How are you and the people you manage handling this economic downturn?
The research on resilience tells us there are two possible outcomes in responding to the current economic stressors. Either you’ll become stronger and more successful, or you’ll become weaker, less mentally healthy, and less likely to do great things in the future.
Which outcome will best describe you? The answer to this question will depend on how you’re able to handle job-related stress and whether you can become a resilient person.
Management consultants Salvatore Maddi and Deborah Khoshaba conducted a 12-year study of the Illinois Bell Telephone (IBT) company staff who were enduring almost constant organizational change during the de-regulation changes in the telephone industry.
Every year for 12 years, 450 IBT employees (including supervisors, managers and executives) were interviewed, evaluated, given psychological tests, and given medical examinations. While everyone in the organization was feeling stress, almost 50% of those sampled lost their jobs. The purpose of the study was to research how people under job-related stress handled these difficult conditions.
The research revealed that the employees reacted to the stress in two distinct ways:
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65% of the employees suffered additional serious stress-related events in their lives such as divorce, heart attacks, depression, anxiety, and drug and alcohol abuse.
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35% of the employees thrived under the stress. If they stayed at IBT, they rose to the top of the heap. If they left, they either started companies of their own or took strategically important employment in other companies.
When the data started to show a distinct difference between the two groups of employees, the researchers then attempted to quantify what caused a person to be part of the second group.
In their book, Resilience at Work, the researchers outlined their findings. A “Resilient Person” is someone who possesses the following three attitudes: commitment, control, and challenge.
“As times get tough, if you hold these attitudes, you'll believe that it is best to stay involved with the people and events around you (commitment) rather than to pull out, to keep trying to influence the outcomes in which you are involved (control) rather than to give up, and to try to discover how you can grow through the stress (challenge) rather than to bemoan your fate.”
In short, their commitment allowed the resilient employees to engage more fully in the job at hand (or with a new opportunity for those who lost their jobs). This helped them to understand and interpret the events that were having an impact on them.
Their sense of control empowered the resilient employees to consider ways that they could proactively influence the changes that were affecting them. Their less resilient colleagues tended to passively withdraw effort, believing there was little they could do to impact what they believed was their fate.
The resilient employees interpreted the stressors and changes as a challenge, and tended to look for the potential opportunities that change would bring about. They took the outlook that change is an inevitable part of life. It didn’t mean that these people enjoyed the stress, but the positive outlook they took positioned them to keep an eye open for new opportunities.
More tomorrow on how to apply this research to what you’re facing in your workplace...
Editor's Note:
Much of the above research was accessed through the Center for Confidence and Well-Being. This organization is a great resource on this topic if you care to learn more on your own.
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