The road to success is usually no stroll in the park, but a strenous endeavor with ups and downs. There is always that next challenge that needs our attention, and a solution no less. If we think we aren’t up to the challenge, we get stressed. But stress is good, it keeps us alert and focused on finding a solution. At least it’s good as long as it lasts only for a short period of time, followed by an adequate period of recovery. But when stress persists and becomes chronic, it will cripple both our quality of life and our health. Since the road to success tends to be a marathon rather than a sprint – what does it take to reach our goals without being chronically stressed?
„More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That is true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.” This statement, which I found in a 20-years-old article by Diane Coutu published in Harvard Business Review, caught my attention.
What exactly is mental strength and resilience, and why are they so important?
We are living in times of rapid change. Much of what we considered safe and stable in the past is now anything but. And somehow it feels as if one crisis seemlessly transitioned into the next. Whether it’s digitial revolution, climate change or New Work – whatever area you look at, you see drastic change. But that’s actually a good thing. Because in change, we’ll also find fantastic opportunities.
But in this world of rapid and drastic change, the ability to successfully deal with change and challenges is critical to be successful. The more instability, change and challenge there is in this world outside, the more important becomes inner strength, adaptability, agility and robustness. And this is exactly what mental strength and resilience is about.
Above all, mental strength means believing in your own abilities.
People who are mentally strong are convinced they will find solutions to just about any challenge that might come up. They stay calm, positive and constructive even in difficult situations. As a result, they are rarely ever stressed over longer periods of time. In a world that requires independence, flexibility and agility from leaders and employees, mental strength is key to success.
Resilience is defined as the ability of a person or an organization to withstand pressure and to bounce back from failure.
Resilience is about being able to endure even extended periods of stress, and to emerge stronger from setbacks. Hollywood legend Rocky Balboa explains to his son in the movie, what a boxing fight is about: „The key is not how hard you can hit. The key is how many hits you can take, and still keep going. That’s how you win!“
Even though I hope in our daily jobs we are not literally talking about “how many hits we can take” – the idea behind “resilience” in our professional life – and in fact in any area – is very well defined by Rocky’s explanation. The key to success is how we deal with pressure and stress, that we keep going despite being faced with opposition and headwind, that we learn from our mistakes and failures, and ultimately that we come back stronger from setbacks and crises. Because failures and setbacks are not only a natural part of any journey, they are in fact essential to learn, to explore, and to innovate!
Luckily, most of our professional life is not a constant series of setbacks we’d need to recover from. More often it’s the sum of many small things testing our resilience. In a study from the UK with 835 employees, 75% of respondents said the biggest factors in their professional lives which are wearing off their resilience was dealing with difficult people, and political games in their organization. Chronic stress due to high workload came in a close third place. I guess whoever is familiar with working in any organization can relate to these results.
What is characteristic of resilient people, and what distinguishes them from other people?
Diane Coutu defines this in her article “How Resilience Works” as following: Resilient people – as well as resilient organizations – possess three characteristics: a staunch acceptance of reality, a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful, and an uncanny ability to improvise.
Putting it differently: resilient people accept a difficult situation or a mistake, they analyse what they could have done differently and learn so that they are better prepared next time, and they explore what opportunities there are in any given situation, even the toughest ones. And then they leave the past behind and concentrate on what’s ahead. Accept it – Analyse it – Move on – it can be that simple. Resilient people don’t waste their energy on finding a culprit or blaming others, they don’t complain about things that cannot be changed. Instead, they get up, remain positive, constructive and most of all: in the driver seat. That makes all the difference!
The good news is: both, mental strength and resilience, can be developed.
How does this work? By learning to treat and to talk to yourself in a kind and positive way, and by training your brain to remain calm in stressful situations.
Mental strength is the result of personal beliefs, attitudes and thought processes. With strong, positive inner beliefs about ourselves and the world we live in, we are building the trust in our own abilities and the confidence to overcome any obstacle we are faced with. And these inner beliefs, they actually talk to us. There is this voice within our own heads that either has our back, making us stronger with positive, encouraging messages, sort of acting like your own cheerleader. But this little voice can also take us down, constantly nagging us, downplaying our abilities and achievements and making us feel small and insufficient. And there is your key to building mental strength: it means promoting your inner critic to constructive coach. There are a number of mental training tequniques that help to build strong, positive inner beliefs and leave negative, destructive beliefs behind. The rest is a matter of practice and experience!
Resilient people pay attention to their own needs, and they give themselves permission to fulfill them.
Resilient people pay attention to their thoughts and feelings, they set clear boundaries and they make sure their batteries do not entirely run empty. That’s exactly the prerequisite to develop the positive attitude and confidence mentioned above defining resilience as a consistent capability to withstand pressure, stress and setbacks.
Another important capability of resilient people is to remain calm in situations of acute stress. Our brain has its very own powerful mechanism to deal with acute stress. When we are angry about something, when we are running out of time or when we are simply overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work on our desks – in these situations a small part of our brain takes over, the amygdala. The amygdala is – among other things – our radar for danger, and the trigger for the “fight-or-flight-mode”. In situations of acute stress, the amygdala hijacks the brain, blocks our ability of rational thinking, i.e. the prefrontal cortex, and puts us on autopilot. When this happens, we often say and do things that later on we realize we’d rather not had said or done…
The neuronal key to resilience in daily stress is how fast we manage to exit autopilot-mode.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the founders of the modern approach to mindfulness, gives us a tool on how we can achieve this. He developed a routine which allows us to train our brain to fully concentrate on the moment, to notice what’s going on, but not to react. In essence we enable our brain to stop the amygdala from taking over in situations of acute stress. A key element in this routine is to train that whenever your attention starts to drift away, you immediately re-focus it back to your breath. The routine requires some practice, in fact the recommendation is to practice for 30 minutes a day for at least 8 weeks. But the reward is measurable: people who went through this exercise are much better equipped to stay calm in stressful situations. With a short pause and a deep breath they can immediately switch off autopilot mode before it hijacks their brain. This is resilience acting as a defense to acute daily stress. If you are keen on trying this exercise for yourself, you can find more detailed instructions in this article: https://hbr.org/2011/04/resilience-for-the-rest-of-us.
