Why Mental Wellbeing Coaching?
The service is incredibly beneficial for people struggling to deal with a significant life event or life transitions.
Significant life events include: Illness or injury (of self or a family member), change in wellbeing of family member, death of a loved one, redundancy, retirement or separation.
Life transitions include: Change of circumstances, workload or personnel issues in the work-place, starting or changing a job, realisation that life-long dreams (marriage, being a parent, ‘success’ etc..) are not materializing.
As a result they are typically experiencing low mental wellbeing, which may be
- Affecting their functioning and/or life satisfaction
- Leaving them feeling stuck, anxious, low or highly stressed
In addition to the impact on an individual, the impact of individual or collective low mental wellbeing within an organisation can significantly impact overall productivity.
How Mental Wellbeing Coaching Works
Mental Wellbeing Coaching involves the assessment of the current state of wellbeing of an organisation (or sections of an organisation), by assessing each individual employee’s mental wellbeing. The assessment identifies three separate employee categories:
- Employees with high or average mental well-being, offering them a one-hour, one-to-one affirmation session.
- Employees with below average mental well-being, offering them on average, three, one-to-one coaching sessions, and
- Employees struggling with low mental wellbeing, offering them a one-on-one, short-term, coaching intervention. Refined over three years, this innovative intervention model involves eight one-hour, one-on-one meetings and has been proven to deliver long-term results. The intervention is a unique and impactful process. Nothing similar exists in the market-place.
Four Key Elements
There are four key elements to our one-on-one coaching service:
Coaching is about moving forward in life: getting clarity on the present and the desired future; setting goals and focus areas and identifying obstacles to moving forward. Readiness to move forward is assessed, giving consideration to timing and pace.
Psychological Frameworks help us understand the obstacles or blocks to moving forward, to our ingrained patterns of behaviour and/or past trauma, bringing awareness and unlocking their hold.
Connecting inward, raising awareness to what’s going on for us: in our heads and in our bodies and in our hearts. In doing so, we teach people how to cultivate practices of listening, of bodily awareness and of self-compassion, providing tools and strategies to manage ‘how they are’.
Connecting outward, creating clarity around supports we need in our lives: people, organisations and other services.
What is Unique about our Mental Wellbeing Coaching?
- Research based: The service has been researched over 3 years and tested on over 50 people experiencing low mental well-being. The Inner Compass project delivered significant improvements in the mental wellbeing on both, an individual and collective level, from the start to the end of the intervention. These improvements were maintained over a six-nine month period.
- Pro-active: Targeting early identification of at-risk employees, minimising risk to productivity.
- Non-therapeutic: In using a coaching approach, we work in the present and future rather than in the past. The service focuses on giving people tools and teaching them skills, which help them cultivate practices to solve their own issues.
- Short-term: The intervention takes place in 7 hours, over 3-4 months, comprising an initial orientation meeting, followed by 6 one-hour coaching session.
- Follow up: A closing check-in, 6 month after the last session, verifies mental well-being levels, focusing on further embedding tools and techniques.
- Tailor-made: The one-on-one nature of the service facilitates it being tailor-made to the needs and the pace of the individual.
- Confidential: Although the organisation funds the service, the session content is confidential between the coach and the individual.
Our Mental Wellbeing Coaching Team
Báirbre Meehan
Báirbre Meehan is a qualified and accredited coach and has coached extensively for ten years. Báirbre worked for 25 years in business and has adapted the skills she uses in Business and Executive Coaching, to develop a highly impactful and unique coaching process. This process, called ‘Inner Compass’, supports people struggling with low mental well-being; be that toxic stress, anxiety or low mood.
Báirbre loves to connect with people. Her fundamental belief is that change occurs naturally when we are heard and can hear ourselves clearly. She senses and awakens the potential that people often cannot see in themselves.
Báirbre coaches individuals and teams and also runs leadership development and executive coaching programmes for organisations, both in Ireland and the US. Her previous roles include CEO of a Medical Device company for 11 years, head of organisational and leadership development in a US Corporation and various finance positions in Ireland and Internationally.
She holds a Masters in Coaching from Smurfit Business School, a Masters in Management Practice from Trinity College, is a Certified Focusing Professional and Trainer, with the International Focusing Institute and is a Chartered Accountant
Dr Geoff Pelham
Dr Geoff Pelham is a coach, psychotherapist and educator. He has worked in psychiatric settings, including managing and supervising therapeutic communities. He is also a lecturer at universities in the UK and Ireland. He combines coaching with coach education, delivering accredited graduate programmes in coaching and working with organisations seeking to develop a coaching style of management and leadership.
He was a psychotherapist in private practice for fifteen years and brings his interest and expertise in the ‘psychological dimension’ to his coaching practice. At the heart of his work is raising awareness of what gives meaning and purpose to peoples’ lives, inviting consideration of whether they are living ‘the right life’.
His Doctorate researched behavioural science and for over twenty years he was a Registered Senior Accredited Member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy. He has an MA Business and Executive Coaching and Post Graduate Diploma in Supervision. This background has been the basis for supervising Báirbre in her research into the Inner Compass process.
Therese Ryan
Therese Ryan is a qualified and accredited coach, teacher and facilitator. She currently works as a coach, in addition to developing and delivering workshops on well-being, the enneagram and focusing. An Iyengar Yoga teacher, Therese has been practising yoga for over twenty years, and teaches classes to adults.
Therese passionately believes in our ability to develop practices which enable us to study our bodies and minds, and become acquainted with our limitations, tendencies and potential.
She has a degree in Education, as well as a post graduate diploma in Special Education and a Masters in literature. Therese is a Certified Focusing Professional and Trainer, with the International Focusing Institute and a Certified Enneagram Typing Practitioner. Therese taught in the primary education sector for several years, and has worked as a lecturer and facilitator.
