How Growing Resiliency Contributes to Your Career & Work Well-Being

Everyone has ups and downs at work. There are failed projects, challenging coworkers, and missed goals and opportunities. The eureka moments are also captured in product and process breakthroughs, incredible teamwork and collaboration, and extraordinary performance advances. But it's adversity that tests our resolve and resilience, and helps to define who we are and how we show up at work.

Age doesn’t guarantee wisdom. Wisdom is generated by our experiences and what we make of them. In a world of unstoppable change, skills and abilities to learn from experience and to increase resiliency, define career success.

Many factors determine and influence resilience, and they are not always about work and career. Every day, people come to work, worried about health and wellness, family members and relationships, or current tensions in the world. Life’s events profoundly influence how we respond to and shape our world of work.

Change and uncertainty affect and condition personal resiliency. Moments turn into days and weeks and months, and, if you’re resilient, you can gracefully acknowledge endings, transform periods of transition to growth, and prepare to begin anew. In growth organizations, leaders learn from adversity to drive forward. Like a muscle, we can choose to strengthen resiliency, deepening our personal reservoirs of strength and emotional wellness.

When we develop resilience, we develop approaches and strength to meet adversity and rise to the occasion. In organizations, resilient people do not let failure define them. While some events seem to take every ounce of resilience, successful people know that resilience is a renewable resource. Because resilience is not a trait, it can be learned and developed. Attitude, ability, and a sense of optimism all contribute to improving your resilience.

Every once in and while we have a front-row seat to experience the incredibly resilient. Regardless of crisis or opportunity, these individuals demonstrate uncanny abilities to acknowledge derailers and setbacks. They use their experience and reflections to chart new goals and forge new paths. We are all the better for the presence of resilient people.

Based on my observations of resilient leaders and individual contributors, I’m offering some brief reminders — perhaps affirmations — to encourage your resiliency, even during periods of radical disruption and transformation.

• You recognize both the challenge and opportunity in situations.
• You acknowledge your discomfort and talk with others about that discomfort.
• You propose a new idea and offer a fresh perspective, or you seek others who can assist you.
• You look towards the horizon.
• You focus on your strengths and work on your need areas.
• You set new goals.
• You remember others and are kind to them.
• You maintain perspective, change, and develop an outlook to help you to succeed.
• You make a change or some changes, regardless of the difficulty.
• You vary approaches, and try at least two or three times, before giving up.
• You empathize and help others.
• You find channels and outlets that are healthy and productive.
• You step outside of yourself and recognize the forest for the trees.

Why wait to replenish your resilience? Through communication, collaboration, and reflection, you can deepen your resilience. Your strength in this area not only supports your success in adverse times but extends to helping your coworkers. In a world of change and uncertainty, when you strengthen your resilience, everything will change!

What approaches do you take to develop and grow your resiliency? How do you help others to develop and to build resiliency? Join the conversation when you share a comment, insight, observation, or question!