Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn, where we're going to be talking about resilience. So what I want to say to you lovely listeners is if you haven't already subscribed or followed, please do that and then you'll get every episode every week as it drops. So today our guest is Beth Benatti-Kennedy, who's written all about resilience. Beth, hello. Hi, welcome. Thanks. Excited to be here. it's so good to have you.
And I love that you've just flown in from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Yes. Just in time. No flight delays or anything. Lovely, so where in the world are you right now? am in Beverly, Massachusetts, which is 30 minutes north of Boston, Massachusetts. We did a road trip around New England once, so I've probably been there. Did you go to see Salem where the witches are? Salem, Massachusetts. No, we were on the way to the lakes with a friend from Boston. Yeah, we spent a whole summer.
It was fantastic. my goodness, good for you. That's fabulous. Yeah, yeah, loved it. So Beth, tell us a little bit about your journey, your professional journey to now. Yeah, so my journey, my resilience journey actually began with my dad. He was an entrepreneur, had his own moving company, family-run moving company in Long Island City, New York. So as a little girl, I would go with him to moving jobs.
He taught me about brand and success and leadership, but he also was a workaholic and struggled with very serious depression. So as a little girl, I was always like, how could I help my dad? And obviously I didn't know how, but I went to college and majored in psychology and I lucked out with this internship in New York City for a company called Stress Care. And they would get these people that would come to them from all these different organizations that were completely stressed out.
And believe it or not, this was in the 1980s, I started learning all these stress management techniques. So the funny part is my senior project to graduate in 1988 was stress management, a must for today's society. And 30 something years later, that's my business. So I've pretty much stayed on track. I was a school counselor for about 10 years, but got burnt out. And I believe so much in connection because I reached out to a woman who I met in graduate school. Her name was Anne Marie.
and I shared with her my challenging situation. And when I met her in graduate school, she was 20 years older than me. And she said, come in. She was the training and development manager at the Gillette company, the Razor. And she said, I want you to develop a bid for an ESL program on the factory floor. I did not know what I was doing. I did this bid and I was awarded it. So I was.
at Gillette for 16 years and developed a career development program throughout the entire company, starting with factory employees all the way up to vice presidents. And that's where my resiliency model got created. You know how they say your life can change in one day? My life changed in one day. Procter and Gamble purchased Gillette. So they politely told me my services after 16 years were no longer needed. But they asked me to stay on to do the outplacement.
counseling and coaching for all the high-level executives. So I did that and then fortunately I got some great feedback that my five coaching strategies really help people thrive but also land some great roles. And that's where my Bonatti resiliency model came into play and it's named after my dad who unfortunately died at 66 years old but I learned so much from him. So that's my journey. Wow, and his legacy lives on! His legacy lives on and it's so fun to talk about him.
And one of the things like branding, I know it's big now, but those days he had beautiful branded trucks with three colors. And so he was ahead of his time. He was ahead of his time. Yeah. Yeah, so it's interesting because resilience comes up in almost every supervision session that I run. Wow, and interesting that you're saying that. I sat next to the college president of Bethany College yesterday and he said to me, we have this meeting with all college presidents.
The number one they're concerned about with college students is resilience. So that's an area I don't do a lot of work with college students, but my heart just is like, this is just something that. you know, we need to work on because it's so important. Yeah, and I was having a conversation with someone the other day who was born in Eastern Europe. And she said that if you do a resilience test on someone from Eastern Europe, their score is really high because they had to be.
As children, they had to be resilient because of the world that they were brought up in. Yeah. It's so interesting that you share that because I actually have shared with clients that when I started getting burnt out, I couldn't leave the schools because I was raised and trained that in my family, you don't quit. You just keep going. So believe it or not, it took me two hard years before I finally reached out to Anne-Marie to tell her how challenging my life was.
So I'm sure there's a lot of people in my boat that are, know, similar situation. It's very hard to have the courage to make a change. Yeah, absolutely. So what have you learnt on this journey? Gosh, I've learned so much. think one of the things I've learned the most was how important self-awareness is and how important connection is. I think, you know, we think, and also that resilience is not grit. It's not just putting up with everything and anything.
