There would be no such thing as adventures if everything went according to plan. It’s the anecdotes people tell of how they overcame adversity to achieve their goals that has us in rapt attention. The near misses, close calls, the lucky escapes make for good fireside yarns. They are the stories that excite us, that […]
Being resilient means being able to deal with an event that otherwise could have been traumatic. Coping, is resilience over time. Resilience is also about our ability to learn from these experiences such that what was once threatening is no longer so. Just as the novice kayaker is intimidated by white water, as they learn […]
Having interviewed 50 senior managers recently, the common theme that emerged was a daily struggle to find time to think and plan. They are so busy trying to keep on top of everything that they reported losing sight of what they were trying to achieve and the bigger picture of why these things needed to […]
The stress was really getting to me. I simply did not know what to do. Out of the blue, whilst grabbing a coffee together after a challenging business meeting one of my colleagues handed me her resignation letter. Her date of departure was right in the middle of the three weeks I had planned on […]
Pay attention! If you are caught whilst driving using a mobile phone, you will be fined and if you live in the UK, points placed on your licence. There is good reason for this. Driving requires visual attention and this is a finite resource. Split it between looking at a phone and driving and the […]
Becoming more resilient is about achieving higher levels of performance through managing the pressure of work better. Managing resilience is a positive, constructive aspect of performance. Resilience is the way you choose to respond to something that could be potentially traumatic and ensuring it is not. Resilience arises from self awareness, the right mindset and […]
I’m tired of this As fatigue sets in, our ability to respond degrades. You know the feeling – you are reading something and realise that you have taken none of it in and have to go back and start again. It’s that ‘war weary’ feeling of trying to mentally pick yourself up, dust yourself down […]
I know what it’s like. I’ve been there. 18 hour days cycling in all weather conditions high up in the remote Rockies, miles from civilisation, on my own, sleep deprived, hungry and physically tired. The effect was to reduce the quality of my decisions to worse than those of a drunk. I should not be […]
I’ve got to thinking that we may be missing a trick in the way we develop resilience in employees. It only took me 2,725 miles for me to have this epiphany, but I think I am onto something. I recently participated in the Tour Divide, the self-supported mountain bike race that goes between the border […]
“I’m just being practical, but I don’t see how we can make this work,” he said. The team had come up with an idea built on their workplace skills and interests outside of work. It was a novel idea that on the face of it sounded exciting, but took little effort to find flaws in […]