Resilience
It’s tough out there – the working environment is high-pressured anyway and recent global and local events have exacerbated this. Everyone is feeling it.
In situations like this we look to the resilient people to help get us through – but what if everyone was as resilient as they could be? What difference would that make to everyday in the office and to productivit
Resilience (CONT.)
Psychological resilience helps us understand how people respond to workplace adversity. There is growing evidence that shows that individual resilience is a good predictor of job performance, job satisfaction and psychological well-being. Resilient employees are also able to recover faster from failure, disappointment and disillusionment as they are more adaptive when faced with events like losing a job/major client, managing difficult relationships or failure to meet objectives.
We spotted the resilience issue a while back and have developed our own resilience model, which forms the basis of our resilience programme. For us, resilience is not a ‘fixed state’; it is something we can all manage better and improve when faced with challenges at work or at home. We strongly believe that when the going gets tough we believe people should thrive not wither and it all stems from their understanding of their own resilience and the resources they have available to them to improve it.
What does the birdsoup resilience course involve?
Our resilience model is a context-person process model which means we consider the individual in relation to the individual environmental factors that affect them.
Ideally the model is best covered over a period of time via a series of half-day or one-day workshops. The model is adaptable however if time is limited. We begin with some pre-work: a questionnaire that helps participants identify how and where they are more or less resilient. We then move on to cover the cornerstones of resilience from our model:
1. Knowing yourself
Using the pre-work and exercises in the group, each participant would get to understand their own resilience- their individual resources. They will look at their personality, strengths, self-esteem as well as their belief system and behaviours in relation to difficulty.
2. The world around you
We then move on to look at the context for each participant. What are their relationships like (at work/home etc)? Do they have a supportive network? Is it working well? Is there anything happening that has made them feel differently? Have past events shaped their resilience? Using a series of activities and exercises each person will have a clearer idea of the impact of their environment on their resilience over time.
3. You and your resilience
Having taken a close look at themselves and their environment, we look at various other predictors of high resilience: optimism, hope and mindset. We also explore the risk factors that some of the participants may be facing: job uncertainty, bereavement, and health challenges for example.
Using a current challenge (if possible), we then use that to help the participants plot their own resilience as a ‘career wave’. This will show how their resilience has developed over time and identify the resources they already have to address their challenge. They will also help them identify the areas where they need to find resources and ways to do that/develop them.
The course is solution-focused and designed to help participants identify and access the resilience resources they need. Birdsoup believes in providing courses/workshops that involve a high degree of participation and reflection in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for our participants.
CONSULTANCY
We create on-going programmes aimed at shifting the behaviour of different groups, in the name of diversity.
