3 Commonly Used Phrases Around Resilience That Actually Drain Resilience

Resilience is very popular as a topic currently. Everyone is talking about how to build resilience in order to cope with the stresses and strains of everyday life and the odd exceptional circumstance.

It has become very fashionable for organisations to look at building resilience in people and they look to the CIPD, psychologists, coaches and trainers to help them with this erstwhile endeavour. YET, there are a number of commonly used phrases that are used when working with resilience that may exacerbate the issue. These phrases are used so often that you probably use them yourself every day without even thinking about them.

1) Resilience involves “bouncing-back”
Resilience is often defined as your ability to bounce back from the stresses of life.

The idea of resilience as an aspect of human behaviour originates from material science where it describes the property of a material to resume its original shape after distortion or stress – to bounce back.

The issue with the phrase “bouncing back” is that there is an expectation that people will return back to a state where nothing has changed.

You show good resilience by possessing:

• a firm, reliable acceptance of reality
• a deep belief, supported by strongly held values, that life is meaningful
• an ability to be creative, adaptable and to improvise.

This has nothing to do with bouncing (backward or forward) as you continually evolve and improve yourself by learning from your environment and your mistakes and in this way develop your resilience.

2) Resilient people are better at managing “positive and negative emotions”
Emotion is a complex state of feeling resulting in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behaviour.  Emotions are controlled through interactions of your amygdala and hippocampal complex within the limbic system of your brain. This part of the brain has no language processing ability. It is your neo-cortex – the thinking part of the brain - that assigns a label to the emotion.

The issue with the phrase “positive and negative emotions” is that it assumes some emotions to be good and some to be bad.

Emotions are emotions. You experience them for a reason. They have developed over eons through evolutionary processes as a survival mechanism. It is not the emotion that is positive or negative; it is the thought process and the behaviour that accompanies it that requires the label.

Anger is often referred to as a negative emotion, yet it serves you well to right a wrong, to be more attentive and careful in your thinking and to motivate you at certain times.

Fear is often referred to as a negative emotion. If it is so negative, why can you get so much enjoyment from horror movies and scary films?

Happiness is often referred to as a positive emotion. It is suggestive of a state of blissful nirvana that you must aspire towards, yet it is not appropriate at solemn occasions. Also, happiness will limit you in your ability to communicate effectively, negotiate well and make critical decisions. It can encourage riskier behaviours, encourage you to take shortcuts and lead you to make more mistakes.

Resilience is developed through the intelligent application and expression of identified emotions, known as emotional intelligence.

3) Resilient people have a good “work / life balance”
Resilience is having a clear, realistic focus of what is important and being able to prioritise effectively.

The issue with the phrase “work /life balance” is that it compartmentalises everything into work activities (meetings, clients, trips, conferences) and life activities (family commitments, holidays, hobbies, keeping healthy).

Think about it. The phrase is actually meaningless. Life is not at one end of a fulcrum with work on the other end! Work is an integrated part of life.

You only have one life – you just happen to live some of it while working and some of it engaged in other activities. Like most people over the age of 20, work takes up a major proportion of your life and has to be realistically integrated into all of your activities to give you a rich, rewarding and meaningful focus.

Resilience is developed though realising what is necessary and important, keeping fit and healthy, and building rewarding, authentic relationships inside and outside of work. It is all about personal organisation and finding ways to relax.

Perspective on issues and your ability to look at problems creatively is lost under continued stress. The popularly of resilience tries to rectify this, however, your good intentions could be diminished by the inappropriate language that you use inadvertently.

Adapted from "The Authority Guide to Emotional Resilience; Strategies to Manage Stress and Weather Storms in the Workplace" - published May 2016.  Available to order from Amazon - https://goo.gl/JdQKsX

Personal Transition through Change

Organisations don't just change because of new systems, processes or structures. They change because the people within the organisation adapt and change too. Only when the people within it have made their own personal transitions can an organisation truly reap the benefits of change.

