Individual managers and leaders must develop their resilience to help their organisation’s succeed
Resilience is about people having the tools and knowledge to successfully navigate stressful and challenging times. Resilient organisations are made up of leaders and managers who know how to be personally resilient and how to help their team members also be. When people are resilient, they are more emotionally healthy as they are more able to manage situations, and move on from them.
The leaders, managers and teams I work with are under intense pressure to deliver more with less.
Whether it is budgets being cut, teams being decimated, or a gradual loss of skills and knowledge as long serving colleagues move into retirement, the results are all too familiar for those left behind: increased stress, overwhelm, absenteeism, and ineffectiveness.
In these circumstances, an organisation’s resilience will be down to an individual’s resilience. And this starts at the top. Resilient managers and leaders will be able to share the tools they have and the knowledge on how to successfully navigate an increasingly changing and stressful environment.
So what can you do as a leader, manager and individual to retain your professional effectiveness without losing your sanity?
Here are my three suggestions to help you start building your own resilience:
1. Share your knowledge and information.
Ensure that ‘know how’ does not reside with just you. To not sink under the weight of responsibility that can, and should be shared, you must develop processes and the time to share your knowledge.
2. Invest time and money
If you are in charge of a team, set aside sufficient resources in terms of time and money to help you and your team to recover and regroup. Avoid lurching straight from one high pressured situation to another, from one change to the next. Build in time to allow you and your team to stop, recover, regroup. Build in budget and time to help you and your team develop new skills and strategies to deal with future changes.
3. Be purposeful
Within your zone of influence (see another blog of mine for more information on ‘Influencing what you can’) plot a direction which has clear goals that you are committed to achieving. Do this with your colleagues and if you have a coach, get them to help you too. Then, set out to achieve those goals and stick to them. You and your team will feel enormously satisfied to have achieved something rather than moving swiftly on to the next task or project leaving a trail of uncompleted ones in your wake.
Further help
Many of the managers and leaders I work with feel alone. They feel that they would be the only people in their organisation trying to achive the above and that it would be hard to do this. I help them understand what they can control and how to build their personal resilience under the circumstance they are in now.
This summer, on the 23 and 24 July 2018 I am running a two day resilience course in Cardiff. Join me to learn how to build your own personal resilience and in turn, how that will allow you to build organisational resilience.