Building Resiliency: How to Thrive in Times of Change

Pulley, Wakefield

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9781882197675
• eBook ISBN: 9781604916676
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Liderazgo

It is sometimes hard to accept change - particularly when it is delivered as a hardship, disappointment, or rejection. But by developing resiliency managers can not only accept change, but learn, grow, and thrive in it. This guidebook defines resiliency, explains why it's important, and describes how you can develop your own store of resiliency. It focuses on nine developmental components that, taken together, create a sense of resiliency and increase your ability to handle the unknown and to view change - whether from disappointment or success - as an opportunity for development.

Becoming Resilient

Beginning early in life you have developed behaviors and perspectives that have enhanced or hindered your ability to be resilient and adaptable as an adult. Yet resiliency can be developed. It’s possible to change your views, habits, and responses by modifying your thoughts and actions in nine areas: acceptance of change, continuous learning, self empowerment, sense of purpose, personal identity, personal and professional networks, reflection, skill shifting, and your relationship to money.

These nine areas aren’t separate facets of resilience but intertwined and interrelated themes. Each builds on the others, influences the others, and in concert with the others can bolster your resiliency and your skill in handling change. By improving in all of these areas you broaden your outlook and become less narrowly focused – more able to adapt to change.

Acceptance of Change

Change is constant and inevitable, and to some managers it brings an overwhelming discomfort. The roots of that discomfort can sometimes be traced to such feelings as fear (How can I continue to succeed when the rules have changed?) or a need to exert control (If I don’t do it my way, the way I have always done it, then it won’t be done right). Other managers try to deny change by focusing on the skills that have brought them past success and ignoring gaps in their leadership competencies. But sooner or later a change for which they are not prepared results in a mistake with serious consequences – a missed promotion, negative appraisal, demotion, or termination.

“He couldn’t change. He had a rigid and outdated management style. He was inflexible and people got tired of it.”

Successful managers accept change and adapt to it. If you find yourself uncomfortable with the idea of change, you can increase your resiliency in this area by creating an accurate portrait of yourself and an accurate picture of your environment. Here are three actions you can take to build up your resiliency by becoming more accepting of and adaptable to change.

1. Pay attention to the people and the work around you. Don’t bury yourself in a narrow channel of work or you risk being blindsided. Seek out new challenges that stretch your skills or that minimize your weaknesses.

2. Pay attention to your physical and mental well-being. If you feel discomfort, which is natural when changes occur, take that as a signal to further explore your feelings and thoughts about the change. Use the Resiliency Worksheet on pages 22 and 23 as a guide to exploring your reaction to change.

3. Examine change on its own terms. Decide which changes you can control and which changes you can’t control. For example, if your organization gives your team a new performance mandate, you manage that change through your team leadership. But if your organization undergoes a downsizing or reacts dramatically to a market shift, that kind of change is beyond what you can control. In that case it’s better to move your energies away from the anxiety spawned by the change and toward developing new skills and bolstering current strengths.

Accepting Change Is Crucial

According to research from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), the number one reason managers derail – fall off the “track of success” – is their inability to change or adapt during a transition. North American managers said 55 percent of the most successful managers they knew displayed the ability to adapt (European managers put the number even higher at 67 percent). That ability to adapt, that resiliency, was the most frequently mentioned success factor in CCL’s most recent study of executive derailment.

Continuous Learning

The nature of resiliency asks that you acquire new skills and understanding and be able to apply them during times of change. Many managers resist learning new ways, holding on to old behaviors and skills even when changes make it obvious that they don’t work anymore. If you find yourself in that description, think about your resistance. It may be that you think your old ways are important to who you are and that changing might somehow affect your identity. Your old skills and behaviors might be deeply connected to your self-w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• What Is Resiliency?
• Why Is Resiliency Important?
• Becoming Resilient
• Resiliency Worksheet
• Suggested Readings
• Background
• Key Point Summary