The Personal Transition through Change curve is widely used in business and change management. This tool is extensively used in all sizes of organisations across the world to understand the emotional pathway that people go through when they experience any change.

John M. Fisher is the Chartered Psychologist who researched and developed the Personal Transition through Change curve. He presented at the Tenth International Personal Construct Congress, Berlin, 1999, and subsequently developed in his work on constructivist theory in relation to service provision organisations at Leicester University, England.

See if you can relate to these steps:

Anxiety – You don’t really know what’s going to hap­pen next, and you aren’t sure what any change will really look like at this point.

Happiness – You’ve committed to the change, and you are feeling really good about it.

Anger – Some anger and frustration is directed at others, especially those who you believe are responsible for forcing the change.  At a later stage, this is directed at yourself with feelings of guilt for not having coped as well as you believe you could have.

Despair – You may feel confused and apathetic and really start to wonder who you are.

Other pathways on the curve are:

Denial - where you deny that any change is occurring at all

Disillusionment  - where you decide that the change does not fit with your value system and you decide to have nothing more to do with it.

Hostility - where you show aggression towards yourself and others and the change, in general.

John explains how he came to develop the change curve and how he uses it in his work in an exclusive Ei4Change podcast.

You can listen to the full podcast through iTunes or on the Ei4Change website.

Copies of the Personal Transition through Change curve can be downloaded free of charge, along with other free resources on the Ei4Change Resources page.

The Authority Series

‘The Authority Guides’ is a new series of pocket-sized books offering highly practical and accessible guidance on a wide variety of business matters. They are published by independent business publisher SRA Books under the imprint Authority Guides.

The books are aimed at the busy business professional and business owner; they are snappy and practical with absolutely no unnecessary padding and waffle.

Each book in the series has been written by an author who is not only an expert in their field but who is working today at the coalface of their specialism.

The first three books in the series are:

‘The Authority Guide to Emotional Resilience in Business: Strategies to manage stress and weather storms in the workplace’ by Robin Hills

The emotional resilience of those involved in a business will contribute significantly to the organisation’s success. This Authority Guide from leading emotional intelligence expert, Robin Hills, will help you change the way you think about yourself and the way you approach potentially difficult situations. You will be able to develop your own personal resilience and understand how to develop resilience within the hearts and minds of your team and your organisation.

Robin Hills is the director of Ei4Change and is based in Greater Manchester. He has over 30 years’ commercial and leadership experience having worked in a variety of sales and marketing management roles. His special interest lies in emotional intelligence and linking together the outputs from assessments to give real practical relevance to improve effectiveness and productivity.

 

‘The Authority Guide to Marketing Your Business Book: 52 easy-to-follow tips from a book PR expert’ by Chantal Cooke

It’s never too soon to start thinking about how to market and promote your book. In this Authority Guide, leading book PR and marketing expert Chantal Cooke, presents 52 tips that will make your book stand out from the crowd, build your credibility as an author, and ensure you achieve those all-important sales.

 Chantal Cooke is an award winning journalist, broadcaster and author. She has over 25 years’ experience as a columnist, broadcast and print journalist, and radio presenter for the BBC, commercial radio, national newspapers and magazines. Chantal has reported from Bosnia and Northern Ireland, and written travel articles for a variety of publications including the Independent on Sunday.

‘The Authority Guide to Financial Forecasting for SMEs: Pain-free financials for finance and planning’ by Simon Thompson

In this Authority Guide, forecasting guru Simon Thompson shows you how to build financial forecasts quickly, effectively and cheaply through his unique, proven and easy-to-follow 10-step process. By learning how to create effective forecasts you will master the ability to understand the potential financial outcomes for your business and be able to communicate financial information in order to successfully raise investment or loans.

