Member Article

Outdoor coach innovates to help CEO's during Covid-19 lockdown

A former Chief Executive turned business and life coach has turned to technology to keep his business leaders’ mentoring business going through the Covid-19 crisis.

Karl Beckett uses the North East countryside to help business leaders grow and develop with ‘walk and talk’ coaching.

But when the Covid-19 outbreak required everyone to stay at home, he was forced to innovate at a time when he knew stressed business owners would probably now need him more than ever.

So, Karl, who lives in Northumberland, has turned to technology to allow him to help business leaders in lockdown whilst keeping his own specialist business going.

Using a PDF map on ViewRanger software, Karl sends his client a detailed walking route starting from their front door and sets out on his own daily walk at the same time. Headphones and audio-video technology such as WhatsApp and Skype allow Karl and the client to communicate throughout the walk.

This has enabled him to keep working with his clients and help during the Coronavirus crisis.

Karl says: “Leading an organisation or team can be isolating at the best of times and now more than ever that pressure is increased tenfold through enforced isolation. Add into the mix the worry for their business’s survival and the health and mental wellbeing of their teams, and you have a recipe for real stress.

“Determined to help, I developed an approach for business leaders that addresses not only the necessity to exercise each day physically but also to exercise their brains. This solution takes away the pressure that can be associated with making decisions alone – big and small.”

Using his own experience not only as a resilience coach but as a former CEO who bounced back from tough times, Karl says he can help his clients to view the landscape and gain perspective on specific situations and so clarify next the steps to help that client forward in his decision-making and solution process. Something which is now currently in even greater focus.

When the walk is over (and over a hot tea or coffee and biscuits), a video call takes place at home to agree an action plan and arrange the next session.

Karl added: “If I can make a small difference to help take the pressure off leaders in organisations, so they can think more clearly and be more resilient at this time, I will have done my job.

“With such a massive change in our working environment, we all need to pull together. What works with this solution is it can be undertaken anywhere in the UK – and it’s remote, so it falls safely within the Government’s social distancing guidelines.”

He added: “People fall into habits and often just follow the same walks so an additional benefit is it can also be refreshing to find a new walking route and a fresh outlook.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Neil Shaefer .