An Outstanding Worker is a Resilient One

An outstanding worker is a resilient one because resilience is needed to navigate change and the frequency of change in the workplace has been increasing. For example, a person sees more life-changing innovations over the course of a lifetime now because we are living longer and the rate of technological change has been accelerating. Back in 1930, the average life expectancy was 59 years old which is shorter than the time it took to advance from television to mobile networks.¹ Today, the average life expectancy is 72 years old which is much longer than the time it took to go from mobile networks to the internet, cell phones, virtual meeting tools, and artificial intelligence. Workers today need to be able to adapt to new technologies to stay relevant. Outstanding workers practice adaptation by finding ways to use new technologies to improve the quality and efficiency of their work and to increase the benefits their work provides to others.²

Adaptation is one aspect of resilience. Another aspect of resilience is managing stress because the fast pace of technological change adds to what we need to keep track of on top of our already information-overloaded workplaces. Fortunately, we now have artificial intelligence tools to help us manage information overload such as SaneBox for email. But, if you are stressed out, then you might not have the capacity to find and use new tools that could help streamline and improve your work. Also, wisdom is needed to use a new tool within the scope of its intended use and in novel ways so the benefits outweigh the costs of learning to use the new tool. The good news is that developing resilience helps you build wisdom and manage stress to adapt to these changing times. This post considers how to improve resilience over your base level of resilience.

Scientists understand that there are genetic factors that play into your base level of resilience. For example, a 33% to 52% inheritance rate has been found for resilience.³ Further, there is also a genetic component to motivation which provides fuel for resilience. Neuroscientists have identified two different brain pathways to motivation that we can be wired for.⁴ One pathway to motivation is approach orientation in which the brain is wired to experience reward when pursuing something you consider desirable. The second pathway to motivation is avoidance orientation in which the brain is wired to experience reward when preventing something bad or threatening from happening. People wired with more approach orientation display higher resilience than those wired with more avoidance orientation. There are also environmental factors. For example, life experiences can rewire a brain for more avoidance orientation than approach orientation or vice versa. There are proven interventions to improve resilience regardless of your base level of resilience.^5,6

Intervention for Resilience that Builds Wisdom

Resilience and wisdom are intertwining concepts because you cannot have wisdom without resilience and you cannot have resilience without wisdom. According to Google, resilience is the ability to recover without damage from difficult conditions. From my experience, wisdom is gained through curiosity plus resolving misunderstandings and mistakes. It takes resilience to resolve a misunderstanding or mistake because these can be damaging to the ego or social status. For example, a work team I led was selected to pilot a trust survey from Human Resources for improving team performance. I was curious as the team leader what could be learned from participating in this trust survey. I had not anticipated the amount of negative feedback from team members towards me as the leader that would result from the survey. Fortunately, I had enough resilience to accept the negative feedback and learn from it to become a better team leader. The wisdom I have gained from this and other team leadership experiences has since been compiled into a book.⁷

An intervention for resilience that builds wisdom in learning is adopting the growth mindset. The growth mindset can be cultivated in others by praising them for their hard work and effort. Praising others for a trait like their intelligence can lead to a fixed mindset or the belief that their intelligence is set at birth. A fixed mindset discourages the resilience needed to take on new challenges in learning. A growth mindset can be cultivated in yourself by adopting the belief that you can improve any trait or skill with effort and hard work. A growth mindset is a source of resilience in learning because it provides the impetus to take on challenges and learn from mistakes and misunderstandings which, in turn, builds wisdom.

Interventions for Resilience to Acute Stress

Acute stress is an intense negative reaction to a specific event or situation that is short-lived because the stress is dissipated once the stressor is resolved or removed.⁸ Outstanding workers display resilience to acute stress by exercising good thinking between the stressor and their response. Here is an example of acute stress causing a low-resilient response:

Imagine you are seated in one of multiple rows of chairs in a large conference room for a monthly departmental meeting led by the Vice President of the department. One of the managers is presenting an update at the front of the conference room. This manager is short of stature but always carries a big smile on his face – he is well liked by you and by others. He is smiling now as he reports on a recent result. Suddenly, there is a loud sigh of frustration from the back of the conference room that causes you and everyone else seated to turn around and see where the noise came from. Then a female manager stands up, walks out the back door of the conference room, and slams the door behind her very loudly for all to hear.

