[Sub ID 4572] Coaching for Behaviour (ArcLife)

Submission ID: 4572
Organisation name: ArcLife
Contact name: Ms Erin Mulvey
State: NSW
Contact email: erin.mulvey@arclife.com

Which priority group of the Try, Test and Learn Fund does your idea support?
Young students at risk of long-term unemployment

What need or issue are you trying to address?
Personality disorders are a significant and growing problem in our modern society, and this is particularly true in the workplace. Personality disorders are on the rise. This means that some people have an “enduring pattern” of problems, including “interpersonal functioning” in a broad range of personal and social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” (American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

Workplaces are all about interpersonal functioning, social situations, and occupational functioning. Forming relationships is imperative to success and sustaining a job.

High-conflict young people are often preoccupied with blaming others, all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions (in some cases), and extreme behaviours.

Because of their personality difficulties, they lack self-awareness and have difficulty to change their own behaviour. What if there was a way to provide exceptional education and coaching to address and improve the interpersonal skills of high conflict people? And equipped them with the skills required to flourish in the workplace?

What is your idea?
Our solution is to provide top quality education in building interpersonal skills for a person to respond to high-conflict people, as well as, new ways to coach a high-conflict person to change their approach for productive relationships.

Using the latest research in neuroscience, we teach a simple but effective method for a person to respond to a high-conflict person to solve conflicts, producing more productive and collaborative relationships. The method disengages the high-conflict person by shifting the defensive side of the right-side of the brain to connect with the left-side of the brain to find solutions. This empowers individuals that are surrounded by conflict to change the escalation of drama to finding a solution, simply through understanding how the brain works. This also provides opportunities for disfranchised youth to built the confidence to manage and negotiate difficult relationships and situations that occur in the workplace.

In addition, we train and coach high-conflict people to improve their current thinking of:

– All-or-nothing thinking (seeing oneself as perfect, others as all bad)
– Unmanaged emotions (frequent yelling, blaming, crying, dramatics)
– Extreme behaviours (threats of violence, yelling, false reports, etc)
– Blaming others (focusing on others’ behaviour; not taking responsibility for own actions)

To imperative skills that produce productive working relationship in the workplace, these skills include:

– Flexible thinking
– Managed emotions
– Moderate behaviours
– Reflection – checking yourself
– Ensuring an individual’s capacity to be a productive member of the workplace and to enjoy being a participate through having solid personal skills