CHAPTER 2: THE CHALLENGES FOR MANAGERS OF BUILDING RESILIENCE IN THEMSELVES AND OTHERS
Introduction
In this chapter, we look at how to tell when you actively need to build your resilience and why people find this so difficult, and why increasing your own resilience and that of your team is important.
Case study
Pallia and her partner live together with their two children.
Pallia has been working from home since the first lockdown. Pallia works from a bedroom that has been converted into an office, and her partner, who also works from home, uses the kitchen table.
Pallia manages a team of six people, three of whom have been furloughed. The business she works for is struggling in the difficult economic circumstances. As the pandemic has progressed, Pallia has become increasingly concerned about the long-term viability of her job.
Pallia’s partner is in sales and the business he works for has also been impacted. He has had to take a 20% pay cut. In the past, the couple relied on his large annual bonus and sales commissions to help pay their large mortgage, but these have also been cut. As a result, they are struggling financially. Pallia and her partner have already taken a mortgage holiday and now are using their credit cards, which are at their maximum credit limits, to pay for their day-to-day living. Pallia’s partner has been applying for other jobs, but the market is saturated, and he feels lucky to at least have his current position.
The couple have been home-schooling their two children, aged six and eight, when the schools have been closed during lockdown. One of the children has learning difficulties and this has put increasing strain on the home environment. Pallia’s partner works for an American company and often has calls and meetings late into the evening, which means that he has little time to help with childcare.
Pallia finds herself in a constant state of anxiety. She feels isolated and vulnerable at work and is conscious that two of her team members are not coping well with working from home. She has tried to keep in contact with the people on her team who have been furloughed, but this is increasingly difficult. Her relationship with her boss has always been slightly strained and now they tend to communicate via email rather than videoconferencing or phone. Recently Pallia missed two important deadlines and she feels she is constantly playing catch-up at work.
Pallia juggles childcare each day and feels guilty she is not a better mother or teacher. In addition, she is very concerned about her parents’ welfare. She is an only child and has not seen her parents for more than six months as they have been self-isolating.
The inability to plan for the future, and the thought that even if all goes well, she and her partner will be in financial difficulties for a long time, leaves Pallia feeling overwhelmed, often on the edge of tears and unable to cope.
Lack of control
Does Pallia’s situation sound familiar?
Feeling you lack control and that things are getting out of hand can have a detrimental effect on health and well-being. In the case study, Pallia is certainly stressed, and her current work and home situation is pulling on her reserves of resilience.
We all need a degree of stimulation at work in to be efficient and effective. If we are just sitting twiddling our thumbs, our performance is low. However, if we feel overwhelmed and have too much to do our work performance also diminishes and we can suffer physically and mentally, leading to exhaustion and illness.
Figure 2: The efficiency threshold
Typical causes of stress
Pre-pandemic, typical causes of stress at work included lack of time, frustrations at work, the pressure of meeting deadlines, relationship breakdowns, change, boredom and bureaucracy. During and post-pandemic, job security and isolation factors may also cause people to feel overwhelmed and unable to cope.
Outside work, we have additional pressures:
•Health worries and illness
•Losing a loved one
•Crisis in relationships
•Family pressures
•Financial worries
•Moving home
•Unemployment
•Caring for others
•Poor self-esteem
If you work remotely, you may not have the support network to help you cope with stress that can exist when you work from one central location on a nine-to-five basis.
When pressure turns to stress: spotting the signs of a decrease in well-being and resilience
As we have seen, some degree of pressure helps work performance. Indeed, there is such a thing as positive stress. Called ‘eustress’ (the opposite of ‘distress’), it helps us to focus our energy and motivates us to achieve our short-term goals. Eustress is the excitement we feel when working up to completing a major, important task. It is when we know we can cope with the pressure; in fact, it improves our performance.
Conversely, distress, which can be short- or long-term, is when we feel we cannot cope. It causes us anxiety or concern, is unpleasant and negatively affects our performance.
When distress occurs, we experience physical, emotional and behavioural effects:
Table 1: Physical Signs of Stress
| Pressure | Stress |
| Good posture | Poor posture |
| Relaxed breathing | Rapid breathing/tight chest |
| Aware of body needs | Indigestion/stomach cramps |
| Vitality | Shoulder and neck pain |
| Wellness | Headaches |
| Dilated pupils | |
| Sweating/clammy feeling |
Table 2: Emotional Signs of Stress
| Pressure | Stress |
| Confident | Anxious |
| Efficient | Tense |
| Pleasure | Distress |
| Good self-image | Poor self-image |
| Assertive | Unconfident |
| Able to cope | Swamped |
| Energised | Depressed |
Table 3: Behavioural Signs of Stress
| Pressure | Stress |
| Focused | Poor concentration |
| Clarity of thought | Confusion |
| Awareness | Lack of awareness |
| Effective planning | Poor planning |
| Decisive | Indecisive |
| Objectives achieved | Not completing tasks |
| Clear communication | Ambiguous communication |
| Time to rest and relax | Lack of time/fatigue |
Self-care
To ensure your own well-being, be aware of the common burnout symptoms. Look at the list below and tick any that relate to you in the past month:
Table 4: Burnout Assessment
If you are feeling anxious or depressed, here is a free self-assessment that will point you in the direction of help and support:
www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mood-self-assessment/.
Coping with stress
If you do find your well-being affected by uncertainty and change and/or you are experiencing any of the burnout symptoms listed above, it is important to act to prevent further decline and illness. At times of stress and when things are not going OK, you actively need to build your resilience. Many people find this difficult as they will not admit even to themselves that things are wrong. They may find it difficult to reach out for help or not know how or what to do to move things forward.
In the following chapters you will find tips on how to boost your resilience. The resilience questionnaire in the next chapter is also a useful diagnostic to help you identify where to focus.
Watch out for signs of stress in others
As well as keeping an eye on your own well-being, your workload and the balance of home and work life, look out for signs of stress in members of your team.
With more people working from home and regular working patterns changing, gone are the days when a quick stop at someone’s desk or a chat by the water fountain would give the manager a sense of the state of team morale. As the work climate becomes more difficult and less cohesive, and without face-to-face interaction, it’s easy to miss the cues to pinpoint someone’s state of mind. It is essential therefore that managers make a sustained effort to tune into the well-being of their team when they are working remotely or when working patterns have changed.
Watch out for mood swings and unusual behaviour in your team members. Keep in regular contact, be supportive and be available to offer a listening ear. It is helpful to discuss how you and others are feeling in team meetings and agree any actions to help improve well-being in the workplace. In chapter 8, I provide tips and ideas for ways you can build resilience in the team.
The consequences if resilience declines for the manager and for the team
You may think that no one notices if the team manager is not feeling at their best – but employees are extremely sensitive to their boss’s mood and behaviour.
Consider for a moment how your own boss has reacted to the pandemic and how they have been with you in the past month. It is likely that their behaviour is infectious. If positive, it can boost morale and motivation. If negative, it can cause ripples and stress across the whole team.
A manager and a team who are not resilient will probably dwell on problems, not see the way out of difficulties and become overwhelmed. By practising resilience techniques with your team both as an individual and as a manager, you will be able to adopt a proactive approach to daily life.
Reflection and action points from this chapter
Take five minutes to write down how you are feeling right now and how this is impacting how you interact with your colleagues. Reflect on what this tells you about your current state of well-being and level of happiness.