Preventing Stress and Burnout Through CliftonStrengths

On a recent Called to Coach, we spoke with Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach Nicole Seichter.

Nicole Seichter, Founder and CEO of Strengths4you, focuses on coaching people through stress before they burnout. She especially focuses on people working in corporate businesses: How can she help people in organizations reduce stress and work differently together to make every day count?

Nicole spent almost 10 years in corporate business before becoming a coach in 2008. Nicole had a mission to help people understand how beautiful they are and how to become more their true self. After several certifications and coaching for years, she was still looking for the language to explain human uniqueness. In 2013, Nicole moved to Michigan and started a coaching business called Seichter Coaching & Consulting LLC. In 2014, she finally found the glue to her mosaic through a friend. Her friend told her about the CliftonStrengths assessment and she realized that's how she could help people understand their uniqueness. She then created her current business, Strengths4you, and connected all the parts of her life, her knowledge, her experience and her work with the "StrengthsFinder Glue." She is the author of Strengths Based Stress and Burnout Prevention (sold on Amazon, June 2017).

Please share the key concepts around the acronym you created in your book.

ENJOY is the acronym that represents the process Nicole uses to guide her coaching clients. E is for embrace, N is for nurture, J is for jogging, O is for organization and Y is for you.

• Embrace: She helps her clients understand how to embrace their strengths in many ways. Sometimes our own strengths are what can lead us to stress, other times we can use our strengths as a stress protection shield.
• Nuture: How can you use your strengths to get in a place where you are relaxed?
• Jogging: It's about routine and how can you get to a place again to start again, start over, how can you move your body and your brain,
• Organization: Organize and treat your body like the most precious thing in the world. Organization can help with sleep, nutrition and time management.
• You: Everything starts with you and ends with you. You is about breathing techniques, mindfulness, self-awareness and self-worth.

Nicole emphasizes that there will always be stress in life, so she wants to help people handle it in the best way. She doesn't want people to compare themselves to others and try to be someone they are not.

Who are your ideal clients?

Since she doesn't have a psychology degree, she doesn't work with people who are not healthy. She works with people hopefully before they hit the point of burnout. She hopes to work with forward-thinking, open, and courageous, mentors and leaders -- people who know their employees need coaching. Someone who doesn't treat their employees like people who get a paycheck at the end of the month.

Share a little bit about what you have done with your passion to help leaders with stress and burnout. What coaching services do you offer? How do you market yourself?

Nicole stays true to herself. If she wanted to sell some packages for leadership, she could do this, but that's not her niche -- her niche is stress and burnout prevention. She offers free lunch and learns to help people understand what she does. She also offers half-day workshops so they can see how her coaching can help before they commit to more.

How have you incorporated the Q12 or other tools in your coaching?

When she learned about the Q12 she realized that it was a great way to show to people that there is a return on investment and a way to measure if coaching was effective. Shows the progress in numbers. She often starts with the Q12 at the beginning of her program, then at the end so clients can see how far their teams have come.

She also went to the Gallup Engagement Champions Course and the High-Performance Management Course in Omaha and she includes those elements into her coaching and her programs. It ramps up her whole coaching package.

How have you had successful meet-ups in the Detroit area?

She took over the group from Maureen Monte. She is happy to volunteer her time to do this. She enjoys meeting and working with people who are interested in strengths. Hosting the meet-up is an honor and a pleasure for her. She believes everyone should do what they do best and shine, and then it will come back to you.

She does quite a bit of volunteer work. Currently she works with the Grace Center of Hope. She offered her coaching services to people there who normally could not afford it.

Anyone interested in starting a strengths meet-up in their area, please let Jim know and he will sit down and have a call with you to help you get it started. Check out our meet-up page if you would like to know if your city already hosts one.

Nicole Seichter's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Empathy, Connectedness, Maximizer, Learner and Positivity.