As a coach or mentor, you have the opportunity to help your team members grow and achieve their goals. But you also have the responsibility to provide emotional support when they face challenges, stress, or frustration. How can you do that effectively while practicing servant leadership and self-care? Here are some tips to guide you.
One of the most important skills you can use to provide emotional support is active listening. Active listening means paying attention to what the other person is saying, showing empathy, and asking open-ended questions. Active listening helps you understand the emotions, needs, and perspectives of your team members. It also shows them that you care and respect them as individuals. To listen actively, you need to avoid distractions, interruptions, and judgments. You also need to summarize and reflect back what you heard to confirm your understanding.
Another way to provide emotional support is to validate and normalize the feelings of your team members. Validation means acknowledging and accepting the emotions they are experiencing, without minimizing or dismissing them. Normalization means reassuring them that their feelings are common and understandable, given the situation they are facing. Validation and normalization help your team members feel heard and understood. They also help them cope with negative emotions and reduce shame or guilt. To validate and normalize, you need to use empathic statements, such as "I can see how that would make you feel...", "It makes sense that you are feeling...", or "Many people would feel the same way in your situation..."
A third way to provide emotional support is to offer guidance and resources that can help your team members overcome their challenges. Guidance means sharing your insights, suggestions, or feedback, based on your experience and expertise. Resources mean providing information, tools, or contacts that can assist your team members in finding solutions or learning new skills. Guidance and resources help your team members feel empowered and supported. They also help them develop their confidence and competence. To offer guidance and resources, you need to ask for permission, respect their autonomy, and tailor your approach to their needs and goals.
A fourth way to provide emotional support is to encourage your team members to practice self-care and wellness. Self-care means taking care of your physical, mental, and emotional health, by engaging in activities that nourish and replenish you. Wellness means achieving a balance between your personal and professional life, by setting boundaries, prioritizing, and delegating. Self-care and wellness help your team members prevent burnout, stress, and fatigue. They also help them enhance their performance, creativity, and happiness. To encourage self-care and wellness, you need to model healthy behaviors, celebrate achievements, and promote a positive culture.
A fifth way to provide emotional support is to seek support for yourself. As a coach or mentor, you may also experience emotional challenges, such as compassion fatigue, imposter syndrome, or isolation. You need to recognize and address your own feelings, and seek help when you need it. Seeking support for yourself means reaching out to your peers, mentors, or professionals, who can offer you emotional support, feedback, or advice. Seeking support for yourself helps you maintain your well-being, resilience, and effectiveness. It also helps you set an example for your team members and show them that seeking support is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
We suggest five healing habits to become emotionally strong and to provide emotional support to your team members. These habits are 1. FReSH: This combines the concepts of Failing forward, Resilience and Self-healing. 2. Forgiveness: We provide a 10 method (Unforgiveness anonymous) to help participants master this. 3. Apology: How to make an apology right is the biggest challenge. We provide tool kit to get this right. 4. Pause and Recharge: in our task oriented life, this is often ignored. We recommend 45 minutes per day for this. 5. Bestow Grace: Grace is often illogical and could be considered unfair. It is “unmerited reward “. But there is great value in practicing Grace in work situations, where Justice and Mercy might not be enough
As a coach & mentor of several teams, these are my conclusions how to provide emotional support to your teammates; - practice listening tactics, this could be when you are in a group of friends or doing community work - develop patience when listening to someone - never interrupt or add your comments whilst listening - step in other’s shoe to look from their perspective - show empathy & compassion - engage in a meaningful conversation & deflecting the person’s attention towards positive outcomes - connect on a human level - don’t delve too much in thoughts as this may harm you personally - craft an action plan & guide the person to develop healthy activities - share personal relatable experiences - guide them how to overcome emotions