Building Personal Resilience to Sustain Excellence at Work

r@w resilience ryan hansen Sep 10, 2018

Sustaining Success with Resilience at Work, by Ryan Hansen

What comes to mind when you think about resilience? Is it a 'grin-and-bear-it' sense of toughness? Perhaps you envision a rubber band stretching and then snapping back into place. How would you rate your own resilience? Would you rate your personal resilience at home the same as your personal resilience at work? How would you even begin to quantify resilience?

It is a common misconception that resilience is only related to our ability to cope with challenges. In fact, our personal resilience directly impacts day-to-day performance at work. Consequently, more resilient individuals have been found to be higher-performing employees - these individuals are better at managing the emotional, mental, and physical challenges of their roles while maintaining high performance.

Just how important is resilience? Consider the consequences: with low resilience, employees are more likely to experience burnout, fatigue, health issues, and ultimately leave their jobs due to dissatisfaction. Highly resilient individuals are happier, healthier, more engaged at work, and are equipped to sustain their performance over the long term.

Fortunately for those of us who are responsible for growing team members, personal resilience is not static, and can be measured, tracked, and even improved. Research from organizational psychologist Kathryn McEwen gives us a clear instruction manual. By focusing on just a few components of our daily lives, we can improve personal resilience and deliver improved performance:

  • Promote Self-Care - It is an often-quoted but often-ignored adage that we must take care of ourselves before we can serve others. When it comes to building and maintaining our own personal resilience, we must ensure that we have a personal "reserve" from which to draw. This reserve comes from our physical and mental health. From a physical perspective, fatigue and stress drain our personal resilience. Aerobic exercise and sufficient sleep will sustain our physical needs while dedicating time to relaxing away from work will recharge our mental resources.
  • Find a Sense of Purpose - When we believe in what we are doing, and feel that we are leveraging our strengths, the expectations placed on us become quite personal. We work harder to achieve our goals because we see our work as a personal mission, and we do not let small setbacks become major roadblocks.
  • Create Networks - No one is at their best when they have no one to support them. Whether at work or at home, we are better off when we can benefit from those around us. In the workplace, that means engaging with colleagues to deliberately seek out and act on feedback. In its best form, this requires us to be aware of our strengths and weaknesses, and ask for others to help us improve in certain areas.

Personal resilience is just the beginning - McEwen has developed robust tools for measuring and improving the resilience of individuals, teams, and leaders in the workplace.

Our Alloy Solutions team members are among the very first certified facilitators to bring these valuable materials to leaders and teams in the United States.

To learn more about the Resilience at Work Toolkit, you can refer to this overview from Working With Resilience, or you can connect with me or another Alloy Solutions team member for a full slate of Resilience at Work offerings for you, for your emerging leaders, or for your teams.

Alloy Solutions is a team of professional coaches, speakers, and trainers driven to elevate the companies we serve. Alloy Solutions is about coming together to strengthen our partners through tailored, evidence-based development programs. Our team brings decades of expertise to engage and inspire your team. As strategic partners, your goals become our inspiration as we enthusiastically engage our resources to get you there. Contact our Solutions Team to start improving your team today!

www.alloystrong.com | [email protected] | 402.779.5846

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