Stress and Resiliency - Part One

People who have been in a leadership role often encounter a level of stress and pressure that is a significant multiple of the challenges encountered by those in non-leadership roles.  Performance pressure, personnel challenges, mistreatment by one’s supervisors, mistakes viewed by oneself or by others as a “failure,” and other such events, can take a toll one the leader’s internal fortitude.

Such realities can impact the emotional and mental reserves of leaders over time – and this brings us to the topic of resiliency.

What is Resilience? Webster’s dictionary defines it, in part, as “…an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”[1]

Psychologists define resilience as “…that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes.”[2]

This capacity to “adjust” is not static; rather it ebbs and flows, based on the level of stress, the number of incidents, the duration of individual or cumulative stress-causing events, and other contributing factors.

Over the next couple weeks, we will examine this topic, as well as suggest some potential ways to maintain an appropriate level of resiliency – in how to do so in a healthy manner.

Stay tuned…