Leadership is a lonely job, coaching can help

Recently while watching the Singapore National Day Parade (have family and friends who have worked there), I was struck by the fact that psychological defence was part of their six pillars of defence for a secure nation, along with key areas such as digital and economic defence.

It's possibly the only country in the world, to my knowledge, that declares psychological resilience as a national mission.

This brings me to the point of this article. In my experience, coaching has a key role to play in psychological well being and thus in national building . To be clear, I am not talking about the treatment of mental health challenges, that is clearly in the realm of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. But, I am talking about the support that coaching can provide in building your RQ or Resilience Quotient.

Increasingly, organisations are talking about the need for resilience as a key attribute, in addition to EQ or emotional quotient. Leadership is in special need of this support giving the increasing lonely and isolated aspects of being a leader.

Here's how leadership coaching can help with this

1) Encourage introspection and mindfulness among leaders

Perhaps, never, have leaders been under the kind of pressure they are under today. AI, social media and Covid have all made agile leadership extremely important. In a world where an ill-timed social media post can wipe out your brand, coaching helps you build the resources you need as a leader to deal with these unprecedented times.

2) Provides a safe space

Professionals today are lonely. It's very hard to know who can you trust to be a sounding board. Mentors do fill the knowledge gap as well, but coaching provides you with the tools to be your own mentor. It took coaching for me to explore how to integrate my often diverse work interests into a whole. Before coaching, I was unable to find that sweet spot that would pull together tarot, leadership coaching and journalism.

3) Prevent burnout

Burnout is the silent malaise of the professional world. It leads to situations such as the 'Great Resignation' and 'Quiet Quitting'. Work life has never been more difficult. Coaching can help you set up benchmarks for spotting and preventing burnout. And equally importantly helping burnout recovery.

Paarul Chand is founder of Whyte Sky Coaching, coaching for life at work.