How To Build Resilience At Work

Resilience at work is the ability that allows us to flexibly assume the limit situations that arise in our professional environment. We talk about situations that produce huge stress spikes because they put our abilities to the test.

On the other hand, this anxiety is also fueled by another idea: we have to overcome these situations if we are to survive in the work environment in which we find ourselves.

Often, several of these extreme situations associated with a strong emotional impact occur in the personal sphere throughout our lives. For example, with the death of a close relative or a close friend, a romantic breakup or a serious illness. However, these situations can also appear in the work environment, so we talk about resilience at work.

In this sense, we may face a business problem for which we are solely responsible, failures of our own projects or legal issues that can lead an entrepreneur or employee to a personal crisis. Given this, a good resilience will help us get out of rock bottom.

How to develop our resilience at work?

Contrary to popular belief, resilience is not an innate quality of every person. Rather, it is an experience-sensitive skill. In fact, some people have managed to develop it by taking as an example someone close to this quality, but others have done so by facing problems and doing their best when it comes to solving them.

To develop our resilience capacity, we can follow some of these principles:

• First, people with resilience at work are very aware of their abilities and the areas in which they excel. At the same time, they know their limitations and the areas they are not comfortable with. In this way, they establish achievable goals and, to achieve them, use resources more logically, delegating or acquiring more tools before tackling tasks that do not so easily develop.

• They try to surround themselves with people with a positive outlook. On the contrary, pessimistic people provide nothing useful.
• Obstacles are seen as an opportunity to learn and grow. Therefore, we must keep in mind that one only grows with adversity.
• They are persevering and don’t give in to the first change because they know that success takes effort.
• They are flexible in the face of change, because they know that change and evolution is something necessary to improve. At work, changes are made in an optimistic way, knowing that they may imply an effort at the beginning, but that the goals will be more attainable after this period of adaptation is over.

How to be resilient at work?

Following the above ideas, we can gradually develop our resilience at work.  In addition, we can apply the characteristics of a resilient person in a more internal way, knowing ourselves and following these ideas:

• Increase awareness of our emotions, especially in times of stress. If we ignore fears, we can never have a positive attitude about them.
• Control stress and uncertainty. Resilient people have a greater ability to manage these two concepts that are so common in the workplace. While it’s not always so easy, the idea is not to let negative feelings overwhelm us and not let stress last too long or peak too high.
• Be flexible with others’ opinions. If we know how to adapt to changes, as we said before, even if they are negative, there is less chance of going wrong with them. If something new happens at work, disputes and divergent opinions will arise. Therefore, if we are able to practice active listening, we will avoid arguments and misunderstandings.

• Have patience. Occasionally, the obsession with getting short-term results leads us to make rash decisions, and that, at work, is the worst enemy. Therefore, patience and the ability to wait must be put into practice when medium or long-term goals prevail over the desires of the moment. Controlling impulses is guaranteed success in teamwork.

In this article, we describe the importance of resilience as an influencing variable on job success. In addition, we describe some strategies that can help us work towards resilience. Now, we just need to practice them and adapt them to our needs.