¶ The Concept of Resiliency
That life does throw you curveballs . It is absolutely about the coping and surviving thriving balance . You can't be thriving all of the time . It's quite often you're finding that you are facing into challenges that you never expected , and it is moments of the self-awareness that you're in the survival mode and that you aren't going to let it go on forever .
Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience . I'm your host , Manya Chylinski . My guest today is Russell Harvey . He is the resilience coach and , as you might imagine with a title like that , we had a fabulous conversation about resiliency and what really is it . Does it mean bouncing back or does it mean pausing and taking some learnings and going forward ?
With that , I think you're really going to enjoy the conversation and , if you like the podcast , find us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe and leave a review . We'd love that , and there's a link in the show notes to a Google form . We're looking for feedback . What do you like about the podcast ? What do you wish we were doing that we're not doing ?
Thanks so much and enjoy this episode . Hi Russell , I'm so excited to be talking to you today .
Hi Manya , so am I , so am I . I love to have a little preach at , so I'm definitely looking forward to it .
All right . So before we get into who you are and start talking about resiliency , I would love to know if you could have a superpower . What would that be ?
So I think it would be optimism . Okay , that would be my superpower . I am absolutely trying my very best to keep cultivating it . For me , it's a key part of what we will talk about today . So , yeah , optimism would definitely still be superpower .
I did go around the houses of like would I want to fly and all sorts of things like that be the strongest person on the planet ? But it didn't float my boat . I thought , actually , you know what , let's go for the optimism piece . It might sound cheesy and corny because it's what I talk about , but yeah , I'd have that as a superpower .
But I like it because that's the superpower that is within grasp .
Yes , it most definitely is . It most definitely is .
Whereas flying without the benefit of an airplane , for example , or a hang glider , is a little bit harder . Just sort of flying on my own . It's a little bit harder to make that happen .
It is , it is . It is , yes , most definitely , most definitely . So yeah , it would be the optimism piece which we're more about I like that .
I like that a lot . So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and in your relationship to the concept of resiliency .
Yes . So I managed to find steal borrow title of the resilience coach . Not any old resilience coach , the resilience coach . She's good . Still a bit slightly peeved that I never managed to get the full moniker . On One of the social media platforms that's recently changed its name to a single letter , there is somebody , so I'm at the res coach on that .
And then we did try . There was somebody with resilience coach somewhere , I think , out of Mongolia , and could , just couldn't get it off them , you know , never responded to things . So whole career in learning , leadership , organizational development , pretty much . There was a little bit in sales before I got into this .
But I knew from many , many years ago 1996 , I was traveling around the world with my wife girlfriend at the time came wife so that worked Teaching in Hong Kong and there was some form of magic that was happening in the room and I didn't quite know what it was . And then it was later that was like oh , it's learning .
When I'm with people that are learning light bulb moments , realization moments that go from confused face to a half face and thought you know what this and magic in that it gave me a nice warm , fuzzy feeling . So that drove me from that point to go . You know , I want to do this for a living . I didn't want to be a teacher in a school .
That just didn't resonate with me . So it's like , oh , I think , I think I want to be a trainer , I think that's what it's called . So then my whole career was from there . I'm like , how do I get into training ? Then it was , you know , learning and development . Oh , organizational development .
And today , and I am a facilitator and a coach , as the resilience coach , that's who I am and it's what I do . So how to lead yourself and others well , in this mad , bonkers , crazy world we live in is my particular specialism , essentially .
Okay , and I like that . You're thinking about the concept of leadership and and all of us getting along together through the lens of resiliency . So how do you define resiliency ?
So I always talk about it as springing forward with learning and to be able to do that , you have to be able to pause . You need to get into the habit , the habitual norm of from all of life's experiences the wonderful ones and the not so wonderful ones you need to get into the habit of pausing and re-energizing from those experiences .
So re-energizing from wonderful experiences so it's nice , tired is different to re-energizing from the not so wonderful experiences when you're a bit broken . And then , when you're re-energizing , you need to reflect on your experiences and ask yourself two questions and your reflections in general .