The loud sigh and slamming of the door are behaviors that are not in keeping with social expectations for female behavior in a workplace so most people will view the female manager’s behavior as bad. This is an example of a low-resilient response that can be damaging to reputation and career advancement. Now an example of acute stress causing a high-resilient response:

Imagine you are seated in one of multiple rows of chairs in an open space for an interactive meeting led by a female professional facilitator. The professional facilitator is kicking off a workshop with an introduction that highlights content from a pre-read document. You recognize the content because you read the document sent ahead of time as preparation for the workshop. The facilitator illustrates a point from the pre-read document with an example and suddenly the Chief Technical Officer raises his voice in strong disagreement with the example provided by the facilitator. The room goes quiet as it is clear the Chief Technical Officer is angry and about to derail the meeting. The facilitator thanks the Chief Technical Officer for his input. She then says that the input will not impact the work planned by explaining how the focus of the planned work is independent of the disputed content. She further explains that the disputed content does impact prioritization of the work to be generated in the workshop and that this prioritization will happen after the workshop. She captures the disputed input on a “parking lot” with a marker on a flipchart in front of the room for all to see. The facilitator then asks the Chief Technical Officer if this addresses his concern and he says “yes, thank-you.”

The calm and confidence with which the professional facilitator handles the angry outburst from the executive in the room diffused the tension in the room so was impressive. This is an example of a high-resilient response that can be helpful to reputation and career advancement.

One intervention to develop resilience to acute stress is to improve your overall well-being which promotes brain health. Brain health is key to exercising good thinking between an acute stress and your response which leads to high-resilient behavior. There are five dimensions of well-being that I focus on and that can be remembered with the acronym SPICE for social, physical, intangible, cognitive, and emotional well-being.⁸ Social well-being is determined by the quality of your social network. Physical well-being is determined by your sleeping, eating, and exercising habits. Intangible well-being is determined by the quality of your spiritual practices. Cognitive well-being is determined by the variety and frequency of intellectual challenges. Finally, emotional well-being is determined by the extent of your emotional intelligence. You can take the SPICE well-being assessment to identify specific ways to improve your overall well-being and brain health.^7,9

Another intervention to develop resilience to acute stress is to use controlled breathing to dissipate the strong negative emotion that accompanies acute stress. Acute stress causes the brain’s amygdala to trigger the release of stress hormones which in turn prepare the body for response. Stress hormones redirect energy from the thinking parts of the brain to other organs needed for response such as increasing your heart rate and respiration rate to prepare to fight or take flight away from the threat. Controlled breathing is a way to stop the threat response and return energy to the thinking part of the brain. Controlled breathing is a technique to dissipate strong negative emotion and enable good thinking before a response to acute stress. One controlled breathing exercise to try is 4-7-8 breathing¹⁰ as follows:

• Exhale completely through your mouth.
• Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose while counting to four in your head.
• Hold this breath as you count to seven.
• Exhale completely through your mouth as you count to eight.
• Repeat this cycle three more times, for a total of four 4-7-8 breath cycles.

Interventions for Resilience to Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is the low-level negative emotion that results from persistent stressors like work pressures, chronic health conditions, and financial worries.8 Outstanding workers display resilience towards chronic stress through preventative measures that develop self-efficacy and self-discipline. It can be difficult to detect when more resilience is needed to address chronic stress in your life. For me, it was when I had my first and only panic attack at home. A panic attack feels like a heart attack. I remember having a pain in my right arm and I could feel my heart racing. By the time the ambulance arrived, the attack had subsided but I still needed to go and get checked out at the hospital. I turned out to be fine and was given a prescription to use in case I got another panic attack in the future. This experience made me realize how much stress I was under because of a new boss who was micromanaging me and who was neglecting the political support the organization needed at the time.

One intervention to develop resilience to chronic stress is social modeling. Social modeling is watching others or learning about the effort of others in pursuing goals or results like your own. For example, I had learned from a leader I admired later in my career that everyone will have good and bad bosses over the course of their career. The leader said the important thing is to learn what to do from the good bosses and what not to do from the bad bosses and what not to do really shaped his leadership style. I would have had more resilience to the bad boss that triggered my panic attack had I had this social modeling reference before that bad boss! Social modeling is one technique to develop self-efficacy or the belief in your ability to take actions to accomplish a goal.¹¹ Watching others be successful or learning how others have been successful can motivate you to put in the effort to confront challenges and accomplish goals over time. People with high self-efficacy are resilient because they remain more optimistic and confident in their abilities in the face of challenges than those with low self-efficacy.

