The Authority Guide to Emotional Resilience in Business

Strategies to manage stress and weather storms in the workplace

Robin Hills

• Publisher: The Authority Guides
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781909116603
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

How do your challenges inside and outside of work impact upon your emotions and your resilience? 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.

From setback to comeback

Facilitating change

Change is the only constant.

Constant change can be stressful: it challenges your ability to cope and can drain your resilience.

When implementing change, organisations often focus on the systems, processes and outcomes, but fail to understand or consider the emotional impact it will have on people. Equipping people both physically and emotionally to deal with change effectively will significantly develop the resilience of the individual, the team and the organisation.

• Find out as much as you can about any impending changes or challenges
• Understand the reasons for the changes or challenges and why it is happening
• Determine what isn’t changing
• Acknowledge what you will lose
• Shift your negativity towards creativity, improvisation and problem solving
• Break down problems and challenges into bite-size pieces
• Listen to others’ anxieties and fears
• Engage other people to develop a shared vision of a realistic, optimistic future
• Maintain a healthy balance around work commitments
• Celebrate your small victories

Resilience in change

Change is all around us. The pace of change seems to be unrelenting. It appears to occur faster and faster with every year, month or even week that passes. How you respond to change can make all the difference to how resilient you are to it.

Change can be a really valuable, exciting opportunity, with the right approach and focus, for organisations, for management teams – and, vitally, for people who will experience the changes and be the key people in taking the change forward to success.

Because with change comes a whole new set of emotions; it gives you the chance to authentically reconnect to who you truly are.

Coaching and empowering people through change are functions of effective leadership. The role of the leader in times of change is to:

• show the way, to explain the change journey and give meaning
• communicate (avoidance of delivering the message is not an option)
• understand the emotional impact that change will have, to care and to empathise
• clarify where there is uncertainty
• empower people and challenge where appropriate.

Look after yourself

During periods of change and uncertainty, it is essential to look after yourself. In order to be mentally tough and resilient, you need to be physically healthy. This includes:

• Eating healthily
• Drinking plenty of fluids
• Limiting alcohol and caffeine intake
• Taking regular breaks and holidays
• Taking regular exercise
• Using relaxation techniques that work for you
• Getting the right amount of sleep
• Getting support from family, friends and colleagues

Managing emotions

Before considering anyone else’s emotions, you need to be aware of your own emotions. How do you feel about the changes? Are you feeling completely comfortable and positive or do you have concerns? You may be fearful about your future or you may find yourself taking a lot of the blame and the criticism for the change, which may make you angry or upset.

It is important that you are able to understand and manage your own emotions, so that you don’t have a negative impact on those around you.

Managing your emotions does not mean denying your feelings or putting on a false front – it’s about behaving in a way that your emotions don’t cause damage to others.

Emotions are expressed in your body language, your voice, your tone and your behaviour. So it is important to be aware of how you come across to others and what needs to change.

People will need to feel that they can trust you and rely on you, so you need to manage your thoughts, feelings and behaviours so that you remain calm, collected and objective.

To ensure that you unders...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• Resilience versus coping
• From setback to comeback
• The characteristics of resilience
• The behaviours of resilience
• Action strategies to develop resilience
• Too much resilience
• Team resilience
• Organisational resilience
• References
• About the author