Tag: personal resilience

Building Resilience – 2

Week 2 of the Building Personal Resilience course, by Macquarie University on Coursera, focuses on the different types of stressors.

Stressors are the causes of stress and are of 4 types:

1. Time Demands: This typically comes into play when we are overwhelmed due to a lack of time to finish a task. Time passes by quickly as we approach the deadline. Please note this feeling of time passing by rapidly can also happen in activities where we have high engagement, such as reading a thrilling page-turner. Time stressors can increase fatigue and exhaustion and reduce our ability to work to our full capacity.

2. Interpersonal Conflicts: This happens due to conflicts with team members. There has been a focus on teams with diverse skill-sets in recent years. The underlying assumption of this is that a team with varied skillsets and backgrounds can solve problems better. While this may work well for problems requiring innovation, diversity may inadvertently hurt teams when they have a task to be accomplished in a standard way. Interpersonal conflicts stem from self-interest, and since each of us has varying self-interests, there is a likelihood of our interests conflicting with that of team members. In such cases, the fight/flight response takes over, and either we get into arguments with team members or we back off from the situation. In both cases, the impact is negative on our teams and us. Interpersonal conflict can arise due to the demands of our job for investing in emotional labour. Most people who work in customer-facing industries have experienced irate customers and would have had to hold back their true feelings and adhere to company guidelines while dealing with customers. These again take a toll on us.

3. Situational Stressors: This occurs due to unique circumstances in our environment. For example, someone travelling long distances daily to get to work may experience more stress. This could be because of the stress in navigating traffic or the fear of getting late to work. Studies have shown that most people prefer the ideal commute time to be 16 minutes. Recent work-from-home culture has led to people reporting that they miss the commute to work. This is because people use commute time to transition between work and home.

4. Anticipatory Stressors: These are situations where we undergo stress due to anticipation of unpleasant events. For example, a contract worker will experience stress closer to the end of the contract as they are anxious to know if the contract will be renewed or not.

The above is a short summary of my interpretation of learning’s from week 2 of the course, and I am eagerly looking forward to week 3!

Building Resilience – 1

I recently enrolled in a course on Building Personal Resilience, by Macquarie University, on Coursera. Here are a few learnings from Week 1 of the course:

1. Stress is omnipresent in nearly all walks of life.

2. Some people respond to stress better than others.

3. The amount of stress we experience in the workplace is a function of our skill sets, our manner of working, and how we interact with others.

4. Historically, whenever humans are under stress, we tend to respond with a flight or fight response. These responses may have served us well in tackling dangers from predators, but these are not apt responses for modern workplaces.

5. We have no choice but to learn the nature of stress, find ways to manage stress, and build resilience. Doing so can help us navigate stress in a variety of situations that we may encounter.

The relationship between stress and productivity is not always inverse. In cases where the demands on a worker are lower than the workers skill sets and ability, there is a likelihood of the worker getting bored and, therefore, disillusioned with work. At the other end of the spectrum, if a worker is overburdened with work, he will experience anxiety and even have a breakdown in extreme cases. The optimum state is where the demands on a worker are in sync with the worker’s ability.

The Stress-Resilience Framework:

The stress resilience framework consists of the following elements:

1. Stressors: These are the cause of stress. These could range from demands on our time, demands on our work, and our anticipation of demands on us.

2. Stress Reactions: These are physiological reactions to stress and could range from heavy breathing, high BP, dryness of throat, sweating etc.

3. Resilience: This is the capability of an individual to handle stress and navigate challenges thrown to them.

4. Direct Resilience: These are ways to cope with stress by avoiding stressors or reaching out to a support network to talk about stress being experienced.

5. Lifestyle Resilience: These are changes we undertake in our lifestyle that can help us cope with stress better. Example: exercising and sleeping optimally.

Week 1 was exciting, and I look forward to week 2!