling us for a long while about the crisis of low work engagement (no rhythm, no groove - emotionally detached). The 2022 Gallup global workplace data shows that only 33% of workers in the US and Canada are engaged (the highest scores globally), dropping to 14% in Europe (the lowest scores). The Washington Post noted: More than two years of a pandemic have jolted the meaning of work and the way employees think about it. The consequences are just unfolding... Millennials and Gen Zers are shifting ambitions from wanting to reach the top to having a meaningful effect on their communities, nation and the world. Our jobs are not loving us back, notes a cited Elle article on women's new take on ambition. This summer, McKinsey published an article on COVID 19 as a catalyst to cancel burnout cultures - workplaces that ask from workers more than they get back, throwing them out of their grooves. “People aren’t just quitting their jobs, they’re rejecting the idea that burnout is the price they have to pay for success,” said Arianna Huffington... Whatever accelerating work trend resonates most: the engagement crisis, the great resignation, quiet quitting, or the burnout epidemic, it all boils down to work ill-being, which drives our well-being downhill. More than that, work ill-being is a colossal, if not tragic, waste of human potential. How might we groove at work on a large scale? Zooming out, we can see a shift coming in capitalism - a shift in the longstanding, implicit deal between capital and workers. Recent Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria wrote about it in HBR magazine this summer: Today workers up and down the socioeconomic ladder are reexamining their commitment to employers and the fairness of the existing bargain between capital and labor. Our deep questioning of capitalism is no surprise. If our work lives are a main driver of overall well-being, and work is failing to deliver what humans want dearly, than it is time for a new deal. How about we ask "capitalism" (leaders, bosses, investors) for a new deal: growing wealth and growing well-being together. Instead of consuming well-being for work, we all make well-being a product of work. We need to ask for more than corporate wellness - including physical well-being (eating, exercise, sleep, etc), and mental/emotional well-being (mindfulness, self-compassion, resilience, balance, recharge, etc), along with fair financial compensation. We need to properly integrate our groove - crafting personally meaningful work, that uses our strengths, grows our competence, generates nourishing relationships, and brings interesting opportunities. The future of work is good - more wealth and well-being, grooving together. Coach Meg. www.coachmeg.com Find a coach. Find your groove: www.wellcoachesnetwork.com

The August 2022 Online first edition of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (AJLM) published our new paper about health and well-being coaching research. This issue contains our article (Sebastian Harenberg and Joel Edman are my co-authors) entitled “A Rubric to Assess the Design and Intervention Quality of Randomized Controlled Trials in Health and Wellness Coaching.” While the title is a mouthful, read on. We developed a rubric (a checklist of questions) to examine the quality of a research study from two perspectives: how well the study was designed and how well the coaching intervention was planned and implemented. In all, the rubric we created contains 28 items. Of these, 15 address study design criteria and 13 examine coaching intervention criteria. The questions related to study design assess items such as participant recruitment, participant allocation to group, exclusion criteria, sample size, control group management, outcome measures, and statistical analyses. The rubric questions are scored 0-1 or 0-2, and the greater the total score the better the assessment of study design quality. For studies of health and well-being coaching, it is also essential to examine the structure and implementation of the coaching intervention. The rubric questions addressing the quality of coaching intervention ask about items such as coach training, certification, and experience. Questions on the coaching intervention include coaching session frequency, duration, and program length (in months). Finally, the rubric also calls for a description of the coaching process, coach quality checks during the research project, and client adherence. Using the rubric, a given research paper might potentially score high on study design and low on coaching intervention, or vice versa. The best research papers score high on both dimensions. Check out the full-length article, which is cited below and is available open access from AJLM Sage publishing website. