Happy Friyay! I hope everyone has enjoyed their weeks, today’s topic was a last-minute pivot, and I’m looking to be able to write about that planned blog in 2 weeks, where I’ll elaborate. This week I was able to enjoy the benefits of Freedom Day for the first time this week. I attended a bottomless brunch and I certainly didn’t take the term bottomless lightly. For work this week I was a part of an interview panel for the first time, being on the other side of the interview was an insightful and interesting experience. I would highly recommend everyone get involved in some capacity where they can. One competency that we’d assessed was resilience, and for this week’s topic I will be exploring that.
So what is resilience? Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness. We’re all familiar with periods of difficulties, some of which don’t feel never ending. This pandemic at points has certainly felt like that for me, a testing 16 months and counting! So why is resilience such a desirable trait both personally and professionally?
Personally, developed resilience is associated with lower rates of depression and greater satisfaction with life. Our understanding of mental health continues to grow and indications suggests that resilience helps us in that department. Whilst poor resilience can be associated with concerning issues such as depression and anxiety
Professionally, resilient employees build strong connections and relationships with others. Strong relationships in the workplace harbour better collaboration between staff which can result in a dynamic workplace. Employees not being discouraged from difficult work tasks can prove huge assets to organisations as they may identify innovative solutions.
So how can we develop our resilience, it’s essential that we look around us. Our we placing ourselves in environments that are supportive, it may require a review of our relationships. “Positivity breeds positivity” do we have positive people around us? Constant negativity really has the power to take a toll and chip away at us, whereas positive perspectives have the power to boost us, accountability partners can be great for this. Another way to build your resilience is to apply lessons learned to difficult situations experienced, this allows you to find ways to avoid a repeat of those situations and potentially identify solutions. Last blog I wrote about the power of Goal Getting and they can also act as a way of developing our resilience. There are several more methods that we can do to develop our resilience, here is a helpful list. Two notable times that have helped build my resilience:
1. Following my second year in university, I had received a 2.2. This caused me a short spiral but I quickly remembered I still had third year to improve my final grade. My friends and classmates also advised me to speak with my tutors to review my exams. This was great advice as the feedback provided by my tutors identified a trend that could be remediated, leading to my final 2.1 grade in my degree.
2. The second notable time is something I’m sure we’re all familiar with and that is job rejections. Prior to securing this role I had received several rejections, which became disheartening. I begun to review the feedback provided by the rejections to help guide where I had to improve my applications, I also had colleagues peer review my applications. This led to some insightful comments which I incorporated into my following applications, allowing me to be in a position to have more than one job acceptance to choose from.
As mentioned, resilience is a desirable trait to employers, so much so that they may ascertain it during interviews. For that reason, I think it’s key to consider instances where we may commonly face workplace adversity:
- Excessive workload
- Ineffective management
- Conflict with colleagues/ stakeholders
It is also important to consider how we can or may have managed workplace adversity and therefore demonstrated resilience:
- Persisting in the face of adversity (e.g scope of work dramatically changing)
- Putting effort into dealing with challenges (e.g finding creative solutions to work tasks)
- Remaining flexible / adaptable when plans change
- Practicing and demonstrating self-aiding thought patterns;
Resilience is a complicated, owing to it being so multidimensional although taking our first steps to develop it can be simple. Life throws unexpected waves in the form of adversity to us more frequently than I’m sure we all appreciate. It’s critical to develop so that we are not simply keeping our heads above water, but rather riding the waves (especially with last weekends floods!)
Temis2Pence
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