When I took a resilience practitioner course almost 2 years ago now to help my client and build my own resilience muscle I had no idea how I and the humans would be tested in 2020 and 2021. Last September, I already shared some tips that you can find here .
Today I want to share something that I hope will be useful for you when facing a crisis or a challenge whether at home or at work. Chris Johnstone called this the SHIFTS process and I find it very useful when facing a crisis. I also think this can be used for individuals as well as teams working on challenge and wanting to set the vision and steps to get out of it. It is a storyboard of the challenge you are facing. It has 6 steps:
- Step 1: Starting point – What I am facing is….
This is where you describe you are facing either now or something that can happen in the near future.
- Step 2: Hoped-for outcome – My hopes here are…
Here is the point where you list what you are hopping for out of this situation you or your team is facing.
- Step 3: In the way of that obstacles or difficulties include…
In this step, you list all the obstacles that can be in the way of achieving your hoped-for outcome
- Step 4: Facing that what help is …
As I had talked in my previous blog on resilience, listing all the things and people that will support you and the help can leverage in this challenge:
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- Your own ressources (your strengths, strategies/behaviours and actions you have used in the past that can work in that situation…)
- People around you that can support you (from family, to colleagues, to neighbours to health professionals…depending on the situation and your needs)
- Ideas or saying that have made a difference for you in the past
- Step 5: Turning point – a turning or shift might happen if we were to…
This is about the actions or knowledge you need to gain to get to the Hoped-for outcome. this can be anything from examples of people who have reached the type of “hoped-for outcome” you are looking for or ideas about the actions or steps one can take to get there. If your challenge is related to team work (or a family scenario), identifying what contribution and action each member need to make is critical.
- Step 6: Specific achievable steps in the next seven days to make my hoped-for outcome more likely are
Over the next week, what can you (or the team members) do that will help get closer to the hoped-for outcome. This needs to be specific and achievable. you are breaking down the big challenge into little steps to get on the way to a resolution.
This process has the benefit of downloading on paper the challenge and worries associated to it – like a brain dump* – so the thinking is on a piece of paper and not in your head anymore.
so try it next time you face a challenge.
- Want some help to recognise what brings stress in you and what to do? – Download the free emergency self-care help sheet here.
- Want to know more about your strengths and discover (or rediscover) them with our strengths coaching program? – Find all the information here.
- Want to start your coaching journey?- Book a free possibility session here.
*brain dump is a technique used to download all the thoughts you have in your head on paper so it doesn’t clutter your mind anymore. Try it – at night before bed or first thing in the morning to start your day with a fresh mind.