RESILIENCE FOR LIFE

Do you, or someone you know, feel like sometimes you cannot thrive amidst stresses and challenges? Would you benefit from a stronger sense of resilience so that you and others can flourish?

Higher levels of resilience help people handle stress, adversity, conflict, and trauma more effectively. While universally valuable, times of crisis, worry, fear, and uncertainty underscore the importance of resiliencebased approaches in academic and workplace settings. Resilience is key to overcoming life’s challenges and attaining positive outcomes.

For instance, throughout the pandemic, many people have experienced an increase of worry, fear, uncertainty, loneliness, depression, anxiety, self-doubt, change, and a host of other manifestations. These experiences can negatively affect emotional, physical, behavioral, and social health. When left unchecked and unaddressed, stressors can undermine concentration, communication skills, decision-making, and problem-solving abilities, all of which decrease workplace and academic performance and productivity.

Personal resilience can be promoted by focusing on holistic wellness. Implementing healthy practices (e.g., diet, exercise, and sleep), improved stress management abilities, positive social interactions, and engaging in optimistic and hopeful thinking are some ways to enhance one’s own resilience.

Organizations that have implemented resilience-based practices and approaches typically observe improved employee retention, teamwork, cohesion, and even profits. Leaders and managers should consider how they promote resilience in the workplace. This can be done by fostering engagement and connectedness through both in-person events and virtual platforms and cultivating a culture of teamwork, education, flexibility, support, and overall health and wellness.

A focus on building resilience in personal, academic, and workplace settings has been linked to enhanced performance, productivity, and well-being. Thus, organizational leaders, policy makers, and educators are strongly encouraged to become knowledgeable about resilience and enhance existing policies, procedures, and practices to reflect a resilience-informed mindset.

KEY TAKE-AWAY POINTS PERTAINING TO THE TOPIC OF RESILIENCE:

Resilience can be defined as the ability to adapt and overcome adverse consequences such as hardship, tragedy, and trauma, and is sometimes referred to as hardiness or grit.

Resilient people have the ability to find ways to grow in response to difficulties and struggles; they learn from previous experiences and use this information to prepare and respond to future situations.

The goal of resilience-based leadership is to not only weather crises, but become a stronger organization that adapts effectively to adversity and promotes innovation.

Resilience-based approaches within workplace settings typically foster a culture of teamwork, learning, flexibility, and support, with welldefined roles and organizational structures.

Careful consideration of diverse responses and their potential impacts is an important characteristic of organizations embracing a resiliencebased mindset.

The modeling of resilience by leaders within an organization can help encourage the development of resilience by other employees, faculty, and students.

STORY: Jerrod Brown, Ph.D., M.A., M.S., M.S., M.S., Assistant Professor, Program Director, Master of Arts degree in Human Services.