It's really, to me, resilience is about having a toolbox, that we are gonna have ups and downs. And when we have those downs, we pull out some of those tools and sometimes some of those tools can be being with close friends that recharge our energy bucket. You know, it's not a magic wand, but I get kind of frustrated because sometimes I think since the pandemic, people think of resilience as put on this coat of armor, get through everything and anything.
And that's really not, you know, to me, that's not what resilience is. Yeah, and there's a being human piece. Yes. Yes. And to me, I think that's most important. And especially, I think, for people that are self-employed or entrepreneurs, that it was very interesting because after this talk I gave, the head of the program, the conference planner said to me, Beth, one thing everyone said about you, we just want to share that with you, is how sincere you were.
And to me, that was just like, that was just made me feel so good because I don't want to be one of these people like using all the buzzwords and I want to be able to like move people forward and being sincere. feel like, my dad's smiling right now, you know? So, yeah. How much your dad is part of this journey. I know, I know. It's interesting, I have this frame on my desk. It has a picture of him when we were at Disney World. One of my friends gave it to me. And it says on it, mover of people.
So he was not only a mover of furniture, his business was on Steinway Street, which is famous for the Steinway pianos, but he was a mover of people. His... He was such a great leader that his employees just kind of followed him and moved along. So I kind of like that I work with executives now, but I love that my dad was just like a working class gentleman who loved his career, know, ends hope except hope.
So what difference do you think that your life journey has made now to your work on resilience, You know, the difference I think that it's made in my life is I am courageous in my coaching to ask really, really hard questions. And I work with some founders and I work with some CEOs and they'll say to me, Beth, no one has ever said anything like that to me because they're kind of like at these levels where people don't bring these things up or vice presidents.
And I will say to them, What kind of fun are you gonna have this weekend? I'm proud of you, you know, developing this molecule. I work with a lot of scientists. They have so many degrees and they're so educated, but I'll say, share with me something fun you're doing this week. What did you do with your team? How did you celebrate? So I feel like I'm that coach that kind of gets into some of those areas that some people don't wanna talk about in leadership.
Nice. Let's come back to courage and resilience because I wonder whether there's something to explore there. But first of all, what do you mean by resilience? So what I mean by resilience is being able to move forward through challenges and change in a proactive way. And so for everyone that proactive is a little bit different. For some people it might mean I need to have a therapist, I may need to have a coach. For some people it might be I have in my book club and that supports me.
I have people who, you know, have a hobby and that hobby is just what completely recharges them. So a big theme of all my work is recharge. So my first book was called Career Recharge. This book called Rethink Resilience, because I want people to rethink about what resilience means to them.
And at the end of the day, this word of being fulfilled, it, know, the research is incredible and I know and many people on this call have heard it about happiness is it's not about fame, it's not about money, it's about having close relationships with others. And there are so many scientific studies to prove this. So I'm always sharing that in my coaching, I think it's such an important factor.
And we've seen what happens to some of these famous people with all the followers and the Instagram and... At the end of the day, what does fulfillment mean? So I'd like to explore that too with my clients. So something about connection. Yeah. Yeah. So I believe it's interesting. I believe having a tribe of supportive people in your boat is the most important thing you can do for your life and your career.
And I also have to think about, you also have to think about it's not the number of connections, it's the quality of the connections and do they fill your energy bucket. And it's okay to have, in my first book I talk about energy vampires, it's okay to have really good boundaries and to say no to certain people because I think also for coaches, therapists, leaders, sometimes we can take on too much and we need to maintain our own resilience. Tribe is one of my favourite words. my gosh.
I love it. book called I found my tribe. I never heard of it, thank you. I think she's Irish or English and her husband was diagnosed with, in England we call it motor neurone disease, in America you call it ALS. yes, we have someone in our town. And she found her tribe by encountering a group of wild swimmers, women wild swimmers. And they used to swim every day in the Irish sea, think, well, in some very cold sea.
And that was the tribe that sustained her through her husband's illness and through his death and beyond. I mean, really extraordinary. So as you were saying, we need to find our tribe. Yeah. What I heard myself say to myself was, and that tribe needs to be to see us. Yes. And yeah, they need to see us. I want to share that, that my clients have found really helpful. I I've just invented it, you know, like 10 years ago, I call it the Friday five.
And what I have my clients do is, is in their phone, pick whatever time you have your morning tea or your morning coffee, or you get on your laptop, you give an invitation to yourself and you put connect and capital letters. And when that little chime goes off, you every Friday, less than five minutes, you pick one person on your tribe. to text them either good morning or email them or better yet, take out a little snail mail and write a little note.
