One thing is certain. Uncertainty.
The past few years have brought new meaning to leading through uncertainty. It’s been a bit bonkers hasn’t it?
In this article we’ll explore the ways different businesses have responded to the uncertainty of the last half decade, how they’ve thrived and offer some tips from the research on resilience and leave you with the reminder that your mindset is critical for your success and mental health.
If you’re not in a position to make or influence decisions about how the business responds, what can you actually do? Developing your resilience or ‘bouncebackability’ can be critical for staying effective and focused, no matter what life throws at you, whether you’re in control or not.
One of the critical aspects of resilience is self-belief – slightly different to self-confidence, self-belief is the sense that you can cope, you will survive and life goes on. Why is self-belief important for resilience? Without self-belief we can feel helpless in the face of difficult and challenging situations that occur. We can be afraid of the future, worry that things will be impossible to overcome and feel frozen into inaction.
However, if we believe that we have the skills and resources to deal with these situations, we will be willing to tackle the challenge head-on, focus on the outcomes we want and persist towards that outcome even when things get difficult. So how can people develop self-belief?
Remember where you have coped before
We have all faced challenging situations before and every passing year seems to offer us all unique challenges, it is a good idea to think back to the difficult things in life you have overcome. When has life been hard and you have managed to survive and maybe even thrive afterwards? Remembering that we have coped before can boost our confidence that we can cope again – building that belief in our ability.
Set goals and achieve them
A key way to develop self-belief is through ‘mastery’ experiences, ie setting yourself goals and achieving them. In relation to resilience this means learning you can cope with unexpected situations. By putting yourself in situations where you have to use your coping resources, you will learn that you are capable of dealing with these situations.
Identify and observe role models
Identify people who are able to cope with challenging and difficult situations easily. What do they do and what can you learn from them?
Find a supportive coach or mentor
A key element of building self-belief is being encouraged by others and having them acknowledge your achievements. Identify someone who can support you and mentor you – Skype is free and it’s good to talk. Reach out to someone and don’t underestimate yourself, it’s possible that others may see you as a role model too.
Challenge your own limiting beliefs
Our belief in our ability to cope is often limited by our beliefs about ourselves and our own capabilities. It is important to challenge and question these beliefs, as it is often only these beliefs that hold us back. The first step is identifying them: what statements do you tell yourself over and over? Things like “I could never cope with…,” “I’m not good enough for this job,” “I can’t do this” and “I could never do this job if…” are common limiting beliefs. We state them in our minds like they are facts.
Make a list of the most common things you tell yourself that fit into this category of sounding like facts, yet are really more beliefs about your ability.
The second step is to challenge these statements. Are they facts? For each one, ask yourself whether this is true, false or cannot say. What evidence do you have that this statement might be false? When we say things like “I always fail” or “I never do well at…” the fact is that we will have evidence to the contrary. We will of course sometimes fail, but we sometimes succeed too. Challenging these limiting beliefs and creating new beliefs for ourselves can be critical to our self-belief.
What if we changed “I always fail” to “Sometimes I do well and I want to do everything I can to make sure this time I do well too.”
Each business is reacting differently to the changes the world is experiencing at the moment and that uncertainty will continue. Looking at building resilience and self-belief – for yourself and your people, is a critical step towards surviving and thriving today and tomorrow.