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15598276221117089 Once the rubric items were selected, they were reviewed by research design and coaching experts. The items were also crossed-scored on 29 articles by the study authors to establish reliability. In other words, all three authors read 29 health and well-being coaching research papers and scored those articles using the rubric. An intraclass correlation of .85 (ICC = .85; CI95% - .68-.93) indicated very good levels of agreement between the three of us (study authors: Harenberg, Sforzo, Edman). These processes of gathering expert opinion and checking reliability provide a measure of validity for the new rubric. We have encouraged other authors to use the rubric in their work and further validate it as a useful tool for assessing health and well-being coaching research. In this paper, we applied the rubric to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) studying patients with Type 2 diabetes (T2D; n = 11 articles) or RCTs studying patients with obesity (n = 18 articles). The total rubric score for the T2D studies turned out to be slightly greater than found for the obesity studies – mainly because the scores for coaching intervention design were higher in the T2D research examined. This serves as a caution for readers of those obesity studies and as a reminder to future researchers of health and well-being coaching when applied in an obese patient population. It is important to carefully design and implement the coaching intervention. Only with a well-designed, described, and implemented coaching protocol can we optimize and best understand the effects of coaching. Those papers with carefully designed and presented coaching methodologies contain the research propelling the field forward and informing us how to apply the best coaching strategies in practice. We believe the most valuable contribution of the new rubric and this publication lies in application for future research. Rather than thinking of the rubric as an evaluation tool, it is best thought of as a roadmap for designing future health and well-being coaching research. When planning a project, researchers can look at the rubric and check off criteria to maximize rubric score and design the best possible study. We know from our Compendium work (2,3) the quantity of health and well-being coaching research is rapidly expanding. It is important to the development of health and well-being coaching profession that the quality of coaching research is continuously improved going forward. This article and the related explanation may seem like way too much information for the average health and well-being coach – why would they need to know how to assess research? Maybe they don’t! However, the typical coach benefits from understanding the status of the existing research and having an appreciation that this base of knowledge is being examined for quality. With such knowledge, a practicing coach can confidently apply state of the art methods and techniques with their clients. We expect application of the rubric will improve the future of health and well-being coaching research and thereby improve the standards of coaching. CITATIONS Harenberg S, Sforzo GA, Edman J. A Rubric to Assess the Design and Intervention Quality of Randomized Controlled Trials in Health and Wellness Coaching. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. August 2022. doi:10.1177/15598276221117089 Sforzo GA, Kaye MP, Todorova I, et al. Compendium of the Health and Wellness Coaching Literature. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2018;12(6):436-447. doi:10.1177/1559827617708562 Sforzo GA, Kaye MP, Harenberg S, et al. Compendium of Health and Wellness Coaching: 2019 Addendum. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2020;14(2):155-168. doi:10.1177/1559827619850489

Editor’s Note: This article was originally written as a research dose for the Institute of Coaching. Become a member of the Institute of Coaching to access thousands of resources on coaching science. To get a 40% discount, select Wellcoaches when asked. Positive emotions generate precious resources - they improve thinking, behavior, mood, and physiology, in turn improving self-efficacy, optimism, work engagement, creativity, stress coping and resilience, health, teamwork, relationships, customer satisfaction, and leadership. Positive emotions can be directly improved in organizations using practical techniques, leading to enduring resources and upgrading work enjoyment and performance for all. Introduction In April 2021, we lost a giant in the science of well-being – Ed Diener. This article features one of Ed Diener’s last publications (in collaboration with Stuti Thapa and Louis Tay) – a mega review on positive emotions at work (2020) addressing some important questions for coaching: How are positive emotions defined at work? How can we regulate our positive emotions? How do positive emotions exert their effects? What resources do positive emotions expand in the workplace? What are other interesting findings on positive emotions? 