Having recently completed a second hiking and coaching session with a client, it feels like a good time to reflect on the benefits of this approach to leadership coaching.
Why Hiking & Coaching?
The benefits of walking and coaching are well known, especially when in nature. To move to the next level, a day’s hiking and coaching provides a bigger space for exploring your challenges and opportunities, both in terms of time and a nature fix. As well as the longer 5 hour coaching session, the creativity and inspiration of being outdoors are amplified in the beautiful and dramatic scenery of the West Wales coast path.
These sessions are designed to support a deep dive into your leadership coaching journey, and can support you whether you are:
- Commencing a new role and wanting to shape your leadership and strategic approach
- Refreshing your leadership mindset
- Returning from a career or work break (maternity, paternity, stress, illness) and want to jump start your return to work with a fresh approach and perspective.
" Everyone has goals they want to reach, challenges they are striving to overcome, ideas that need a road map and times when they feel stuck...[coaching is].. partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential."
International Coach Federation (ICF)
How does a hiking and coaching session work?
Whilst the journey to Aberystwyth can be a long one, it’s 3 hours by train from Birmingham, it is one of the most scenic rail journeys in the UK, and the time is used wisely to prepare for your coaching session with carefully designed pre-work helping you to focus your coaching exploration.
After a restful night in a hotel of your choice, ideally on the promenade listening to the waves breaking on the beach, we meet at the Prom Diner at about 10am for a coffee and an hour briefing session to explore the focus of your coaching.
Our journey starts up Constitution Hill at the end of the Aberystwyth Promenade. As with each climb on this 6 mile hike, we stop at the top to admire the view and reflect on the coaching subject we are exploring.
After this hill the first 3 miles of the walk are gently undulating and we stop at Wallog for lunch and a break from coaching. Here we can admire Sarn Gynfelyn, the shingle spit which has long been part of the centuries-old legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod, a fabled sunken kingdom which was lost beneath the waters of Cardigan Bay. Before setting off on the second leg of the journey we reflect on the learning from the coaching and any of nature’s metaphors that may have presented themselves along the way.
The second part of the journey has two steep climbs, which we take at a steady pace with and challenging question to support the climb. Before the second climb we get a glimpse of Borth, our destination, with it’s houses stretching thinly along the seafront, demarking the sea and Cors Fochno behind, a raised peat bog – an area of special scientific interest. After our final climb (not has hard of the last one) we have a gentle descent in Borth and can admire the Dyfi Estuary that opens up before us as a metaphor for the expanse of opportunity ahead.
By approximately 3pm, our final destination is the coffee shop with a well deserved coffee and cake. We take time to reflect on the learning from the coaching and the journey and identify next steps and homework before your 25 minute return journey to Aberystwyth via bus or train. From there you can either make the return journey home or stay an extra night to process the day’s coaching. A sports therapy massage or a reflexology session can be arranged for the late afternoon if you want to luxuriate after your hike.
A follow-up email with suggested bespoke resources based on your coaching experience us provide and ideally we arrange a follow-up 90 minute coaching session to reflect on your learning 4 to 8 weeks later.
If a coast path hike with climbs is not for you, we can arrange a walk with inclines rather than climbs in the hills near Aberystwyth at Nant yr Arian
or a flat walk along one of our local rivers
A coachee’s reflection …
" Coaching whilst hiking surrounded by beautiful nature has provided me with thinking space to reflect on my leadership journey thus far, the next steps, and most importantly an opportunity to identify how and what I need to develop to get there. Having space away from a busy work and personal life has allowed me time for self-reflection, clarity in my values and
vision and revisiting my goals based on these. Being outdoors really helps with thinking creatively about the different approaches I can use to achieve my goals. I always come away with a spring in my step, a tummy full of cake and a revised sense of purpose!". Helen Pearson, National Institute Health Research Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow, Advanced Nurse Practitioner and PhD Student
What are the benefits?
Leadership coaching has many benefits for the individual and their organisation, my personal observation of client benefits includes:
- Heightened self awareness
- Increased levels of clarity, focus, passion and motivation
- Better management of stress and anxiety
- Higher levels of empathy
- I ncreased creativity and adaptability
- Improved leadership skills and strategic capability
These observed benefits are supported by findings in the Leadership Foundation’s ‘Exploring the Impact of Coaching in Higher Education’ report [1].
There are enhanced benefits associated with a hiking and coaching approach, including:
- The benefits of integrating walk and talk into the professional practice of therapists was explored in research published by Stephanie Revell and Jon McLeod in 2015 [2]. The research aim was to test the substantial degree of consensus across practitioners regarding walk and talk as an emergent psychotherapeutic approach. Findings included that walking and talking can help shift ‘stuckness’
in clients and facilitate psychological processing, as well as walking side by side promoting a collaborative way of working.
- In 2014, research [3]
by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz at Stanford University demonstrated that participants in a study increased their creative thinking output by 60%
when walking as opposed to sitting, which was more beneficial for focussed thinking. Our hiking and coaching approach encourages both creative and focussed thinking with both hiking and seated coaching spaces.
- The benefits of being in nature are described in over 1000 research publications, which all point in one direction that nature is not only nice to have, but it’s a must-have for physical health and cognitive functioning. In 2020 Mathew White and colleagues published research in a paper concluding that ‘ Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing’
[4]. Benefits of being in nature include: lowering blood pressure, reduced stress hormone levels, reduced nervous system arousal, enhanced immune system function, increased self-esteem, reduced anxiety and improved mood.
What next?
If you are interested in discovering more about hiking and coaching, or just coaching, please arrange a 30 minute ‘Discovery Session’ via this
diary booking link.
[2]
Revell, Stephanie, Mcleod, John,
Experiences of therapists who integrate walk and talk into their professional practice, Counselling and Pyschotherapy Research, Volume 16, Issue 1, March 2016, 35-43
[3]
Oppoezzo, M and Schwartz, D.L., Give your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking, Journal of Exprimental Pychology: Leaning, Memory, and Cognition, Vol. 40, No. 4, 1142-1152 (2014)
[4]
White, M.P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J. et al. Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Sci Rep 9, 7730 (2019).