Another intervention to develop resilience to chronic stress is goal achievement. Goal achievement takes self-discipline and achieving goals helps offset the negative emotion produced by chronic stress. Further, goal achievement gives you something rewarding to focus on and builds resilience because goals worth pursuing have challenges and obstacles to overcome. In response to my panic attack triggered by a bad boss, I set a goal to find a new position at the company headquarters. A big source of the stress at the time was concern for the long-term viability at the satellite site this bad boss managed. Securing a new job at company headquarters in a different location would have longer term security than staying at the satellite site.

The science of goal achievement has three stages.⁴ First, goal achievement begins with setting a SMART goal or a goal that is specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and time-bound. A good goal is also relevant to you and tangible. My SMART goal for escaping a bad boss was as follows: explore and secure a position on the SAP project that supports my future career interests in the next two months while the SAP project is still hiring. Second, goal achievement includes goal striving in which it is helpful to link the “why” of the goal to the “how” of the goal especially when setbacks or obstacles are encountered during goal pursuit. Third and finally, once a goal is achieved, consider what maintenance might be needed such as new habits to maintain the result. Goal achievement takes self-discipline but also builds self-efficacy or the belief in your ability to take actions to accomplish a goal.

Summary and Next Steps

Resilience is the ability to recover without damage from difficult conditions. Working conditions have become difficult because of technical obsolescence from the fast pace of technological change. Consider a statement from Matt Sigelman’s 2021 testimony to the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training: “In fact, there is a growing disjoint between the skills of America’s workforce and those sought by employers.”¹² The gap between the skills possessed by American workers and the skills needed by employers reflects the impact of technological advancements. An outstanding worker is a resilient one who can adapt to change, develop the new skills needed, and manage the stress caused by change.

Resilience is needed by professionals because there is more change, skill development, and stress occurring over the course of a career today in 2025 than when my dad was in the workforce between 1960 and 1995. The fast pace of technological advancement is driving more change, the need for skill development, and increased stress in the workplace. Outstanding workers adapt to change by finding ways to use new technologies to improve the quality and efficiency of their work and to increase the benefits their work provides to others. Outstanding workers develop new skills by living the growth mindset or the belief that you can improve any trait or skill with effort and hard work. Finally, outstanding workers manage both acute and chronic stress in the workplace. Outstanding workers mind their well-being and use controlled breathing to be resilient to sources of acute stress. Further, outstanding workers use social modeling and goal achievement to develop self-efficacy and self-discipline which serve as preventative measures to sources of chronic stress.

I did an exercise in which I reflected on my most satisfying and most dissatisfying career experiences over 35 years. I reflected on the lessons learned and factors that enable me to withstand and recover quickly from my greatest career setbacks. My insight was that fulfillment skills fueled my resilience to my career setbacks! This insight motivated me to curate the most powerful, science-based practices to pursue fulfillment from my experience and research into a new on-line course for the benefit of others interested in fulfillment.⁹

References

1. https://www.adaptationadvantage.com/
2. Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018
3. Tucker P., What is resilience? Psychiatric Times, 2021;38(7) at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/resilience
4. NLI Foundations in NeuroLeadership certification program fall 2017
5. Parmar, R., The science of resilience and wisdom, Psychiatric Times, 2022 May 10 retrieved from https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-science-of-resilience-and-wisdom
6. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311
7. Valerie Patrick, When Bad Teams Happen to Good People: Your Complete Repair Guide for Successful Teamwork, New York: Career Press, 2021, Chapter 1 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1632651823)
8. https://mscenter.org/article/the-science-behind-stress-examining-its-causes-responses-and-impacts/
9. https://valerie-s-site-68ec.thinkific.com/products/courses/science-and-practice-of-fulfillment
10. https://mscenter.org/article/practical-strategies-for-managing-the-many-types-of-stress/
11. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-efficacy-2795954
12. https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/5.27.21_hewi_matthew_sigelman.pdf