So , from my recent experiences , what do I want to keep doing because it worked well for me ? What do I want to stop doing Because it didn't work well for me ?
In relation to your personal resilience or the way in which you've faced into things or what your self-talk has been or what your emotional intelligence has been or what your general levels of resilience have been , I'm not a fan of this idea of bounce back . I appreciate it's there in the terminology and we absolutely do need to recover from adverse events .
However , if we say to ourselves okay , this life event happened , I faced into it , I did this , I did that , did the other and now I'll go back your sort of eye and was like , no , you can't go back , bounce back . It's like you can't actually do that . You can only move forward with some learning .
And so those individuals that are really reflecting and re-energizing on their experiences around their levels of resiliency and their resiliency skill sets that they used , that's what resiliency is for me .
Okay , the concept of resiliency is so interesting and I talked to so many people about it and for some people it's clearly the concept of bouncing back . For some people , it's not necessarily quality or characteristic we have , but it's a set of behaviors . I think it's so fascinating that this concept means so many different things to so many people .
Well , for me it's about the human condition is , and so I totally understand what it's like . You know it goes into that whole thing of like . So what does it mean to be human then ? You know it's like you can go anywhere and get . It could be enormous . It's aiming to shift away from just keeping going regardless .
I get a little bit worried when people believe that if that's all they ever do , then they're not actually demonstrating as much resiliency as they could . It's about I mean better conversations , about the three words of coping , surviving and thriving . So you know the baseline of the resilience you know historically came from .
You know , really , from the mental health point of view , people were feeling broken so they needed to get to break even , and that's coping and surviving , and it was left at that . Now I and many others above the view of like well , no , let's not just leave it there , could we take it to somewhere else ?
So those that are thriving are the ones that are actually demonstrating the resiliency . You can't thrive all of the time , but in general it's about even if I've got quite a few challenging life events going on I can genuinely state that I'm in a good place , you know , and that for me is far more the resiliency , please .
Yeah , so you mentioned mental health in your answer , talking about sort of coming from the perspective of mental health . Well , is resiliency mental health , or how does it relate to mental health ?
So well-being and resilience completely intertwined . So there are there . In the UK we have the five pillars of wellbeing from the National Health Service and I've got the resilience wheel that I have that I talk about how you build your resilience , which is a build upon research from Robertson Cooper .
So there's seven aspects to resilience wheel and there's five pillars of wellbeing and they're all in . You know they're interlinked and , as a result of working upon your resilience , you feel well . Therefore , your mental health is in a better place . You know it's absolutely about your emotional resilience , your mindset .
So the heart of resilience is your attitude , and so it's like okay , so what's your attitude to life at this moment in time ?
If you are of the view at any particular moment that actually my attitude to life is it's happening to me and there's nothing I can do about it , then I would be concerned for you that you're not necessarily in the most mentally healthy place that you could be in .
If you're in a place of like actually I believe I'm complete mistress , master of my destiny for , or everything that happens in my life is completely and utterly down to me . That's the other side of the scale , and sometimes that can be the case , and so at that moment in time , you are absolutely believing that you're in a mentally healthy place .
So they're heavily interlinked , because it's back to the fact that it's part of the human condition , essentially Right .
Russell , are you saying that this is complicated ?
Wow , people are sort of saying how do I build my resilience ? You go , I go . Well , my starting answer is there's this resilience wheel . There's seven things on it .
So if you have a look at those seven things , you make a starting point and then , when you delve deeper , you're starting to get into the human condition , and then you can't necessarily just give it one simple thing . However , as an absolute basis , if people listening to this can go , do you know what ?
Springing forward with learning , I humbly believe that gives you a really good chance to simply build your resilience .
Yes , yes , Well , you know how much we love our you know , checklists , or can I just check the box ? Or can I take that pill , or can I do that ? One thing that fixes everything .
Yes .
Maybe that's I don't know about the UK , but I feel like that's something pretty prevalent here in the US .
It's all over the place . It's really difficult with a lot of clients when . So my intention a lot of the time is I struggle to work with clients when they will come to us and they'll sort of say so you know our team or our organizations a bit broken . These things have happened .
