Resilience
What is Resilience?
Resilience is our ability to respond with agility and adaptability as we deal with adversity.
We all have to deal with setbacks at some point (large and small) in the workplace and in our personal lives. We can't stop those happening. But we can change how we react to them – by being resilient. Next time it happens (and it will, we just don’t know what that setback will be) we can draw on a pool of resources and our past experiences and respond with agility (ability to move quickly and easily / ability to think and understand quickly) and adaptability (with versatility, with flexibility).
Personal planning and preparation are key. If we try and become resilient when we are already very stressed, it’s a much tougher hill to climb. Any athlete will tell you that they drink before they become thirsty. Drinking when we are already thirsty is too late – we are dehydrated: we won’t be able to hydrate in time and our performance will suffer.
The good news is that resilience can be learned. However, we don’t attend a course and suddenly we’re resilient – there is no silver bullet! Think of it like a muscle – the more we use it, the stronger it becomes.
When we’re at our most resilient we are able to reshape what’s ahead of us. We hear much of resilience as ‘bounce-back’ but resilience is more than that – in fact, think ‘bounce-forward’ because we’ve learned from experience, we are open to learning from new ideas, our energy gives us perspective. It broadens the range of possibilities ahead of us.
Resilience Engine
Accredited practitioner.
When might we need to be at our most resilient?
Recovering from an unexpected setback
Planning for known change
Recognising that we’re (just about) coping from the daily ‘drip, drip, drip’ of ongoing pressure / stress
More specifically, these common causes of workplace stress can make real demands on our resilience.
Demands: caused by the volume, pattern, complexity of our job
Control: lack of autonomy in how we carry out our job
Support: inadequate resources, ineffective line management, a blame culture
Relationships: dealing with conflict, bullying
Role: lack of clarity
Change: how it’s dealt with
My resilience services are a combination of workshops and coaching and are designed for:
Individuals who want to strengthen their own resilience
Leaders who want to lead resilient teams
Teams who want to understand how to be more effective and supportive as a resilient unit
My approach depends on where the starting point of the resilience work is, for example:
Are you dealing an unexpected setback? Perhaps redundancy, organisational change or a difficult new manager. You might feel overwhelmed, perhaps angry, perhaps tearful, but certainly out of control.
Are you (or your team) struggling to deliver at your best, feeling overwhelmed, lacking energy, unable to breakthrough to find new solutions or possibilities – but can’t quite put your finger on why? You’re coping, know you can do more, but don’t know how to access these resources?
Are you planning some significant change and need to be at your most resilient for you and your team? You’re excited about the possibilities ahead but know there will be some tough challenges to overcome. How do you create an environment where you (and your team) can perform at your most agile and adaptable selves?
I work with clients on a one-to-one or team basis and the benefits you can expect from our work on resilience are:
Understand what resilience is
Know where you are on the energy / resilience curve
Know where you want to be
Recognise the trigger points that can drain or increase your energy
Know what to do to strengthen your own, or your team’s, resilience
I look forward to working with you on your resilience journey.