Neal Loidolt is the president and CEO of Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans (MAC-V). His 34 years of service are decorated with honors and accolades including the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, and Bronze Star. Neal’s declaration that he’s “not made to play to a tie” is fully supported by these honors. Even considering those accomplishments, what he’s been able to achieve by applying his passion for fellow Vets is likely the most impressive part of Neal’s story.

Recently he found himself and MAC-V in a position that would intimidate even the most battle-hardened professionals. MAC-V helps Veterans secure sustainable housing, as well as supporting employability and access to other resources. In a time of unprecedented global change, Vets experiencing homelessness faced more hardships and bigger risks than ever before. The pandemic found so many facing a loss of part, or all of their support system. That drove the need to expand the staff by more than 50% and conquering new ground. Sometimes in a very literal sense.

Facing these challenges, Neal began to hope. A hope of finding a way to support his team. To give them the opportunity to learn skills to help themselves. A hope of a more holistic commitment to their mission.

His quest brought him to Choice Leadership and Human Perspectives International (HPI).

Neal saw an alignment; both share a “serious drive to help people”. With the CL and HPI team engaged, it was time to begin resilience coaching.  It must have resonated with the MAC-V employees, because over 30% of staff requested to sign up, including more that half of the leadership team.  Here’s how the program rolled out:

Coaching and Development to Tap into Your Resilience

Participants progressed as follows:

Step 1: Take resilience assessment

○       Participants receive personal, customized results on 11 targeted skills that highlight strengths and opportunities for growth

Step 2: Collaborate with a Choice Leadership Resilience Coach

○       Each participant attended a minimum of four 1:1 coaching sessions over the course of 5 months with some learners requesting more, or more frequent coaching sessions

○       Each participant and their coach identified transferable personal traits that already embodied resilience skills, things that were immediately accessible tools that they’d already developed to overcome adversity

○       Participant and Coach took a clear, unfiltered look at individual resilience growth opportunities

○       The Resilience Coach took a holistic approach in finding the root causes as to why some skills identified as growth opportunities .

○       Participant and Coach worked together to develop an Action Plan.  This focus ensured success because they understood actions they could take to approach challenging situations differently.

 Step 3: Six-month review

o   After individualized coaching, independent study, and Action Plans, participants were again given the Resilience assessment. Results showed the greatest growth in these areas:

All participants showed marked improvement in multiple areas, including areas not identified as needing action.

Conclusion

Neal identified multiple successes he directly attributes to resilience coaching: changes in his own behavior, his trust of people, and his view of the world. These improvements weren’t limited to himself. More and more of his team members were signing up for resilience coaching. Neal noticed them harnessing their existing strengths in new ways. Plus, they were elevating other skills to sustainably support themselves and each other through adversity. Team members built more faith and confidence in each other and leadership.  Recently we asked Neal: Could he see the holistic growth in skills and dedication to the mission he’d hoped for?

In his own words… “Absolutely!”

Why does Resilience matter so much?

What your employees carry into the workplace affects productivity, innovation, and culture. The American Psychiatric Association believes resilience has a hand in combating workplace stress and fatigue. In fact, they state that “Resilience is associated with greater job satisfaction, work happiness, organizational commitment, employee engagement, improved self-esteem and employee interpersonal relationships.”

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