You know , can you come along for 10 minutes or do a 40 minute speech and you know , sort our resilience out for us just so that we can actually just break our people again .
Yeah , so if this sort of saying actually the natural culture of our organization is , we pretty much just break our people , give them a bit of a resilience boost so we can break them some more . I rarely accept those types of clients . Occasionally I might , if I think , okay , it may be .
If you know , it's like if there's a 45 minute speech and it's quite a lot of people , I'm going well , this might give me a chance . You know , sow some seeds and drip feed some things , right , and I'm running a business , so you can't keep saying no to lots of clients , you know , right , and so , yeah , you've got to pick and choose essentially .
So , yeah , there is still a lot too much , in my opinion , of we just phrase is like we just need to be positive . But you know , we might come back to the optimism piece , the super mile piece . Be careful of toxic positivity . Yeah , that's you know . Don't like that .
Yes , and you get at a great point when you're talking about these organizations that , as you say , are just designed to break people and having someone come in just for 45 minutes probably isn't really going to make a big difference but what we all exist in , a world where we're institutions , with our society , with our workplaces , these organizations we interact with
. What do you see as the role of these , of our society and these institutions , in supporting us in our resiliency ?
It is absolutely keep thinking about what's our value system and what's the culture that we generally want to create around here . And I do think one of the positives is that I don't know why they might come out of the pandemic is a lot more individuals , people that will go into the employee space , are reflecting upon actually do .
I want to work for this organization and what really matters to me in my life We've had a big , massive , unintended pause as a result of the pandemic and everybody taking stock around . Actually what's the type of life that I want to live ? So I'm hoping the genie's out of the bottle on that one .
And so you know , tiny sidebar , I am curious around when organizations or people seeing a business or say everybody must come back to the office . You know , it's like you know what's that about ? What's there's an agenda there ? Yes , it worries me . So , to answer your question , those organizations , because it's about competition for talent still .
So those organizations that really really click , actually the humans that we need to support us , run our organization and make money , because money makes the world go around . We actually really need to sort of create an organization that people want to come and work with and form . So that's their role , Okay .
Actually , how you create a realising organization is one that's actually got a decent culture that enables people to grow , be themselves , play to their strengths , personally develop , be engaged in activities and ideas that float their boat . You know , and lo and behold , you'll get all these wonderful , fantastic scores on your staff surveys .
All right , do you like working here and do you have good conversations with your colleagues ?
And the final bit is and I know I'm biased on this , but it is absolutely spend the time and effort and the resources that you need to to support your line managers to be really good line managers , because the World Happiness Report came out March this year and , once again , one of the factors that's on there about people being able to say how happy they are
a key one is a good relationship with your line manager . So it's on the World Happiness Report okay , because anybody that's got a not so nice relationship with their line manager , they are more likely to be unhappy .
Yes
¶ Creating a Positive and Resilient Workplace
, Actually , I was just reading a study that says we spend on average of 90,000 hours of our life at work and our manager has a bigger effect on our mental health than a doctor or a therapist . And it's equivalent to a spouse or a partner because of the amount of time we spend together . Yeah , it's crazy . I think we don't .
We're not thinking of the workplace in particular as that kind of environment like what you're talking about with these line managers and how that lines up with the happiness report or the unhappiness report .
So there's so many different studies out there . So this way now how you have a high performing workplace , productivity stuff surveys Well , you know .
There's yet another one , and the one that you you're referring to is actually , when , as much as humanly possible , you as an individual , the conversation you have with your boss , line manager , leader , when the vast majority of time that makes you feel good , it's like huh , learn , behold , life's great .
And the fact that that isn't literally front and center all day , every day in a business I know I'm biased because I'm on the people side it just blows my mind that that isn't literally front and center .
And I'm biased too , because I'm also on the people side and I get that businesses exist to make money . They don't exist just to , yeah , for unicorns and rainbows .
But why is it that we , with all of these studies that show the importance of a human centered organization , why do we still have so many organizations that don't pay attention to these or really don't give them the attention they deserve ?
Because there have been , was my humble opinion because over time . So you , it's an old bundle but it still makes sense . So you need the triumvirate of running a decent organization of people , systems and process .
