Science & Technology Facilities Council - Case Study

Rediscovering your 'mojo'

How Zentano provided a toolkit that restored a sense of purpose and happiness

The Challenge

Justin Greenhalgh started his coaching with Rich to find out what strategies he could learn regarding how best to manage his division. Justin felt he was getting stressed at work and didn’t feel like he was getting much out of life in general. The coaching turned out to be far more about Justin and how to manage himself rather than his team. 

The solution

Justin said: “Rich was able to help me understand some of the reasons why I was stressed at work. He helped me explore the differences between the things I could control and those I couldn’t”. Justin also spent time looking at happiness and what the causes of happiness are.

Rich discovered that Justin’s preferred learning style is to read and reflect. 

“After Rich recommended several good books I could read on ‘flow’ and happiness, I felt happier within my career and personal life. Rich’s asked me some searching questions – but these weren’t questions you would usually ask yourself. The answers were very revealing in terms of how I thought about things”. 

For example, Rich challenged Justin to ask himself whether he was doing a good job or not? Who he compared himself too and who was his role model?

Justin reflects: “I found my own standards were impossibly high. I compared myself to an amalgamation of the engineer Brunel – but with none of his mistakes - and heroes from fiction books. This made me realise that of course I will make mistakes, its ok to make mistakes, we are after all only human”.

The work Rich has done with me has opened my eyes to things that are possible. Rich helps people to understand their relationships with themselves and helps them to put it back on track when they discover they are out of kilter with themselves.

Justin Greenhalgh - STFC

The result

“The coaching has now set me up for my career in government funded research and within my personal life. I am much more content than I was before”. 

Justin uses an analogy to explain the impact of the coaching: “It felt as though Rich was standing beside me at a pond and he threw a pebble in creating ripples that are going to spread throughout. It sometimes took a while for me to answer the questions Rich asked me, I would often have to go away and think about things for a week”.

“From the first session it was clear that the way Rich worked clicked with me and has helped me ever since. The work Rich has done with me has opened my eyes to things that are possible. Rich helps people to understand their relationships with themselves and helps them to put it back on track when they discover they are out of kilter with themselves”

“I feel as though Rich’s coaching has set me up for the rest of my career and my life. 

Justin is still using the questions Rich gave him and has been encouraged to write journals as part of an ongoing strategy to manage internal self-talk. “I find if I do get stressed, writing it down with the simple and specific techniques Rich gave me, helps a lot”.