‘The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work’

For the poet W.B. Yeats this was ‘The Choice’. Life or work? We can reject the idea that one of these things needs to be sacrificed to secure success in the other. We can reject the notion that work and the rest of life are separate ways of being. Yet that unresolved tension between different forms of fulfilment feels familiar. And it is especially familiar to coaches.

A common theme amongst many coaching clients is the struggle they have with work-life balance. Even when their goal is squarely set within the professional realm of work, the rest of life - the ultimate context – cannot be ignored. Whilst some stages of life will be more work-intensive, an attention to work to the exclusion of one's wellbeing cannot be sustained.

Perhaps a more accurate way to work with this tension is to think about integration. As coaches, what do we do to help people integrate a sustainable career, within a sustainable life? This Learning Lab will bring together a range of ideas and approaches that help clients to integrate working well and living well.

Questions we’ll be bringing to the Lab include:

• What are the choices that embrace opportunity in our longer working lives, and our wider worlds?
• What are the challenges of focusing on BIG decisions, for clients and their coaches?
• Where can we – and where can our clients - find the courage to have the conversations that need to be had?
• Where are you in your life?
• How is our sense of personal wellbeing shaped by relationships, in and out of work?
• How might we maintain a flexible mindset – as well as working environments that are flexible enough to support what we want to sustain?

Insights we’ll expand on and explore include:

• ‍‍Ways we can gear up for the right kind of conversation with our clients.
• Ways we relate to hope: the importance of finding ‘glimmers’ not ‘triggers’.
• Ways of working on goals that are in the service of a client’s sustainability.
• Ways of recognising the value of now, and connecting it to future foci.

Come integrate yourself with our Learning Community in this Lab, as we take a longsighted view of career-maintenance, whilst stressing the importance to our futures of what we’re doing in the present moment.

Our Facilitator:

Viv Vella is renowned as a hugely skilled and perceptive coach. She draws on various schools of psychology to work with individuals and teams to help them increase their self-awareness: clarify their choices for change with a focus on action to enhance their personal best performance. Building strong coachee relationships, she creates a confidential, trusting and positive learning environment that provides both encouragement and challenge for personal change. Viv has an MA in Psychological Coaching from the Metanoia Institute and her MA research was on Resilience & Well-being. Her personal style has been described as having an appropriate balance of energy and calmness.