Building Resilience in Challenging Times

April 2010

Erica Edmands Potential Spaces Australia

0438 389 083 www.potentialspaces.com.au

Our logo – Potential Spaces

About our logo - The Himalayan Blue Poppy

The Himalayan Blue poppy is a native of southeastern Tibet.

Responsive to its environment, with the right balance of water, light, air and soil this plant is extremely resilient and adaptable and will produce the spectacular, saucer shaped, bright blue flowers that make it such a sought after specimen.

Its ability to adapt, its resilience, uniqueness and its messages of ecological sustainability reflect the values which underpin our organisation.

Overview of today’s session

  What is resilience?

  Why do we need to build our resilience?

  Aligning our core talents with our values

  Collaborative conversations on building our resilience using World Café

  Harvest our collective insights

  Personal planning and coaching for resilience

  Workshop close

What is resilience?

  The ability to ‘bounce back’ from adversity, or rise above a situation

  The capacity to handle challenges & opportunities of work & life by doing things which include:

–  Recognising the signs & symptoms that for you indicate your resilience is slipping - your stressors and physiological responses

–  Knowing the best way to ride life’s ups & downs for you to stay well, feel energized and in control

–  To act in a resilient manner

Resilience and Stressors

Stressors can have quite a number of different characteristics:

•  External, physical stimulus (heights or a loud noise). •  An event, (loosing your job, divorce, starting a new role). •  An internal thought or worry. For example you suddenly

think that you forgot to turn off the stove – no event has occurred but the stressor is real.

•  Long term like a family member with an ongoing illness or a debilitating injury or dissatisfying job, or it can be acute like a sudden shock. It can be in the past (bereavement) or in the future as an anticipated negative event, like a public speaking engagement.

What are your stressors? Make a list of 5.

Resilience - Response

•  We often respond whilst we are feeling the effects of the emotional response.

•  What does that look like for you? Think about how this affects your behaviour at work and home.

•  What sort of impact do you think this will have on your teams/colleagues/family?

•  We have a choice in how we respond. You may not be responsible for the events in your life but you are in control of your response to those events.

STOP I often feel anxious, irritable, nervous, teary, tired, steamrollered or plain worn out for no reason or reasons with no control. I struggle to concentrate or make decisions. I am relying on caffeine, alcohol, drugs, pain killers or smoking too much. My health is deteriorating and I see no way out. *

THINK I am having: difficulty sleeping, diarrhoea, constipation tense neck, shoulder, jaw frequent headaches pounding heart heartburn, wind, bloating or indigestion a cold or bug that lingers outbursts loss of patience no time for me people saying I am working too hard I am slipping into using drugs, gambling, alcohol or smoking to get through the week

GO I feel great, alive, full of life. I am on top of life’s challenges and pressures. I have good systems in place to pace myself. My life is pretty balanced through a daily exercise program, eating healthily, weight under control, not smoking and having a few drinks on the weekend only.

Where Are You Right Now?

© mental health at work: Ingrid Ozols (mn@work, 2008) Potential Spaces

Where Are You Right Now?

© mental health at work: Ingrid Ozols (mn@work, 2008) Potential Spaces

Activity

Potential Spaces

How do we build our resilience – a holistic approach?

The inner work

(the mind, the soul)

Physiological (the body)

Environment Building

Relationships

Physiological strategies

Our body is an excellent communicator for how we are feeling.

  Breathing, regulation   Yoga   Review of diet/nutrition   Exercise regime   Increasing flexibility   Getting adequate sleep

Physiological (the body)

The inner work of resilience - thinking strategies

One of the most effective ways of regulating how your thoughts may be impacting how you feel.

  Mindfulness meditation   Guided imagery   Cognitive reframing   Learning to problem solve   Perspective shifting   Reading & self education

The inner work

(the mind, the soul)

The inner work of resilience

Kevin Cashman, Leadership from the Inside Out: discovering your sweet spot

The inner work

(the mind, the soul)

Authentic happiness – Martin Seligman www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu

Resilience and being in-flow

Optimal happiness and engagement is based on your capacity to understand and cope with the range of positive and negative emotions you experience at work

We find flow when we find equal balance between our personal level of skill in completing our work and the challenge of work itself

Your core talents

Thing about the times when you’ve felt at your best, when you’re energised and engaged. Now ask yourself and respond to the following questions and statements:

1) What gifts can people count on me for? 2) When I am making a difference, creating value, my talents that “show up” are… 3) Other people tell me I make a difference by: 4) When I am working with others, and we are most energised and engaged, I am contributing… 5) In summary, my Core Talents – the gifts that I have that make a difference – are:

What are your Core Values?

  What do you value most in your life?

  What are your key values?

  What are your passions?

  What makes you tremble?

  Why do you do the work you do?

Environmental strategies

Factors external to us can impact on how we feel at work.

  Modifying, working hours   Changing the office layout   Modifying expectations   Limiting, unnecessary stress   Playing relaxing music   Adjusting work flows   Questioning organisational

structure – does enable resilience?   Creating physical spaces   Planning your ideal week – making

the time for you

Environment

Building resilience through building relationships

  “a problem shared is a problem halved”

    connecting and sharing how we

feel with others provides us with the opportunity to vent our feelings and reconsider how we want to be feeling about an issue

  when expressing our emotions we do begin to feel differently

  others might also provide us with an additional perspective on how we feel – it’s not about judging you!

Building Relationships

Building resilience through building relationships

Conversational leadership

 a leader’s intentional use of conversation as a core process to cultivate the collective intelligence needed to create value

 It is a leadership praxis, an approach to leadership that is embedded and embodied in a leader’s very ‘being’

 true solutions and innovation lie not in one leader or one viewpoint, but in the bigger picture of an organisation's collective intelligence

Building Relationships

World cafe!

Choose a table host

 Remind people at your table to jot down key connections, ideas, discoveries, and deeper questions as they emerge.

  Remain at the table when others leave and welcome travelers from other tables when the next question begins.

 Briefly share key insights from the prior conversation so others can link and build using ideas from their respective tables.

I’m a table host – what do I do?

Potential Spaces

World café conversations

1) How do I build resilience in myself as a leader?

Mini - harvest

What is the essence of your conversation?

Write up your collective essence, a word or a short statement on the coloured paper on your table

We will come around and collect it.

World café conversations

2) How can we support each other in building our resilience?

Mini - harvest

What is the essence of your conversation?

Write up your collective essence, a word or a short statement on the coloured paper on your table

We will come around and collect it.

World café conversations

3) How do we build resilience within our teams?

Mini - harvest

What is the essence of your conversation?

Write up your collective essence, a word or a short statement on the coloured paper on your table.

We will come around and collect it.

Personal reflection and planning

Let the following questions guide you to committing yourself to practices that will enhance your energy and resilience.

  What can I do to improve the quality of my activity or reduce the quantity to bring more resilience to my lifestyle?

  What can I do to improve the quality of rest to revitalise myself?   What habits do I need to replace with more positive behaviours?   What are my internal motivators for achieving more resilience?   What is my vision for the more resilient life I want to live?   How is my pursuit of wants vs. needs complicating my life and

taking away from my life vision?   What is my plan to build more energy?

Identify one or two goals/challenges to work on moving forward.

Circle close

1)  What has been a major learning insight for you today?

2)  What seed might we plant together today that could make the most difference to a

resilient future?

Thank you for your participation and thank you to the Upstairs Room

Erica Edmands

Potential Spaces Australia 0438 389 083

www.potentialspaces.com.au sarah@theupstairsroom.com.au

The Upstairs Room