Simon Thompson is a specialist in financial forecasting for small businesses. Established in 2011, his business ‘Edge Forecast’ has refined a unique combination of expertise, support and software, which has helped UK businesses raise millions of pounds of crowd-funded, angel and bank finance.

 

Each Authority Guide is packed full of useful information to help business leaders grow themselves, their teams and their business. 

For more information www.authorityguides.co.uk

Insights into Mindfulness Lightbulb Moments Cards

"Mindfulness is paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment."  Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus and creator of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme  at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Ei4Change has available Lightbulb Moments cards giving insights into various aspects of emotional intelligence.  These have been well received as a valuable resource in education, training and coaching.  

A new set of 18 Lightbulb Moments cards - Insights into Mindfulness - has just been published.

Lightbulb Moments are free to download from the Ei4Change website.  You can  access to all the Lightbulb Moments series and other free resources by clicking on the button.

Emotional Intelligence Programmes for 2016

Ei4Change – Emotional Intelligence 4 Change - are pleased to announce that we have a number of emotional intelligence training initiatives starting in 2016. 

In April 2016, we are running an Introduction to Emotional Intelligence workshop and leading into our Advanced Emotional Intelligence Programme.  Both are endorsed by the Institute of Leadership and Management who provide a Certificate on satisfactory completion of the required assessments.

These programmes cover an in depth look at the role and function of emotions and how emotional competencies can be used and applied.  They provide a complete picture of emotional intelligence how these principles enable people and organisations to improve their performance.  The tools and techniques that participants will learn can be applied immediately.

Our programmes commence on April 4th at The Woodland Grange, Leamington Spa.

Ei4Change is also running the Introduction to Emotional Intelligence Programme via webinars over 8 weeks starting on 20th April 2016.  This programme is ideal for you if you live and work outside the UK or if you are unable to commit the time to attend workshops.

Graduates from the Ei4Change Advanced Emotional Intelligence Programme can cement their learning by enrolling on the Master Practitioner in Emotional Intelligence Programme.  Again, this programme is endorsed by the Institute of Leadership and Management who provide a Certificate on satisfactory completion of the required assessments.

We are running a Master Practitioner in Emotional Intelligence Programme commencing on the 20th June 2016 at The Woodland Grange, Leamington Spa.

There is a 20% Earlybird discount on all courses at Woodland Grange up until 31st January 2016.

For more information on our emotional intelligence training, see our website www.ei4change.com or contact Robin Hills at Ei4Change via email robin@ei4change.org.uk

Introduction to DISC Personality Assessments

Everyone should be treated with care and respect. Whilst people are different, everyone has a value with special strengths and qualities. People very rarely set out to cause upset - they just behave differently. That’s because they are different.

Personality assessments are useful tools that can give some interesting insights into these differences around motivation, management style, communication, relationship building, etc.

The theories that underpin personality assessments are surprisingly easy to understand at a basic level. There are many different personality and motivational models and theories, and each one offers a different perspective.

One of the most widely used, well respected and highly developed models is based on the theories of Dr William Moulton Marston, from his book Emotions of Normal People (1928). His ideas have been developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota into a robust, validated assessment tool known as DISC.

The DISC model presents a series of four main descriptions (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance).

Dominance = Results driven - strategic planning and action towards identified aims - tends to be outspoken.

Influence = Influence, persuasion, affability - communication and people skills - tends to be extraverted.

Steadiness = Steadiness and process - routine, dependability, reliability, credibility, trustworthy - tends to be team-orientated.

Compliance = Compliant with rules, proven principles, detail, accuracy - tends to be introverted.

Most people have a dominant or preferred main type, plus one or two supporting types in different degrees, which are dependent upon the individual and the situation.  The main characteristics of their dominant or preferred type are displayed allowing for recognition of a broad range of generalised behaviours.

DISC testing instruments assess people's strongest or preferred type and their supporting types from the four available.   The results are represented on a series of graphs and personality descriptions based upon the mixture of the types.

