Building Resilience Course

Building Resilience Programme

This is a day that raises awareness around what resilience is, what builds and breaks it and what your default resilience strategies might be. The day will then focus on tools and techniques to help you build resilience in yourself and others. 

It’s also an acknowledgement that resilience is a bit of a moveable feast – our ability to cope goes up and down depending upon a whole range of things: what else might be going on, who else is involved, what actually has happened, whether you or someone else got up on the wrong side of the bed.

We will look at patterns, default behaviour, emotional reactions, expectations and pay particular attention to how anyone can make things worse in terms of eroding their resilience by spending too much time and energy being distressed with the distress.

By adding to your resilience ‘tool kit’ you will have a lot more to call upon when the going gets rough.

Outline of the Building Resilience Course

What would you like to get from the day?

Each delegate will have the opportunity to identify what they would like to take from the training. There will be an opening chat so that everyone can discuss what brought them to the course.

Icebreaker

Everyone comes to training with a lot of other things on their mind. Our icebreaker is intended to energise and enable the delegates to get to know one another slightly better. Our energisers are dynamic and yet never put anyone on the spot.

What is Resilience?

In two groups, delegates will be asked to define the term – what is it? We’ll also discuss the associated behaviours and emotions that can accompany resilience. A model of resilience and what contributes to our natural capabilities will be offered, emphasising that it is a capacity that can developed – from any start point.

When have you been resilient in your own life?

Everyone has a time in which they managed under adversity. Delegates will be asked to identify what strategies/tools/support enabled them to be resilient in a specific situation. This will raise awareness of their default patterns and existing tools.

Resilience Cycle

Obviously, everyone deals with resilience differently. However, we do know that there are common themes and behaviours that we believe can help develop and strengthen resilience.

The Cycle:

Something Happens!  →  First Reactions (primitive brain usually kicks in here)  →

Thought Gathering  →  Second Reactions  →  Stepping Away and Gaining

Perspective→  Getting Support  →  Solution Finding

What Builds / Breaks Resilience

The following factors have been identified by Carol Pemberton as supporting / building resilience:

• Emotional Control
• Making Meaning
• Proactivity
• Realistic Positivity  
• Elasticity
• Support
• Solution Finding
• Self-Belief

In addition, there are a few more elements that all contribute to building resilience:

• Humour
• Acceptance
• Seeing the big picture
• Gaining perspective
• Creating a support network
• Knowing how to self-protect

In turn, there are many factors that can undermine people’s resilience.  Of course it’s individual, but at some point most people will have encountered the following:

• Overload – too much to do in too little time
• Your own mistakes
• Someone else’s mistakes
• Unanticipated bad news
• Difficult managers, colleagues, etc.
• Unresolved conflict
• Sustained criticism
• Emotional or physical shocks
• When things don’t go according to plan

The Resilience Tool Kit

Delegates will be offered processes to support development of their own or others’ resilience. They will be encouraged to identify specific behaviours relating to each factor that contribute to the growth or decline of their own resilience.

All the processes are designed to give the delegates a greater awareness of how they respond to difficulties, especially unexpected ones or the ones that take them to the ‘tipping point’. The greater peoples’ awareness, the more able they will be to change their behaviour.

However, before there can be a change in behaviour, there has to be an awareness of each person’s default emotional response and the ‘narrative’ they tell themselves that help or undermine resilience. The narrative reinforces belief systems and belief systems impact on behaviour.

Depending upon the delegates’ needs exercises, processes and games will be drawn from:

Values – identifying purpose and meaning

How to persist when the going gets rough. What’s really important, what motivates? We believe that identifying and acknowledging personal values is essential when looking at Resilience.

We also know that often when difficulties arise it’s because there’s a clash of values.

Delegates will be encouraged to identify what their purpose is in a specific context/contexts. For example, what is ultimately important to them in the situation of their choice. This creates the framework for the rest of the day’s work.

Circles of Concern, Influence and Control

It can be very easy to focus a lot of energy and attention on areas in which we have no control, which can in turn lead to a sense of helplessness and lessened resilience. This exercise helps delegates to identify what they are concerned about, what they have influence over and what they have control over. This awareness can help delegates see where they might have more influence/control than they might recognise and to make conscious choices over where to optimally focus their attention and energy. 

