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Fire Fighting?

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Resilience is your capacity for change.

‘I think there’s a danger that we get caught up very much in the fire fighting. When we don’t have enough resilience to be able to stand back from something and put it in perspective’.
Participant of a Resilience Engine programme

Highly resilient people seek different perspectives all the time, so they don’t get trapped by any patterned ways of thinking, doing, or being. How can you create the space to get perspective?

First off the bat, connect with how to ‘be’ more. ‘Being Present’ is one of the top three enablers of your resilience. Which of these do you do already, and which do you want to do more of?

• Taking a moment out
• Counting to ten before reacting
• Going for a walk to clear your head
• Watching a sunset, or enjoying a similar beautiful moment
• Becoming kinder to yourself in the moment, no matter what your thoughts are
• Doing that hobby or sport that allows you to cut off from everything else
• Yoga, Pilates or Mindfulness

The second step is to consider the conditions that you need to get perspective. There are four key drivers:

1. Your Energy
How much energy have you got in your tank? If this is too low, forget trying to do anything else other than topping the energy up.

2. Your Curiosity
What would be most interesting for you to discover about this whole situation?

3. The Time available
Nothing will change unless you give yourself some time and space to notice for real what is going on

4. Your commitment to doing well/doing right in this situation
How much does it matter – to you? – to others?

Seeking perspective is a fab way to get out of the fire-fighting trap. Both ‘Being Present’, and creating the conditions for perspective are straightforward. Give them a go!

To discover more about how you can invest in your resilience, click here.

Author: Jenny Campbell, CEO of The Resilience Engine

Client story: Coping vs Breakthrough

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Resilience is your capacity for change.

Stories from the Resilience Engine Community of Practice: Yvette Elcock

 

Read this client’s story of resilience coaching. The Resilience coach is Yvette Elcock, one of our Accredited Practitioner from the Resilience Engine Community of Practice.

 

“Working through the difference between soldiering on or what you described as breakthrough is very powerful. The difference between soldiering on and breakthrough is significant. The unfortunate trap here is that tenacity and endurance are seen as virtues, which they are and the ability to keep going has probably served as well in the past.

However, I would suggest that just coping is a very passive way of responding to a situation and comes at considerable cost which becomes attritional.

‘Breakthrough’ is the active management of a situation where one might decide it’s appropriate to endure for a short period, or change the circumstance, but either is an active decision and strategy. This can be more demanding initially because we have to maintain a broader perspective, assessing both the situation and our own state, and consider options. One has to resist the ‘perceptual narrowing’ that pressure and stress can generate.

For me tai chi gives a very useful, physical example and analogy. The principle in tai chi is to keep contact and so remain engaged and ‘listening’ to one’s partner/opponent whilst also staying soft, moving and turning. Again for me, the warning signs are the sense of pressure and when the focus is on the very immediate, or if I am thinking’ I just need get passed that Board meeting or those dates…

Just coping is a very passive form of endurance. ‘Breakthrough’ is more skilful, and so requires an initial investment of effort; but is empowering and more sustainable”.

CEO of mid sized organisation

 

We couldn’t say it any better.

If you want to coach to create these kinds of insights and impact, please invest in your own resilience and learn to become a resilience coach with the Resilience Engine Accreditation Programme.

 

What is the definition of Resilience?

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Resilience Engine, Resilience Engine Publications, Resilience Engine New Blog Post, What is Resilience

What is Resilience?Resilience is our ability to reshape ourselves. Or another way of saying it is our ability to successfully adapt to change. This definition is applicable at any level, individual, team, organisational right through to community.

It’s an unusual definition. Most of what is talked about on resilience is about either coping or about bounce back. Both of these are elements within resilience, but they do not capture all of what resilience is, or indeed can offer. In fact these definitions come from a deficit style way of looking at ourselves:

Coping

Coping is about not breaking down.

Coping is a state where things are held as much as possible at status quo. We resist change. Instead we look for the highest level of control. The state of coping is a rigid one, where we aim to deflect anything that will threaten us. We hold onto old habits and patterns because they give us stability. In this state our performance is at best satisfactory, but especially in a prolonged state of coping, performance is more likely to be at best mediocre, at worst poor.  That’s in any part of our life.

If coping strategies are successfully stopping a breakdown, coping is a great place to be. And it’s tough.

Bounce back

Inherent in the words bounce back is the notion of setback or even trauma. This time bouncing `back is great, if the alternative is coping. Bounce back means returning to something normal, and in doing so somehow absorbing the change necessary to do so, even if unwelcome change.

The return from difficulty feels good, but bouncing back has created a cost. There may be loss involved in the change. And often the total cost is expressed in our energy; we are often tired because of dealing with the setback, and that shadow of tiredness may last a long time. If affects performance. Our performance in this state is likely to be more satisfactory than at coping but it’s difficult to improve it.

Having to bounce back from several challenges wares us down. The Resilience Engine are seeing this more and more; more managers and leaders are having to face simultaneous difficulties, and it is this overlap that sends them back to coping mode. In the end, we may slip out of bounce back into something much more rigid and stuck, often coping, or sometimes, oscillating around in the middle of a kind of ok, static state where there is no change.

Either coping and/or bounce back give us ok.  Interestingly we notice how often organisations seek to get back to coping after difficulty – but in doing so not realising they are stymieing their own performance.

So Is There Anything Else? Introducing Breakthrough

What if there was another stage of resilience where deficit didn’t play a part?  Where in fact there was a high level of energy all the time. Where performance was sustainably high. Where even when things got tough, we operating from a surplus mentality, having enough understanding and confidence about how to whoosh back into high performance. All without cost. All of this no matter the domain, whether work or in personal life. Where bumps in the road were smoothed out long before they become a setback. Where we would thrive.

Doesn’t that sound great? And doesn’t it sound like those who operate at this level are really quite at ease in both home and work domains? It’s very attractive!

This state of resilience exists. It’s called breakthrough. When you are at breakthrough resilience, you are resourceful, adaptable and energised. If you know this level of resilience and do experience a tough time where your resilience slips, you are wholly confident in your abilities to go back to breakthrough, and the return is straightforward and quick. When at breakthrough, one particular setback, no matter how important, will not completely dominate our existence. We will have better perspective, and in fact still be able to experience joy in our lives.

This is when resilience is wholly about our abilities to reshape ourselves. It’s a strategic capability in business and organisations. It’s a strategic capability in our personal lives. When we operate with this level of resilience, our capacity increases immensely, our clarity of purpose and motivation and alignment all increase, our options for solving problems increase, our speed of decision making and action increases. It’s a great place to be.

The Resilience Engine® has been researching resilience since 2007. We have discovered these levels of resilience, and how dynamic resilience is. We are proud to offer  The Resilience Dynamic® as a simple model that helps people – individuals, teams, organisations – diagnose their own levels of resilience and  understand the implications.

Jenny Campbell,
Senior Executive Coach and Resilience Researcher

 

The Resilience Engine® then helps develop them develop it according to this initial diagnostic.
To learn more about our research and The Resilience Dynamic click here. Get in touch if you want to learn more.