In an ideal world, your workplace would always function perfectly. Your coworkers would get along great, new hires would learn quickly, and everyone could keep their cool when a crisis occurs. Your numbers would always be excellent and your company would show exponential growth year after year. (Or, your nonprofit would attract abundant unrestricted dollars).
We know this vision is not realistic, however. It is normal–expected, even–for organizations to experience periods of lowered productivity for a multitude of reasons. Even if your organization tries to cut down on distractions or shorten meetings, the unavoidable highs and lows of everyday life can continue to affect your team’s productivity levels. Team members may be facing personal issues like a death in the family, a breakup, or mental illness that can affect their ability to do their job. And, even everyday inconveniences, like a missed bus, edits on a project, or a difficult client may be enough for a colleague to experience burnout, a burst of anger, or dejection.
Thankfully, resilience training can help. At ROI, resilience is a core part of the curriculum we share with our community, as building resilience can help us stay strong in the face of adversity. We talked to three of our resilience trainers, Chandra Green, Eulanda Thorne, and Victor La Rue Jones about the results they’ve felt and seen from resilience training and how this training can benefit the workplace.
First, what is resilience?
When we asked our trainers their definitions of resilience, each gave a definition that helps peel back the layers of this term. Eulanda, a former teacher and current program manager for the Public School Forum of North Carolina, stated that resilience is “the capacity for staying well in the face of hard times, both mentally and emotionally.” When we face adversity–whether at home, work, school, or anywhere–resilience gives us inner strength to keep moving forward. Building on Eulanda’s definition, life coach and therapeutic youth counselor Chandra describes resilience as a power within that all humans are born with, though some have a wide resilience zone (the state where we can remain calm in difficult times) while others have a narrow one, based on our own experiences and personalities. This means that a small inconvenience may not bother some, but others may require much more effort to move forward from the same situation. Victor, who has worked as a therapist for over 25 years, added that resilience gives us the ability to connect with others. As we learn to handle situations without becoming overwhelmed, we learn to show empathy and compassion for those we may be in conflict with.
Step one is to go to where this organization physically is. Show up at the schools that they regularly hand out backpacks at. Find a way to fit your work and mission within and underneath theirs. It’s not about competing – it’s about collaborating. You can say something like:
Resilience is a multidimensional concept, which may seem complex at first glance. But one thing all of our interviewees agreed on is that through tangible techniques and frequent practice, resilience can be learned. And over time, it can change the entire trajectory of our lives by allowing us to conquer situations that once made us falter. Through resilience, we can push ourselves to do things we might’ve otherwise considered impossible.
Why is it important to build resilience at work?
When asked about why it’s important to have resilience in the workplace, Eulanda noted that the core of resilience is connection; we must strive to know what it takes for each individual to stay well in tough times. When a problem occurs, our resilience zone may be different than someone else’s; so if we can support them in the way they need, we can help get through the problem faster. Similarly, Victor stated that resilience works like a rubber band; we can stretch our resilience zones when we need to hold space for others and connect with people, and it will not hurt us, because we’ll be able to help them work past the issue and return to our original, calm state. Learning to stretch ourselves in this way increases our capacity to have empathy for others, give them the help they need to get through challenges, and still check in with ourselves to satisfy our own needs. By supporting each other, we can increase our productivity at work, even in crisis moments.
When we are able to be resilient at work, the positive outcomes include more than just increased productivity. Chandra stated that when we can operate in our resilience zones and remain calm in tough times, we experience more positive health outcomes, improved focus, and fewer ailments than we do when we operate under stress. In an organization, Chandra says resilience trainings have helped increase employee retention, made managers become more people-focused than outcome-driven, and expanded teams’ abilities to be trauma-informed, offering more compassion to their coworkers.
Over the last few years, the topic of resilience in the workplace has become increasingly important in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial issues, and economic crises. Employers are learning that if their organization fails to help workers feel safe, they will see decreased employee satisfaction and retention, especially in high-stress jobs like teaching, parenting, medicine, court systems and law enforcement. Therefore, it is more important now than ever that organizations learn to have empathy, compassion, and build resilience in their employees.