1. How are positive emotions defined at work? The first perspective – discrete positive emotions Scientists have explored and defined “discrete” positive emotions or constructs including gratitude, awe, pride, interest, optimism, and humor. The authors note that this perspective leads to studies of the effects of discrete emotions, for example: “different positive emotions have differential effects on job attitudes where pride is linked to psychological empowerment, interest is linked to work satisfaction, and gratitude is linked to satisfaction with supervisors and colleagues.” One study showed that work-related gratitude positively predicts job satisfaction and negatively predicts emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Another study showed that awe led to the perception that time is more plentiful, reduced impatience, increased willingness to volunteer time, and much-improved goal progress. The second perspective – positive valence or feeling good The common thread of discrete positive emotions is their underlying dimension of feeling good – they have a positive valence or mood, which brings us to the second perspective. Positive valence (a general sense of feeling good rather than a specific type of good feeling like inspired, enthusiastic or proud) has been shown to be associated with positive individual and organizational outcomes, including better performance and job attitudes. The third perspective – positive adaptive function The authors describe a third perspective - positive adaptive function: “Emotions are regarded as positive insofar as they lead to positive personal and organizational outcomes; positivity is… the outcomes it produces… No emotion is universally “good” or “bad” but its value is context-dependent. For example, anger may be considered to be negative, but it can have prosocial functions if elicited by perceptions of injustice and unfairness and then induces remedial behavior to address the wrongdoing… A recent meta-analysis showed that shame can be positive, as it leads to prosociality and self-improvement when reparative actions can be taken. Although inducing gratitude can lead to prosocial behavior, it can have burdening and negative effects on the helpers.” 2. How can we regulate our positive emotions? First, regulatory approaches that highlight, harness, and sustain positive emotions include cognitive practices such as savoring, positive rumination, journaling, and sharing one’s blessings or gratitude with others. A second approach is behavioral strategies that can improve the quality and quantity of positive emotions including: being present and paying attention to the positive in current moments expressing positive emotions in communications celebrating positive events to amplify positive emotions summoning a specific positive emotion, such as optimism, gratitude, or a positive reinterpretation A third type of emotion regulation promotes emotional integrity—where the inner experience and outer expression of emotions are authentic and aligned. Emotional authenticity is both valued and less draining. An example is the concept of deep acting, as opposed to surface acting, where deep acting is the practice of modifying the inner emotion required of a job, whereas surface acting is merely modifying external emotional expressions. Deep acting is preferable, having shown more positive outcomes than surface acting. A fourth approach in emotion regulation is the multi-faceted construct of emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and distinguish one’s own and others’ emotions and use that knowledge to guide thoughts and behavior. Interestingly, there is a bi-directional street between positive emotions and regulation strategies for positive emotions – more of one generates more of the other, creating an upward spiral. Emotion regulation strategies have been shown effective for both undoing negative emotions and up-regulating positive emotions. A study of six emotion regulation strategies (reflection, reappraisal, rumination, distraction, expressive suppression, and social sharing) found that rumination and expressive suppression decreased positive emotions, whereas reflection increased positive emotions. Positive humor has been shown to down-regulate negative emotion and up-regulate positive emotion. 3. How do positive emotions exert their effects? The authors synthesize the literature into four channels that generate positive outcomes: cognition, affect, behaviors, and physiology. Emotion to cognition to outcome Maintaining (or savoring) and enhancing positive emotions through cognitive processes can promote positive outcomes such as more open-mindedness and more strategic thinking and creativity, which is the basis of positivity spirals (i.e., positive emotions beget more positive emotions— both degree and types of positive emotions) and undoing effects (i.e., positive emotions reduce the effects of negative emotions). In the work context, a study showed that high positivity reduced the impact of negative emotions in reducing job satisfaction. Emotion to behavior to outcome The authors explain: “positive emotions lead individuals to engage in novel and larger behavioral repertoires that lead to new opportunities and building of new skills. Positive emotions are related to positive promotion-focused individual behaviors that are important for worker health and productivity such as healthier eating, exercise, better sleep and stress management, and social behaviors like collaboration and cooperation.” Emotion to emotion to outcome “In addition to the direct experience of positive emotions, emotion expressions act as social information and can spread to others, creating positive emotion contagion. For example, genuine smiles (or Duchenne smiles) promote perceptions of employee friendliness and customer satisfaction; positive emotion expressions are associated with more positive social outcomes such as greater potential for business relationships and cooperation.” Emotion to physiology to outcome Substantial research supports the role of positive emotions in generating positive health outcomes such as greater longevity, lower intensity of illness, higher immune resistance, reduced inflammation, and better physiological recovery. Three physiological systems—cardiovascular functioning (lower heart rate and blood pressure), endocrine functioning, and immune functioning—are improved by positive emotions. 