Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Myth 1: Resilience Is Being Tough

'I don't like self-absorption.'

'There are no mistakes, only opportunities. Resilient people always reframe mistakes.'

Chapter Overview

This chapter sets out to bust one of the greatest myths of resilience: that it's about being tough. Whilst being strong is an outcome of resilience, being tough is not. Toughness leads to brittleness, the opposite of adaptability.

The chapter will help you connect with your own perceptions of resilience and toughness. It sets out how you can so easily get caught between unhelpful polarities of good versus bad in relationship to many drivers behind resilience, like being right versus wrong, or strong versus weak. It offers the Resilient Way, an alternative view to this polarisation that embraces a more flexible approach.

Finally, you then get the chance to review this kind of new thinking for yourself via reflective exercises.

The Resilience Scene

Hands up, do any of the following statements resonate with you? Or are they part of your organisation's culture?

Don't show your emotion unless you're happy and smiling.

Just say everything is 'fine'.

Don't show you are feeling vulnerable.

Don't show you are stressed.

Don't show you don't know.

Beat yourself up for being so stupid, but only after they have gone.

Do show when you've punched through the challenge.

Do show when you've beaten the opposition.

Do show when you're ok.

Do show when you're feeling smart.

Do show when you've done a lot of smart things.

Any of these statements running around your own head? Unvoiced possibly, but still driving your action? Do any of these drive your organisation? You may have a lot of learnt values from your upbringing, your workplace, your friends. You may collectively live this kind of culture. And these result in a set of values, not necessarily your own, that drive the way you live.

It ends up a bit like a set of polarities that you have to choose sides on:

Good vs Bad

Strong vs Weak Win vs Lose Right vs Wrong Control vs Out of control Keep going vs Give up Power vs Powerless Knowledge vs Don't know (aka stupid)
Hard vs Soft Unemotional vs Emotional Just do it vs Try

What about you?

[??] Write down

Go through the attributes on the left-hand side, the Good side, and tick which you are drawn towards.

[??] Review

How many out of the Good ten are you strongly pulled towards?

What thoughts do you have whilst doing this exercise?

The Problem

The mantra becomes 'If you want the Good side, you need to embrace all of the Good behaviours'. What an effort involved! No failure accepted, have to keep going at all costs, got to know-know-know, got to be ok in front of everyone.

The alternative? Not the Bad side, please! Many of the attributes on the right hand side are unattractive depending on your life values and those around you. In fact your primary motivators may be about being driven away from these – you'd do anything to ensure you don't appear weak, wrong, a loser.

[??] Write down

Go through the attributes on the right hand side, the Bad side, and cross through those you dislike.

[??] Review

How many of the ten attributes on the Bad side do you find distasteful?

How many do you really abhor?

What thoughts do you have whilst doing this exercise?

Becoming aware of whether you are drawn towards or driven away from in these matters is part of the deeper matter of resilience building. Being driven away is a temporary state: when you are close to the thing you want not to be, you create action to shift away. Once you are further away, you ease up the action a little; indeed you may stop it altogether.

Take the example of not wanting to be overweight. Weight management measures kick in strongly when the person is feeling overweight, what they might refer to in their internal self-talk as 'fat'. They dislike feeling like this so move away from it, but their efforts to lose weight decrease and indeed stop altogether once the danger of feeling 'fat' is gone:

The you-have-to-be-tough mantra may come from either side, Good or Bad, but in The Resilience Engine's experience, this myth is fuelled most strongly where someone has an 'away driver', to ensure they don't look weak or stupid. This 'away from' engenders a kind of superhuman, always-on effort to ensure you appear the opposite of what you consider Bad:

If you feel you don't know enough? [right arrow] you aim to know lots and lots!

If you feel like you're emotional? [right arrow] you aim to hide your emotions.

If you feel you just can't go on, and think this is weak? [right arrow] you do the opposite,
you go straight back with force,
without necessarily changing anything.

It's as if you're using your own self as a battering ram. And what gets battered is your resilience including your wellbeing.

The 'hijack'5

A lot of energy is spent making sure you don't fall into looking like anything on the 'Bad' side. The level of hold that this can have on you is intense. As George Kohlrieser describes in 'Hostage at the Table',you can get 'hijacked'. Our partners, The Healthy Workforce, talk about the 'amygdala hijack'. This is when you suffer from brain freeze because of sensory overload and being emotionally charged. It's where the cortisol, the 'stress hormone', shoots up whilst the oxytocin, the 'cuddle hormone', your feel-good hormone, shoots down. See Chapter 7 for more. The Resilience Engine observes this kind of 'lock' in many situations: in work, in home life, in decision making, in the dealing with difficult stuff, in planning a new process.

Culturally, whether in your workplace or in your communities, this can be massively exaggerated when looking at groups and teams.

This is how it is amongst team members who have learnt that failure is not acceptable. They work always to ensure success and that in turn might mean subtly toning down expectation or setting goals that are, whilst comfortable, not that motivating. Thus mediocrity gets borne.