3 Ways to Improve Team Productivity Through Resilience Training
To understand some concrete methods for building resilience at work, our interviewees shared their favorite training techniques that can help return you to your resilience zone even in tough moments.
1. Learn to recognize your body’s responses to stress.
Victor noted that we all have a different response to stress within our bodies, often including one of the 4 F’s of trauma: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. When we have one of these responses, we are bumped out of our resilience zone, causing us to react with our body first, then with our emotions, and then our thinking brain. This can cause us to become defensive when we’re triggered, so we have no room for compassion or empathy. As a result, our reaction to stress may be combative, cruel, or cowering.
When we can recognize the signals in our body that tell us we’re stressed–like an increased heart rate, racing thoughts or tensing up–we can take a moment to pause, come back to our resilience zone, regulate our emotions, and calm the response within our body. When we react with our thinking brain first instead of last, we can respond more rationally to stressful situations and work toward a solution more quickly.
Imagine you spill your coffee down your shirt walking into work. Your immediate bodily reaction might be to curse out loud, cry, or run out of the building and take a sick day. But if you stop and take a moment, you might realize you don’t need to do any of those things to move forward. When you use your thinking brain first, you might remember there’s an extra shirt in your car. Then, your emotional brain can react–you might be a little embarrassed, but knowing there’s an easy solution will help you move on. Finally, your body reacts by carrying you to your car to change. Before you know it, you’re clean and dry and off to restart your day.
2. Highlight helpful things in difficult times.
One of Eulanda’s favorite resilience training methods is called Highlight. This method helps us widen our field of vision. It helps us ask, “in the midst of this difficult moment, what is helpful or going well for me/my team right beside the difficult things?” Eulanda noted that our brains are wired for negativity; we often focus on bad situations or inconveniences rather than focusing on the good. When we’re stressed or have a few hard things happen all at once, it can cause us to become overwhelmed and react outside of our resilience zone.
But when we focus on the good, it can calm our central nervous system and get us through a tough time. Using the same coffee example as tip 1, we can learn to change our thought patterns in a difficult moment. When you spill the coffee, it’s easy to beat yourself up–you’ve ruined the shirt, you’re going to have a late start to the day, and your spare shirt won’t look as nice for your presentation later in the day. Instead, try thinking about what’s going well for you. Maybe you know you’ve got something delicious for lunch that day. Or, you’re still excited to show your boss everything you’ve put together for your big presentation. Perhaps you’re working on getting up earlier, and despite the coffee mishap, you’re still at work on time. Highlighting the good in these moments can help us put the situation into perspective–in the grand scheme of our lives, that one moment will not ruin everything.
3. Use Rapid Reset techniques.
Chandra shared some of her favorite techniques for quickly getting back into our resilience zones during a tough situation called Rapid Resets. These techniques come from ROI’s Reconnect for Resilience trainings, and can be used whether we’re feeling activated or withdrawn. They simply help to reset our nervous system and get us back to our resilience zone in just a few minutes. Here are just a few Rapid Reset techniques to use when you feel stressed:
Let’s go back to our coffee spilling incident. Perhaps after the spill incident is over and you’re cleaned up, you’re still feeling anxious. You decide to take a few deep breaths, go for a short walk with a coworker, and take a moment to ground yourself at your desk. In no time you will be feeling calm and ready to do your job.
One great thing about all of these resilience training techniques is that they are all things that you might already do in times of stress. While these techniques are intuitive and easy, when we put intention behind them and use them to stay grounded in hard moments, they can help us move on faster than we originally thought possible. This increases our potential to do great things–because when you feel good, you do good.
Want to learn more about how resilience can impact your life? Learn about our Reconnect for Resilience program, which offers practical strategies for individuals, organizations, and whole communities to promote balance and wellbeing. Contact us to request a speaker or learn more.
Edgecombe County, North Carolina
Attn: Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI)
Area L AHEC
1631 S Wesleyan Blvd
Rocky Mount, NC 27803
Email: info@ruralopportunity.org
Email: naomi@ruralopportunity.org
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