Young people and mental resilience: Interview with Jon Nottingham, resilient futures coach

I have been having regular catch ups with Chris Terry, director of Insight Workplace Health around the health of young people in the workplace. Our interest comes from the wider policy challenges across the UK (recently highlighted in the interim Milburn report with almost 1M 16-24 year olds not in employment education or training) as well as what the Insight Workplace Health team are seeing with younger workers on the ground in their occupational health clinics. Chris recently introduced me to Jon Nottingham, a specialist resilient futures coach who supports young people build sustainable careers. Here are the highlights from our chat: 

Introduction: Preparing young people for sustainable careers

LS: I have never met a resilient futures coach before! Tell me about your professional background. 

JN: I have a sports education background. After my degree I qualified as a teacher and spent time in many classrooms. In my teaching years I constantly came back to the concepts of sport development and community development, which I then took into extra curricular education. This began as working with young people at college to support with building healthy active lifestyles but I soon realised the merits of a more holistic approach to supporting this cohort in achieving their next steps in life- namely around moving into the world of work. I began building my skillset and took some qualifications in coaching, specific to young people. For the last two years I have focused on delivering programs that help prepare young people for work. 

LS: What an interesting background. So you landed on a biopsychosocial approach which ties in with what we know can be effective in occupational health contexts. What do the key principles of your programs look like?

JN: The format can vary according to the context. But for the most part, I am delivering individual or small group coaching, with the aim of building up participant life skills and transferable skills. This involves bridging the skills gap between education and work. In practice, I have found the main high yield areas of focus are confidence, goal setting and personal values and identity. These more conceptual areas set the foundation for engaging with how to achieve a healthy and sustainable work life.

LS: I like the idea of group work as I am sure there is a lot that participants can learn from eachother but it must be difficult setting up a safe space where people feel comfortable to participate. Tell us a bit about the settings you work in.

JN: Group work can be great but does require a lot of facilitation. I also deliver group sessions for wider stakeholders in this space such as colleges, apprenticeship providers or workplaces. In group settings, sometimes the audience is young people, where my aim is to help prepare them for the workforce. Sometimes the audience is people working with, or line managing young people, and in those cases I am supporting an integration agenda- helping bridge the gap between different perspectives on work. I also do some work with individual young people - who may come forward independently or via parents, schools or employers for support. 

The challenges young people face when entering work

LS: It’s good you are able to reach the wider workplace as well as the young people entering it. What are some of the common challenges you see among young people transitioning into work? 

JN: The two big themes that crop up working with these cohorts are digital wellness and mental health. And there is clearly an overlap between the two. Anyone exposed to social media will find what they consume can change their view of the world. This can lead to comparison that impacts the perceived value of work to an individual. While people of all generations use social media it seems particularly difficult for young people to understand where it is not relevant or realistic. This can impact their journey around work. 

How social media shapes identity, confidence and expectations of work

LS: Social media has been referenced across policy work in this space as a contributor to mental ill health in younger people as well as having a bearing on their productivity. Do you have any thoughts about why this is, based on what you are seeing in your practice? 

JN: Yes, it is just anecdotal evidence- what I am hearing from the cohorts I work with. But it is almost as though older people exposed to social media do not face the same challenges as their identity and values are more established. Young people consuming social media report it can have an impact on their value systems and identity: how they see themselves, the types of work they perceive as valuable and what they define as important. This has a knock on effect on their confidence and ability to set and pursue goals- around work, productivity, and other aspects of their lives. 

LS: I have also had experiences supporting young people with managing social media use. Very often they have insight into its detrimental effects but find it very difficult to reduce use and  implement boundaries. How does your work help to address this?

JN: My work takes the young person back to basics. Instead of focusing on downstream interventions - like screen time limits, we try and build up from values and personal identity. By acknowledging the different directions young people are pulled in we try and separate out what they want to prioritise which then leads to them being motivated to implement behaviour change down the line. By the time they get to boundaries the suggestion has come from them and they are motivated to commit to change. 

Building resilience through values, habits and emotional regulation

LS: How does the identity side of things evolve into a young person’s relationship with work? 

JN: Once we start to think about what is important to us and how this relates to our core values, we can start to build out a picture of what we want from an employer and what we are looking for in a job. Many young people are disillusioned with their experience of work compared to what they see of people’s lifestyles on social media. This impacts their tolerance for discomfort and their resilience to adversity. In my workshops we re-center goals and expectations based on their own values, rather than whatever they are watching online.  

LS: I can understand turning off the ‘noise’ of social media and thinking more about what matters based in on our own priorities and values. But how do these elements feed back into resilience? 

JN: I tend to focus on tangible ways to build resilience. Then how that maps to life outside of work and work life balance. That’s when we can start focusing on specific actions around daily habits - from self care to exercise.  So, for example, establishing healthy daily habits can be very protective as things to lean on during disruptive or challenging times. Other elements of the courses I deliver cover the basics of emotions and the way these impact us. Such as the basics of the sympathetic and parasymapthetic responses.

Once young people can understand what is happening with their emotional responses they can start recognising, labelling and ultimately managing them. There is no fast fix to this, rather trialling different coping mechanisms and slowly building up skills as building blocks, seeing what works and iterating to improve on these techniques. 

Prevention rather than clinical intervention

LS: Emotional regulation is so important in managing our own mental state. But it can be very difficult to work on these skills. In clinical settings, treatments such as dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) are one tool that people find helpful for this. But you are not offering clinical interventions- how do you tread this line?

JN: Yes I am trying to support with prevention through skills for life that are protective against developing pathology. Rather than diagnosing and treating pathology. This extends to the workplace too- trying to put infrastructure in place before work-related ill health develops. For example, streamlining healthy practices, from movement breaks to boundaries for digital workplace platform communications to protect against work-related stress. 

Are education and workplaces keeping pace?

LS: Laying the groundwork for healthy workplace habits seems a great idea but something I have not seen in many educational curricula. I have personally found that it has even been difficult to get airtime on the curriculum for work and health at medical school level! I believe there is potential for education about work related stress and its causes can probably go a long way to protecting the future workforce- who of course will over time be seniors in the workplace, managing other young people. Do you see education evolving to meet young people where we are at? 

JN: I believe there needs to be an education overhaul. The UK is actually split in education delivery and while Wales now offers a broader, more project based curriculum, assessments remain in the format they always have been. It concerns me that our education system may not be preparing young people for the current state of work in among the current challenges they face. None of this is the same as it was 20 years ago. And of course, this may change again with AI.

LS: I suppose that’s where these supplemental programs have value! And it is interesting to me that workplaces and educational settings are building in your work. Maybe over time we will see these learning opportunities more integrated into mainstream education…Thanks Jon! 

Supporting a healthier transition into working life

Young workers do not enter employment in isolation from the pressures shaping their confidence, identity and expectations. Employers can help by creating supportive working environments, developing confident line managers and establishing healthy practices before difficulties become more serious.

Insight Workplace Health supports organisations to protect the physical and mental health of their workforce through occupational health advice, management referrals and workplace wellbeing services.

Find out how we can support your organisation or contact our team to discuss the needs of your workforce.