4. What resources do positive emotions expand in the workplace? Positive emotions expand resources, building physical, intellectual, social, and psychological resources that support positive outcomes or buffer against the damage of stressful situations. These resources include longer-term, habitual patterns of cognitions, behaviors, emotional responses, and physiology. The authors explain: “the broaden-and-build theory proffers the view that positive resources are an outcome of cumulative effect of positive emotions over time and are explicitly described as enduring.” These ten enduring resources are listed below and summarized in the Appendix: Positive belief in self, including self-efficacy Creativity Work engagement Stress coping and resilience Health Teamwork Relationships Customer satisfaction Leadership Performance 5. What are other interesting findings on positive emotions? Fluctuations in positive emotion, regardless of the mean levels or intensity of positivity, is maladaptive. A high level of reactivity to negative events (quick drops in positivity) may be maladaptive to well-being. There are daily cycles for positive emotions but not negative emotions, and weekly cycles for both, where people have higher positive affect during the weekend and then “blue Mondays” where people have steep downward slopes in positive emotions. Seasons can influence emotion states – some experience less positive mood in winter than summer. Positive outcomes don’t always emerge from positive emotions, as they can sometimes lead to shallow, cognitive processing. Negative moods can be sadder-but-wiser, leading to deeper cognitive processing. Maximal happiness is not ideal. While those who experience the highest levels of happiness have better close relationships and engage in more volunteer work, those who experience slightly lower levels of happiness have greater success in terms of income, higher rates of employment, and greater political participation. There are cultural differences - happiness is associated with personal achievement in Western societies in contrast to interpersonal connectedness in Eastern societies. In Eastern societies, positive low arousal emotions (e.g., calm) rather than positive high arousal emotions (e.g., excited) appear to be more related to positive outcomes. For example, European Americans preferred excited (versus calm) applicants, whereas the converse was true for Hong Kong Chinese. Individuals’ emotional experiences have a much more profound influence on the judgment of life satisfaction in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures. It's important to note, that a focus on improving positive emotions in organizations is optimally combined with a focus on navigating negative emotions, including mindfulness, self-compassion, emotional agility, and post-traumatic growth. In February 2022, Wellcoaches shifted its credential title to reflect the value of well-being. While the terms wellness and well-being were used interchangeably, this has now changed. In recent years, the burst of scientific exploration of the domain of well-being has been profound. Well-being has now overtaken wellness as a larger, broader, and deeper construct of human flourishing and thriving. This change is energizing and expansive for the Wellcoaches community as we integrate the fullness of the well-being domain (physical, psychological, life, work) into health and well-being coaching. Takeaways for coaches Organizations can benefit by developing a workplace that cultivates positive emotions. Organizations can consciously manage and shape a positive emotional culture (e.g., a culture of joy/fun/love versus a culture of fear/anger) that can enhance organizational performance downstream. In coaching, you can: Intentionally cultivate authentic positive emotions as resources for change and well-being for your clients during coaching sessions, using appreciative inquiry techniques for example. Consider using the positivity ratio to help your clients get a quick read on their levels of positive emotions and negative emotions. Help your clients understand the various approaches to regulating positive emotions and negative emotions. Help your clients understand the organizational impact of elevating positive emotions – self-belief, engagement, creativity, teamwork, relationships, health, customer satisfaction, leadership, and performance. Citation: Diener, E., Thapa, S., & Tay, L. (2020). Positive emotions at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 7, 451-477. Appendix Resources improved by positive emotions in organizations Positive belief in self The authors summarize: “positive