The WiT Programme includes a set of life coaching sessions to train self-leadership and goal setting. This unique approach is included in the programme because humanitarian architecture is, while rewarding, also a challenging field; practitioners work in very complex and often unpredictable situations. Such environment can often raise difficult emotions and increase stress levels. One needs to be able to cope with such situations, and maintain a constructive and positive mindset to be able to help others.Coaching can help you to create a strong base for your professional development. 

Self-leadership from elemental life skills 

Life coaching is originally an approach to increase quality of your life from your own starting points, working towards goals that are important for you. It is goal- and future-oriented. Life coaching provides fundamental, elemental self-leadership skills and tools that are important in all fields of life, and extremely useful for working in challenging environments, such as humanitarian architecture. These skills include time management, goal setting, and understanding one’s own motivations. Research shows that life coaching can increase awareness of values, improve communication and management skills, and even help to gain courage and attainment.  

Positive change from focusing on solutions 

Life coaching aims to help you to recognize and leverage your strengths, and it also helps you to find ways to cope with and release stress. Life coaching is often called solution-focused coaching. This means that with life coaching skills, you can learn to direct your focus on things that can be improved, instead of ruminating on problems that are outside of one’s own circle of influence. Coaching helps you to evaluate situations and your own responses related to them – you learn to look for possibilities to improve and work towards a positive outcome. Such self–leadership skills also improve your abilities to work constructively with others – an essential skill in humanitarian architecture.  

Life coaching in WiT Programme 

Life coaching approach is included in the WiT programme to give you support in becoming a practicing professional in the field of humanitarian architecture. The aim is to ensure that you can develop a sustainable method for your own work, and that you recognize your internal resources and strengths. Humanitarian architecture is about helping people who are in a vulnerable situation (read more at Humanitarian Architecture - What does it mean?). Practitioners in the field need to be able take responsibility of their own self-leadership. In our WiT Programme, you get to work with a professional life coach, individually and in groups, to improve your self–leadership skills. The core of the course includes also theoretical and practical studies with a group of experienced humanitarian architecture specialists, and you learn from the valuable lessons that they share from their previous projects in the field (read more at the WiT Programme description).