Tim Ellis: Boost your resilience and find the way out of the 'death spiral'

Resilience: Olympic 1500m hero Nick Willis. Photo / Kenny Rodger

These are challenging times for organisations, the individuals who work in them, their families, friends and associates.

But are we making it all harder for ourselves than we really need to? The evidence suggests that we are.

At the core of the problem is anxiety. This is being felt at work and at home; it is draining individual and organisational resilience to an extent not seen in most of our working lives. Its toll on performance is increasingly evident and is compounded by the resource constraints under which we have to work.

There is much talk of "resilience" - it is a word creeping ever more prominently into management and sporting jargon, heard more frequently in the media, at dinner parties and at our local cafés. It is a condition many of us need and openly aspire to, but one that too few of us truly understand and even fewer possess.

If stress, health problems, relationship difficulties, lost peace of mind and purpose are to be avoided - and their negative effect on organisational performance, productivity and profitability - then public and private sector leadership must take time to reflect. It must reflect on what it takes to remain whole when everything around us seems at best unstable and turbulent and at worst disastrous.

WHAT IS RESILIENCE?
Resilience is the ability to remain engaged in our life and work - to be calm, energised, engaged, focused and purposeful, regardless of what we may encounter.

Resilience is the learnable ability to:

* Bounce back from adversity - toughness and recovery capability.
* Thrive on challenges - optimism and full engagement.
* Reach our potential - talent and skill.
* Influence others positively - empathy and compassion.

While most of us would be comfortable applying this description at an individual level - to ourselves - it is important to recognise that it is equally applicable to our workplaces. It is fair for us all to ask just how resilient the culture of the organisation we work in really is and whether it is resilient enough.

HOW CAN WE BUILD RESILIENCE?
Resilience can be learned, but to do this effectively a framework must be established and acknowledged against which our progress - individually and collectively - can be reviewed.

THE HUMAN PERFORMANCE SUPPLY CHAIN
The importance of aligning our physiology, emotions, thinking and actions is paramount. These are the essential building blocks of resilience, all of which can be more effectively managed when we better understand them. We don't have to achieve perfection in these areas - this is all but impossible - but the act of making improvements (even modest ones) in these vital components of our lives can yield dramatic changes for the better.

Once we understand the need to align the components of our individual performance supply chains, we can begin to explore more confidently how the challenges of our modern lives contrive to throw it out of balance.

THE DEATH SPIRAL AND RESILIENCE THERMAL
In today's world we seem to have an almost morbid determination to demonstrate to ourselves and to others how "stressed out of our mind" we are. For many of us a lack of stress is almost a cause for embarrassment - we can't be trying hard enough, we are not committed, we are leaving it all to others!

Too many organisations appear to expect a level of stress in the workplace; we hear comments like "it comes with the territory" or "this is what people are paid for" or, more menacingly, "if you can't take the pressure, clear off out of the way and let someone step in who can".

We must not to fall into the trap of thinking life should be a breeze and that any organisation or person expecting a bit of hard work is being unreasonable or, heaven forbid, exploitative. The issue here is that too much unmanaged stress impairs performance and we all suffer - the individual, colleagues, organisations, families, friends and associates.

How do we manage ourselves better?

The answer lies in understanding the symptoms of the "Death Spiral". Space does not permit a detailed discussion of these symptoms and their cures, but if you have ever felt overwhelmed by having too many decisions to make, too many people wanting your attention, too many meetings to attend, too much clutter flying around in your head, then you were at the top end of the spiral looking down into it.

And if you have ever experienced such discomforts as those below, you have been down at other, potentially more dangerous, levels of the spiral:

* Driving home from work, only to find that you can't remember the journey.

* Reading a business report or letter, only to realise you have taken none of it in.

* Suddenly feeling incapable of doing something - making a presentation, a speech, going into a tough negotiation, dealing with a difficult issue at home.

* Stopping your meticulous exercise routine (if you have one) or having no enthusiasm for it any more.

* Finding that from after lunch on Sunday there is a dull ache in your stomach, because tomorrow is Monday.

* Waking at 3am with a whir of voices, ideas and worries spinning around in your head.

The key to working this out lies in the "Resilience Thermal". This consists of a treasure chest of tools and techniques, ideas and inspiration for systematically managing our stress levels, ensuring our physical vitality and building our emotional competence and thinking skills.

Exercise, sleep, breathing, posture, listening to our emotions and battling the negative with the power of the positive; taking a critical look at long-held beliefs and challenging them, can all move us towards a much healthier, happier, more productive state, improve and lengthen our lives and make us a more positive influence on those around us.

Most encouragingly of all, resilient organisations are today nurturing resilient people by placing emphasis on these neglected areas of corporate and individual wellbeing. These are the places to be when times get particularly hard.

Tim Ellis is a partner in The Resilience Institute, based in Auckland.