- Somebody recently said we are in the age of disruption.
In fact, it was me who recently said it,
I just said it now, that was me who said it.
Now, maybe you're not completely disrupting everything
within your industry or being disrupted totally
within your industry, but we are without question undergoing
a massive amount of change like never before.
The pace of change has never been greater,
the magnitude of change has never been greater.
And as I tell my audiences and clients everywhere,
if the pace of change on the outside of your organization
exceeds the pace of change on the inside,
it's just a matter of time
before you're going to be in trouble.
So in the age of disruption, in this age of massive change,
it has never been more important to build
a culture of resiliency.
I've got eight tips on how to do just that.
Number one, we know that open and honest communication,
transparent communication builds resiliency.
It builds trust, it makes people feel involved
and connected even when you're talking about challenging
serious issues.
It doesn't do anyone any good to hide people from the truth.
To shield people from uncomfortable truths or challenges
your company, your industry might be experiencing.
And in fact we know that people are less resilient
in organizations where communication tends to be closed off
and not shared because people don't trust what's going on.
Rumors, love, a communication vacuum.
So people start gossip again making stuff up
and that contributes to people feeling less resilient
at work.
So, you need to invest like never before in open
and honest communication,
which means you need to trust your employees
like never before in the age of disruption.
And it doesn't mean just talking about everything
within your organization in an open and honest way
and investing in communication so everyone feels involved
and connected, it also means talking about the topic
of resiliency openly and why it matters and making sure
people feel comfortable bringing up the topic.
It means talking openly about the pace of change
and the need to change within your organization.
Number two, you need to create a culture of support
where everybody feels like they are supported.
At an emotional level, it's never been more important
which means employees need to know even what training,
what resources, what options they have.
When they are experiencing a lot of stress,
when they are experiencing serious mental health issues
especially they need to know what resources are available
within your organization.
They need to know who they can talk to.
And they need to have that psychologically safe environment
where they can open up and talk about how they're feeling
about things that is absolutely critical.
Creating a culture of support means encouraging
all of your employees to just check in with one another.
A Deloitte study found that the number one way employees
feel they have a sense of belonging at work
is just when another employee checks in with them.
But you need to encourage all of your employees to do that.
And do know that there is a difference between checking up
on somebody and checking in on somebody.
One of those things destroys trust
and one of those things build trust.
So you wanna build trust to build resiliency
in your workplace by checking in with one another
in a genuine way.
And asking the dirt simple question.
Is there anything I can do to support you?
And when it comes to building a culture of support,
simple little practices, simple little rituals
can make a huge difference.
For example, I've got one client,
they did this great ritual in the morning
where everyone in their team there's about 14 of them,
once they've arrived in the office,
everybody yells out on a scale of one to 10
just how they're feeling,
how their attitude is that morning.
And because there's some engineers,
yes they use decimal points
and the reason they do this is one, to remind everybody
to just check their attitude, that they can choose
their attitude at the start of the day here,
but two and more importantly,
they do that to find out where the lowest number people are.
So, who's the person who's gonna yellow 1.2
so that they can rally around and support that person.
It's that simple, but it's incredibly effective.
Number three, share best resiliency practices
on a regular basis with your team.
So, take the time every now and then to talk about
what is working for people in terms of them managing
their stress effectively.
What stress reducing practices are working for them?
What sleep practices are working for them to help them get
a good night's sleep because we know that has a huge role
in terms of us feeling more resilient.
What are people doing to make sure they eat properly
and get some physical exercise?
All of this stuff ties together to contribute towards us
feeling more resilient at an individual level
and a team level and it's another way of showing support
to one another.
So, share best practices on a regular basis.
Number four, more and more organizations are investing
in meditation and mindfulness practices.
Whether it's training, whether it's just creating
a physical space where people can go away
and have a quiet space where they can de-stress
and meditate, or at least practice a few minutes
of mindfulness is incredibly important.
There's so much research that has gone into how powerful
mindfulness practices and meditation
are when it comes to people feeling less stressed out
and being more resilient in the face of change.
So, just taking five minutes throughout your day
to practice your breathing and slow down
where you just take
(breaths in deeply)
slow deep breaths through your nose
out through your mouth can do wonders,
where you just take a few moments with a cup of hot tea
or coffee in your hand to truly savor and be in that moment
and think about the texture, the taste,
the feel of that coffee, to put yourself in the present.
