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Resilience at Work
Professional Resilience is:
Neenan and Dryden 2002
Having a high level of professional resilience enables you to thrive in the face of the stressful conditions of contemporary work and life. High demand and ongoing pressure mean it is important to be able to stay on top of your workload and not get bogged down with instances of petty office rivalry, job uncertainty or the challenges of modern business.
Even the workplace can become a demanding and challenging environment that affects both our physical and mental health. Arming ourselves against the effects of this ensures that work remains a fulfilling and important part of our lives, but not a debilitating or exhausting scene of worry and failure.
Robertson Cooper, a workplace wellbeing company which pioneered a model of workplace resilience, says: “There is a widely held belief that people are either resilient or not – and that’s it. This is a serious misunderstanding because in fact, in certain work situations some people would be very resilient, whereas in others they might feel under extreme pressure and cope very badly. In other words, how
resilient someone is likely to be, depends on the situational challenges that they are confronted with.
In the model used at Robertson Cooper the key aspects of personality that are important in determining resilience are:
CONFIDENCE: Feelings of competence, effectiveness in coping with stressful situations and strong self-esteem are inherent to feeling resilient. The frequency with which individuals experience positive and negative emotions is also key.
ADAPTABILITY: Flexibility and adapting to changing situations which are beyond our control are essential to maintaining resilience. In many situations resilience involves coping well with change and recovering from its impact.
PURPOSEFULNESS: Having a clear sense of purpose, clear values, drive and direction help individuals to persist and achieve in the face of setbacks.
SOCIAL SUPPORT: Being able to build good relationships with others and get support from them can help people to overcome adversity.
Building up your own resilience means being able to recover from setbacks, to frame expectations, to suggest alternatives and use challenging situations as learning experiences for personal and professional growth. Resilient people demonstrate great flexibility, high energy, mental agility and consistently perform at their highest level. They also have strong relationships and support networks that help them to amplify their productivity and results.
And, there are some key ways you can work towards and keep improving your professional resilience.
WELLBEING: Look after your health, exercise regularly, eat and sleep well, reduce your caffeine intake and increase your water intake, relax and try to find time to mediate every day.
PEOPLE: You can overcome adverse situations in a more effective way when you feel supported. These means taking strength and solace from family, friends, colleagues, peers and your larger business network.
HUMOUR: Laugh. As often as you can. Share laughter and humour with colleagues which will develop relationships, inject jokes and funny moments into meetings to get some perspective, see the humour when facing challenges to reduce stress.
VISION: Focus on finding solutions, looking ahead, finding the best in a situation and knowing the difference between what you can and can’t change. How we feel is often a consequence of how we think and behave. Be positive wherever possible, empathetic with colleagues and willing to adapt and change when needed.
