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Denise Corey Coaching Blog: An occasional blog on a wide range of topics including leadership, managing difficult work situations, and gaining new business skills.

The Resilience Factor

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The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte successfully makes the case for the value of resilience and offers a methodology for increasing it. The authors’ well thought out discussion of resilience includes multiple examples and provides an in depth discussion on the challenges of taking things in stride.

The first step in building your resilience is to comprehend your usual response to adverse situations. As the authors say,

"The foundation of the seen skills of resilience is built on the simple realization that our emotions and behaviors are triggered not by events themselves, but by how we interpret those events."

So, start by identifying what pushes your buttons. What situations, people or experiences really trigger you and take you down? Your extreme reactions to these adversities occur because your core beliefs are challenged. The authors divide all beliefs into why beliefs and what next beliefs

There are three big why beliefs. People generally believe one of these statements:

  • I am responsible for the situation

  • I am not responsible for the situation

The Resilience Factor offers this example: If you were walking down the hallway, saw your boss walking toward you, said hi, and she didn't respond, how would you view this situation?

A. I must have made a mistake in the last report I gave her and she's angry with me.

B. She must be having a bad day.

If you felt that you would likely view this situation as A, you're feeling personally responsible for another person's behavior. In contrast, if you assume your boss is having a bad day, you're not feeling personally responsible. Your reaction to the situation will affect your resilience.

Is this is a permanent situation or a temporary situation?

You're a project manager and the deliverable is overdue. Which is your likely reaction?

A. My team members are so lazy.

B. My staff is not working hard these days. I guess they are burned out by our recent projects and need some downtime.

“Your team is lazy and will always be lazy” is a permanent situation. But “the team is tired now and will recover” is only temporary. Obviously, if you view the situation as permanent, your ability to move through a setback will be limited.

And the final scenario:

This situation always happens to me, or it is unusual

Back to the project manager with an overdue deliverable. 

A. I'm an irresponsible manager.

B. I'm not good at this kind of project management.

If your narrative is that you’re irresponsible and that shows up in other areas of your life, you will be plagued with challenges. But if you believe that you have trouble managing this particular kind of project, but generally do well meeting other people's expectations, you will have a reason to seek out the necessary resources to master this skill. 

Resilience is difficult if you believe that you are personally responsible for adverse situations—and that the adversity is permanent within many areas of your life. But that can change, and The Resilience Factor walks the reader through how particular views are formed. It also offers specific exercises and advice for opening up new perspectives.

One can not escape adversity, but building resilience will arm you to face your challenges with less stress, more optimism, and less wear and tear on others. It will also increase your ability to consider a wider range of solutions when roadblocks appear.

The book is thoroughly researched and very complete. I highly recommend reading The Resilience Factor if you want to explore your resilience and work to increase it.