Developing Resilience - A Critical Leadership Skill

Posted on February 13, 2014 by Jan Carley, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

When you get knocked down by events in your life are you easily able to get back up again? What happens when your world is turned upside down by financial calamities, relationship crises, health setbacks or by the death of a loved one? How easy is it for you to recover when you get hit with a series of smaller challenges that relentlessly combine to shake your confidence and rattle your foundation? Resilience is the critical element that will help you move through life challenges and get back up again with ease.

The 5 steps below will help you build resilience to rebound from your next knockdown:

Step One: Acknowledge
When you get hit, it is important to openly acknowledge and allow expression of the feelings you are experiencing. Whatever the reasons for your knockdown – big or small – if you try to avoid your feelings they become amplified and can accelerate a further downward spiral. Make sure you take time to acknowledge and accept your potentially conflicting, changing or even contradictory feelings and emotions that rise at different times of the day or week. Share your feelings with a trusted friend. Journal about your feelings. Allow yourself full expression of whatever emotions you feel. When one gets knocked down there is often an initial reaction of searching for a reason that may result in blaming something or someone else outside oneself. This is part of the grieving process and precedes the stage where we accept personal responsibility for our feelings and can begin to move forward.

Step Two: End and Let go
According to the transition model coined by author William Bridges, we must adequately end something in order to have a new beginning. In fact, every ending signals a new beginning. The essence of the transition process lies in that statement. The ending is critical, because without a proper completion there cannot be a successful beginning. After grieving, we must let go of the things that knocked us down in order to move ahead. We must be willing to leave the past behind. Listen to your thoughts, acknowledge your feelings, but don’t dwell on them – there is a difference between denial and transcendence.

What can feel confusing is that most transitions between an ending of one thing and the beginning of another are not necessarily a smooth progression from Point A to B. Old feelings may linger and you may go back and forth between the two.

There are two key questions to ask oneself in the ending phase.
1/ What is it time for me to let go of right now? Be sure to spend enough time on this first question. Our tendency is to want to move forward without properly or fully grieving.
2/ What is standing backstage, waiting to make its entrance? This second question is critical to follow the first.

How do you then let go? William Bridges is big on ritual and on having us create some specific way to facilitate the letting go. There are many ways to create a ritual and lots of resources online to guide the process. The key point is to mark the ending officially and be sure not to rush through the ending. You won’t move into the future as successfully (or as quickly) until you complete.

Step Three: Look Ahead
When you are ready to move forward, turn your focus to where you want to go. What future state (emotional, mental or physical) do you want to create? Build on your past successes to create your new vision of what you want to be, do or have. If you are open to stepping into an expanded identity and creating a different plan, you can use the energy of the knockdown to spring you upward again with the possibility of going even farther and higher than you were before. When you design your new vision be sure to keep your thoughts and discussions very firmly focused in the what you want for the future rather than what you don’t want. If you keep your focus on what was and everything you have lost and look for someone to blame, you will remain stuck and quickly re-enter a downward spiral. Allow that sense of forgiveness to extend to yourself.

Step Four: Make the choice
All of us get knocked down to varying degrees at some point in our lives. Although the circumstances for the knockdown might feel out of our control, making the choice to use that experience to move forward in a new way is in our control. You have the power and the control for creating your life – how you want, and in the time frame you want. Before you get caught up in specific goals and action planning, re-ignite your passion by dreaming of the future possibilities without limits. You are the only thinker in your own mind. The choice is yours.

Step 5: Check your Resiliency Bank Account (RBA)
Before you move forward, ensure your vision is being built on a solid foundation. Check your Resiliency Bank Account (RBA). Is it depleted? Overdrawn? Make a conscious effort to restore your Resiliency Bank Account and replenish your account on a regular basis. Remind yourself of who you are. Your unique strengths, your brilliance, your values are the constant wealth in your RBA to draw on whenever you feel the need.
Acknowledge your supports – who in your life strengthens your RBA? Celebrate those people or structures. Celebrate your past successes and acknowledge the elements that contributed to those successes. Those elements form the foundation upon which your future can be built. Beef up your RBA daily by adopting a gratitude attitude for everything in your life.
And finally, make self-value an integral part of your life. Positive thoughts, sleep, exercise, nutrition – you know the drill. You have much more capacity to rebound when you have made a practice of consciously and consistently valuing your physical, mental and emotional needs.

Resource: Book: William Bridges, Transitions – Making Sense of Life’s Changes (Da Capo Press 2004) www.wmbridges.com