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Feeling stressed? Get the tools to be empowered to cultivate resilience for you and your team!
Melanie Kearsey explains at our recent Geelong HR Roundtable.
“Resilience is not a trait that people either have or don’t have.
It involves behaviours, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone” – Melanie Kearsey.
Whether its strength building or wellness centered, resilience means something different to every individual. When equipping staff with tools and strategies to cultivate resilience it is important to listen to staff and understand their individual needs.
How do you equip staff with the best strategies?
At Harvest’s Cultivating Resilience workshop, we unpacked the importance of resilience training. From overcoming interpersonal challenges, remaining calm under pressure, managing emotions, to dealing with difficult people and guarding against burn out, every workplace can benefit from implementing strategies to cultivate resilience and create a psychologically safe culture.
So, what’s the first step? Identify stresses.
Identifying the common causes of stress in the workplace is a good place to start.
Some key causes include:
- Poor job role clarity
- Lack of resources/time
- Negative or toxic workplace culture
- Interpersonal conflicts
- Lack of communication/assertiveness skills
- Inability to handle emotional reactions
- Poor self-regulation strategies
- Personality traits & characteristics – perfectionism, reluctance to delegate, need for control, lack of confidence, inability to assert oneself
- Tolerating too much
- Compassion fatigue/emotionally draining work
- Poor problem-solving and lack of divergent thinking
- Massive or continuous change – volatility, uncertainty or ambiguity
Having a genuine curiosity and willingness to listen to stress causes, helps create a positive culture and a psychologically safe workplace.
Some other strategies to foster a psychologically safe workplace include:
- Providing EAP services
- Acting on bullying complaints
- Encouraging a work/life balance (however that looks)
- Role modeling and prioritizing self-care
- Rest and recovery rooms
- Outdoor gatherings / walking meetings
- Providing assertiveness training and supporting individuals to communicate effectively
- Providing necessary breaks and resources
- Connecting KPIs and goals to personal values
- Encouraging vulnerability
- Provide training and development for competency and confidence and role enrichment
- Meditation, exercise, wellness coaching programs etc.
Even with the best initiatives in place it is important to be aware that workplaces change quickly, and the causes of stress can often resurface. Being aware of the enemies of resilience can keep us on the right path to reducing stress in the workplace.
So, what are these enemies?
- Personalization – the belief that we are at fault
- Pervasiveness – the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life
- Permanence – the belief that the aftershock of the event will last forever
(3 P’s as per Martin Seligman)
So, where to from here?
You may not be able to change everything in the workplace, but you can empower yourself and your team to adopt an attitude of control; by focusing on the positives and the things that can be changed or influenced. Perception is key and having a positive outlook is critical. Resilience is a journey and no matter how strong you think you are it is always important to ask for help.
Recommended reading for further insights on resilience:
- Option B – Sheryl Sandberg, Adam Grant
- Resilient – Rick Hanson
- Emotional Resilience – Harry Barry
- The Happiness Trap – Russ Harris
- The Courage to Be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi
- IKIGAI – Hector Garcia
- How to Stop Worrying and Start Living – Dale Carnegie
- Change Your Thinking – Sarah Edelman
- Rejection Therapy –
- Mindset – Carol Dweck
- Flourish – Martin Seligman
- Authentic Happiness – Martin Seligman
- Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway – Susan Jeffers
- Emotional Agility – Susan David
- Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Daring Greatly – Brene Brown
