Resilience is the human capacity to face, overcome, and be strengthened by experiences of adversity. Resilient people turn adversities into opportunities and reframe difficulties as challenges to overcome, rather than pressures that might overwhelm them. Indeed, the ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is one of the most important factors for success in professional and personal life.

Resilience is not a gift that you are either born with or not. Everyone has the capacity to enhance their inherent resilience, by learning how to face the inevitable adversities of life and be strengthened by them.

Purpose of Course

Enable delegates to respond positively to the pressures and demands of modern working life and to help them identify opportunities to thrive.   

Objectives

By the end of the workshop delegates will be able to:

• Define how resilience training will help them identify opportunities for developing personal resilience.
• Describe their own RQ (Resilience Quotient) on the 7 key resilience topics.
• Understand the difference between surviving and thriving at work.
• Appreciate that resilience is not something you are simply born with but is something that we start to build in childhood and throughout all life experiences.
• Know what stops us being resilient and how to overcome these obstacles.
• Understand how resilience helps us to respond more positively and effectively to change.
• Manage emotional responses particularly when under pressure and during difficult times.
• Realise how important it is to make effective connections with others and specifically how to do this.
• Understand how conflict can drain your resilience and how to overcome this.
• Appreciate identifying the causes of problems rather than just dealing with the symptoms is a key resilience skill for helping people cope more effectively.
• Identify the specific tools and techniques which will help individuals strengthen the areas of resilience they have already highlighted as needing strengthening within themselves.
• Use a "thriving" approach to facilitate personal change.
• Describe the written objectives of their resilience development plan.

Course Content

Understanding Resilience and Adversities
Here delegates are introduced to the specific context of their resilience training (in line with organisational strategy and objectives if required). Why, how and when resilience is needed at work and at home is explored. Delegates are also introduced to the "surviving v thriving" model and how developing personal resilience at work is very much a matter of "thriving" and helping people to reach their full potential rather than just "getting through the day".

How Resilient are You?
Delegates complete the 56 item questionnaire which provides each individual with their RQ (Resilience Quotient) on 7 key areas of resilience. Resilience is defined and includes: the ability to stay calm under pressure and maintain performance; how to absorb high levels of change; the ability to bounce back from setbacks and recover quickly from problems; how to adjust easily to prevent a crisis; how to manage work and life demands effectively and how to minimise the adverse effects of stress.

The Importance of Perspective
This section looks at the importance of how we view ourselves and circumstances, and particularly how we view the past, present and future. For instance, focusing on the "here and now" rather than wishing we could change the past or worrying about the future is strong resilience behaviour.

Regulating Emotions
Here delegates identify their own patterns of handling emotions. This section also looks at how our thinking can affect our emotions, for example, how important it is to challenge stressful thoughts rather than perpetuate unhelpful patterns of thinking.

Engaging in Effective Relationships
The importance of empathy and reaching out to others is the key to this section and delegates will explore their own relationship skills. Delegates are also encouraged to look at how they manage relationships when they feel vulnerable and what they can do to feel less vulnerable and more connected to people at work and at home.

Solving Problems
Solving problems is at the heart of resilience and the importance of identifying causes (rather than just dealing with symptoms) is explored here. Also explored is, how can coping strategies be strengthened to develop self-efficacy? This section includes a case study for group participation and discussion.

Individual Tools and Techniques
By this point of the course, delegates have identified their RQ and had the opportunity to look theoretically and practically at each of the key resilience areas. The purpose of this section is for delegates to spend time individually identifying which area(s) they feel they would most benefit from developing. The Tools and Techniques explored are proven to enormously help delegates focus on relevant actions for improving personal resilience.

Building a Resilience Development Plan
Finally delegates use the day's learning and insights to write their resilience development plans, where specific SMART objectives are set for future evaluation through your organisation's usual performance review and appraisal systems.

If you wish to discuss any aspect of this training course please contact Alastair Taylor on Tel: 0131 476 5027 or e-mail: alastair@in-equilibrium.co.uk

 

Good mix of personal attention and group work; It's great the way the tutor relates to personal and individual examples; Very useful insight; Trainer, discussion-Group all took part, all were positive.

London School of Economics (LSE) delegates