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Retirement Coaching supports individuals to attain the greatest fulfilment and find meaning in one’s later years. We work one-on-one with clients delivering, a highly personal and customized planning for retirement plan to make the most of life in retirement. We do this with personal care and optimism.

Retirement coaching considers pertinent questions such as:

• What are your retirement goals? What are your responsibilities?
• What does your retirement look like?
• How are you going to spend your time? What are your hobbies and interests? What is your life balance?
• Are you retiring or downshifting your career? What type of work commitment suits you, your family and meets your physical health? Is a career shift an option?
• What are your relationships like?
• How do you manage your health?

Let’s consider ways of incorporating the benefits of work into the retirement period.

Work can be undertaken in a new capacity with reduced hours and commitment, such as voluntary work, mentoring younger people entering the industry, part-time or casual work, consultancy or a new work role.

This brings:

• some income with perhaps additional superannuation
• sense of purpose and status

As one contributes, they are building a new identity and increased self-esteem.

Individuals can explore their interests and renew old passions that were un- or under used, as they worked and built careers.

As a teenager/young adult, music may have been a passion that was dropped as one built their career and was raising a family. The new retirement would rekindle the enjoyment that music brought.

Involvement of activities at work, leisure and hobbies means that individuals

• manage their time
• and socialise with others

To plan a meaningful retirement takes time, and honesty. But there’s also fear attached. You wonder, how can such a well-deserved period in our lives, one where we have saved for such a long time, be clouded with fear? Let’s look at some of these fears.

Fears

• Letting go – you have worked for many years, have a routine, are ‘busy’ and now we are faced with the opposite – no work, and largely unstructured time.
  The individual has moved from one extreme of fulltime work – to the other, no work.
• Facing yourself – can’t hide behind one’s work role, busyness, meetings or emails. This is about your identity and self-image.
• Perhaps it is recognising that you need to spend more time than previously with your partner. You’re wondering, how do I do this? What can we do, talk about?
• You may have recognised that through full time work, you’ve neglected your personal relationships, or your hobbies. Yet, you know that it is probably good for you to catch up with your friends and spend time on your hobbies. How do you reconcile this situation?
• You may feel guilty about spending time and money on yourself and having fun. You may ask yourself: ‘am I worthy of this?’
• Or, your vision may be of yourself only working hard without fun! How do you change the vision? It’s now you are feeling the privilege and enjoying your retirement.
• Or, you are fearful that during your retirement you will become the available ‘full time’ babysitter for your family.

Retirement is a stage of your life that is a gift. Rather than assuming your retirement will fall into place, it deserves a holistic plan to create a meaningful retirement.

I’d like to leave you with the final question:

‘How do you want to spend your time during retirement?

No matter what industry you work in, workplace challenges can and will arise. They may come in the form of conflict with co-workers, goals that appear unachievable, or more unpredictable avenues such as the sudden onset of stress or, worse, burnout.

In all these challenging situations, however, you can apply specific skills to overcome them. Leah Shmerling, an educator, journalist, author and trainer for more than 25 years, shares these skills in her latest course Mentoring and Development – Dealing with Workplace Challenges. We interviewed Leah to discuss how educators of all experience levels can adopt these skills and use them to become high-level achievers.

Resolving Conflict Constructively

“Conflict resolution is also one of my favourite topics, because how do we resolve conflict? It’s the word constructive that I always add in. We learn how to resolve conflict constructively in the course because we need to manage stress. And when we talk about managing stress – because life is so busy – what do we do with it? How do we look after ourselves?

“We go through an assortment of skills, including the gift of feedback. Most people are not always willing to give that open and honest feedback, and especially to receive it. That’s why it’s called the gift.”

Interpersonal Skills

While Leah began her teaching career in the TAFE system in the mid-1980s, it was her foray into writing that opened her up to a whole new world of education. And through that writing, she recognised just how crucial interpersonal skills is to the entire teaching process. Not just being able to relate to students, but with co-workers who are perhaps struggling with their own challenges and stressors. Interpersonal Skills an element of her Mentoring and Development Training course and one she believes can help teachers reach their full potential as educators.

“We cannot assume that teachers (or anyone) naturally have interpersonal skills. It’s a skill that must be developed. Importantly, you need to be able to listen. As a teacher, it is not only about giving information, but hearing what students are saying to you. What’s their body language, what is their emotional constant regarding that message? It is through listening skills that we develop empathy.

“So, all of the sudden, it’s reversed roles – you put yourself in the shoes of another person. As a teacher, you must be able to do that incredibly naturally. Most people are not very good at being open and honest, because we are socially constructed. We may think we are good at it, but we’re not. Maybe because people aren’t sufficiently praising their life.”

Leah’s top tips

You must be passionate: “Without passion, you will never last in your job (especially teachers). You must be passionate about anything you ever do in your life. Because your passion shows. If you want to get up in the morning, if you want to enjoy life, if you want to inspire others then you have to inspire yourself first.”

Be thorough and prepared: “When I write, I don’t just write one draft. I do what it takes and there are no shortcuts. If you want to succeed in the workplace, you have to do what it takes to produce good-quality work. I also think you have a responsibility to make sure you have the latest, updated information.”