Once identified and recognised, each type can be seen to react differently in a given situation, to work with tasks in their own way and to engage with people in different ways.  There is no right or wrong type, the important point is that each type has differing strengths and liabilities.

The research and development over the years means that DISC can give valuable insights into predicting behaviour in the workplace and behaviour under pressure. In recruitment, DISC can provide very valuable compliment to the interview process.

This article can only give a very quick overview of the tool. To find out more you can enrol for free in my class Behavioural Styles and Teamwork on Skillshare using this link - http://skl.sh/1OVbIF2

The best way to get a clear understanding of your own profile is to take the assessment provided by a reputable, respected company. From this you can see what the assessment shows and how it can support you as part of a recruitment process or in your personal and management development. If this is of interest to you, please get in touch at robin@ei4change.org.uk

The importance of testing for clear thinking in recruitment

Neuroscience is rapidly changing our understanding of how human memory works.  For many years it was widely believed that the human brain recorded events like a video camera and that events that had been completely forgotten could be could be retrieved and played back given the right set of circumstances.

We now know that the memory does not work in that way at all.  In fact the human brain reassembles and reorders various parts of an event when retrieving a memory.  It, in effect, creates a completely new memory, often including details that seem very real but which turn out later not to have taken place.

The same process takes place when the brain remembers words and orders them together either to think analytically or attempt to express thoughts.  Rather than having a dictionary-like definition, words in the brain are stored as an ever-changing set of connections that constantly update their meanings.

When people are reading, writing, listening or speaking, their brains create new connections and hence new definitions for many of the words, statement or phrases that it is processing.  This phenomenon manifests itself in the tendency of business discussions to devolve into dialogues around semantics rather than address the actual issues in question.

The brain’s inherent plasticity when using words greatly increases the value of business communications that are clear and precise.  That clarity and precision (or lack of it) is simultaneously rewiring the word connections and definitions both in the brain of somebody who is writing and speaking as well as the person who is listening or reading.

Fuzzy wording creates fuzzy thinking

Unlike communications that are clear and precise, business communications that are fuzzy and imprecise generate connections between words that are similarly ambiguous and unclear.  In other words, a feedback loop is taking place: fuzzy thinking creates fuzzy wording which in turn creates fuzzier thinking. 

Many organisations tolerate, indeed encourage, the use of fuzzy and imprecise wording in the form of acronyms, buzzwords and jargon.  The culture created is one where fast communication can appear to occur so that anyone who uses the key words feels as if they are an integral part of the organisation. 

This has been compounded in recent years by the trend for people to express themselves using quotation marks or inverted commas in both writing and speech.  This is an expression of thought in its original form phrased by the communicator without clearly defining exactly what they mean.  Often the phrase is a metaphor and in most circumstances there is understanding.  Caution is advised as the rules around the use of quotation marks varies with language.   All too often, we know what we mean and think that we are communicating clearly but in reality this is often not the case.  As an illustration, we when we talk we think people “get it” but in reality they “switch off” when they hear something that isn’t meaningful “in their world” and so may appear to be somewhat “dumb”.

Clear thinking creates clear wording which in turn creates clearer thinking.

What this means when recruiting

From the perspective of recruitment, it is important to understand how your communication style reflects the fuzzy thinking and imprecise wording of the industry that you recruit for and the clients that you work with.  It is obviously necessary to assess your clients’ tolerance towards industry acronyms, buzzwords and jargon and imprecise wording and how ingrained it is in their culture.  How much are you contributing to this by your desire to be recognised as an experience professional?

For those organisations who recruit people who communicate in a similar way, this will contribute to the amount of ambiguous thinking, which is going to impact on the communication capabilities within the overall organisation. 

In the future, recruiters must put additional emphasis on a candidate’s ability to write and speak with precision and clarity.  As a result, the recruitment process will tend to make the overall organisation progressively better at communicating internally and externally and so appear to be “smarter”.