emotion enhances positive belief in self that arm individuals against negative consequences of negative experiences. Self-efficacy is one such positive belief that has clear connections to work motivation and performance. There is substantial evidence that positive emotions promote self-efficacy. There is also evidence that people in a good mood set more ambitious goals and have higher expectations. Therefore, people who feel good see the world in a more optimistic light and have more positive beliefs about succeeding, which in turn promotes higher performance downstream. Studies also suggest that positive emotions are related to increases in ego-resilience over time.” Creativity Say the authors: “In the creativity literature, positive emotion (conceptualized often as mood) is one of the most reliable predictors of the creativity process. Multiple meta-analyses of the influence of positive mood on creativity have found positive moods to be a predictor of the creativity process (e.g., flexibility and fluency, the number of unique ideas produced) when compared to control conditions. For example, one study showed that physicians in a positive mood were more flexible and made more accurate diagnoses when solving a case of a patient with liver disease.” Work engagement Work engagement is a positive work-related state of mind, characterized by vigor (high energy and motivation to invest effort at work), dedication (strong involvement in work and experiencing pride and enthusiasm about work), and absorption in work (flow at work). Positive emotions have been shown to be a driver of work engagement, and their lack leading to disengagement. Coping Positive emotions and emotion regulation approaches can help people be resilient and cope with the inherent stress of work, supporting solving problems, planning, and positive reinterpretation rather than some of the less effective emotion-focused strategies such as avoidance, denial, disengagement, and turning to alcohol and drugs. One study showed that those with high levels of emotional intelligence use emotion-focused coping such as venting, denial, and disengagement, for both letting go of negative emotions and prolonging positive emotions (e.g., joy). Health “Multiple meta-analyses have found positive moods to be associated with better health and greater longevity… Research suggests that positive affect was associated with lower blood fat and blood pressure and a healthier body mass index…People with low levels of positive feelings were at a higher risk for heart disease….Experimental studies have found that inducing positive feelings led to faster cardiovascular recovery.” Teamwork “Positive emotions can contribute to collaborative behavior as well as choices and trust. Negotiation studies have found that positive emotions boost cooperative and collaborative behavior instead of withdrawal or competitive behavior. Individuals induced with positive moods are more willing to make concessions. Moreover, displaying positive emotions during negotiations can lead to increased interest in future business relationships and the likelihood of closing a deal as well as greater concession from the other party. In group managerial settings, induced positive affect promoted positive emotion contagion; in turn, it improved cooperation, decreased group conflict, and increased perceived task performance.” Relationships “There is firm evidence for the relation between positive emotions and good relationships; additionally, some studies also show that positive emotions may causally lead to better relationships...Experimental studies find that positive mood induction leads to interpersonal communication and self-disclosure, improved social skill assessments, and lasting social relationships.” Customer satisfaction “There is also a body of work showing a causal relation between positive emotions of employees to positive customer experience. Studies have identified emotion contagion as one of the explanations for how positive mood of workers can lead to better customer satisfaction….One study found that positive behaviors of shoe salespeople, such as greeting, smiling, and eye contact, correlated with customers’ in-store positive mood and subsequently the time they spent in the store and their willingness to shop there again. In general, there is evidence that positive emotions can promote greater sales performance through higher customer satisfaction.” Leadership “Positive emotions are recognized as a crucial aspect of charismatic, transformational, and authentic leadership…Theoretical and empirical work on authentic leadership posits positive emotion as a distinguishing feature between authentic and nonauthentic leadership…Authentic leaders affect employee creativity through the mediating role of employees’ positive affect and hope.” Performance “Research has shown that individuals disposed to positive affectivity perform better in ratings on decisional and interpersonal tasks. Furthermore, positive interpersonal affect has been shown to be associated with better performance ratings…One study found that collective positive emotions led to team resilience, which in turn leads to increased team performance as measured using supervisor ratings.”