Mindfulness practices are incredibly powerful
when it comes to building resiliency in any situation
in any workplace.
Number five, create a culture that supports a growth mindset
instead of a fixed mindset.
People have a fixed mindset tend to believe
that everyone is just born with natural gifts,
natural talents, innate abilities.
So, either you're good at math, or you're not good at math.
You're born a natural leader or not.
You're good at being more resilient and managing your stress
or you know, I just didn't get the resilience gene.
I just didn't get that gene whereas people with a growth
mindset, believe that well, it's right in the term
they can grow, that they can learn new things.
They can adapt to new situations no matter what age
they are, no matter what position they are in,
they believe that they can learn new things.
And people who have a growth mindset
tend to view obstacles in a very different way than people
who have a fixed mindset.
So, people have a fixed mindset when they encounter
an obstacle, a challenge at work,
they tend to take it more personally,
and they tend to believe that they can't get around
that obstacle.
Whereas people with a growth mindset
don't take it personally, they view it as a challenge
and they viewed as something that they can learn
to adapt to, or get around on to the other side
from an experience from.
So obviously, people have a growth mindset
in all the research have been shown to be far more resilient
in the face of stress in the face of challenges.
So, encourage a growth mindset.
Talk about what that means,
offer training in how to adopt a growth mindset
and make sure you are recognizing and praising
your employees for having a growth mindset.
In other words, don't praise them,
don't recognize them for their innate talent
because that does them a disservice.
Oh Susan, you're just so good with numbers,
you always just rock it.
Instead say, Susan, thank you so much for all that extra
effort you put in all that work you put in for making
those numbers work for us,
for bringing this report together.
So recognize people's effort and not their innate abilities.
It's really important that we do that.
Number six, train and coach employees and how to reframe
the three P's of pessimism to be more optimistic
in the face of challenges and a lot of change.
Martin Seligman, who's known as the father of positive
psychology, talks about how pessimists tend to view setbacks
challenges through a lens of three words that all start
with the letter P, hence the three P's.
So when something bad happens,
it's personal because the universal evolves around me,
it's pervasive in other words my entire life is ruined,
and it's permanent.
The rest of my life is ruined.
If you have teenagers at home,
you probably have some experience with this mindset.
Martin Seligman has shown in his research that we can train
our brains that we can actually counter argue,
debate the voices in our head when those negative,
pessimistic thoughts arise.
We can debate those voices to remind ourselves
that no, this isn't permanent, it's not gonna affect
the rest of our lives, no it's not pervasive,
there's still all of this good stuff that's happening
hasn't affected our entire company, our entire business,
our entire world, and no, it's not personal.
So, train and coach your employees on how to reframe
those three P's to have a more realistic positive outlook.
Number seven, celebrate the small wins and small milestones.
It's never been more important when you're experiencing
a lot of change to make sure you are building momentum
by celebrating the small steps by celebrating
those small wins.
That is so important in terms of people feeling
more resilient.
And all sorts of research shows that even though
they're just small wins,
celebrating them has a disproportionate impact
in terms of what that we actually represent.
So make sure you do recognize that you note the progress
that is being made and that you celebrate it.
And number eight, I'm a huge believer in the power
of daily intentions.
So many inspiring leaders I've interviewed around the world
talk about how daily intentions have changed their life.
And there's simply this, you write down a few things
that you wanna work with and every morning,
you look at those daily intentions, you review them,
you take a few moments quietly at your desk
or sitting in your car before you go into the office.
And we're talking about resiliency here.
So, setting some daily intentions around
being more resilient.
What are you going to do today for your mental health?
What are you going to do to laugh today?
What are you going to do to make sure you get outside today?
Who are you going to check in with today?
So, set a few that you want to work on.
Now here's the key though,
what you have to do is at the end of the day,
review the list and track your progress and make sure
you did commit to those intentions,
so that you're turning those good intentions into daily
habits, into daily practice.
And so what about you?
What are you doing to be more resilient in your life
in your work?
What are you doing in your culture to create a culture
of resiliency?
Drop a comment in the comment box,
let us know so we can all learn from each other's experience
about what's working for you.
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