So mental strength and resilience do in fact provide meaningful protection against stress on the job.
Could they be the solution to our problem of chronic overload and stress at work? This may sound temptimg, but I consider this idea problematic, for three reasons:
1. Companies have to take on their responsibility when it comes to chronic stress at work, it’s not just a problem of the individual.
Of course it’s a good idea for companies to support their leadership and staff with trainings on building resilience to be better equipped to deal with everyday stress. But that’s not giving them carte blanche to abstain from their responsibility to provide a work environment that is designed to prevent chronic overload and burnout in the first place. Hurtienne and Koch even point out that companies are responsible to improve the work conditions as much as possible before you can expect the individual to adapt his or her behavior. In this regard resilience on an individual level is certainly an important building block to dealing with chronic stress in the workplace, but it’s certainly not the solution as such. A more comprehensive approach is needed to avoid chronic overload not only on an individual level, but also on team level and – where possible – also on an organizational level.
2. Depending on the type of pressure, even the strongest type of resilience is not enough
Even if resilience can be built in general, we have to acknowledge that not everybody will be able to do so to the required extent in order to go through extended periods of chronic stress without comprosing their health. One relevant aspect here is, what type of pressure we are dealing with.
Many people can deal well with a massive workload as such over a very long period of time. They manage because a few other factors are in place that make up for little spare time and constant pressure, e.g. a clear purpose, respect and recognition, team spirit and at least once in a while these sparkling little moments of success. And they manage because they live a rather healthy life despite their busy work schedule. Most of these people make sure they exercise, get enough sleep and take short breaks regularly to regenerate and to ease acute stress in the moment. They also pay attention to healthy eating habits and spending time on hobbies they enjoy. Last but not least they prioritize staying connected and spending quality time with family and friends. If any one of these aspects is negtlected over longer periods of time, no amount of resilience or mental strength can shield you from the negative effects of chronic stress on your health or your life.
What’s much more critical than stress caused by a massive workload alone is when high workload is accompanied by additional struggles. Whether it’s an ongoing conflict with your colleague or with your boss, a lack of perspective, micromanagement or any other type of leadership failure, or simply personal problems and worries – when chronic work stress is caused or exacerbated by any type of psychological stress, even the most resilient person can wear out rather sooner than later.
3. Compromising your health for a job or a career – more and more people say: No, thank you!
Study after study demonstrates that many people are no longer willing to compromise their life or their health for a job. Especially not their health. It doesn’t matter how resilient or mentally strong these people are, they are simply not prepared to work under constant pressure and overload. This holds especially true for the younger generation. As Lea Schönborn puts it in her article in DER SPIEGEL, talking about generation Z: „Many young people refuse to work even 40 hours a week. Some may say we are lazy and merely pleasure-seeking. But we only defend ourselves against a work ethic that makes you ill“
In an ongoing war for talent, companies nurturing a culture that does not provide a healthy work environment will have a strategic competitive disadvantage.
The latest Gallup Engagement Index 2021 for Germany comes up with some impressive numbers on that. 38% of the 1500 responding employees said that during the last 30 days they had the feeling of being burnt out due to job-related stress. At the same time, more people than ever express their willingness to change employers. 40% of employees are either actively looking for a new job, or they are at least exploring their options and are open to offers. It’s very likely these numbers look similar in other countries as well. Already now a shortage of skilled workers results in noticable limitations for many companies. And all the while the “war for talent” we have been talking about for the last 20 years in only just beginning.
Resilience and mental strength are key resources for the individual to deal with the pressure and stress of today’s worklife. This is why one of the modules of the BetterBraincare program deals with exactly that topic. It’s called „Build your resilience“.
But the huge issue we have with chronic stress and permanent overload at work cannot be solved with more resilience on an individual level. This requires us to address the issue where it stems from: we need the change the situation at team and company level. However, as most companies deal with cost and competitive pressure, there is most likely limited room to solve the issue by simply adding more people to the team. So we need change and relief for the staff within the existing system. And this is exactly why there is a dedicated module in the BetterBraincare Program dealing with that challenge. It’s called „Battle your load“ – to achieve more focus on what actually adds value, and less internal hassle and getting bogged down in unimportant details.
Sources
Coutu, D. (2002): How resilience works, in: Harvard Business Review
Gallup Institute (2022): Gallup Engagement Index 2021 Germany
Goleman, D. (2011): Resilience for the rest of us, in: Harvard Business Review
Heimsöth, A. (2022): Kopf gewinnt.
Hurtienne, J., Koch, K. (2018): Resilienz: ein schädlicher Begriff für den Umgang mit Stress am Arbeitsplatz?, in: Karidi, M., Schneider, M., Gutwald, R. (Hrsg.): Resilienz – Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven zu Wandel und Transformation, S. 141-157.
Ovens, A. (2015): What resilience means, and why it matters, in: Harvard Business Review
Schönborn, L. (2022): Teilzeit ist nicht gleich Aperol-Zeit, https://www.spiegel.de/start/teilzeit-arbeiten-als-berufseinsteiger-warum-das-kein-zeichen-von-faulheit-ist-a-39a9aef2-a346-4cec-837c-67d37b6828f5 (Stand: 10.06.2022)