Thanks so much for subscribing to my Resilience Tips blog. I hope these weekly resilience tips have helped you thrive despite the challenges we’ve all faced over the past several years. I’ve decided to focus on other priorities and will no longer be writing and distributing new blog posts. If you miss these weekly resilience boosts, you can access all of my blogs at payneresilience.com/blog. Or, subscribe to newsletters from the following excellent resilience websites: Thrive Global, Option B, Dr. Rick Hanson. As a farewell gift, I’m offering my Resilience Leadership course free of charge to ..read more

Are you looking for a good book on resilience? I've read dozens of books on resilience, and these are my favorites. Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges by Dr. Steven Southwick and Dr. Dennis Charney. Southwick and Charney draw on decades of resilience research and work with trauma survivors to identify ten factors that we can use to cope, become stronger, and build resilience. They use extraordinary stories of a wide range of people to demonstrate how these factors helped them overcome seemingly impossible situations. If you read only one book on resilience, read t ..read more

Image by balik from Pixabay When I survey employees and organizations about their resilience, having a rude boss is one of the most common reasons individuals and teams struggle. There are many ways bosses can be rude. Some walk away from a conversation because they lose interest. Others answer calls or do other work during meetings. Rude bosses openly mock people by pointing out their flaws or personality quirks in front of others. They remind their subordinates of their place in a hierarchal organization. They take all the credit for wins and blame others when problems arise. The negative i ..read more

Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay Since the global health pandemic hit, you've probably seen and heard the word resilience a lot. It seems to mean many different things depending on the context and, unfortunately, is often misused. According to MacMillian Dictionary, the noun resilience, meaning 'the act of rebounding,' was first used in the 1620s and was derived from the Latin term resilire, which means to recoil or rebound. By the mid-nineteenth century, watchmakers used the term resilience to refer to the flexible qualities of internal components that prevented excessive vibration. In the 1 ..read more

Team resilience is the capacity of a group of people to respond to change and disruption in a flexible and innovative manner. In the face of adversity, resilient teams maintain their work productivity while minimizing the emotional toll on team members.  A team’s resilience can vary depending on how well resilience is fostered within the group and the amount of stress, change, and trauma the team is experiencing at any given time. Teams with high resilience are more innovative, proactive, and collaborative. They are excellent problem solvers and work through conflict. Teams with low ..read more

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash Dr. Rick Hanson writes a lot about resilience and provides some practical tools that improve our well-being. One of my favorites is his suggestion to "drop our stones." He explains that most of us are lugging around at least one thing that is a needless burden. According to Hanson, a burden may be "holding on to resentments, worrying over and over about the same thing, or trying to make someone love you who won't. Perhaps it's an unrealistic standard you keep failing to meet, an old quarrel you keep rehashing, or something addictive you can't do in moderation ..read more

Photo by rawpixel.com form PxHere Many managers are not aware of how their email habits impact the people they supervise. Now that many of us are working remotely, we may be tempted to engage in some email bad habits that can harm our team's resilience. In 2018, the Harvard Business Review published an article describing efforts to quantify how some leadership habits impact teams. The authors found a significant and consistent correlation between the number of times managers send emails after-hours (late nights and weekends) and the amount of time their direct reports do the same. For example ..read more

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash Many people are required to be available for work 24/7. We carry mobile devices that we regularly check after hours for emails, and we are expected to be able to respond to a text or phone call immediately, even when on vacation. Today's "new normal," with many of us working remotely, has increased the pressure on employees to be available around the clock. The problem with this work style is that it rarely allows for true leisure time. Employees have less control over non-work activities and less time for recovery. One study linked extended work avail ..read more

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash Many people have worked virtually for over two years now. Some companies are incorporating virtual work into the new normal. It’s harder to build and maintain connections with colleagues when you don’t see them in person. We don't have the short, casual conversations we had when we would run into coworkers in the elevator or at the coffee station. Virtual meetings may have become more structured, without time or opportunity for non-work chit-chat. It’s also harder to chat informally online because it’s so easy to talk over each other. Having strong connec ..read more

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash In the first few months after coronavirus spread throughout the world in 2020, there was an explosion of group singalongs around the world. People sang from their balconies in Italy, the United States, and Canada. Others used technology to sing together virtually. In Columbus, children played cellos from their porch so an elderly neighbor could hear. A Dutch orchestra gave a virtual performance of Ode to Joy. There's a reason so many people broke out into song during this health crisis. Music, particularly singing, helps people stay resilient despite ..read more