Coaching Emotionally Fragile Staff - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

I was recently asked by a manager on a webinar what strategies she should use when coaching a new graduate who is emotionally fragile and reactive to feedback. The nurse was stressed, anxious and demonstrated catastrophic thinking when suggestions were made to improve performance. The manager expressed concern because the new graduate seems to lack the resiliency that is needed to successfully navigate the role demands on a busy, complex unit with a steep professional learning curve. She was also worried that the nurse would quickly burn out.

Dr. Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania works with leaders to help them successfully coach their staff to become more resilient. There are three key areas that he focuses on in this work. The first is a need to help staff build mental toughness. The second is to help staff build on their natural strengths in times of stress. The third area is to build strong relationships with staff through a focus on constructive conversations.

If we use our new graduate as a case example, the manager would use the following coaching strategies:

Build Mental Toughness – Seligman believes that how we explain events to ourselves plays a key role in resiliency. If we want to build mental toughness, events have to be evaluated differently. He suggests the ABCD model – A is the adverse event. For our new graduate, it could be an error in judgment. B is the personal belief about the event. For our new graduate, this error in judgment may be seen as a professional failure. C represents the emotional consequences experienced as an outcome of the event. For our new graduate, these were stress, anxiety, and concern about job loss. D is the ability to quickly confront and dispel these unrealistic beliefs. As a coach, the manager would walk through A, B and C with the nurse. She would then move to D to put the event in context and coach the new graduate to see a different way of viewing what happened.
Help Staff to Build on Natural Strengths – all of us have unique strengths and talents that can serve to help us during times of adversity. The nurse manager would coach the new graduate to consider their unique gifts. This can be formal using tools like the Clifton Strength Finder or the Values in Action Strength Survey. It can also be through questioning the staff about what they like best in their role and what is effortless. These strengths can then be leveraged to deal with adversity.
Build A Strong Relationship with the Staff Member – Seligman believes that managers have the capacity to help to decrease stress by having an active, authentic and constructive style. Too often, managers compound the problem in adverse situations by being either passively or actively destructive versus constructive in their responses. An example of a constructive approach would be to ask the new graduate what she learned from the adverse situation promoting a growth mindset.

Seligman believes that the building blocks of resilience are positive emotions, engagement, relationships, a sense of meaning and feelings of accomplishment. With an investment in coaching, new graduates can be taught skills that will help them grow to be confident professionals.

Read to Lead

Seligman, M. Building Resilience. The Harvard Business Review. April 2011.