With the stresses of COVID-19 only multiplying over time, workplace resilience is a hot topic these days.

What traits should employers they look for? What tools and methods can HR use to promote resilience? And what does resilience REALLY mean anyway?

To answer these questions, we caught up with Andi Saitowitz, Mindset & High-Performance Coach for Leaders & Teams.

Andi shared incredible and actionable insights into everything we asked, and more.

What is Resilience?

“I think that people make resilience out to be this crazy SUPERPOWER, but resilience is actually our ability as human beings to handle what comes our way,” begins Andi, “And we are far more resilient than we realize.”

Andi compares resilience to a muscle. When we experience a stress or a threat, resilience prompts us to respond with:

• Courage
• Strength
• Creativity
• Agility
• Flexibility

Using those traits, we can overcome and sometimes reinvent because of the challenge.

Those characteristics, in turn, need:

Flexing our Resilience Muscles

Like any muscle, we need to develop our resilience to activate it at full strength when we need it.

And here’s the secret that Andi reveals: We often build up our resilience from positive challenges. Any time we chase a vision or a goal or learn a new skill, we need resilience to respond to the newness constructively.

In that context, she shares two categories of life stressors:

1. Runway moments are the moments you see “coming a mile away” that you prepare for and work towards. They could be any life transition, but in the workplace, runway moments might be upcoming promotions or career changes.

Because you know it’s coming, you spend weeks or months recruiting mental energy and mindset to step into your new role or circumstance.

2. Flash moments are the moments that catch you off guard, presenting challenges you never asked for and weren’t expecting. A global pandemic, for example, comes to mind. But any sudden change like a new manager/CEO or merging teams would be examples, too.

The resilience you build up preparing for runway moments allows you to summon up your best qualities to meet the challenges of flash moments. But positive or negative, resilience is the ability to adapt to new circumstances with grace and strength.

Day to Day Resilience

But we don’t only build resilience from major events. Andi explains that we create and use resilience DAILY.

She quotes a statistic that we face an average of 12 stresses every day! Gulp! Those are the small annoyances that can ruin our day—but only if we let them.

In the workplace, they could be:

• Minor conflict at work
• Internet’s down (again!)
• Misunderstanding with a teammate
• A big deadline
• On the way to a meeting, and the car doesn’t start

Unfortunately, the workplace offers many, many stressors each day.

If employees are trained in resilience, though, they’ll respond to those micro-challenges with flexibility, courage, and strength as the situation demands.

Creating a Safe Space

Which brings us to the million-dollar question – how can we train our employees to build resilience?

Ironically, you don’t build resilience by building resilience. Resilience is an umbrella trait made up of smaller ones like the courage, creativity, and flexibility we spoke about earlier.

And those traits, in turn, need the right environment in which to flourish. Andi explains that

• Mindfulness
• Communication
• Emotional intelligence
• Empathy
• Compassion

are the building blocks of resilience traits.

However, the most critical element is creating a safe space at work. Employees should feel safe speaking out, taking risks, trying something new.

That’s because building resilience hinges on adapting to and embracing new challenges. “Resilience is your bounce back. It’s your ability to try something, and if it doesn’t work, learn from it,” says Andi. But we can’t risk new challenges if we fear repercussions for failure.

How to Build Resilience

Now that we have a clear understanding of resilience, we can build a process for developing the emotional intelligence and mindset to create it.

Andi bases her approach on the six NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Levels. Robert Dilts developed them as a model for understanding the elements of team performance and how they work together.

Andi starts from the top of the hierarchy, showing how to bring in tools, frameworks, and methods that promote resilience.

Vision is the larger purpose of a company or team. Managers and team leaders can open the questions of “Where do we want to go?” and “What’s the best outcome we can hope to achieve?” That practices resilience as employees tap into the courage and creativity to dream big and create something new.

Identity is how a team thinks about itself, who it is. Encourage employees to think of themselves as their most resilient identities. Make it real! How would they speak? What would they believe? By defining their resilient selves, they create them.

Values are what a company or team holds to be important. What values would your company need to embrace to build the traits of resilience such as courage, flexibility, etc.? Think about mindfulness, communication, and the other building blocks we mentioned above.

Skills, in this case, are knowledge skills. Consider, on a practical level, what training management and employees need to grow their emotional intelligence and train their resilience muscles.

Bringing in training sends a powerful message to employees. It shows that you’re creating a safe culture of growth and learning where it’s ok to step out and be creative even if you make mistakes. And the belief that you can bounce back from mistakes is at the heart of resilience.

Behavior is the specific actions of each employee. How do we behave daily? What are the organizational norms in our culture? How do we speak? How do we conduct meetings? How do we handle conflict? How do we handle stress?

Environment is the physical place where work happens. It’s essential to create an environment that encourages communication, collaboration, and mindfulness.

One more thing

We’ve covered a lot of ground, but there’s one more important piece of resilience. Resilience requires inner strength, which means being at your best.

And being at your best means sleeping well, eating well, exercising, and taking regular breaks. These practices can be built into the company culture.

Encouraging employee wellness in these terms isn’t about throwing around a buzzword. It’s about creating an atmosphere where employees can safely set boundaries and maintain healthy work habits. Where they’re allowed and even encouraged to connect with other employees during the day.

Does promoting resilience take effort and resources? Absolutely.

But the pay-off is huge.

“When we are resilient,” concludes Andi, “Our creativity is ignited. Our learning is activated. Our connections are more meaningful than ever before. Resilience is essential for employee performance.”

That’s true in normal times and even more so in an uncertain world.