Building Resilience

Resilience can be defined as having the resources, mental, physical or experience-based, to cope with unexpected, difficult or adverse situations. Whether personally or as an organisation.

Resilient people and organisations are better able to bounce back from adversity and also, interestingly, are also better able to deal with unexpected good fortune!

One facet of organisational resilience is social capital. The social capital of an organization reflects its connectedness. It’s about how easily information flows around the organization and how much trust there is. Both these factors make it much easier for organizations to be resilient and to adapt quickly.

Organizational and personal resilience are particularly important during organisational change, when people’s habitual patterns are disrupted and they need to be adaptive and maintain their motivation and morale.

Both Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry, with their emphasis on identifying strengths and actively managing mood offer practical approaches for boosting personal and organisational resilience. They also increase resourcefulness and confidence in the face of the challenges. Appreciative Inquiry also builds social capital in organizations, and creates a positive pull motivation to help energise movement through the period of disruption. They also both offer powerful processes for creating hope.

Working in this way, we can help boost the resilience of your staff and your leadership.

Download Sarah’s article about boosting your resilience and adaptability

See below a video of a conversation between Sarah and Dr Ilona Boniwell about resilience.