How Self Coaching Helped My Return to Work After Breast Cancer and Spinal Surgery
Tina Leigh McDonald (United Kingdom)
I sat in Costa, (my happy place) with my usual Caramel Latte, across from me sat my line manager and my senior manager, they knew meeting me here would keep the meeting light and less formal, and this discussion was meant to be a conversation to see how I was doing. No one wanted me to feel pushed to come back to work and everyone was working hard to keep things on my terms. It was November 2024, I had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer in April, both breasts I needed surgery and Radiotherapy. I had now completed both of these treatments. I was starting to think about when I might return to work and I was keen to get my life back to normal, but there was a problem, I had overcome this huge hurdle but there was more. I was going to return to work in January, it was going to be a phased return, but I was going to be off again soon after. In February before my diagnosis, I had been told I needed spinal surgery, this had been put on hold to manage my cancer, but now I needed to have this surgery, and the problem had escalated because it had been left.
You hear the word resilience and you talk about work-life balance all the time in my industry (education) and especially in my role of work in Learning and Development. We are often the people training others or setting examples to others to ensure they don’t ‘burn out’ making sure staff have the tools to manage their workloads, ensure they book their annual leave and talk to people positively about ways they can ‘leave work behind’ but this was something very different. I had in my previous roles in management worked with staff on phased returns, so in my head I thought I knew what a good plan would look like, I understood it would take time, I was under no illusion that things would be easy. This was about phasing myself back into work, then phasing myself back out again, and then phasing myself back in again. It was also now about understanding, this first phase of illness was something deeply emotional and the second would be something very physical. T.his was Work Life Integration.
I am a very positive person, I see the silver lining in almost everything I do, I have an annoying habit of being able to find something good in even my biggest struggles. When I was told I had cancer, my first thought was having it in both breasts was good because it meant the surgery would keep my breasts even. When I found out that collectively my tumours weighed the same on each side, my response again was the same, That’s lucky things are even. So for me Self-Coaching is something that becomes easy to start and natural to maintain in a crisis, it is often the first thing I find myself doing and I use it as part of my wider toolkit as I have a chronic illness that I have been managing for many years now.
Here are some simple strategies I used to help me manage my return throughout both sickness periods and surgeries and ones that helped get me through each day.
Visualise Traffic Lights
Red light, Amber Light. Green Light. – Lighting up my feelings to acknowledge how I feel is a real visual connection for me. When I wake up and my tiredness or pain was good or manageable, that was a green light ‘moment’. It meant I could continue, I could carry on. As time went on through the day, my light might change to amber. This might be ‘be aware’ that things have changed, just like the traffic lights that warn you the lights are changing, this was a warning to me that I needed to be aware that I was approaching the need to watch my red light, this meant I could rest, get a drink, eat, sleep, take medication, stop whatever was needed. If I woke up and my light was already red, I could acknowledge that I needed to find a way to get to amber first, then green. I could work my way through these lights up and down through the day, and these allowed me to keep positive by seeing my day with some amber and green and not stay in red all day. It helped me to manage my lights and my day.
Coaching Style Discussions
Using a coaching style with my manager in discussions, when we met, he would ask me what I needed, what worked for me. When we met at the end of the week, we would reflect on what worked and what hadn’t, we talked about the obstacles as goals, using GROW (as laid out here in Positive Psychology) What Is the GROW Coaching Model? (Incl. Examples) we set goals for each week, small targets that I wanted to meet, either increasing days, hours, workload. We were brutally honest about the reality of what I could achieve based on how I felt the week before and how my weekend had gone. We looked at options I had, support available, things I could do differently, what hurdles I might have and what might cause me trouble. Then we would create the plan for the week. This style gave me control, which helped me feel supported and allowed me to ask questions and push myself without feeling pressured.
Source: iCN Issue 53 (Wellness & Holistic Coaching: Well-Being & Balance); page 47
About Tina Leigh McDonald
Tina Leigh McDonald is a People Development Facilitator at Milton Keynes College. She has worked in Leadership and Coaching since 2002. Tina has 2 children 25 and 23, This year she is turning 50 and celebrates her 25th wedding anniversary. The most important thing to her is her family and friendships, the people close to her are the most important in her world. In 2016, she was the We are the city top 100 Rising Star women in Education finalist and supporting people to develop and see their potential and believe in themselves is something she is passionate about.
