People of all ages and at all life stages increasingly need to improve their resilience. As change accelerates in our modern world, people need the mental skills to thrive through adversity. Research suggests that resilient people make resilient cultures. It makes sense, therefore, for each member of an organization to learn how to protect themselves from the potential damaging effects of stress. Learning the right psychological techniques will determine how quickly a company can recover under pressure.
The general definition of resilience is the ability to recover from a setback. The more specific description of a resilient person is the ability to recover despite adversity and to come back even stronger. The beautiful thing about resilience is that it is a skill and a mindset that can be learned through training and daily activities. Resilience is essential for a business as a fundamental building block that allows an organization to predict, prepare and respond to shifts in a challenging market that could easily send a business off-track.
Any well-established organization anticipates turbulence in today’s business world. Daily political and economic changes – not to mention a pandemic – create a fluctuating market; it is simply unrealistic not to expect to face setbacks. If we want our businesses to be capable of withstanding fluctuations and adversities, it’s clear that cultivating and nurturing a culture of resilience in your organization is not only desirable, it’s essential.
Any company needs rules and the unwritten ones are just as important as the written rules. As Jeff Miller wrote in Forbes in 2019: “Company culture talk must align with company culture walk.” The cultural framework is what allows an organization to flourish, overcome cultural hurdles and keep employees satisfied and engaged. Investing in employee resilience is therefore crucial for achieving corporate endurance.
So how do you create a resilient culture?
“Winning companies cultivate cultures that enable their people to develop the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties,” wrote James Kerr in Inc magazine last year.
This enablement happens through training programs that instill techniques that focus on different
domains for each individual. Hello Driven, a resilience coaching program with assessments and
daily activities to improve mental and physical wellness, focuses on six specific domains:
1- Vision: Goals, self-worth, personal values.
2- Tenacity: maintaining optimism through adverse situations and dealing with ambiguity through persistence.
3- Health: Exercising regularly, eating wholesome, nourishing food, and sleeping well.
4- Reasoning: Being resourceful, adapting to change and problem-solving.
5- Collaboration: Working with others, both in and out of the workplace and creating networks of support.
6- Composure: Regulating and understanding emotions and learning techniques to cope with stress.
Concentrating on those categories leads to individual employees having improved confidence, learning to turn change into opportunity, more personal personal insight, stronger relationships, bringing goals into reach and connecting to others in a meaningful way – all of which are the cornerstones of an agile workplace. An organization with those qualities will drive employee engagement, which drives productivity and increases the likelihood of retaining staff.
To maintain that resilient culture, company leaders must create a vision and ensure actions are aimed in the direction of that vision. A culture that is equipped for organizational growth and innovation and prepared for the oncoming challenges of the future is a resilient one.
Today, squeezing maximized productivity out of employees is no longer sustainable for the bottom line. Instead, experts recommend investing in building up resilience and creating a positive culture that focuses on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs of employees.
Resilience is an excellent skill to develop. The ability to recover from the setbacks of normal life and to come back stronger than before both on a professional and personal level is a fundamental characteristic that is well worth investing in. Our modern world demands high levels of performance and achievement through increased productivity, lower turnover and fewer health costs and expenses. In my opinion, this is only achievable if we invest in our resilience.
To listen to Modia Baterjee speak more about this topic, tune in to The Livehealthy.ae Podcast.
