Cultures of resilience don't happen through training, workshops, video platforms or Friday team building functions. They happen with small, consistent practices of managing discomfort. Resilience is hard work, practiced everyday, alone and in community.
Resilience is, "The ability to navigate loss, failure, disappointment or unexpected outcomes." What does navigating of failure and unexpected outcomes look like in the workplace. What about the virtual workplace? How can you tell if a future employee or partner has this skill? How do you foster resilience in your workplace and even better, embed it in your workplace culture?
In a workplace, resilience gives you the ability to manage strong feelings, confidence and skill to take care of peer to peer conflict with independence and respect. It also provides you with the capacity to take risks, solve problems and manage failure. But, these skills don't just happen by accident. The require practice and experience. Lots of it.
Resilience is hard work, practiced everyday, alone and in community.
Cultures of resilience don't happen through training, workshops, video platforms or Friday team building functions. They happen with small, consistent practices of managing discomfort; they happen when workplace policies encourage and insist on every member of the workplace hold responsibility for taking care of their discomfort; they happen with the encouragement of face to face connection and community.
What are some things you can do to foster resilience in the workplace?
Value Resilience Publicly. Include the word in your code of conduct and actively train and coach your workplace to build the skill.
Actively focus on long term projects. You may be in a time crunch or constrained by very tight deadlines, but helping everyone on your staff play the long game is to your advantage. Help everyone see where the current project fits in the 5 year plan or 10 year plan. Take 3 minute breaks where you asking each other where they would like to see the organization go in the next 5 or 10 or 15 years. Let staff work out pieces of the dream.
Encourage face to face communication where ever possible. The benefits of face to face practice can not be over estimated and if this pandemic has taught us anything, it has been the critical value of our presence. It calms your nervous system, it helps you read and process non verbal communication and it is harder, much harder to be present and focused when you are face to face!
These are three places to start but they will go a long way. Value resilience and put it in writing. Help everyone take the long view and embed it in the day to day work. Find a reason to connect.
This is how you practice resilience and make it work for your organization.