Self-Perception – Victim or Hero?

It’s easy when things get difficult to perceive ourselves as victims of – fate, bad luck, bad karma – whatever.  And sometimes, undeniably, we get more than our fair share. How we perceive ourselves, however, can inform how we react. Loosely based on Karpman’s Drama Triangle, this exercise looks at some options of how we perceive ourselves and our circumstances – are we the victim of a persecutor who needs to be rescued, or can we challenge ourselves to be the coach and creator or our next steps.

Identifying your default narrative

A pairs exercise where participants pick a recent event and describe their emotional reactions and what messages they told themselves. In other words, what ‘story’ did they create to reinforce their beliefs about themselves. For instance, “I’m rubbish at…which is why this happened.” Or “This is frustrating but let me roll up my sleeves and get on with it.”

The aim here is for each person to identify their default story or narrative and to understand the impact that narrative has.

Crafting a narrative that builds resilience

Following on from that exercise we now move into crafting a narrative that supports resilience – what alternative narrative might there be? This exercise explores a method to change the messages people tell themselves that, when repeated, become ‘true’ and can inevitably undermine their resilience. 

Learning to separate fact from emotion

Much of what we think is true is often fed by emotion, clouding perception of what is actually fact and what is reaction. This is an energetic process where delegates get a chance to unpick recent situations and identify where the line between fact and emotion may have been blurred.

Learning how to choose behaviour

As we said earlier, when something happens there’s not a whole lot we can do about our initial reactions. However, there’s a great deal that can be done about second reactions. This is another face-paced exercise where delegates practise a variety of chosen second reactions.

Confidence – how to access and build it in self and others

Participants build a Resilience Pyramid:

The bottom of the pyramid is made up of foundation blocks:  what strengths and traits delegates recognise they have always had.

The next tier is what people have acquired and developed:  the skills that support those strengths.

The third is behaviour that reflects those strengths.

Finally, the apex of the Pyramid is a Strap Line which articulates delegates’ Resilience Factor.

Solution Finding – Coaching self and others to solutions

It’s often said that in the mind of the person with the challenge also lies the solution. When resilience is low, however, the ability to find that solution can be difficult. This exercise looks at ways for delegates to recognise the options that are available. We return to the narrative people say to themselves when their minds go blank:  “I can’t do that”  “That will never work”, etc.
We will look at individual scenarios of times when delegates found they couldn’t easily find a solution and will explore the options of what else could have been done.

We will then work with the delegates to challenge their narrative “I can’t do that”, “That will never work” and create a way for each of them to find the route to solutions – it will be different for everyone.

Developing humour, even in the face of disaster

Seeing the humour in difficult or overwhelming situations can be hard. This is a drawing exercise where everyone draws a recent experience in ‘cartoon’ form to see if they can extract any absurdities, silliness, comedy from the situation.

Creating a supportive environment for yourself and others

You don’t want to do this stuff alone (isolation is toxic for humans) so we look now at how you create a support structure and other ways to take emotional, physical and practical care of yourself.

• What do you already do?
• What are your calming strategies?
• Where do you off-load?  Does it work?

Action Plan

Delegates will identify one tool, behaviour or strategy that they will use to support their own or others’ resilience, when they will next have the opportunity to use it, what they will need and what might prevent it. This will help to make their learning more readily available if they are ‘primed’.

Post-Cards from the edge….

Delegates will be asked to write a post card – to themselves – of what their key learning has been from the training. This will be sent to them two weeks from the course date as a reminder of what they are taking away. 

They will also each receive a follow-up call approximately two weeks after the course by one of their trainers to see how they’re getting on and answer any questions that might have arisen since the training.

Building Resilience Course Concluding Remarks

Delegates are asked to tell us what they are taking away and where they will be putting it into effect.

Participants are given a web link to their videos from the course

They also have access to a course web page containing

• Handouts used during the course
• New supportive material
• Impact Factory PDF documents
• Recommended reading
• Links to our favourite videos
• Photos of the day

to help further their progress.

Building Resilience Course