In February 2022, the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine published our article entitled “Dosing of Health and Wellness Coaching for Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes: Research Synthesis to Derive Recommendations.” The primary purpose of our study was to determine an effective initial amount (or dose) of health and wellness coaching to recommend to patients with obesity and/or type 2 diabetes (T2D). To make this determination, we closely examined the health and wellness (HWC) coaching literature using the previously published Compendium papers. After identifying 88 peer-reviewed articles (51 obesity; 37 T2D), we synthesized the amount of HWC effectively applied in this literature. We defined and quantified HWC programming using five variables: 1. session duration 2. session number 3. session frequency 4. program length 5. total HWC dose The general dosing recommendations we derived for HWC are shown here: This programming information can serve as a guideline for coaches when a patent asks, “How long will this take?” Now, the coach can provide an evidence-based answer to that important question. Another important function of these HWC dose recommendations is to provide physicians a starting place when referring patients to coaching treatment or intervention. All treatments have initial dosing recommendations (e.g., 8 sessions of physical therapy, 16 weeks of cardiac rehabilitation, or 10 mg of a statin). Such prescriptions allow for patient planning while also enabling appropriate billing practices to be understood and arranged. Underlying all initial prescriptions, is the fact that every prescription is adaptable to accommodate patient needs. Everything from a medication to an exercise prescription, can be adjusted to fit an individual patient. Flexibility is most certainly true for these HWC dosing recommendations. HWC is a patient-centric process, and these guidelines are in no way meant to change or violate this critical concept. All programming variables (from single session duration to program length and total HWC load) are ultimately determined by a patient and coach working together to determine how to best serve a patient. The recommendations provided in this study provide a reasonable and initial coaching dose that would be effective in most circumstances. If you are practicing coach, use these guidelines to best suit your needs and the needs of your patients. These recommendations were derived from studies involving obese and diabetic patients. It is reasonable to extend these findings to other patient groups, awaiting more data. HWC is a fast-evolving profession with need for science-based guidelines that support best practice guidelines. The recommendations in this article are appropriate for initial HWC programming guidelines. Dosing guidelines are sign of a maturing health profession. Check out the full paper to learn more about our investigation. References 1. Sforzo GA, Kaye MP, Faber A, Moore M. Dosing of Health and Wellness Coaching for Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes: Research Synthesis to Derive Recommendations. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2022. On-line First. doi:10.1177/15598276211073078 2. Sforzo GA, Kaye MP, Todorova I, et al. Compendium of the Health and Wellness Coaching Literature. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2018;12(6):436-447. doi:10.1177/1559827617708562 3. Sforzo GA, Kaye MP, Harenberg S, et al. Compendium of Health and Wellness Coaching: 2019 Addendum. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2020;14(2):155-168. doi:10.1177/1559827619850489

As we wrote in the Institute of Coaching report – Leading with Humanity - the pandemic era has awakened our humanity as leaders. More of us are tuning into the ultimate purpose of organizations - to serve humans - our aspirations, needs, values, strengths – the sum of everything that influences human well-being. Everything leaders and organizations do have the ultimate, higher intention of making human lives better. We are moving away, albeit slowly, from bureaucracies where humans serve institutions and moving toward “humanocracies” where institutions serve humans and humanity. How work drives human well-being is right in front of our eyes now – connection, trust, relationships, purpose, engagement, collaboration, productivity, and creativity – these are drivers of BOTH human well-being AND great performance at work. Our eyes confirm the work of researchers. Leading well, aka being led well, has been shown to generate psychological and physical well-being – improving engagement and reducing stress and burnout. The research shows that the reverse is true too – life well-being enables our best performance at work. What’s a map then for leaders to foster human well-being, in ways that also enable great work? In my co-authored Harvard Health book, Organize Your Emotions, Optimize Your Life, we explored nine universal personality elements that code for our individual needs, values, interests, and strengths. Each of us has our own formula for well-being based on our unique personality mix. These personality elements also manifest in 8 types of corporate cultures, as explored in an HBR article on corporate culture. We’ve since mapped the nine elements to a variety of personality models, including: Jung's cognitive functions, the basis of the Myers-Briggs assessment Enneagram model of personality drives Let’s consider how these core elements of well-being offer leaders a whole, human-centered model for leading well. Autonomy (Jung’s introverted feeler, Enneagram Reformer) A primary human need is