So, because I think that's the other piece about connection is we can't expect it to just happen. It's energy. And people would say to me, my job is so big, Beth, I don't have time. I just have time for my team. But in today's world, there's so much chaos and stress. We need to think about some of those people that we're not always seeing. So yes, we need to invest in our tribe.
And I don't know if you're familiar with the book, Give and Take, but that book talks about the power of taking that time to give to others is what really refuels you. It produces those great brain chemicals. And we have to be careful, you know, that word taking can be really, you know, just can feel kind of awful. but remembering how important it is to give to others. I don't think that we can give if we aren't able to receive. Yes. Yes, I agree.
I agree. And I think, I wonder, I notice in the helping professions, whether we can get a bit over fluent on giving and under fluent on receiving. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. And one of the things that I was sharing with these college students, I said, I wish I knew at your age, I'm sharing with you one of my resiliency boosters is asking for help. And I wish I learned that as a college student.
So as adults, people will tell you I am the first one, if I get a challenging client or a challenging big training, I reach out to my network. And people are there for me. don't, I'm, you know, people call me an expert in resilience, but I'm not an expert. It's, really shared learning. I've, I've learned to have an expertise because people, you know, I'm constantly studying and learning, but it's really share. call it shared learning. It's all of us together.
That's helping this move, you know, helping us progress through this world together. Integrate. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I do this exercise that people might find helpful. I have people just write down who are your allies, the people that fill your bucket, write them down. Then I have them write down who are your influencers, so the people who inspire you or you learn from. And then I have them write down their champions, who are those cheerleaders? So start with that, I call it their connection plan.
And then, because then when Friday comes, they say, well, who am I supposed to be connecting with? That's your tribe. These are all people that have nourished you in different ways throughout your life. And they could be from grade school, high school, college, jobs, mentors, managers. So yeah. Anybody, but we need to connect. That's what you're saying. We need to connect.
as I shared with everyone how my life changed in one day when Procter & Gamble purchased Gillette, sometimes when I used to only do career counseling, my clients would say, Beth, I don't have any connections and they just lost their job. So we can't wait. We can't wait till we have that hard day. We have to, I feel like we have to make it a part of our life, the tribe. As you're talking, it feels like you're describing us being plugged into the electric socket of connection.
Yes, that's such a, I love that metaphor. I love that. because I've just learned how to say that in Spanish. And then how we can be, when we're disconnected from the power for too long, we lose our resilience, don't we? Oh gosh, I'm gonna be using that. That is excellent. That is excellent. And it's kind of like, do you remember the old days where our phones had such a little bit of a charge?
So when I, I have a full day training that I call career recharge for companies and it starts with the phone full up and then it goes, sheesh. And the whole idea meaning, you today is about how, what are those little things you can do to recharge? Because as you know, it doesn't happen overnight. It's something you have to continue to work on. So I love your metaphor. think we came up with that together. So we pass through courage and resilience. Tell us a bit more about courage and resilience.
Yeah, I think the reason why I talk about courage is because I think being resilient is not just having a certain career. I don't think being resilient is getting through everything and anything. the example of courage is the example you shared about the woman that went through the terrible tragedy. You courage really is about centering ourselves, thinking about our purpose and how do I move forward and what do I need, what are the pieces that I need to move forward?
And sometimes that can be good friends, that can be, sometimes we need to take a break, like I was a school counselor and for some people it might not make sense, that fit my values, but I was going down that, I call it the burnout escalator. And I had to be courageous and reach out and ask for help. And when I did, I realized as far as resilience goes, I was exercising, but that wasn't enough. I really needed to have greater self-awareness and I needed innovation. I needed something new.
And when I started work on that factory floor, I can't tell you my energy just tripled. I loved it. I loved it. Yeah. So you sort of were describing the courage to acknowledge what is. Yes. So what else do we need to be noticing to be resilient? For coaches, what do we need to be noticing in the people we work with around resilience? So as I know, since the pandemic, well-being has been a huge piece. So I don't want to skip over it.
It is, I think, really important for all of us as coaches to make sure we're focusing on our well-being in a balanced kind of way. Whatever works for you, but I think with our clients. And I talked about the idea of self-awareness with not only just purpose, why are we here? but this whole idea of growth mindset from Carol Dweck, I think it's not about optimism all the time.