You know you might now add data in there , but for me , if you need a bucket of three things to run a successful business , so it's everything that you need to think about in terms of cash is king and your processes and , yeah , you absolutely need to make sure that you've got you know belt and braces on understanding where the money in the finances are and
where things are coming from . You need to do everything that you need to think about to do sales , marketing , business development , to create you know your customers and you need to do everything around that you know supporting your people to be at their best .
And in my humble opinion , it's just all those voices that we have listened to over the decades , the centuries around running a business . They've been more on the first two systems and processes .
You know the consultancy firms and just leaders of big business and things like that , the people that you go on hundreds of thousands and conferences and you've got business leaders you know at conferences talking about things . They're still predominantly it's two thirds or the majority of it is about systems process data . You know it isn't .
It's not so many times to . I observe literally everybody of a panel of people have seen your business leaders and CEOs who literally just go . It's about people . It's about people . It's about people . You know it doesn't happen .
Yeah , what's the lever to ? To get that on the agenda .
Well , I am wondering if that's what I mean about sort of the pandemic and the jinnies at the bottle . I am hopeful that the people power of actually to know what I feel empowered and feel confident for me as a human being to choose who I work for , because then it's that power is all in the hands of the people and then the organizations .
When they're sitting there and going , nobody wants to come and work for us . I think we're , oh gosh , we might close as a business because we're not attracting all of this talent . That will be the lever that . That will be the moment when they go . Oh , I think we need to change , we .
Can we get some more like you know , people , people to come in and go ? What do we need to do ? Because nobody wants to work for us ? This is an opportunity right now .
So those businesses that will continue to thrive , I believe they'll do more focus on the people and the line management side of things , because that will be building the individual and collective resilience of their business , because the vast majority of the time people , when they go to work , they're enjoying themselves , they're happier , they're playing to their strengths
and whenever they need to check in with their boss , that checking with the boss goes well right . I feel like I'm on a soak now .
Power to the people .
Yes , this is it yes , you've got completely gone down that route . Yes and yes . I've no idea how many people are listening now . Are either going , come on or rolling their eyes , no idea .
I feel like most of my listeners are saying , yes , this is it we need to be . This is what we need to be focused on . Well , you know from your work with clients and your own life what's an important lesson about resilience that you've learned .
But life does throw you curveballs . It is absolutely about the coping and surviving thriving balance . You can't be thriving all of the time . It quite often you're finding that you are facing into challenges that you never expected , and it is moments of literally .
I understand that I am in survival mode right now , and the difference , though , is the self-awareness that you're in the survival mode and that you aren't going to let it go on forever .
Okay , so it is that real trick and that real art to keep going with that I might be putting off some element of self-care , but I'm not putting it off permanently , you know .
I'm absolutely aware , though , how I am approaching the challenge I am in the run is not good for me , and I'm absolutely aware , I'm conscious and know that , actually , there's a point that's going to come , where I am going to take care of myself more , to get myself back into the thrive before I fall over .
You know and that's from a recent lesson , from personal circumstances as well it's the spring forward with learning , is absolutely part of it and is the optimism piece , which I've said a couple of times . So Just to clarify and that's why I think it needs to be a superpower . So , when you look at optimism and positivity .
The dictionary definition of optimism has the word positivity to describe it . So they're heavily intertwined and I would like listeners and yourself to think about how you get to positivity is through optimism first , okay . So optimism , you start with . It's grounded in reality . Okay , and we're not great at being grounded in reality .
It's really good quality conversations About have I really got my head and heart around the challenge that's in front of me , or the reality of the size and the scale of the problem . Now , that isn't to depress yourself .
You know you need you used to do it because you've got some natural levels of resiliency to go Understand the scale of scale , size in the scale of the challenge , and I can accept it with good grace . Mm-hmm , that's hard , it's really hard . There is really hard . It's really hard to accept you for good grace .
And then the next bit is to go right , absolutely fundamental . You got me around where we are . I'm pretty much there accepting a good grace . Then you do so .
