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Competency Coordinates: Resilience

Keeping calm and recovering quickly when facing resistance, reproach and setbacks, responding well to and being accountable for own errors, switching between different tasks and engaging in informal learning without effort.

Why you should embrace (not run away from) setbacks and errors

  • Have you ever notice that when people do something wrong, there is a tendency to run away instead of moving towards the error. There is a tendency to justify wrongdoings (e.g., forgetting the keys inside the house) with vague sentences (e.g., “the keys stayed inside the house”) and external attributions (e.g., “there was a noise in the bag that fooled me”) instead of assuming the responsibility (e.g., “I forgot the keys inside the house”).
  • There is a clear consequence from running away from errors – if we are the ones responsible (which, at least to some degree, that is more often than not the case) we never change the actual cause of the wrongdoings. Many people feel like they keep trapped in a loop of bad luck, bad jobs or bad relationships simply because the natural tendency is for people to run (away instead of inspecting) their agency and contribution to the problem.
  • There are many reasons why you should inspect setbacks and errors with curiosity, acceptance, and without guilt:
    • Self-knowledge. This is one of the most important tributes you can pay to yourself, to know what you are made of. Not an idealized version, a real version of yourself, with flaws and errors along with all the accomplishments and successes.
    • Agency. Learning what were your stakes in a wrongdoing substantially improves the odds of success when you face the same problem again. Instead of hoping for “better luck this time”, you can acknowledge the difficulties in advance and find better responses.
    • Moral compass. Many setbacks result from being in a complex context where right and wrong is not black and white. Approaching these setbacks is a way to strengthen your moral compass and to make it easy to keep your personal values centred, even in complex contexts.

The hidden powers of becoming resilient!

  • Self-knowledge, agency, and a moral compass are likely results of inspecting setbacks and errors with curiosity, acceptance, and without guilt. But being resilient has many more consequences that are particularly important for social practitioners. For example, research in the work environment shows that resilience is positive on work satisfaction, engagement, general well-being and mental health. However, one of the single most important consequences of resilience for social practitioners is the development of stronger relationships.
  • Many people believe that sharing their own errors is a sign of fragility. Research shows quite the opposite! Acknowledging a wrongdoing (as opposed to discounting it or attributing it to an external cause) makes people more human, tangible, and comparable to other people and, consequently, makes other people more likely to get closer and help to reduce the magnitude of the challenge at hand. It can be said that being comfortable with your setbacks and errors makes it more likely that you will overcome those setbacks! Remember, unity is strength.

Tips to build up resilience

1. Acknowledge that the natural tendency is to run away from errors and setbacks

  • Human cognition works towards positive self-image and justifying our personal errors. Learn how to understand this constant force and (to some extent) overcome it in your benefit in the Carol Travis and Elliot Aronson book named “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)”.

2. Train your resilience

  • Many people have the (false) belief that people cannot change – people are what they are in their nature. Although some things that are anchored to our personality can be difficult to change, for others, like resilience, all that is required is training the underlying skills. The Savvy Psychologist Ellen Hendriksen offers a 9 minute guide on what are these skills and how you can improve them in her podcast, here. Some examples are: let yourself feel bad and uncomfortable with a setback every once in a while, understand what you can and cannot control, and scale your expectations for yourself.

3. See resilience in action

  • The history of other people is a good way of seeing in practice what resilience can do for you. The HBR Anxious Achiever podcast tells the story of Aarti Shahani’s journey to becoming a successful journalist and how much of that was inspired by an emotionally demanding context. Another HBR podcast, the Cold Call, depicts the challenging decisions faced by the CEO of MetricStream, Shellye Archambeau, and how she achieves resilience in such a complex context.
References
  • Cross, R., Dillon, K., & Greenberg, D. (2021, January 29). The Secret to Building Resilience. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/01/the-secret-to-building-resilience
  • Connor, K. M., & Davidson, J. R. T. (2003). Development of a new Resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson Resilience scale (CD-RISC). Depression and Anxiety, 18(2), 76-82.
  • Edmondson, A. C., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2020, October 19). Today’s Leaders Need Vulnerability, Not Bravado. Harvard Business Review.