Resilience is more important than ever as we continue to face ongoing changes, uncertainties and increasing pressures. We all need to find ways of navigating through the ‘always on’ culture in which we live so that we can thrive rather than simply survive!
Resilience at work needs to come from 2 angles.
- Firstly, the individual needs to feel empowered to develop the tools for their own resilience
- Secondly, the organisation needs to create a healthy environment that enables individuals to utilise those tools, and which prevents undue stress.
For example, it’s all well and good a team member factoring in 20 minutes meditation each lunch time to decompress but if they then have a meeting booked in at that time that they aren’t allowed to miss it defeats the object and sends a negative message from above.
Exploring pressure and stress
I’d like to share the Yerkes-Dodson inverted U curve with you to help us understand the relationship between stress and pressure.
We need a level of pressure to motivate and challenge us to achieve our optimal performance, as you can see in the green comfort and stretch zones. Too little pressure and we switch off, become bored, disengaged, and over time this can create low self-esteem, depression, apathy. We can be busy all day, but if we aren’t stimulated or challenged then what’s the point? Our performance can start to dip.
Stretch is where that pressure is ramped up to a level that really drives and motivates us to achieve our best work. We feel a sense of accomplishment, maybe even a state of ‘flow’ where we zone out of everything else. We want our teams to be in the green zones, moving between the two to recuperate in comfort and then push again.
The world of work today often has unrealistic expectations of people to be in stretch for long periods of time due to demands of the role – and this is dangerous. Humans only have a certain battery life and stretch will tip into strain if we don’t recharge. In strain, your teams are still performing as you can see on the curve, but we will start to see warning signs like fatigue, poor decision making, forgetting things, working longer to get things done, being short or impatient, not sleeping well. If not recognised early, this can then escalate into burnout – and once here, it can take a long time to get back on track again.
Resilience gives us that awareness that we are slipping into strain and the tools to help us stay well.
How can we use the Yerkes-Dodson Inverted U curve to help build resilient teams?
This can be a really valuable tool to use with your teams to open that conversation about pressure and identify what would help alleviate / manage it more effectively. Could you ask everyone to anonymously plot where they sit currently? Could you explore openly (if you have a psychologically safe environment) where people are at, what their tipping points are, and their individual warning signs to increase the support for one another?
For those who feel the pressure has become too much, The HSE stress indicator tool is a useful framework for conversations to identify the sources of stress and help you action plan together to minimise these stressors.
This curve is also useful in exploring how resilient you are as an organisation.
A resilient company will build its capacity for emergency situations. A simple SWOT analysis can help with this. Recognise the threats to the company and your people, accept the problems that exist rather than burying heads in the sand, and forward plan for how you can support at times of high pressure so that people don’t tip over the edge at the first sign of change or added pressure.
Tips for building personal resilience?
In terms of personal resilience, there is no one size fits all approach. Our experience tells us that training is more effective done little and often allowing people to digest the information and have a go at using the tools that appeal to them rather than overloading with everything at once. There are 3 fundamental tools that we all have access to that you can explore through training / education for your teams.
- Acceptance – resilient people know that life is not always plain sailing and bad things happen. This allows them to accept a situation and move forward more readily rather than dwelling.
- Control – resilient people know to focus their energy and attention on the things they can influence rather than those things out of their control. They will also be able to gain perspective through paying attention to what they are grateful for.
- Self-compassion – resilient people are kind to themselves and others, remembering we are all human, and recognise whether behaviours or thoughts are helping or harming them. Strategies around developing reframing thoughts and developing positive self-talk are helpful here.
Final thoughts
- How do you encourage and manage ‘stretch’ within your team?
- Are there any unnecessary pressures that could be removed to prevent strain?
- What team behaviours are harmful that need to stop, and what behaviours are helpful that you could all do more of?