Developing resilience and grit in the workplace

The words resilience and grit are used a lot, especially in times of challenge and stress. But are we thinking about them all wrong? In this post, Stephanie Davies shares the difference between the two and how you can develop your resilience skills to flourish in the workplace.

If we think about resilience and grit as something we only do in times of stress or when we have setbacks, it’s unhelpful. Building resilience and grit is something we need to do continually. In doing so, we can use these traits when needed most.

Workplaces often talk about supporting resilience and creating resilient teams, but do leaders truly understand what this means and how to support it? Well, here at Laughology, we’re here to help… but first we must understand what resilience and grit are and the relationship between the two.

Difference between resilience and grit

Resilience and grit are two positive personality traits that help us to be successful in life. Moreover, these two traits help us to bounce back from challenges and keep going until we achieve our goals.

Resilience is the ability to easily recover from, or adjust to, misfortune or change. Whereas grit, on the other hand, is the passion and perseverance to continue when you bounce back and work towards your goal. With the pace and magnitude of ongoing changes, leaders have a responsibility to create environments where people can flourish.

Part of this is supporting people to develop these strengths. But leaders take note! Telling people to be resilient is not the answer to systemic problems that impact mental health. Continually piling on the work and unrealistic workloads cannot be balanced out by grit and resilience.  

How can we build healthy workplaces that help people be gritty and resilient?

First, let’s consider these as separate concepts and define them further. We’ll start with resilience.

Resilience is an outcome. It’s what’s achieved and improved upon when you flex your ability to recover, adjust or bounce back after adversity in a healthy positive manner.

There are numerous determinants of resilience, including genetics, personality and social factors. For some, the qualities that make us resilient are inherent to some degree, but for everyone, these are qualities that can be learned and developed.

It’s helpful to keep in mind that resilience, once attained, is not set in stone. It will vary for each individual, depending on the situation, and will change over time. This is important for leaders to understand. Judging others by your own resilience is unhelpful. Instead, ensuring you know people personally will help you understand what they need and how you can help them. Conversations should go beyond work, as what’s happened personally undoubtedly impacts people in the workplace. And yes, if you’re a leader or a manager, it is your problem.  

For example, a person may be adapting and coping in their professional life but not on a personal level. They may be resilient working in a team environment but struggle to cope when working from home in solitude.

Resilience is not set in stone, we have to work at it - and leaders can help

Resilience doesn’t just happen either, you have to work on it. Helping people have time out and understand what they need to build their resilience back up is part of your role as a leader. 

Research has found these five factors are common in resilient people:

• they are more likely to seek help
• they are resourceful and have the skills to problem-solve and recognise what’s in their control 
• they have strong, positive self-belief
• they have social and personal support mechanisms
• they are well connected with family, friends and others.3

If we flip the above round, it tells us what leaders can do to support resilience with others and what leaders should do: 

1. Create an environment where it’s easy to ask for and get help  

Have regular team catch-ups where you create time to share problems. Make this a behaviour that’s rewarded, and encourage teamwork and group get-togethers for problem-solving. 

2. Use on-the-spot coaching skills to help people think about what’s in their control and support growth mindset behaviours  

Encourage curiosity and the ability to problem solve. If you have people who do this well, create a team of people who can help others think well and develop these skills. 

3. Believe in your team, and praise effort and behaviours that support resilience

It’s not always about output. Behaviours that promote resilience are important too. However, it is okay to give feedback and challenge - just ensure you do it in a constructive way and 1:1. 

4. Create strong social connections to help people feel supported  

Making time just for fun is important too. It relieves tension and lets people know relationships go beyond work.  

5. Ensure people have time for personal activities that help them relax and fill their resilience bank

Talk regularly about what you do and encourage these behaviours in others. You could even create resilience days. These could be up to 3 additional days people can request if they feel they need to top up their resilience bank. Encourage them to come back and talk about what they’ve done, helping to build that bond between teams. 

What is grit and why is it important?

Grit on the other hand is a driver, helping us to sustain interest in, and effort towards, long-term goals. This ties into resilience because by taking a longer-term view, we’re better able to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life.

Psychologist Angela Duckworth, a leading researcher on grit, says, “it entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”

Importantly, you don’t have to have oodles of natural-born talent to be gritty. Duckworth recommends adopting a growth mindset - i.e. the belief that you can continue to develop your talents with hard work, positive strategies and embraced feedback.

As part of her grit formula, she additionally identifies six key factors: effort, precision, passion, ritual, prioritisation and, importantly in the current seachange, hope. Hope can help you identify goals and provides motivation to attain them.

Reflect for a minute on these six factors: which ones resonate and come easily to you and your team, and which ones might need some more focus and fine-tuning? You might like to find out how you rate on the Grit Scale.

Where grit could be described as having the drive, passion and perseverance to fulfil your goals and succeed, resilience could be described as the way we continue. 

As a leader don’t just use 1:1’s to discuss work, use them to build grit by talking  about things like: 

• Personal goals – how can work help you achieve them? Maybe work itself supports purpose? Where in life are your passions and what does work do to enable these? 
• Brilliant blunders and failures – what things are you prepared to share as a leader to set the tone? Encourage others to share their blunders and mistake - what can you learn from them? 
• Be cautious of burnout – set realistic goals and celebrate the successes along the way; review and refine what’s achievable and, for high performers who are super gritty, ensure they take breaks and role model this as a leader
• Ensure there’s balance – physical activity is important for your brain’s ability to develop and change; exercise, relaxation, and practising mindfulness are necessary to counter stressful times – talk about what people do to achieve this

For your workshop on resilience and grit, get in touch with Doug@laughology.co.uk and learn more about our special FLIP-it thinking ingredient for building resilience and grit with humour.