Let’s be real. Things don’t always go smoothly. We can go as far as saying that at times we may even face blockers or barriers to get to where we want.
During these times, we can find ourselves either turning things around to get back on track, and even improve our performance, or we spiral downward which can have a negative impact on us and our performance. What dictates this though? What will mean we burn out or flourish? It comes down to how resilient we are and how much we put that resilience into practice.
In an ever-changing world where expectations to meet demands are high, developing our resilience supports us to do this. These can be our own expectations, or expectations others have on us. By developing our resiliency, the hope is for us to create strategies to manage demands, create an environment for us to thrive, flourish, perform at our best and bounce back stronger following adversity. It’s having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables us to cope with the many demands placed on us while consistently remaining determined, focused, confident and in control under pressure.
Resilience is a huge topic, with so many ways for us individually to develop it; our own resilient recipe or formula.
Therefore, I do want to be clear here, that this is an introduction. Resilience is double-ended; it’s both reacting effectively in the moment to get back on track and proactively setting yourself up for success long-term, building this by knowing and understanding our own resilient formula to actively draw on. Each of us will have our own unique formula as we are all different and have different circumstances and situations.
Research done by Lane4, a performance consultancy, developed a resilience framework that was based on what it took to deliver and sustain high performance (shown below). It consists of eight core attributes that make up resilience, and six enablers that either support or contest us being as resilient as we can. The enablers fall under either our health & well-being or the performance environment. At the heart of our resilience is our identity, who we are, which is why we all will have a unique formula.
Lane4 Personal Resilience Framework
© Lane 4 Management Group Ltd
Let’s focus in on the eight core attributes here though, what they mean and how they can be part of supporting you to develop your resilience.
Self-belief – The confidence and belief in your own abilities
Drive – The inner drive to give your all in every aspect to achieve success
Dedication – Your commitment and conviction to do everything in your control to achieve your goals
Thriving on a challenge – An outlook to see opportunities and thrive in high-pressure situations
Bounce-back – The ability to effectively come back from setbacks with a strong will to succeed and have a future focus
Performance intelligence – Utilizing a good understanding of your environment to make and execute critical decisions in the moment
Focus – The ability to maintain the right focus and manage interferences, internal or external
Emotional control – An ability to perceive, understand and regulate emotions in demanding situations
When we think of times when we have been resilient, we will have accessed one or more of these eight attributes to help us. On the flip side, when we think of times when we haven’t been so resilient one or more of these attributes will have been missing. Each time may also require a different one, or combination of these attributes for us to be successful. Therefore, if we are to build our resilience in a way to be able to react effectively in the moment, we need to be pro-active in building these eight attributes to draw on when we need them.
View them as tanks that need to be filled - if that tank is empty then we can’t get anything from it when we need it. The result could be that we burn out and are therefore not resilient. In previous blogs, we have covered some of the things you can do to top up some of these, self-belief for example. We need these eight tanks to have something in them for us to deal with setbacks, challenges, pressures that we may experience.
Which of these 8 attributes do you find easier/more difficult to access?
What could you do to start pro-actively topping up each of these 8 core attributes to build your resilience?
Where might you need support to help you top up a tank that might not come as easy to you?
Being clear on the answers to these questions can be the start in helping you build your own resilience formula. Knowing and applying this can increase your ability to deliver, develop and grow as consistently as possible when things are challenging, tough and pressurized. As I said earlier this is just an introduction and an area, I work 1:1 with people to develop so if you have any questions or want to know more, please let me know. I’d be happy to help.
Please feel free to reach out with any questions or if you would like further 1:1 support.