Three perspectives on resilience
Have you ever been told you need to ‘be more resilient’?
I have, earlier in my career, and I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that.
I was going through a bit of a tough time at work, and I had reached out to a senior manager expecting their support. This was their feedback - and it felt unfair as they were passing the responsibility back to me to deal with it on my own. I felt like it was a personal failing that I needed someone’s help, and it was more so this feedback that caused me to feel angry and despondent, not the situation itself.
As my career has progressed I’ve learnt that resilience has more to do with our connections and network, and less to do with any individual characteristic. But let’s explore this commonly held attitude a bit more first.
In Western society, we over-emphasise the importance of individual characteristics, because our culture values individualism. If we have a problem we are told we should sort it out on our own: don’t involve other people as they have their own problems to deal with. This attitude and the accompanying social norms developed in the 1970s, in the aftermath of large social changes following two world wars, social rights movements and women entering the workforce. This leads people to attempt to deal with things by themselves - resulting in negative consequences like mental health issues and burnout.
This view on resilience does not give us the whole picture. In my coaching I use the three perspectives model for thinking about relational aspects to human problems - our core psyche is wired for social interaction. When it comes to resilience we can view it through these three lenses:
Relationship with self
Relationships with others
Relationships with context
By focusing purely on the self, we miss key ways to build resilience by considering how we relate to others and the context.
Resilience is an emergent property from the groups that you belong to. The more groups you belong to, the more resilient you are.
This is why I place great importance on networks. Being connected to others in different domains of your life means that when one area is not going so well, you have others to fall back on. This includes family, friends, work, community groups, sports teams, hobby groups, religious groups, and all the different circles where you connect with others.
If you lose your job but have a strong professional network then you can reach out to them for help. If you get sick then family and friends will rally around you until you are better. If you’re playing a team game like rugby and the game isn’t going so well for you, your team mates will encourage you onwards. Teams and companies win and fail through collective efforts, rarely those resulting from just one individual’s actions.
In addition, the context we operate in now is more uncertain and changeable than ever. There are new factors to deal with that as a species we haven’t completely figured out and our psychology is ill-equipped for: artificial intelligence, social media, climate change to name a few. In trying to make sense of these novel contexts it is likely that we will experience more adversity, stress and change in our environment, and consequently need to develop even more resilience (at the species- or society-level, not just at the individual-level).
That means we need each other now more than ever, and we must recognise our interconnectedness if we are to overcome the biggest challenges facing us today.
