Lessons In Building Resiliency By Rob Hosking

This PepTalk article is written by Rob Hosking, speaker, a former police officer turned mental health and workplace wellbeing advocate. We hope you enjoy Rob's reflections on resiliency.

Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to challenging life experiences, whether that is in your personal or professional life. We can have all the skills and talents in the world, but without resilience and mental toughness, there is a limit to how much we can adapt to challenging situations. In the business world, any business will want its staff to handle the hard times and bounce back with aplomb, but what strategies can be implemented to help with this?

Six strategies to buld resilience

Well, that’s where I come in. As a former front-line Police Officer, I know something about dealing with high-pressure, stressful situations. The ability to successfully adapt to the challenging situations put in front of me was vital in my role. I’ve made life-death decisions regularly, and after each time, I had to bounce back and recover quickly, as the calls didn’t slow down.

I’ve come to realise that there are certain things we all must focus on as individuals and as organisations to ensure that resilience is part of our toolbox.

1. Ask yourself what your relationship with failure is like

Mistakes are part of life. We have all made mistakes and will continue to form part of our lives. However, ask yourself what your relationship is with failure. How do you cope with the setbacks? For me, there are TWO things we must do when faced with failure. Accept it and embrace it.

Accepting that the mistake has happened. Never shy away from admitting a mistake. Own it and accept that it occurred. By doing this, you can move into the next stage of the process, which is the 'embrace it' stage. Embracing our mistakes is about taking away what we can learn from the mistakes. We must view mistakes as an opportunity to learn rather than an excuse to stop.

2. Positive thinking

To improve our resiliency, we need to adopt a positive mindset. When we think of positivity, we can look for solutions and the positives from any situation instead of solely focusing on the negatives. Yes, we cannot be 100% positive all the time, but to build more resiliency, we need to get into the healthy habit of looking for the positive in things.

Not only does this assist with your mindset, but it also helps with your physical health. An analysis of 15 studies encompassing nearly 230,000 people linked an optimistic mindset to a lower risk of heart attack and stroke, as well as a lower risk of death.

3. Use the 'difficulty'

We need to change our mindset when it comes to the obstacles we come across in our lives and in business. Truth be told, we will all encounter some obstacle in our lives, and it is up to us to determine how we use that obstacle. One of the lessons the famous actor Michael Caine learnt when he was a younger actor was the idea of using difficulty. This means that whenever a problem arises, we get to choose how to use that problem. Do we use it as an excuse as to why it won’t work, or do we use it to our advantage and find some positives from it? Looking at the positive means we end up using the problem rather than having it control us.

4. Change your relationship with change

1 in 3 people would avoid change if they could. Many see it as a threat rather than an opportunity. However, we need to adjust our mindset to change (which is a bigger topic I speak on). By getting comfortable with change and seeing the benefits of change, we can become more resilient as a result. Organisations can implement the strategies of the ‘Change Curve’ strategy, a powerful tool businesses use to help them understand and manage change better.

5. Value your team

Valuing your staff is integral to their overall well-being and a key ingredient in helping them become more resilient. Just think for a moment. Would you be better equipped to manage stress and challenges if you felt a sense of belonging and were valued in your place of work? Of course, you would, as everything is connected. Making staff feel valued can assist in building resiliency levels.

6. Connect with others

Research was carried out with an anaesthesiologist about how we could endure the unprecedented event of COVID-19. In the study, it highlighted that although the anaesthesiologist had a strong inner fortitude, his ability to connect with others in the most challenging of times was one of the main things that helped his resiliency levels (via HBR). Connecting with your team, family, and friends is integral to building our resilience. Organisations can quickly put strategies into place to ensure that connection is a core value that spreads throughout, ensuring the resiliency of their staff is increased significantly.

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These are just six simple ways that we can implement to ensure that resiliency becomes ingrained in us and our organisation. By doing this, we can change our relationship with setbacks and ensure that they don’t stop us but instead propel us.

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💡 Would you like to hear more from Rob or any of our other expert speakers? Let us know, and we’ll find the perfect PepTalk expert for your organisation. Email us at hello@getapeptalk.com or send us a message via the chat. You can also call PepTalk on +44 (0)2038352929. Remember, it’s never too early (or too late) to get a PepTalk!