Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction 00:01:54: Your resilience range and resilience reserves 00:03:13: Idea for action 1: focus on your world outside of work 00:04:10: Idea for action 2: simple pleasures that make you smile 00:05:47: Go-to guru 00:06:07: Relevant podcast episode 00:06:16: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This episode is part of our Skills Sprint series.  We've recorded 20 episodes, each less than seven minutes long, that we hope are going to help you to build some career development momentum.  In every episode, we talk about a Squiggly Skill, what it is and why it matters, share an idea for action each, and give you a go-to guru and a podcast episode so you can learn more.  And we want you to turn your skills sprint into a learning streak.  And so for everyone who completes a 20-day learning streak, we'll be offering you a free Five Skills to Succeed in a Squiggly Career virtual workshop in September.  If you post about your progress on social and tag us @amazingif, and we'll be in touch to tell you more.

Helen Tupper: In this Skills Sprint, we're going to be talking about resilience.  And this is one of the topics that we covered in our book, You Coach You, so I feel like we spent quite a lot of time on the topic of resilience.  And when we wrote You Coach You as well, it was during the pandemic.  So, I think we personally --

Sarah Ellis: We were being resilient, we were living the dream!

Helen Tupper: We definitely needed it!  And there's a nice quote, I think, which helps us to understand what resilience is, that comes from Adam Grant.  And he says, "It is the strength and speed of your response to adversity".  And I really like that, because it makes me almost evaluate when I'm in a situation, how powerfully am I responding to that problem, and also how quickly.  And I feel like I can almost coach myself by looking at that as a quote.  Though we sometimes feel that puts a bit of pressure on people, like I don't just recover quickly!

Sarah Ellis: The speed bit I do think depends on the context and the knotty problem that you're experiencing at that moment.  So, sometimes you might think, well speed matters a bit more because it's a smaller, knotty problem; a week feels a bit stressful, you're trying to juggle three or four priorities.  But if this is a bigger knotty problem, I think I wouldn't want people to put pressure on themselves to be like --

Helen Tupper: "You should be over it by now".

Sarah Ellis: "Why have I not sorted this out yet?  Why have I not made progress yet?" because sometimes things are hard and they take time.

Helen Tupper: I think it's why, as well, when we talk about resilience in our sessions, we talk about your resilience range, so how resilient are you across a range of different situations.  And that again is quite useful for reflection, because it helps you to say, "Oh, that one, yes; that one, no".  And also your resilience reserves, that's the other thing that we talk about, which is making sure that you are proactively investing in your resilience, like the things that almost fill up your bucket of resilience, is how I think about it, because you will be drawing on it constantly because we're all experiencing lots of adversity in our lives.  And so, if you are just relying on your resilience without investing in it, then basically you can run out and it becomes really, really hard then.  So we want to think about your range and invest in your reserves.

Sarah Ellis: And one of the things I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on is, "Well, how can I be more resilient?" you know, my strength and speed of response to things going wrong.  And I also think there's a lot of value in the "we" as a team, so thinking about how as a team can we be more resilient; so what does it look like to support each other when there are knotty moments that actually we might be experiencing together?  It's very rare at work actually, it's just you, particularly if it's more project-based or to do with an objective you're working towards where things are not going well.  So, I think there it's like we're thinking about as a team together, what does it look like to build our resilience reserves and our resilience range, so thinking about both I and we.

Helen Tupper: So, some ideas for action to help you then.  Mine is about focusing on your world outside of work.  So, one of the things that can be hard for your resilience is when your work becomes your entire world.  It's called "enmeshment" is, I guess, the technical term for this.  I always think it's where you have become what you do, and it means that you are overexposed to the ups and downs in your work, it affects you personally.  If something's going bad at work, you think you are bad; if it's going well, you've got all that energy.  And there are lots of fluctuations, but it really affects how you feel when you are so closely connected to your work. So, making sure that you're investing in your world outside of work is really important for your resilience.  That could be the time you spend with your family, that could be your hobbies, that could be time you spend on your own, to be honest.  But it reduces enmeshment, it means you're less exposed to the fluctuations.  So I think what is important is to think, what is your world outside of work?  How much are you prioritizing those things today?  And if you are intentional about investing in it, would you do anything different?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think my idea for action is connected, but perhaps a sort of more basic level, because I always really remember my conversation with Dr Bill Mitchell, who spent his career researching resilience, both for individuals, but also for teams.  And I pushed him, probably a bit unfairly, on sort of going, "Well, what's the one thing?" because you know you always want the silver bullet because it makes life a bit easier, and there never are silver bullets.  But he did actually say, "The one thing I'd love everybody to do more is just have one thing every day that is just for you", almost a selfish act where you kind of go, "Well, this is my moment for me.  I'm not doing this for anyone else, it's something that I enjoy and it's a really small moment". It's often, we describe them as simple pleasures that make you smile, that one thing where you just think, well, this is just the 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, that just sort of, I suppose, is often described as, you know when your stress bucket gets over floating, it sort of stops that from happening, you just release a bit of stress and a bit of tension.  And actually, often when I ask people, "Do you daily do something that's just for you?", most people say no. Some of the times, the one thing that gets me through a week is that I'm good at continually and consistently committing to, "Okay, well I'm just going to go for a walk by myself and get a coffee.  I am going to go and do a Pilates class today".  And it does sometimes feel selfish, and you do sometimes feel a little bit guilty, and you do realise there should be work you should be doing, or a six-year-old you should be playing Pokemon with; but if you don't do this, I think you just recognise that those knotty moments can get overwhelming very quickly.

Helen Tupper: I guess it's a "self-care isn't selfish" kind of thing, isn't it?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: So, our go-to guru on this topic is brilliant Bruce, Bruce Daisley.

Sarah Ellis: Brilliant Bruce!  We should just call him that from now on!

Helen Tupper: I don't think he'd like it.

Sarah Ellis: No I don't think he would either.  He doesn't even like resilience to be fair!

Helen Tupper: I know!  He's got a book called Fortitude, because he thinks that's a better word, but it is a really good book on the topic of resilience, and particularly the "we" elements as well; that really sticks with me from that book.  And if you want to listen and learn a little bit more on this topic, then the episode that Sarah recorded with Dr Bill Mitchell is 252 of the Squiggly Careers podcast.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you for listening to this Skills Sprint, we hope you found it useful.  We'd love you to share and subscribe so you don't miss a sprint.  And that's everything for this episode, so bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.