What strengths , what skills , what capabilities , what attitude , where experiences , what mindset , what behaviors of I got and those that have around me have got that are gonna enable us to face into this challenge ?
When I start to look at those and go on oh , okay , I'm now getting feelings of hope and so the hopefulness is genuine hopefulness , but actually we're gonna be able to face into this and come out the other side . Those hopeful feelings obviously are very similar to feeling positive , so it's feeling positive .
You get to positive through the optimism approach right Now .
I'm thinking when you say that . So a lot of what you're talking about requires a lot of self-awareness . It's that you are in a situation and that you also have these skills . I'm thinking back to my own experience after major adversity and really not even Recognizing what was happening , let alone what my skills were .
So how do you help someone who's in that phase of adversity ?
yeah . So , additionally as well , it's like it is unfair the vast majority of time , human beings don't know how resilient they are until they have an adverse situation , until the curveball comes and that's just . It's not great . But people taking interest in resilience , my advice , suggestion , my ask of them is take the time now To work upon your resilience .
You know , work upon your resilience wheel . And so I think your question is you know it's a state of readiness as well for the individual . So somebody's going through something . Can you you are a friend or a colleague this can see they're going through something and You're recognizing that they may not have the self-awareness what's going on for them .
It's like , actually , what can you do in the moment to trip feed , suggest , empathize , compassion with them in the moment ? May you know some to maybe offer a chink of light of ? You know , as your friend , it looks like a really difficult place and how aware are you that you're in a really difficult place ?
You know , yeah , and so it's like how do you raise anybody's self-awareness ? It's , it's good conversation , it's a feedback loop , it's all . But it's also a state of readiness . Yes , it's a lot of people recently said to me you need to look after yourself , russell , because what's been happening with my circumstances ? Yeah , absolutely know it .
However , for a variety of reasons , it's not possible right now right right . I am aware that I need to and I'm not neglecting it . I know I'm not neglecting , I know I have the knowledge , I know that I need to and I just can't right now . But I'm not batting you away Right ? I'm not doing a yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , go away .
I'm doing that , I know , yes , and I am working upon when I can do it .
Yes , and you , in what you've just shared , you've reinforced how important our Relationships and our social connections are to our resiliency .
Totally so . Support network is one of the dimensions of being resilient . It is and it goes back to that thing of you know , checking in on your friends and colleagues .
It's , it's the sort of multitude of ways that you could ask how are you , you know , and how are you really , and all those types of things you know , tell me what's going on for you and all those . So yeah , it is it's building that trust with people that they'll turn and go . Actually , things aren't great because , right , right , those moments .
Well , russell , this has been a great conversation , and I'm sorry to say that we're getting near the end . But as we wrap up , though , I'd love to know what would you tell your 18 year old self about resiliency ?
I'm not entirely sure the 18 year old self would listen . Yes , however I think you get . You can have to just look them in the eye , look myself in the iron go . I Absolutely promise you and I can absolutely guarantee to you that everything's gonna be alright in the end . That's it . Whether they would hear it or notice it , I don't know , but that's what .
That's why I would say you know , any life challenges that you weren't going to face , it is going to be alright in the end . Yeah .
I think that's an important message Actually for all of us , whatever age we are , but absolutely for Children and young adults . We want to get that point across .
Yes .
Russell , thank you so much . Thank you . How can our listeners reach you if they want to learn more about you ?
Yes , thank you very much . So essentially through the website WWW dot the resilience coach dot co UK , I'm on LinkedIn , so if you put anything in about the resilience coach I pop up somewhere somehow on something .
Excellent . Well , I'll put some links in the show notes to to make it easier for folks to find you , thank you . Thank you so much for this and for sharing your knowledge of resiliency , and I really appreciate it my absolute pleasure .
Thank you very much for asking me on .
All right , thanks everyone , bye , bye . Thank you for listening . I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did , so if you'd like to learn more about me , Manya Chylinski , I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life Experiences , and I do this through talks and consulting .
I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency , compassion and trauma . Sensitive leadership , to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil . If this is something you want to learn more about , visit my website , wwwmanyachylinskicom , email me at manya@manyachylinski .
com , or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter . Thanks so much .