As coaches and training teams continue to support organisations pulling out of recession, Coaching at Work road-tests the resilience workbook
1 The tool
What is it?
The resilience workbook is a paper-based resource developed by Hay Group and Adaptiv Learning Systems. Used alongside Adaptiv’s online resilience factor inventory® (RFI), the workbook helps individuals understand resilience and takes them through their scores across seven resilience factors, showing how each one can be developed.
The resilience workbook draws on the work of Andrew Shatté and Dean Becker, founders of Adaptiv Learning Systems. Shatte, along with other psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania, developed and validated skills-based resilience training programmes and the RFI, a 60-item assessment that measures each of the seven factors.
Since 2003 the RFI has been used with more than 20,000 individuals. Adaptiv Learning Systems has field-tested and developed training programmes, individual, organisation and 360-degree versions of the RFI to build employees’ resilience at all organisational levels.
The development of resilience supports emotional and social intelligence. Hay Group’s advocacy of EI with Dan Goleman and Richard Boyatzis, has led to its collaboration with Adaptiv Learning Systems. This resilience workbook, along with free access to the RFI for workbook users, is the result.
How does it work?
The workbook demystifies resilience, helping individuals discuss and understand it through everyday language. It demonstrates that resilience isn’t about being heroic or stoic, but about thinking differently. Getting our thinking right equips us to steer through challenges, bounce back and reach out to new experiences and towards our potential.
The workbook starts with an overview of the seven resilience factors:
- emotion regulation
- impulse control
- causal analysis
- self-efficacy
- realistic optimism
- empathy
- reaching out
It gets people reflecting on what resilience means for them, guides them through the online RFI to capture their own scores and takes them through each factor in detail. It offers development tips, reflective questions and exercises to help individuals identify their ‘thinking traps’ and develop their own ways to boost each factor.
The workbook encourages people to focus on the factors that are important to them, and ends with exercises that help them reflect on and apply what they’ve learned.
For more details go to: www.haygroup.com/leadershipandtalentondemand
2 The administrator
The application
Our people are currently working in the most challenging business environment they have ever experienced. As the training team, our key role is to support them to do their job to the best of their ability.
In discussions around training needs the word ‘resilience’ kept coming up. When we asked what this meant for the business, people told us they wanted themselves and others to have the ability to bounce back, to recover quickly and to keep driving forward. So, after further research we decided to focus on three main areas: people will bounce back stronger through having the right mindset, they will be able to come up with potential solutions through access to creativity tools and they will gain more flexibility to run with the change by understanding its impact on themselves and others.
Using the tool
Our output was a series of three short workshops that we called the Resilience Bundle. When we saw Hay Group’s resilience workbook we felt that it would slot very easily into the programme because:
- it complements our own materials
- the explanations and exercises under each of the seven areas of resilience are well laid out
- it supports the facilitated style of our workshop sessions and also provides a great reference to support our employees going forward
- readers can dip in and out and focus on what’s important to them and their roles (for example, the factors realistic optimism and causal analysis fit well with our own business focus on creative solutions)
- the content is high quality and well presented; there is a good variety of material which keeps people’s interest and should appeal to a wide range of learning styles.
The verdict
As a training team we’re at home dealing with behaviours, competencies, values and traits. The resilience workbook helps us work with employees at another level, because it explains how they can go about becoming more accurate and flexible thinkers. By encouraging our employees to work on their resilience, and sustain it over time, we can help them generate creative solutions to the changes our business is facing.
3 The client
The experience
We’ve only just started using the workbook as part of our facilitated workshops so we’re not yet in a position to assess its longer term impact. However, our employees’ and coaches’ initial experiences are positive:
- “I think the overall content of the workbook is very good. It covers resilience in enough detail for someone to get an initial handle on the subject. I do feel there could be even more examples and more theory, but I realise this may limit the audience that the workbook is aiming at.”
- “It’s very well presented. I like the design, and the language is very easy to understand, which makes it easy to see how resilience ideas can be applied.”
The verdict
The resilience workbook is already making a contribution to our Resilience Bundle workshops, and its potential as a coaching tool is becoming clear. I can see us using the workbook in a number of ways to help our teams face these uncertain times with greater confidence.
Mark Brabazon is head of training and development at AIB Capital Markets
The pros and cons of the resilience workbook
UPSIDE
- Highly relevant for continuous change
- Gives valuable insights
- Can be used by independent coaches or in a company context
- Can be used alongside other tools
- Based on validated research
- Can be used one-to-one or in groups
- RFI easy to complete and benchmarked
- Clearly presented
- No accreditation
- Cost-effective
DOWNSIDE
- Individuals must work on their thinking
- Some may resist dealing with issues about resilience
- Most impact as part of a workshop or coaching discussion
- Less value without the RFI
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 2