Or the team that can't handle emotion. Emotion or being emotional is bad. So don't show it, keep it in, even if it eats you. Cramming your emotions down and down inside into some inner deep pocket with a strong zip so that it stays shut is simply unhealthy: not only do you not honour what you need in the moment, you risk three other much longer-term health and performance-impacting issues:

o The first is personal but has a big impact on others – emotions that are tucked away bubble up or even boil up at unexpected times, and in situations that don't merit their full force.

Thus you can be really angry when one of your team casually challenges a decision you make, and instead of pushing back on their challenge in an appropriately casual manner, you ROAR at them. It's not because of that particular challenge, but because of the inner strength of resentment about other criticism levied at your door that hasn't been dealt with and has been eating away inside.

O The second, for the whole team, is that you miss the possibility of high performance. A high performing team will recognise, honour and develop the emotional side of the team's relationships, to be in service of one another and their overall goals. Not honouring emotions means opportunities for high performance get missed:

• Emotional safety through trust is denied. Emotional safety is needed to say 'I don't know'.

• Debate and challenge is denied. This naturally aims to shift the status quo (and therefore destabilises what has been safe thus far) of the team.

• New ideas and perspectives are not generated. Innovation is curtailed.

Note that embracing emotion within a team doesn't mean sitting around crying or spending ages in deep, emotional sharing. Honouring emotions can be done briefly – a short explanation, a question or supportive statement, a moving to recognise the impact, and an accommodation and potentially specific support.

O The third and last major effect of denying emotions is again personal: you prevent yourself from developing the awareness required for you to understand the emotion, and what you need from it. For example, you may feel angry but just need a hug. Or you may feel angry and recognise that the level of anger is greater than the situation merits, and it's really that you're exhausted and everything is out of perspective. So instead of addressing the anger, you need to address your tiredness.

Being resilient means spotting what you actually need, rather than where your reactions take you. When someone else upsets you, instead of seeking justice or getting angry, you let go of the anger. If you are mad with yourself, it means letting yourself off the hook. Being resilient often means accepting that it's time to rest. That takes self-awareness.

Developing self-awareness towards self-acceptance is one of the inner biggies of resilience.

The Resilient Way

Holding on intensely to a singular option, either away from 'Bad', or towards 'Good' behaviours, is a brittle approach. It is the opposite of adaptability, a resilient way of being. The Resilient Way is altogether different:

Good Bad Resilient Way Unresilient Way

Strong Weak Self-acceptance Without voice and with voice where safe

Plus the grace to wisely use the power that comes from self-
acceptance

Win Lose Learn Bypass the learning

Struck in learning short-cuts that stop change being effective

Right Wrong There are many One way only
'right' solutions often my way is the only way

Enquire Have to be seen to know

Control Out of Take Shirkin control responsibility and responsibility accountability and for what you can, accountability let go of the rest Placing blame on others

Keep going Give up Expect to change Keep going no path to achieve matter what same goal (on the same Solution)

Change will be OR driven by data Give up without gathered along knowing why the way and what

The resources needed for the change identified and made available

Power Powerless With power Without power that comes from Without voice confidence,
synergies with resilience

Plus the grace to effect that power wisely

Knowledge Don't know I can Learn I must know

Not knowing will make me seen stupid

Hard Soft Flexible Inflexible

Unemotional Emotional Accept and Hiding or honour all blocking emotions whilst emotions remaining resourceful

Just do it Try Experiment and Try, try, try learn with openness and curiousity

Applying the Resilient Way

Which is more attractive?

[C] The Resilience Engine 2019

You can do this as a solo or team exercise.

[??] Step 1

Write down

Circle the items in the Resilient Way column that you are attracted to.

[??] Review

For the Resilient Way, how many out of the ten are you strongly pulled towards?

Step 2

[??] Write down

Circle the items in the Unresilient Way column that you find least attractive.

[??] Review

For the Unresilient Way, how many do you really abhor?

Step 3

[??] Change

Which list do you want to operate from: the Good/Bad or the Resilient Way/Unresilient Way?

The key difference in living the Resilient Way is being intentional. What new intentions might you consider in contexts where you are stuck between the Good versus Bad?

[??] Commit

What intention for yourself and your resilience will you now hold?

Stories of Resilience

John

John is a senior leader in a large leading corporation which operates in a very competitive marketplace. John has got to his position on what he knows, and his ability to translate that directly and quickly into action within the organisation. John is very bright and runs a good ship. He is aware of the speed of his processing and that his style is quite dominating, and has managed across the years to find a comfortable middle way, where he consults with others before making decisions. Everything in the end still goes through him, but he is happy that he has improved his delegation skills.

John has new team members who are very different to him. They are also bright and knowledgeable, and are a lot more comfortable in relying on the opinion of their staff without having to know the detail. John doesn't like this, and finds it quite easy to catch them off guard. John is showing that his resilience, whilst high, is not as high as he imagines it to be. He might be caught at the level that The Resilience Engine calls Bounceback. (See Chapter 5 for a full definition of Bounceback.)

