Navigating the Truths and Misconceptions about Resiliency at Work

I recently had coffee with a work friend who surprised me by complaining about a boss she usually describes in glowing terms.

She vehemently exclaimed: "I am just so frustrated with him! This is the second time he has pulled me aside in the last few months to compliment my resiliency. Yuck. I don't want to be resilient. I want to be recognized as the leader I am!"

As much as I wanted to empathize with my colleague, as I listened to her tell her story, I couldn't help but wonder if she and her boss perhaps don't fully understand what resiliency is and how it impacts our professional lives.

It is an understandable confusion. In today's stressful world and ever-changing work environments, resiliency has become a buzzword. In almost every conference, business publication, and companywide training, we are told that resilience can be a powerful key to individual and team success.

Intuitively, the focus on resiliency makes sense. The problem is that the concept of what it means to be resilient is something most professionals get wrong.

We don't know what it is, who is responsible for fostering it, or how to develop it reliably in ourselves or others. To make matters even more confusing, the people touting the workplace benefits of resiliency frequently lack the psychological and neurobiological background to understand it fully. Or they know it from an academic perspective but lack an understanding of how resilience operates in real-world work scenarios.

As a result, it is hard to get beyond the vague platitudes about the benefits of resilience, and it is even harder to foster it in the workplace effectively. The responsibility for developing it is often left entirely up to individuals who are judged for having it or not having a trait few fully understand and treat as an almost mythical quality that seems to be magically bestowed on some people but not others.

Leaders, like my colleague's boss, may praise it when they see it in their team members or lament the lack of it when they don't see it, but they don't have straightforward tools for helping their people develop it.

To help you do better, let's look at some common misconceptions and truths about resiliency and use that understanding to begin our journey to find practical action steps for building a reliable pathway to greater workplace resilience.

When we gain clarity, we can see that resiliency is, in fact, a learnable skill that we can master to be happier and more effective leaders and individual contributors.

Truths about Resiliency:

•  Resiliency doesn't start with your attitude; it starts with your brain and nervous system. When our nervous system is over-activated, we are more likely to enter a state that psychologists refer to as "fight. Flight, or freeze." This is a state where involuntary physiological changes happen in the body and mind because a person feels threatened at either a conscious or subconscious level. During this state, we may experience recognizable physical symptoms of stress. Still, we also lose our ability to access the part of our minds that engages in creative or strategic thinking and decision-making. Leaders must understand this fact because it means that even employees with great intentions, skills, and attitudes will be unable to respond effectively and show resilience if they cannot first re-calibrate their nervous system responses. Because of this fact, building resiliency in a work team requires helping individuals learn how their stress response works. They must recognize when they are in a low-level fight-flight or freeze state. (Perhaps surprisingly, many people do not know how to recognize this state in themselves.) They also need to recognize when they are in a state that makes them more likely to enter into dysregulated behaviors. Once awareness is built, they need practical and fast-acting tools for calming the nervous system. After this is accomplished, then tools of defining purpose, maintaining a growth-focused attitude, and building team communication can help increase resilience, but not before.

•  Resiliency is not about being unbreakable: One of the most significant truths about resiliency at work is that it's not about being invulnerable to stress or setbacks. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Learning to recognize and honor when our nervous system is out-of-whack and then bring it back to a more high-functioning place builds neuro-psychological strength and skill in much the same way that going to the gym regularly builds physical strength and skill. One aspect of Resilience can manifest as the psychological strength and skill that allows us to bounce back from challenges, adapt, and grow stronger in the face of adversity. Resilience is often built through the conscious process of acknowledging and fully feeling unpleasant emotions, dealing with them constructively, and finding a way forward.

•  Resiliency is not always about how we respond to negative situations. While responding well to challenging circumstances is one aspect of resilience, it is not the only one. Resilience can also express itself as a genuine curiosity. And this is often easiest to notice from the outside. Individuals that others experience as highly resilient may not necessarily see themselves that way because the same circumstances and events that cause others to feel significant stress or self-doubt may leave them feeling excited and positively challenged to explore new options and find a better way forward. Because of the neuro-psychological strength they have built, the events that others see as setbacks they may see as intriguing puzzles to be solved.

•  Resiliency can be developed: Resiliency is not an innate trait that some people are born with, while others are not. It's a skill that can be developed and honed over time. Like any other skill, it requires practice and self-awareness. Recognizing this truth can be empowering, as it means that you can actively work on building your resilience.