It's about having those, I call it those like reality tools for, there will be days that will be hard, but there will be days where we need to figure out how am I gonna proactively, I like to use that word a lot more than optimistic. And then we talked about connection and the piece that I think is huge for our clients as well as us as coaches is personal brand. I think that word authentic is so huge.
One of the things I think is we all have to think about when we're not with our clients, how do we want them to think about us? How do we want to come across? And for me to be authentic, to take that extra 15 minutes and talk to someone that wants to do an informational meeting. That is so huge. what is the brand? What is that living legacy we want right now? And I believe that will keep people's practices thriving. It keeps you, know, just makes people want to work with you.
So I think that personal brand. And then the last one is that innovation. And I describe innovation not just from a corporate speak, like, OK, let me get trained in this. It's also what our personal hobbies that you can add to your life to help you thrive. So I have a client in one of my book who ended up taking watercolor painting classes and she loved her job again. You know, I've clients that take dance lessons.
What and you know, this word I use a lot with everyone is just how do get more fun into your life? I think sometimes life can get too serious. So you're really describing be human and have a life. be human and have a life. And I know we're making that sound like it's super easy and I know it's not. It's like a puzzle. So we all need to figure out, I like the Japanese term, ikigai, and they have those five pillars. And one of them that I love is start small.
So if you wanna be resilient, what's that one small thing you wanna do today? The other part you're going to love about the true Japanese terminology for Ikigai is they call it sustainability, but when you look at the definition, it is about having a supportive tribe. So yes, yeah. And I'm sure many people on this call are familiar with Dan Buettner of National Geographic and the Blue Zones. He also shares these individuals that live long and are healthy have a tribe.
So the dots just keep connecting to how important that tribe is. Let's start them off. me, you've made me realize how important the walks that we host for coaches are. Yes. So I wanted to get to know some people when we moved house. So I started a walk here and lots of coaches come along and now people are different coaches around, well certainly around the UK and I'd love to invite coaches around the world, start a walk. And basically it's no selling connect. And... more. When do you do it?
I need to start something like this. How do you advertise it? Yes, I am. So... So... For me, it's where I found my tribe. I found my tribe by making my tribe when we moved to a new area. And it's so amazing. So all you do, we've got a group on LinkedIn called Coaches Walking. I'll put a link in the show notes. And what I did, and which is what I recommend, is that you decide where you're going to walk and you share. I'm going to go for a walk on Tuesday at 9.30 starting from this place.
If anyone wants to come meet, come and join. I use a booking system so I know how many people are coming. I can't believe this. I'm gonna be sharing this example like every week. And we have, we'll often have 15 and often there'll be people I don't know and always will want to meet again. And there's no selling, there's no competition, there's no status. It's simply a bunch of human beings who have the same kind of job in a different way meeting up.
So the one that I'm in, we meet every six weeks. We alternate between Fridays and Saturdays because Some people weekends are better, some people weekdays are better. I've just done a LinkedIn post for all the ones we know about and put on 25 walks in the next four months. I can't believe it. And I just want to compliment you and say it actually fits every area of my resiliency model. So really quickly, well-being, self fairness, connection, brand and innovation.
I have never heard of an example that hits every single anchor. I'll take that. I'm so excited about this. I've never heard of anyone doing this. I love it. Right. That's the message. and people don't have to come, they sign up but they don't have to come and people just, so they just come or they don't come. And last time, two of us said, we're going for lunch and two other people came and we had a really amazing lunch. But there's absolutely no competition.
So one of the things I I experience when professionals are together is it can get to feel a little bit competitive, but this is simply just human beings who happen to have the same profession, just walking. And I'm so glad you kind of named the competition because I think that's one of the saddest pieces happening in our profession that I feel like, again, going back to that living legacy, let's all support, connect, and elevate each other so that we can really move people forward.
And the competition piece to me is the complete opposite of connection. Absolutely. Absolutely. about it. I talk about it. Because I will tell people the conferences that I'd like to go to because I say they're collaborative. So, my gosh, that's such a great example. So join our LinkedIn group, Coaches Walking Beth and. am writing that down right now. I have about, I don't know, I have 12,000 LinkedIn connections or something. So if you tag me, then I'll just share it with my world.
