Stress Awareness Month - sign up to our Coffee Connect

April is Stress Awareness Month, a time for everyone to reflect on their wellbeing and discover new ways to manage their stress.

The theme this year is #LeadWithLove, which encourages everyone to embrace kindness, compassion and acceptance. Stress often thrives in highly charged, conflict situations, so embracing empathy can help to reduce stress for everyone.

The theme is based in the psychological concept of Unconditional Positive Regard, which, when used in the workplace, means valuing colleagues for who they are, providing an environment of psychological safety, and supporting growth and development. It involves active listening, using a growth mindset and effective communication.

Stress Management Resources

Throughout April, we’ll be sharing resources to help you manage your stress, but as our starter for the month, we’d like to recommend the following:

• We have a new Stress Management video which explains the difference between good and bad stress, suggests techniques to manage stress and signposts to our resources available for everyone in the RNLI.
• If you do need assistance, you can review our different wellbeing support options on the Wellbeing page on Volunteer Zone. This includes information about welfare support, our Mental Health First Aiders and additional resources.

If you’re interested in any of the concepts mentioned relating to the #LeadWithLove theme, we would recommend:

• Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset video or Mindset book
• Amy Edmondson’s Psychological Safety video or Psychological Safety book

Coffee Connect

As part of Stress Awareness Month, we’re going to run Coffee Connect pairings where you can sign up to be paired up, arrange a call or meet-up and get to know someone new (Note: Coffee is optional, other drinks accepted).

How will this work?

You sign up to take part using our Coffee Connect sign up form by Friday 25 April. The form includes information about your availability and whether you want to meet up in person (in Poole). We’ll then match you up to someone and send out your pairing week commencing 28 April.

What should we talk about?

When we send out who you’ve been paired with, we’ll also send out some ideas to cover as part of your meet up. You can choose whether to find out what you each do for the RNLI, what you do to improve your wellbeing, or something else entirely.

Who can sign up?

Anyone that’s interested can sign up, but you have to be logged in to your RNLI account to register on the form. We’ve included a wide variety of times of day, so if you’re someone who works or volunteers in particular hours, we should manage to pair you up with someone that can do that time of day too.

How do we arrange our meet-up?

We’ll include recommendations of how to organise your meet-up when we send through your pairing, but it will be your responsibility to arrange within your pairing when and where you’ll meet up. Your meet up will likely be around 30 minutes, but you can figure out what works best for you – it may be shorter or longer.

If you’ve got a question that we’ve not answered here, email [email protected].