Resilience in the workplace
For many, no day at work is the same. This brings variety, but also a lot of stress and uncertainty. Burn-outs can occur unexpectedly at any time in your career. However, there are also people who perform better in a stressful period. What is their secret?
By developing focus and a positive mindset, they manage to overcome challenges and changes with more strength and control.
Developing resilience or mental toughness benefits everyone. And it starts in the first place with self-reflection and self-awareness. Becoming aware of your strengths and further develop these qualities. But also to face your weaknesses, challenges and blind spots and work with them.
What is resilience?
The origin of resilience dates back to the sports world of the eighties. There resilience was described as the ability to always keep running at the highest level. This mainly meant the mental resilience of the athlete. So you had resilience as an athlete if you stayed upright in your career after major setbacks or pressure.
The term resilience was borrowed by the business world where it is an essential part of a healthy and thriving team. Research shows that resilient people handle challenges better, show more flexibility, achieve sustainable results, and cope better with stress or change in the workplace. They perform more effectively, are more positive in life and feel more committed to their work.
Some people draw extra motivation from mistakes and become more productive in putting them right. Others, on the other hand, sit in sackcloth and ashes and lose heart. Don't worry if you recognize yourself in the latter scenario. Resilience is something you can develop.
What aspects does mental resilience consist of?
Mental resilience or resilience at work falls into 5 different sub-aspects:
Passion - Having a passion for your work, is not a constant. Resilience helps you to overcome the moments when motivation is lost.
(Work) relationships - Having a good social network and friends and colleagues to fall back on is a not to be underestimated part of mental resilience.
Future orientation - When things get busy at work or you run out of motivation, you sometimes lose sight of the long term. By making yourself resilient, your eyes are focused on the future from which you can draw motivation.
Physical Health - Good physical health is an important aspect of mental resilience. Your health affects everything you do. Even small things like a temporary lack of sleep can have a huge impact on your mood.
Mental Health - Mental health is the most important aspect of mental resilience. When you feel good about yourself, you stay in control of your emotions better, even when there are setbacks. You more easily keep the good times in mind and have an eye on the period that comes after a stressful time.
What are the benefits of building resilience?
When you're faced with a high workload or feel like work is taking over your life, you risk losing your passion for your job. Your mind wanders and you can no longer motivate yourself to focus on your career. In the long run, this often results in burnout. When resilience improves in yourself and your colleagues, it helps you stay motivated for your job.
2. Dealing with challenges and stress
Not being resilient can lead to not making the right decisions and experiencing more stress at work. This can also have a strong impact on your personal life if you struggle to shake off this stress. Developing resilience helps you keep your cool, be more productive and work in a more focused way.
3. Better communication with colleagues
When everyone can act rationally, teamwork and communication with colleagues improves. This open communication creates a better group atmosphere and prevents altercations due to the accumulated pressure that people experience. This helps you achieve goals and overcome challenges at work as a group.
Resilience helps you maintain focus. By being able to work in a motivated and focused way instead of brooding and overthinking, you can get yourself over a difficult period at work faster.
How to develop resilience?
At work, you or your colleagues will only benefit from being strongly mentally resilient. There are some simple ways how you can quickly develop and promote a better company culture.
1. Focus on self-motivation
Giving a bonus when productivity goes up or when a difficult project is successfully completed is only a temporary incentive. Training people and teaching them about self-motivation will benefit them throughout their careers.
One way to encourage self-motivation is to set clear targets. Instead of creating peaks with, for example, one-off bonuses, you ensure a steady approach with constructive feedback, relevant training and appropriate rewards to maintain motivation.
2. Future-oriented view
By looking primarily at immediate results, the long-term vision is lost. It is important that there is a strong focus on growth and development in your company. Not only for the expansion of your company, but also to grow personally and as a team. This creates a mindset that lets you deal with unexpected challenges or problems in a healthy and calm way. By creating an open company culture, where everyone pulls on a sail and has a common goal, you realize a long-term mindset.
3. Invest in team building
When the pressure gets a little too much, a strong team that supports each other unconditionally and helps out where necessary is worth its weight in gold. This does not mean that you have to be equally good friends with everyone, but it does mean that a positive atmosphere is created where there is room for constructive feedback.
In order to get a close team, it is important that younger team members can fall back on experienced colleagues with more seniority. These older colleagues must in turn be able to count on the eagerness to learn of the new colleagues. This is done by addressing bad relationships firmly, being straightforward and naming underlying problems.
4. Mental and physical health
One of the best ways to become more resilient at work is to pay attention to the mental and physical health of yourself and colleagues. To achieve this, you can pursue a healthy work-life balance and keep your work and personal life separate.
It is important that people do not return home with work and that moments of free time actually function as free time. By not making this distinction, people become both mentally and physically fatigued, which affects productivity and health.
How training can help you become mentally resilient
Without prior knowledge or experience, starting to develop resilience and mental toughness for yourself or a team is a hell of a job. Workshops that provide insights and techniques tailored to your organization can easily bridge this lack of knowledge and experience.
Do you want to get started, with professional help? We can help with a training course in Mental Resilience.
This practice-oriented training creates stronger and resilient teams. It is the ideal way to effectively bring about positive change in the workplace where people can deal with stress and transform challenges into opportunities.
