Building “resilience muscle” to thrive
Building “resilience muscle” to thrive
Taking the opportunity to learn when we face times of change, challenge or even adversity in our working lives can differentiate how we manage to cope or thrive whatever comes our way. The internet is buzzing with advice on resilience, particularly after the last two years, as we have all lived through such an extraordinary time. In our experience, whether your organisation has thrived through the last year or has faced significant challenges, all have been forced to adapt and change.
Resilience is one part of the solution and is mostly associated with ‘bounce back’ – the ability to come back even stronger after adversity. Most definitions of resilience require adversity to have happened before you know whether you have it, or not. Moving forwards, what we really need is the ability to thrive, to handle anything that comes our way, whether we have faced difficulty already, or not. Building our “resilience muscle” requires an ability to positively manage the challenges that come our way at work, to have the stamina to keep going, to be open, adaptable and agile to change and to have a determination to rise up and succeed. This “muscle” is one we can call on whenever we need it, made ready for those challenging times and activated in those moments.
Our ability to become resilient is wrapped up in our mindset, where we advocate resourcefulness, have confidence in a positive future, learn from others to build skills and harness a belief that what we do matters. Determination, a sense of unity and collaboration have all helped to see us through some of the obstacles in our path, largely through a belief that many of these changes are temporary.
The importance of mindset, language and actions for long-term staying power
Our customers are telling us that some of the greatest challenges are connected with helping their people adjust to new ways of working, new processes and new policies – in a workplace that will continue to change for the foreseeable future. Some of these changes may be permanent while others will continuously evolve. How, then, do we make sure we keep our people moving forward? How do we support them to stay focused on their goals and even to strive for more stretching achievements?
The interplay between mindset and the language and actions we use to communicate it, is a good place to start. A conscious decision to build a mindset that takes ownership and responsibility for influencing outcomes, that is resolutely optimistic, that values the learning that feedback brings and that believes in the value that we bring to the people around us can be a driving force for the actions we go on to take. Assessing the situation and understanding what we can control or influence puts us back into the driving seat. And for events that are completely out of our control, managing our response and letting go provides a sense of achievement and progress.
This mindset contributes to greater openness to experience, a characteristic that keeps us creative, curious and more able to accept change as we learn and thrive. These are key aspects of resilience muscle and help to equip us to rise to other challenges that come our way, embracing today’s uncertainty as a chance for future opportunity and growth.
Keeping positive and thinking about the opportunities of our new working lives, appreciating what is good and using positive language to communicate with colleagues is the way we can demonstrate our mindset to bring others along with us, so we can collaborate and keep others motivated too. By reframing and reordering our messages starting on the positive or constructive rather than the negative, we influence ourselves and others to keep making progress. In this way we build preparedness and the capability to cope with anything that comes our way.
How can we help?
Find out how our psychology-based employee training programmes can help your people to build their resilience muscle. Our practical tools and strategies and our validated and embedded training methods are created by a team of experts in the fields of social sciences and organisational psychology. Find out more here.
Our Resources
Discover our free downloadable tools, checklists, guides and eBooks, designed to help you and your people thrive at work.
Checklist and guide: Phrases to listen out for and eliminate from customer service responses
Our simple Checklist and guide will help you to determine whether your teams need more help in understanding how to respond positively, constructively or empathetically.
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Information Guide: How to ensure long-lasting impact from training
We know that strategic, all-encompassing embedding support is essential for achieving long-term behavioural change and success from any significant training investment. Use our information guide to ensure you are considering all aspects of the training experience to gain maximum benefit from your investment in training, whether it be a focus on your culture, a transformational […]
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Assessment tool: Do your people have an Optimal Mindset?
Use our checklist assessment tool to find out whether your teams are displaying a positive, motivated and optimal mindset in their day to day activities and whether they are equipped to deliver great service, collaborate with others in the team and contribute to excellent outcomes every time. This will help you to gain invaluable insight […]
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Checklist: Do your people demonstrate Ownership & Responsibility?
Use our Assessment tool to find out whether your team members clearly demonstrate ownership and responsibility in their interactions with customers and colleagues. Is this consistently demonstrated? Do they need a reminder? Or is it something that needs to be developed? Having a clear understanding will allow you to gain invaluable insight and plan to […]
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Assessment tool: 12 Questions to ask your customer service team
How are your team thinking about your customers? Use our 12-question assessment tool to keep your finger on the pulse of what your people are thinking and feeling about their interactions with customers and whether they truly feel equipped to give great service. Build this assessment into your team meetings, or 121’s and gain important […]
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Guide to assess your listening skills
If you pause to reflect for a moment, consider how well do you truly listen? When we assess listening skills on our programmes, senior executives to the frontline participants tell us they realise they could do better. They become aware that they could substantially enhance and build on their listening skills so that we have […]
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Assessment Guide: Management Training Needs
Do your managers have what it takes to be exceptional leaders who influence and inspire? Use our Management Training Assessment Guide to gauge your managers’ self-awareness, self-management and communication skills; their proficiency in advanced listening and questioning techniques; and their overall potential to be exceptional leaders who value diversity within their teams and can flex […]
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eBook – How to Excel at Customer Complaints
How are your customer service teams handling the feedback and complaints that come their way at work? Do they welcome them as opportunities to showcase their skills as confident and capable customer service advisors, always happy to rise to challenges with a positive and solution-focused mindset, determined to do their best every time? Or is […]
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