His behaviour is beginning to grate on his team, and he suspects the recent resignations of two of his senior people are related, although the reasons quoted were quite different. John doesn't really see that he can change much after all these years, and just decides to get on with it. He has a nasty surprise, however, when his new executive director gives him a difficult performance review and tells him he needs to change his management style otherwise the company will end up losing more good people. John is at a loss as to what all this means and what he can do about it. John feels stuck, and is very angry with the whole situation.

John's ability to adapt is low, and he resents being forced into a situation where he doesn't know what to do. His resilience is related to his ability to control things, and when he can't control, his resilience plummets. Instead he gets caught in anger and resentment, and with this there is an increased danger of his performance dropping. John's resilience falls back, sometimes at Bounceback when he is in his comfort zone, but overall lower, where he is having to cope with this new situation and the pressure on him to change.

Without learning how to adapt, John's performance will be stuck and he risks his position in the company. It's make or break time for him.

[??] The Resilience Lens

How much did John's story resonate with you?

John is clearly a high performer and proud of that. Which blind spots does he suffer from that constrain his resilience?

What might your blind spots be that hold your resilience to ransom?

The Bottom Line

Resilience defined as being all about mental or physical toughness can be a very strong driver within organisations, groups and teams. However, instead of enabling flexibility (which is true resilience), it encourages a resistance towards something, a toughening up 'in the face of ', a push against. If sustained, this forcefulness leads to brittleness which in turn destroys the possibility of a truer, more flexible set of responses. Being tough can lead to burnout.

If this is one of the myths that you are attracted to, you can start to shift your thinking. Start by noticing. Being present, one of the Top Enablers of resilience, is your ticket to widening your perspective. See Chapter 9 for more on how to be present. Once you notice more, you will understand more. And that in turn will create the conditions for a more flexible response.

This is living the Resilient Way.

Myth 2: Resilience Is Having More Control

* * *

'I've had to relinquish control. I'm not frightened of the future – you just have to trust yourself.'

Alternative view

Person 1: Knock knock.

Person 2: Who's there?

Person 1: Control Freak. Now you say, 'Control Freak who?'

Chapter Overview

This chapter will challenge your thinking on whether or not you need control.

Within your day-to-day life, you may well believe that having control is a good thing. Life, however, does not always afford you this; many things are not within your control and this can feel very uncomfortable.

This chapter sets out a different way of looking at control. Instead of a fixed view of control, it offers the Resilient Way, where control is considered alongside taking responsibility and accountability. The chapter explores the balance between control, responsibility and accountability, and how high-resilience people proactively manage how to respond to different situations.

Finally, you get the chance to review this kind of new thinking for yourself via reflective exercises.

The Resilience Scene

Google Trends shows up all sorts of interesting searches that the world is using. Google Trends is a search trends feature that shows how frequently a given search term is entered into Google's search engine relative to the site's total search volume over a given period of time. Here is what you find for the word 'control' in the twelve months from 1 May 2018 to 30 April 2019:

The index delivered on the search term 'control' shows a near 100% use across time. That means we're searching on the term 'control' pretty much all the time – it has become normal.

In comparison to the word 'stress', 'control' seems to be much more significant:

The word 'control' comes up in all sorts of terms beyond the concept of self-control. Often it is about placing restrictions on undesirable outcomes, such as 'crime control'. Or it's about managing risks, e.g. financial control. Self-control is the ability to restrain one's own emotions and actions and the term is included in the Google data above.

The graphs above show that there is a saturation of the concept of needing to have control; it's in everything and everywhere. It's so normal you may not even notice your drive for it. The Resilience Engine aims to bring awareness of this normalisation of the drive for control. It's a myth that you need control in every situation to feel ok, to feel safe.

[??] Write down

Often we play a game at the beginning of any conference slot or with a wide audience. You can do the same right here, right now:

o Rate yourself from 1 to 10 on a 'control-freak' scale, where 10 is a total control freak and 1 is totally laid back.

Go on, give it a go.

What is your score?

O Now, rate yourself from 1 to 10 on your stress levels, where 10 is dangerously stressed and 1 is not stressed at all.

[??] Review

Compare and contrast the two scores, and how they might be related.

With large groups, for question 1 above, we invite everyone to stand up, and we count down from ten through to one, asking people to sit down when it gets to their number. It is rare for many or indeed any participants to be left standing after the number 5; at least half and very often two thirds of any group have sat down by the rating of 7. The same result is borne out again and again, whether in the game above, or whether in our media or where we seem to want control in our lives.

The Problem

The issue is that you cannot always have control.

Review

Consider different situations where you would prefer to have control but just don't!

What about your team? Does each member actually deliver what you need them to in exactly the way that you would wish?

What about your kids? Do they do what you ask them?

---

Excerpted from "The Resilience Dynamic®"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Jenny Campbell.
Excerpted by permission of Practical Inspiration Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---