Buyer Beware

There’s a lot of speculation about what working life will be like in the future.  One option is a hybrid arrangement, with more of us working at least part of the time from home.  Some large corporates are insisting that their employees must work from company offices once the pandemic has eased, but setting aside speculation about the pros and cons of working from home or office, whatever your work environment, everyone is affected by the two intertwined constants in life: pressure and change.

Pressure is a demand to perform.  There is always something to be done, and a lot of it is pretty routine until the parameters change.  Imagine you’ve been asked to produce a project outline for a meeting.  You’ve done this many times before, and since the meeting isn’t until next week the pressure of the task is low.  Later that day there’s a change of plan: the meeting’s been brought forward to tomorrow.  Your manager reminds you that the contract depends crucially on your outline, and that you’d better get it right!

Many people would describe this scenario as stressful, but that’s not true.  All that’s happened is that the pressure has increased.  Pressure can be turned into stress, which happens by ruminating about the negative emotion the situation provokes.  In other words, churning over how little time you have to do the job, or how you might be sacked if you don’t deliver on time.  None of this churning helps.  In fact, because your attention is hijacked by rumination you’re even less likely to get the job done properly, and at the same time you’re prolonging the physical demand on your body that pressure brings.

Pressure can be highly motivating, and being able to adapt to the pressure of change without turning it into stress is what resilience is about.  Some people just seem to do it naturally, but they weren’t born with this capacity – resilience is a learned behaviour, which means that with the right training, anyone can acquire resilience skills. 

Training programmes have been significantly compromised by remote working.  They can be run via Zoom, but all the participants still have to be available at the same time.  An alternative is to use online training.  Apart from the financial advantages, there is no requirement for everyone to attend together, and people can complete the course in their own time and at their own pace.  The downside is that online programmes can unfortunately end up presenting just superficial accounts of the topics, and not really be effective in changing behaviour.  Caveat emptor: before you take this route, look very carefully at the evidence!

We now offer the Challenge of Change Online Resilience Training®, which is a comprehensive version of our face-to-face evidence-based programme.   The Online provides

·         A full account of the four-step resilience process

·         A specially-designed version of the psychometric Challenge of Change Profile®

·         Access to all of the support materials, including the mindfulness exercise, the printable download offering further strategies for addressing Profile scores and the Challenge of Change Refresher® video available 90 days post-training.

Contact us to find out more.