Build rapport with those around you: “You absolutely have to build rapport with your trainees, students or people you mentor, but also with your colleagues, with your clients. And you build rapport by understanding them. You need to understand their needs, their challenges. Ask yourself, ‘What are their difficulties?’ And then, ‘What can I do about it?’ If you want to develop your relationships, take it to that next level that goes beyond just empathy.”

In all things, Leah wants to remind people of her life motto:

“Enjoy the process.”

Learning to forgive and move on

Leah has certainly seen her fair share of workplace challenges over the years – from her time as a TAFE educator to working as a journalist at the Herald Sun and even creating professional development programs.

Because of this, she has some career advice for teachers young and old about how to address and overcome workplace challenges.

“People are not always very good at forgiveness. But when you have workplace challenges, you need to forgive yourself when you make errors. You also need to learn how to forgive others, and then be professional about it. Also keep asking yourself, ‘What can I learn from this and how can I grow from it?’

“Sometimes that hurts like hell, but if you really take those life lessons on board, over the course of your lifetime you will be a wiser person. You will be a responsible person. You will be a lot more empathic when you understand your role in a situation.”

“The ‘Mentoring and Development’ course provided a good range of tools in order to provide understanding to my own approach to mentoring. Additionally, it offered other insights via reflective activities that supported how I might best provide for fellow teachers I work with and alongside.” – Michael Cunningham, 5 stars

With no fixed retirement age, the government wants you to work longer until you are eligible for the age pension at 65 and rising to 67 by 2023. There are lifestyle implications for retirees.

As the average life expectancy for men and women is now above 80 years of age, retirement may stretch 20, 25 or 30 years – longer than you may have first thought. It means retirees are potentially nearly facing as many years being “retired” as they have been in the workforce – but without the responsibilities faced in younger years like building a career, raising children and paying off a mortgage.

When individuals consider their retirement, several factors come into place. The external reality of events which may be through illness (yours or a family member’s), retrenchment so if you have been retrenched in your late 50s retirement or semiretirement may be an option, or due to family responsibilities.

Simultaneously, there is also the internal transition to retirement through deep seated psychological factors with the conscious and subconscious part of one’s brain.

There are two models to retirement that can be contrasted: Old and New Retirement. Individuals will choose the retirement that suits them that is based on several factors: their exposure to retirement, their values, lifestyle and health.

The old model of retirement was one of ending, where there is an end work date and individuals are expected to lead a quiet, restful and peaceful life. There are no challenges, work projects, deadlines or decisions that are required.

We have seen one family member live from meal to meal with sleep in the middle. When we ask: ‘how was your day, the response is ‘I made a salad’, or ‘I paid a bill.’ Although he is happy, we are left to wonder if there is more to life.

Dr Richard Johnson, Founder of Retirement Options, describes the new retirement as ‘a new beginning, the start of a new life journey with vastly expanded proportion.’

Retirement will give individuals the freedom to do what they have always wanted to do. We have seen the family travel without a time restriction, undertake voluntary work because they want to give back to the community, stay active through exercise, spend time on their hobbies, and look after their grandchildren.

In the ‘new beginning,’ instead of retiring from work completely, work can be undertaken in a new capacity with reduced hours and commitment. A phased retirement allows the employee to reduce work hours in his or her current job.

Productivity Commission’s Recommendation

That the eligibility for age pensions rise to 70 years, for some people it may mean a longer working life until they are eligible for a pension. A phased retirement arrangement could involve:

• reducing the number of hours and/or working days
• job-sharing
• changing position and responsibilities to a less stressful or labour-intensive job
• taking on a training or mentoring role to younger people entering the industry or the organisation
• “retiring” as an employee but working as a consultant
• continuing to work full-time with additional purchased leave entitlements and other flexible working arrangements
• work projects

Sam was employed full time as a TAFE teacher. With the cutback to TAFE funding, Sam considered the next phase of his career. He no longer wanted to commit to the insecurity of his role. He possesses experience and skills in teaching and training and is well qualified. He set up a consultancy business running training programs for organisations. He is developing his skills in sales, marketing and business development. He has a business mentor to guide him to grow his business. He is seeking job flexibility where he can choose the hours he works, working from home and being in control of his life. He sees the consultancy business as his new career in the new phase of his life.

For some people, a new work role in stark contrast to their previous can be considered. One example is to be a fitness instructor for senior people. Janice has an extensive history in management roles in the community sector. A few years ago, feeling burnt out and not having time to do what she wanted, she recognised that she cannot maintain this capacity of work indefinitely. She began to plan the next phase of her life. She changed her employer and work role and began to study a fitness instructor course where she wants to work with senior people. She is reducing her work hours to combine her current role and the new career she aims to pursue in the coming years. She is already making the transition into the next phase of her career.

There are benefits to both the individual and the employer to introduce a phased retirement scheme.

Whist remaining in the workforce, an individual can earn an income and perhaps additional superannuation. Importantly, individuals have a sense of purpose, mental stimulation through their involvement at work; they remain connected with work friends and colleagues, can attend work functions, maintain their social status, self-esteem and remain physically active.

For an employer, the benefits mean that they retain the knowledge and skills for longer, address a skills shortages of qualified workers, employ staff who understand the needs of the business, train and mentor younger workers, and have a diversity of age groups, skills and experience in the workplace.

Currently, phased retirement is an individual arrangement that one makes with his or her employer. With individuals living longer, being in better health and with more resources available, a phased retirement may be a trend to reshape the labour force and remain competitive in today’s marketplace.