Want Incredible Resilience? Tap Your Strengths in the Workplace

Have you ever considered that you probably have strengths you’re not even aware of? With this post I help you explore your strengths in the workplace and show you how to use them to become even more resilient.

The exercise used in this article is based on Padesky and Mooney’s four-step strengths-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model.

The first step is to identify strengths that you already have. In step two you translate these strengths into general strategies to form a personal resilience model (PRM).

The next step is to apply your PRM to problem areas. In step four you design behavioral experiments that focus on building resilience in challenging situations.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Identify Strengths in the Workplace

Use the VIA-IS Survey

Strengths are strategies, beliefs or personal assets that you use with relative ease. So how do you know what your strengths are? One way is to use questionnaires such as the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) survey from Seligmann. This identifies 24-character strengths widely valued across cultures organized under six broad virtues.

1. Wisdom: creativity, curiosity, judgement, love of learning, perspective

2. Courage: bravery, honesty, perseverance, zest

3. Humanity: kindness, love, social intelligence

4. Justice: fairness, leadership, teamwork

5. Temperance: forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation

6. Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality

You can take the free survey here to find out what your character strengths are – it takes about 20 minutes to complete.

Other Ways to Uncover Strengths in the Workplace

Other ways to identity your strengths are to get feedback from others or spend time reflecting on what you’re good at.

You can also explore your strenghts by considering your common everyday experiences. What are you passionate about or committed to in the work context? What are your daily ‘never miss’ activities?

It’s important to consider this, because you are already resilient in those areas. If you do something consistently, you’re bound to encounter resistance or obstacles at some point. But nevertheless, you keep at it.

Why do you stick with it? What makes you stay committed? The things that come to mind are your strengths.

After taking time to explore your strengths, you usually end up with a list of three to seven main ones. To further evaluate if these are really your strengths, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do I feel energized when using this strength?

2. Do I feel a sense of ownership and authenticity when using the strength? – That is who I am!

3. Do I feel joy and enthusiasm when using this strength?

4. Do I look for new ways to use this strength?

5. Do I feel excited when showing this strength?

Write down your main strengths:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Step 2: Construct Your Own Personal Model of Resilience (PMR) Based on Strengths in the Workplace

After identifying your strengths in the workplace, the next step is to make your own PMR by translating your strengths into general strategies.

For example, one of my strengths is to be consistent. A general strategy based on this is to always make regular progress and stay committed when I try to reach a goal. In other words, things may come up and I may be limited in how much I can work on my goal. Nevertheless, I can still stay committed and make regular progress by doing what I can and not giving up.

When making your PMR try to use imagery and metaphors as much as possible. This will make it easier to apply your strategies. For instance, regularly working on something reminds me of an ox plowing the field.

So, when I’m in a situation that requires perseverance and consistency thinking of an ox plowing the field will remind me to make regular progress and stay committed. It’s not about doing things perfectly, but just keeping at it.

Write down your general strategies with a corresponding image or metaphor:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Step 3: Apply Your PMR to Problem Areas that Need Resilience

After identifying what you want to work on, decide which strategies would be most helpful in each area. The point is to stay resilient in the face of difficulties, not necessarily to succeed in solving or overcoming the obstacle. Focus on building resilience, not the outcome itself.

This shift is quite exciting because you’re not under pressure to solve the problem. Rather you aim to stand in the face of it.

One problem area I had when I started the job I’m currently in was generating revenue. I was the first employee in a completely new business unit and had to build a client and candidate network. Instead of focusing on increasing revenue, I used my personal model of resilience.

I decided not to worry about revenue, but focused on making regular progress in key areas. I refused to get discouraged, but to persevere. Eventually revenue began to flow, but not because I obsessed over it. Rather, I focused on using my strengths to build resilience in that challenging situation. I was like an ox plowing the field. Eventually I could reap the harvest.

Write down how you will apply your PMR to a challenging situation:

Step 4: Design Behavioral Experiments to Practice Resilience

The point of this exercise is to test the quality of your PMR. You can see how your strengths in the workplace and derived strategies hold up in various challenging situations.

Write down a challenging situation in which you would like to test your resilience. This is the basis for the behavioral experiment:

Now instead of thinking about how the situation will turn out, make predictions about your own resilience. For example, how long will you be able to hold out? What will resilience look and feel like in this situation? What thoughts will you have as you stay resilient?

In my first job, I would often get intimidated by clients who had a more senior role than me. In the face of their critical questions, I would freeze up and not really know what to say. Here is an example of how I could make predications about my resilience in such a situation:

In the face of this situation, I imagine myself as a knight holding a shield. Even though others are critical towards me, I stay calm and don’t get flustered.

Because of this I feel confident and competent. I keep a cool head and stand my ground. I’m proud of myself for not freezing up. This feels great! I’m not pulled down by fear.

Describe how your resilience will look like in the situation you chose:

Look at Challenges Through a “Resilience” Lens

Now that you’ve set up the experiment, you can look at challenging situations through a “resilience lens”. Obstacles and setbacks become opportunities to enhance and practice resilience.  

When you encounter the situation you wrote down above, you can later reflect on how your resilience held up. If you were unable to stay resilient, review your PMR to see if additional strategies might have helped you to stay resilient even longer.

Also, if you don’t respond as you would have liked to, don’t waste time beating yourself up. Instead, consider what you wished you would have done. Based on this you can gradually build up new beliefs and behaviors that enahnce your resilience.

Summary

In this post I introduced you to a strengths-based cognitive behavioral therapy model that you can use at work to grow your resilience. Step 1 is to identify your strengths in the workplace.

In step two you create a personal model of resilience by translating these strengths into general strategies. By linking these strategies with an image or metaphor you make it easier to recall and apply them.

In step three you apply the strategies to problem areas by choosing which strategies will be most effective for building resilience in each situation.

In step four, you design behavioral experiments and adjust your strategies as necessary. The goal is not to find the best solution to the problem, but to stay resilient.

Use this exercise to craft numerous strategies and work on as many situations as necessary. If you need professional guidance and would like some coaching in this area, feel free to reach out to me. I’d be happy to assist you.

References

Padesky, C. A., & Mooney, K. A. (2012). Strengths‐based cognitive–behavioural therapy: A four‐step model to build resilience. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 19(4), 283-290.