Mental toughness was the last thing on my mind as I pulled up at Chester University on a heady day in July, the sun was out, students lolloped – the stately surrounds offered luxury and comfort, it felt more like arriving for a posh mini-break than a work conference. I reached for my sunnies and some Factor 30 and thought nothing of resilience. That would change.

I’d arrived for the EMCC’s 8th International Mentoring, Coaching and Supervision Research Conference – my diary cleared – pencilled sharpened – I was all set to absorb some wisdom from an impressive array of speakers. I was attending the conference as a member of my coaching faculty at The Guildhall School and Music and Drama https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/youth_adult_learning/continuing_professional_development/coaching_skills/ a real privilege of course but I had some trepidation that the ‘research’ part of the conference might leave me a bit cold, might bamboozle or be beyond me. That would change.

The impossibly picturesque surroundings gave way to a swift registration and my first session; the keynote talk from Limbert Spencer (the Centre For Inclusive Leadership.) I’ve long since been interested in diversity in the workplace, a large part of my career has been within the TV and media industry so inclusion, or lack of it, has been an agenda point on too many meetings to recollect. Actually, I pretty much thought I knew it all – but Limbert’s keynote talk was revelatory – check out his company and his fabulous formula for performance. https://thecentreforinclusiveleadership.com/

Fortified by new thinking and ideas I headed off for an array of afternoon sessions – and this is where that mental toughness comes in. It was to be a returning theme over the next two days.
Doug Strycharczyk and Prof Peter Clough’s workshop, Assessing and developing mind-set and mental toughness, was fascinating stuff on resilience and the part it plays in a coach’s work with clients. Here’s their company website https://aqrinternational.co.uk/ I gained much perspective – and some metrics – on how best to work with my clients on the issue of mental toughness.

Karsten Darth’s workshop; Helping leaders cope with crisis – rather unsurprisingly with that title – also explored the human resource of resilience. The model Karsten has developed; the FiRE® model of resilience is a Leadership Choices trademark and stands for Factors for improved Resilience Effectiveness.

Lastly in this lexicon of mental toughness I went to Kaj Hellbom’s workshop Organisational coaching – the new frontline. It’s not my place to expand more on Kaj’s work – or any of the other speakers I’ve singled out here – but I bring them together here to underline the theme – they all offered fabulous new perspectives on that important but often elusive anthropological trait of resilience.

Though I’ve been exploring resilience with individual clients and organisations for some time now I came away inspired and even better equipped to delve deeper into this human resource.

I also got to thinking as I drove away from Chester’s City Walls that resilience and mental toughness can mean a whole host of different things depending on your background and values. That, according to the American Psychological Association, a person’s culture “might have an impact on how he or she communicates feelings and deals with adversity — for example, whether and how a person connects with significant others, including extended family members and community resources. With growing cultural diversity, the public has greater access to a number of different approaches to building resilience.”

This is definitely something I will be aware of as I consider my own resilience and that of my clients — and it brings us neatly, full circle to that first enlightening keynote from Limbert Spencer. I’m all set to join the next EMCC conference in Dublin next April.