There is a misconception about resilience especially from a psychological perspective because it’s always about bouncing back and coping with situations so there is a sense it’s about fixing people. The reality is that most of us, most of your teams, don’t need fixing, people just get stuck or they want to know how to go from good to great.
Resilience is essential for success in most areas of life as it includes rebounding from adversity, stay focused under pressure, break out of overthinking. It also includes understanding what drives people (and yourself), building stronger relationships, and raising performance even when things are going well.
Why are resilience skills such essential factors in high performance?
It’s easy to think of resilience as a thing you have or do when it gets tough. But rather than see it as just endurance, mental toughness or stress management, turn the concept on its head and view it as something to help you thrive, grow and maintain/increase performance.
One of the first things I like to ask people already performing at a high level is whether they can outline in fifteen seconds or less what skills they have to deal with everyday demands. Skills to deal with everything we all experience including a bad day, low confidence, low wellbeing, desire for more focus or adapting quickly to an obstacle or change.
Can they name the skills they have for those situations?
The answer is no. Could you or your teams, if I asked you the very same question?
it is why you often see a gap between their capability and what actually gets delivered when it matters.
Performance moments come thick and fast in any environment. Internal or external meetings, sales calls, presentations, managing relationships, difficult conversations, and deadlines create many complex human challenges that high-pressure situations, other people and change bring.
The Big Problem Is We Are Human.
As human beings, we get distracted from time to time. We’ll drop in mental intensity. We’ll experience inhibition both mentally and emotionally, and that’s normal. No matter how high a performer you think you are, we are all vulnerable to the same human factors that cause a drop-off in us all. Humans are not machines.
Suppose we want to get the best from ourselves or others. In that case, we need to optimise our performance by understanding our mental, emotional and social responses.
For example, we are all wired to detect threat and risk. It’s a survival mechanism. I’m sure you have heard of the fight-or-flight stress. It’s the same thing and designed to get humans away from a threat. To do that, it temporarily reduces cognitive performance and biological processes..
The key word, though, is temporary. It is supposed to be a short-term response to focus resources on dealing with the threat. Yet, these perceived threats are always around us in today’s modern environment. This leaves us short in terms of our capability as humans. We are naturally designed to cope but not to transition and adapt, especially to the degree or regularity we now ask of people.
We are not designed to thrive during constant pressure, change or uncertainty. Survive for a short period, yes, but not naturally thrive, perform and be well at work and home over the long term.
I’ve learned since joining Resilience Development Co. that we can learn a skillset that allows us to adapt and thrive during these constant pressure. We call this type of resilience “restored” or “learned”.
if you want to learn about the three different types of resilience, here’s a link to the blog, but in a nutshell;
1.Natural resilience – a naturally occurring tool that most of us have to some extent. Circumstances can influence it.
2. Adaptive – borne from adversity. Successfully working through these challenging events can strengthen resilience – it is about bouncing back.
And there is a third: the most powerful and the most unknown.
3. Restored resilience – which is learned. Skills and techniques that build on our natural resilience and draw on it in all aspects of life.
Most people, including high performers, tend to rely on the first two. It’s why they can’t explain their framework for dealing with daily demands. They feel their way through, or more accurately crawl their way through, which makes success rely on endurance rather than being powered by resilience.
I would have been a far greater special forces soldier if I had a skillset, instead of relying on natural strength (which is limiting) but learn and apply skills like a toolbox when I needed it.
People Need Restored Resilience, Now More Than Ever
To perform and maximise potential consistently, people need restored resilience as it provides three things:
- Skills to adapt, perform and be well when faced with high pressure, change or uncertainty
- Social skills that combine to create a healthy and safe environment that supports delivery and performance moments under pressure
- Skills and common language to positively impact and connect with their team
If you want to know how good you can be and how far you can go, you need a high-performance skillset and frameworks.
Can you thrive if you don’t have these mental, emotional and social skills?
Can you make (as close to) every interaction count and as close to every hour as productive as is humanly possible?
No. Because even high performers are human.
How Far Can You Go Without A Means To Adapt Positively?
To answer that I’d invite you to ask yourself two questions:
Of all the challenges, you and your teams face what percentage of them are mental, emotional or social?
Most?
How much training have your people had that has trained them in the mental, emotional and social skills needed to positively adapt to those challenges?
None?
