Resilience Under Pressure

Still coping — but only just?

You’re experienced. Capable. Dependable.

You’re still turning up, leading your team, making decisions and getting things done.

From the outside, you may look as though you're coping perfectly well.

But you know it's becoming harder.

Perhaps work follows you home in your head. You find it difficult to properly switch off. You're more irritable or emotionally reactive than you used to be. Your concentration isn't quite what it was. Small things sometimes feel disproportionately difficult.

And increasingly, your evenings, weekends or holidays seem to be spent recovering from work rather than properly enjoying life outside it.

You may not be at breaking point.

And the aim is to make sure you don't have to get there before something changes.

When coping becomes the problem

Managers and leaders can find themselves carrying pressure from several directions at once.

There are expectations from above. The needs of your team. Competing priorities. Difficult conversations. Organisational change. Problems that can't simply be delegated away.

And often, responsibility doesn't come with complete control over the circumstances creating the pressure.

So you cope.

You work harder. Think about work for longer. Pick things up yourself because it's quicker. Put off recovery until things calm down.

Except things don't necessarily calm down.

Over time, coping can quietly become your normal way of functioning.

And because you're still performing, it can be surprisingly easy — for you and everyone around you — to miss how much it's costing you.

Resilience isn't about learning to tolerate more

I don't believe resilience means becoming tougher so that you can endure an unsustainable level of pressure indefinitely.

Nor is this programme about pretending that workplace stress is entirely an individual problem.

Sometimes the workload really is unreasonable. Sometimes the organisation needs to change. Sometimes there are circumstances you simply cannot control.

But even when you can't change everything around you, you can develop a better understanding of what pressure does to you and how you respond to it.

You can learn to recognise your warning signs earlier.

You can become better at distinguishing what you can control, what you can influence and what you may need to accept.

You can examine some of the rules, expectations and assumptions that may be adding to the pressure you're carrying.

You can make more deliberate decisions about priorities, responsibility and boundaries.

And you can learn how to recover and restore properly rather than simply doing enough to get through another week.

That's what Resilience Under Pressure is designed to help you do.

Who is Resilience Under Pressure for?

The programme is designed particularly for experienced managers and leaders dealing with sustained pressure at work.

It may be right for you if:

• you're still functioning, but work is taking more out of you than it used to

• you find it increasingly difficult to switch off

• you're carrying too much responsibility or mental load

• your patience, concentration or emotional responses are beginning to change

• you're spending too much of your time outside work recovering from it

• you struggle to set or maintain boundaries

• you feel responsible for solving problems that aren't entirely yours to solve

• you're finding it difficult to decide what genuinely deserves your attention

• you've tried holidays, exercise, productivity systems or simply pushing through, but the underlying pattern keeps returning

• you know something needs to change and would rather address it before circumstances force the issue

You don't need to identify with everything on that list.

And you don't need to be experiencing burnout to benefit from the programme.

In fact, I'd much rather work with you before you reach that point.

What will we work on?

Resilience Under Pressure isn't a rigid course in which everybody receives exactly the same six sessions.

There is a clear framework behind the programme, but our work is tailored to your pressures, your patterns and your circumstances.

Across the programme, we may explore areas such as:

What might be different by the end?

My aim isn't to promise you a stress-free working life.

That's neither realistic nor necessarily desirable.

The goal is for you to understand yourself and your response to pressure well enough that difficult days don't have to affect you in quite the same way.

You may find yourself:

• recognising the signs of mounting pressure sooner

• responding more calmly and deliberately when things go wrong

• thinking more clearly about what deserves your attention

• feeling less responsible for things you cannot control

• setting and maintaining more sustainable boundaries

• making clearer decisions about priorities and trade-offs

• switching off more effectively outside work

• restoring your energy rather than continually running it down

• understanding what you need to do when pressure begins building again

Ultimately, the aim is to help you enjoy work and life more, with a better understanding of yourself and greater choice over how you respond when pressure rises.

Why this work matters to me

For around 15 years, I worked in Human Resources, half of those at a senior level.

For a long time, I was also very good at coping.

Problems were there to be dealt with. Deadlines had to be met. Difficult conversations had to be had. When there was too much to do, you got on with it.

Until eventually, I couldn't.

My own experience of prolonged workplace stress resulted in time away from work and, ultimately, leaving my HR career.

Looking back, what interests me most isn't simply the point at which things became too much.

It's how long I managed to keep going before they did.

By the time I properly recognised that something had to change, many of the choices I might once have had were no longer available to me.

Things worked out for the better in the long term, but it was extremely difficult at the time.

It's one of the reasons I now want to help managers and leaders earlier — while they're still in a position to think clearly, make deliberate choices and change how they handle pressure before changes are forced upon them.

Read more about why I do this work → See article in my blog section

How the programme works

Resilience Under Pressure is a structured one-to-one coaching programme, delivered online.

The programme includes

6 × 90-minute coaching sessions

followed by:

1 × 90-minute integration and review session, 6–8 weeks later

That's 10.5 hours of individual coaching in total.

Sessions are normally spaced approximately two weeks apart, giving you time between sessions to reflect, experiment with different approaches and apply what we're discussing in your actual working life.

The later follow-up session gives us an opportunity to see what has happened once you've had time to put the work into practice — what has stuck, what has changed and where anything still needs attention.

You'll also receive:

• preparation tailored to our work together

• practical exercises and resources where useful

• email contact between sessions

• optional support calls of up to 30 minutes between sessions where helpful

Investment - £1,800

This includes the full seven-session programme and the between-session support described above.

The programme can be self-funded or funded by your organisation.

Where an organisation requires additional consultation, programme design, stakeholder or triad meetings outside the individual coaching programme, these are charged separately at £200 per hour.

A note for organisations

Resilience Under Pressure can be commissioned by organisations as individual coaching for a manager or leader.

Where coaching is organisation-funded, we'll agree appropriate objectives and boundaries at the outset while maintaining the confidentiality required for an effective coaching relationship.

Additional organisational conversations — such as contracting, bespoke programme-design discussions or stakeholder/triad meetings — can be arranged where required.

Enquire about Resilience Under Pressure for a manager or leader →

Not sure whether this is what you need?

You don't have to diagnose yourself as “stressed enough”, know exactly what's causing the problem or arrive with a clear plan for what needs to change.

We can start with a complimentary 30-minute consultation.

We'll talk about what's happening, what you've noticed and what you'd like to be different.

I'll explain more about how I work and we can consider whether Resilience Under Pressure — or another form of coaching — seems like the right fit.

There's no obligation to continue afterwards.

Arrange a complimentary 30-minute consultation →