autonomy (self-determination theory) – to live our lives in alignment with our core values, interests, needs, and strengths. High levels of autonomy are needed to lead well – to model personal responsibility, stand up for what is good and right, to be authentic, and to be courageous and values-driven. Empowering others to do the same promotes their autonomy and well-being. Relational (Jung’s extraverted feeler, Enneagram Helper) Another primary need is relationships where we attune to and serve others’ needs, strengths, and values, and receive the same in return. Social intelligence and compassion have been shown to be vital in leadership and teamwork. They generate well-being in followers as we/they feel connected, seen, heard, appreciated, respected, and supported, especially in tough situations. Confidence (Self-Determination Theory, Enneagram Challenger) Confidence is both task-specific and broad. It’s a big driver of well-being – one of the three core psychological needs unpacked in Self-Determination Theory. We dearly want to be competent, using our strengths to master work and life’s challenges. Leaders continually help people learn, grow, and expand their competence and confidence, which spills over to engagement - using our skills and knowledge well at work. Continual growing and learning is a hallmark of a human-centered leader - for self and others. Regulator (Jung’s introverted sensor, Enneagram Loyalist) We all need a sense of stability, balance, safety, and security, built upon a work (and life) environment that is carefully constructed to have integrity and to be stable. Good leaders know how to balance and stabilize themselves (e.g. good emotion regulation, good fitness, and health). They encourage everyone to be physically and psychologically fit and healthy, and to steer around reactivity and burnout. They also create a psychologically safe culture and a sound organizational structure (e.g. people, processes, finances). Adventurer (Jung’s extraverted sensor, Enneagram Enthusiast) Once adults (like children) feel stable, they are ready to explore, take risks, learn new things, create new adventures, find the lessons in adversity, enjoy life’s pleasures, and change what’s ripe for reinvention. Leaders model the adventurous spirit, agile and enthusiastic, shaking up the status quo, and keeping up or, even better, getting ahead of external change. Thinker (Jung’s introverted thinker, Enneagram Investigator) People want to understand how things work, what causes what, to solve complex problems, and to make and implement great decisions. Leaders model critical, objective thinking and analysis, finding the truth camouflaged in the noise and messiness of human minds and activity. Leaders’ thinking processes are on display in their communications, helping others think and understand clearly their analysis and best steps forward. Standard Setter (Jung’s extraverted thinker, Enneagram Achiever) Humans need to strive toward a purpose and goals, to have a reason to bounce out of bed and make ourselves and our world a little better every day. Leaders model the purposeful goal-directed process – defining what excellence looks like, designing goals and being accountable to get there, getting things done, and tracking and reporting continual progress. Creative (Jung’s extraverted intuitive, Enneagram Individualist) While most of us aren’t songwriters or artists, we all want to be creative and develop new opportunities, new ways of doing things, and new or improved products and services. Co-creative collaboration is particularly nourishing – when we come together and invent things none of us could do alone. Leaders help themselves and others be more creative, igniting and inspiring others to go nonlinear, to outgrow today’s ways of thinking, feeling, and doing. Strategist (Jung’s introverted intuitive, Enneagram Peacemaker) The ability to step back and zoom out to see the whole picture, create harmony, make meaning of complex situations, find the wisdom in the moment, synthesize all of the data into a strategy – this is the higher purpose of leadership. Leaders are in their roles because they handle more complexity, spot gaps, see further ahead, and find and convey meaning, wisdom, gratitude, and good strategy. As a human-centered checklist on the well-being of the people and organization you lead, consider how well you are supporting these nine personality elements individually and collectively - autonomy, relationships, competence, regulation and stability, adventure and change, critical thinking and decisions, ambition and direction-setting, creativity, and strategic thinking. While our personality structures vary widely in the sorting of our mental processes, drives, and strengths, we share all of the underlying elements. This is our common humanity, which makes for a good starting point in mapping human well-being to leadership. Onward and upward, Coach Meg www.coachmeg.com www.wellcoaches.com www.instituteofcoaching.org www.nbhwc.org Resources: Institute of Coaching report: Leading with Humanity - the future of leadership and coaching McKinsey & Company - Cultivating compassionate leadership during COVID-19 Humanocracy - Creating organizations as great as the people in them Research Handbook on Work & Well-being Organize Your Emotions, Optimize Your Life, Harvard Health book published by William Morrow The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture, Harvard Business Review Carl Jung's Psychological Types Enneagram personality types Self-determination theory Social intelligence Compassion matters in leadership Josh Bersin - The secret to well-being at work is leadership