Tom O'Neil: The power of resilience

According to the Resilience Institute's Global Resilience Report, New Zealand is just a teeny bit over the mean when it comes to the skill of "Resilience". Detailing the results of over 21,239 assessments from across the world in five languages, we scored 1.91 as a nation, ahead of Australia (1.89), Singapore (1.88) and the USA (1.85), but behind the six other nations surveyed including the UK (1.92), Germany & France (2.05) and the Netherlands, who gained the top score of 2.08.

The importance of a resilient national workforce

In a recent Harvard Business Review cited Global Corporate Challenge longitudinal survey of more than 1.5 million employees across 185 countries, it was reported that 36 per cent of employees reported feeling highly or extremely stressed at work on a regular basis.

As we all know, people work better when they are not under extreme pressure constantly. Therefore a high level of personal resilience is vital for effective leaders, teams and individuals, making their businesses and organisations more efficient and productive.

What is resilience?

According to the Resilience Institute "Resilience is a learned ability, through practical skills, that enables our capacity to bounce in adversity, grow our master skills, connect with others and find flow in work."

They believe there are more than 60 key factors that determine resilience, including:

●Mental health and "ability to bounce"

●Staying calm and managing stress

●Well-being and vitality, including sleep, nutrition and exercise

●Emotional intelligence including empathy and self-awareness

●Focus, influence, agility and decisiveness

In terms of positive findings for our country, we rated well against the other nine nations on a number of areas including Reported Fitness level (1st) and Not Being Self Critical (2nd). However, we bombed across other areas including Ability To Focus (7th) and Experiencing Flow State (9th). The only country to do worse in this metaphysical descriptor was Australia (10th), which makes me wonder if this is an Antipodean issue.

Moving Up

According to the Resilience Institute, ways to successfully develop and build sustainable workplace resilience in your own business includes:

●Defining the skill of resilience clearly as an organisation

●Frame resilience as a positive skill, rather than a negative

●Train leaders to support resilience amongst their teams

●Keep leaders visible and active

●Encourage social and team based activities around resilience

●Encourage walk and talk meetings during the day

●Bring natural light into the office

●Provide goal setting and tracking across your key activities

●Remove junk food and sugar drinks and provide healthy options

●Providing an emotional healthy place of work.

Coming back to the afore-mentioned HBR cited longitudinal survey, 87 per cent of people who say they are "not at all stressed", reported above-average productivity. Clearly, developing and promoting workspaces that engage and embrace the skill of resilience is therefore only good for your organisation.

Contact Tom O'Neil and the team at CV.CO.NZ for a free CV or LinkedIn assessment or to be your personal career coach. Visit CV.CO.NZ or CareerCoach.nz to find out more.