And there will be, there's somebody at Nantucket who's looking for coaches who would walk. Is that an island? That's an island, right, near you? Yeah. Cod. I'm actually going to be right near there in May. I'm be right near there in May. But they would have to take the boat over to meet me because I'll be on Cape Cod. I bet they'll be, this is a wonderful thing we could start. I'm in the North shore of Boston. So we have beautiful walks by the ocean. So we could, I just love this idea.
And when you're standing next to somebody, it's just so normal. Do you know we have one criteria for our walks? We only walk where the path is wide enough for two people to be next to each other. This is just gets, this is like unbelievable. We were, we were meant to meet. This is, I am going to be sharing this with everyone. I love that. Yeah, I mean, it's changed my life because we moved to a new area, didn't know very many people.
And also I discovered, I mean, I've got 35 years experience in coaching and there are coaches here who are as experienced as I am and it's such fun. And then brand new people. resilience, that's, also some of the best innovation I believe happens when you're with that one-on-one coach going for a walk or having a cup of tea. And the magic, mean, the fact that you guys are outside with the nature, we all know on this call about awe, what it does for the brain. So I love it.
Good. Not because we don't want to walk in the rain, but if it's raining, you can't talk to somebody because you've got your hood up. my gosh. my gosh. That is. a rain venue and when we share the walk details, we share the rain venue at the same time so that people know that if there's nobody at the start of the walk, if they go to this cafe, we'll be there. I cannot believe, how long have you been doing this for? two years? my gosh. Darn it. people have started them.
So people have said, I'd love to come on your walk. There are 605 people in our LinkedIn group now. I checked this morning. And people have said, I'd love to come, but it's too far. And I just go, we'll start one then. This is amazing. And there's no financial exchange. So there was a walk shared on our LinkedIn group recently where the person was charging and I, we had to take it down because there's no, because the whole point is there's no financial exchange.
It's simply humans turning up being human. Dogs welcome. Dogs are welcome. my gosh, I Yeah, yeah. So if you're in the UK, Beth, you better come. We've had somebody come from Australia on our walk here. Well, I'm so mad we didn't connect sooner because I was in the UK last December. So how far are you from London? Three hours Three hours, okay. So I'll have to look up the next town I'm gonna be in and see how far I am from you. Well, we had some coaches come for a walk from London the other day.
No way. They came for the day and we went and took them up in our hills. And I have so many coach friends in the UK. can't wait to share them this with them. Yeah, please do. So getting back to your book. This is more fun talking about the walk. Absolutely. So your book's called Rethink Resilience 99 Ways to Recharge Your Career and Life. I'll put the details in the show notes. And so is it on Audible? It is not on audio book.
Yes. My first book, Career Recharge, Five Strategies to Boost Resilience and Beat Burnout, is on audio book. And I do want to share for coaches, because coaches have asked me this, my first book includes exercises for each area of resiliency. And if coaches want to use my book for trainings, I'm totally, like my goal is just to have people share so we can have a resilient world. If my first book, Career Recharge, you're welcome to use any of the exercises.
My second book, Rethink Resilience, includes a QR code that people can scan. And in less than 10 minutes for free, it will assess your resilience and give you strategies. But I want to offer it to everyone on this call. You can just go right to my website, which is bethkennedy.com. If you scroll down, it will say, take the resilience benchmark. During the pandemic, I decided to just have it available to everyone. And it's been really exciting.
I've actually had teams and organizations do it and they track their resilience. They do it every three months. So it's one of these things, you you can do it with your coach, but it's also a way that everyone can get some spark of resilience. Yeah. So I'll put that link in the show notes and your LinkedIn profile. Yeah, so my LinkedIn is tricky. It's Beth Benati, B-E-N-A-T-T-I Kennedy. So, but I would love to connect with any coaches and anyone that's in Massachusetts listening to this.
Let's start a little walking group, walking coaching group. you are, there's a challenge Massachusetts. Yeah. Beth, thank you so much for coming to The Coaching Inn. What an absolute delight to talk to you. Yes, thank you. Likewise, it's really been a pleasure and I look forward to meeting face to face in person at some point. On a walk, yes. Thank you Beth for coming. Thank you everyone for listening. We'll be back next week with another episode. Bye bye. Bye everyone.