How to build resilience at work?

IN today’s fast changing business arena, nothing is constant. Leaders and employees alike face increasing challenges at work. Remaining resilient amidst challenges is a must to become successful in this fiercely competitive business world. Resilience has become a hot topic in business these days.

Why is resilience important at work? Being resilient means maintaining your effectiveness, emotional balance, and motivation even when facing pressure, setbacks or challenges. Resilience is not about pushing through at all costs. It is about building the capacity to adapt, recover, change and keep moving forward, even when work gets hard.

How can you maintain resilience at work? To be a resilient person, you must understand your role and responsibility in your work. Resilient workers usually have a clear sense of purpose. They know what they want to achieve each day. When you know why your work matters, challenges become more manageable. You must connect your daily tasks to a bigger outcome. Your daily task may be just chasing outstanding payments, but the bigger outcome will be a financial healthier organization. You may be just a team member, but every component of a team contributes to the overall success of the team. Thus, a resilient person has a bigger vision beyond his own capability. This is because an effective team derives greater strength and achieves more synergically from each member.

A resilient person has the determination to handle tough challenges. Resilience improves when you view challenges as problems to solve rather than burdens to bear. A resilient person defines a problem clearly. He tries to understand the root cause of the problem, identify possible solutions to overcome it, evaluate consequences, choose the best action and follow through until he solves the problem. If he fails again, he picks himself up and identifies further possible solutions until he finds light at the end of the tunnel. Thomas Edison was such a person. It was reported that he had failed 1,000 times before his light bulb worked. Yet he humbly told his audience: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 1,000 ways that won’t work.”

Resilience requires determination to continue making progress despite obstacles. Persistency is another quality of a resilient person. Persistent individuals understand that many achievements and successes require repeated effort and patience. The best way to practise persistency is to cultivate daily habits that strengthen the ability to withstand pressure, adapt to setbacks and continue performing effectively. These habits are behaviours that shape how a person thinks, responds and acts in demanding working environments. Habits give you consistent behaviour and mindset that build trust in your own ability to overcome challenges and to deliver the result. You must persist despite failure. A resilient person views failure as a learning process. Success does not usually come from a one-time execution, but from a series of persistent executions.

Every workplace has disappointments, criticism and setbacks. Instead of giving up, a resilient person will ask “What can I learn from this?” and “How can I improve the situation or process next time?” To reach your goal is often not straight-forward. There are challenges, obstacles and competitions. Only the best will survive.

What do you need when a storm diverts you from your charted course? You need a compass – a strategy. You need to be prepared and to work hard. You need to be persistent and to steer back to your charted course. Instead of damaging her confidence in the mist of challenges, a resilient person treats setbacks as a training tool to build greater capability and competency.

A resilient person constantly upgrades her skills and capability. These include learning new skills and competencies, improving communication and interpersonal skills and making an effort to understand the organizational systems better. Competence builds confidence and confidence strengthens resilience. Resilience is not a personal trait,it is a skill that can be developed through consistent practice. Resilience is not simply the ability to endure pressure, it is the capability to remain productive, positive and purposeful despite challenges.

On the other hand, what are the characteristics of non-resilient workers? Non-resilient workers can be easily discouraged or overwhelmed by difficulties. They tend to lose motivation quickly when the going gets tough. They tend to complain excessively and blame others for the failure. They often avoid ownership and responsibility when problems arise. They focus more on problems and excuses rather than solutions. Instead of addressing the problems constructively, they wait passively for instructions and avoid making decisions.

Resilient workers focus on solutions and progress while non-resilient worker focus on problems and obstacles.