•  Resiliency isn't solely an individual endeavor: Because resiliency requires us to notice when our nervous system's threat response is either activated or likely to be activated soon, we need to have an environment that supports our noticing, exploring, and adjusting our inner experience. This is hard to do in an indifferent or unsupportive environment. Resiliency is significantly influenced by the support and collaboration of colleagues and supervisors. Building a resilient workplace culture involves fostering relationships and creating an environment where employees can openly seek help and share their challenges.

Misconceptions about Resiliency:

•  Resiliency means never showing vulnerability. One common misconception about resilience is that it equates to never showing vulnerability or weakness. In reality, displaying vulnerability and seeking support when needed is a sign of strength, not weakness. Resilient individuals are not afraid to admit when they need help or are struggling.

•  Resiliency is a stable personality trait: Someone can be highly resilient in some situations and less resilient in others. And our capacity for it can vary from day to day, depending on the personal and professional loads we are carrying. Personal history and past workplace trauma or adversity can also prime our nervous system to be more or less resilient when faced with specific circumstances or challenges. The variability of resiliency means we can see ourselves, or someone else, as highly resilient and then be surprised to observe over-reactions or inappropriate choices that are not resilient cropping up. Because of its variable nature, we need to be curious and compassionate when the need for resiliency arises and look for what the specific individual needs in the specific situation rather than making inaccurate mental judgments about how resilient they might be.

•  Resiliency behavior looks the same for everyone: Resilience is a one-size-fits-all concept, and its expression varies from person to person, for one individual "pushing through" and handling a difficult task or situation with little or no overt emotional expression until a later private time may be healthy and productive. For another, pushing through without first creating an appropriate space to process the emotion might result in significant mental health impairment, loss of productivity, or even physiological impairment. What works for one individual may not work for another. Resiliency is not a one-size-fits-all concept. It's essential for each individual to find unique strategies and coping mechanisms that help them process challenges effectively.

•  Resiliency is solely an individual's responsibility: While building personal resilience is crucial, it's not solely the responsibility of the individual. Organizations play a significant role in promoting resilience at work. They can create policies and programs that support employees' mental and emotional well-being, reduce workplace stressors, and offer resources for personal development.

•  Building resiliency skills just means learning to numb out: Most people think of building resilience as living through enough rotten things so that they eventually stop caring enough to let things bother them. Not true! It is possible to train your nervous system and brain to be highly involved but only lightly attached, meaning you still care very much but don't take on personal stress when unexpected events occur. This special flow state can feel great. In fact, it is the exact feeling that top athletes, jazz musicians, and horror movie enthusiasts around the world actively pursue. It is a state of getting just enough of a jolt to the nervous system when the unexpected or unknown occurs to stay excited and engaged but not so much of a jolt as to make you feel unsafe or overwhelmed. And we can train our nervous system to seek this state actively. The result is that we care deeply, but we stay playful and engaged rather than shutting down and disengaging or trying to over-control others.

I shared some of these thoughts with my colleague- and she began to reframe her understanding of what the conversations about resiliency might mean.

She began to see that it is true she does ENJOY responding to challenges at work with a "let's solve this mystery" approach rather than one of feeling personally burdened when things go wrong. She had some resiliency skulls that she had never noticed before because what was stressing those around her often did not cause her stress. When she realized this, she was able to see that people were seeing her as a leader because they saw her as someone with the strategic thinking skills to figure out how to respond to challenges that left them too stressed and confused to know what to do.

But she also began to realize that she was feeling physically and mentally tired after a long, hard push at work, and her nervous system was beginning to show signs of being more reactive than usual. She wasn't in a state where she was going into fight-flight or freeze at work yet, but she could sense that she might be soon. In fact, this was part of why she didn't like being called "resilient," she was afraid that if others saw her as "resilient," they would see her as someone on whom they could dump every unpleasant challenge.

The twin understandings of where she could be proud of the resiliency and leadership she already possessed and where she could further build her future resiliency with better self-care and proactive communication at work helped my colleague stop hearing the word itself and instead turn it into an invitation for excellence.

She realized that joyfully embracing and developing resilience in our high-change, high-stress world is the ultimate excellence plan.

How can you bring a similar viewpoint into your organization?

Embracing the truth that resiliency can be developed and that it involves seeking support and fostering positive relationships can empower employees to navigate the challenges of the modern workplace effectively. It can also empower you to engage in a leadership style that gets results while remaining kind and connected.

So, let's dispel the misconceptions and embrace the truths about resilience at work so that we may build a more resilient, supportive, and adaptable work environment for all.

What does it mean to you to build a more resilient work environment? I would love to learn from you through your thoughts and comments; please feel free to share them below.