talent management
Pushing Through
CORPORATE LEADERS NEED TO TEACH WORKERS
RESILIENCE TO NAVIGATE CHANGE
My first job in sales at a small Canadian printing company
more than 20 years ago was far from easy or
glamorous. I sold printers out of a van and had to meet
a daily quota of at least 30 cold calls. This entailed lugging
a printer from my van into prospective customers’ offices to
provide demonstrations and free trials.
I was tempted to hand back the keys to my van and pack it in
many times, but I stuck it out for a year – a lifetime in that role.
Along the way, I discovered I had a trait that has served me well
throughout my career and positioned me to be an effective corporate
leader: resilience.
Persevering in the face of adversity is critical to getting ahead.
It has the power to take us farther than IQ, education or experience
alone. It’s applicable across all roles and all lines of business in
every industry around the world. And yet, we don’t spend nearly
enough time developing resilience in our workforce. While some
people seem to be born with thicker skins, for most of us resilience
is a skill that we need to learn and practice.
American psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman has spent the last
30 years studying resiliency to understand why some people rebound
after a setback and why others fall into a state of learned
helplessness. He and his team at the University of Pennsylvania
created the Penn Resiliency Program. They train businesses in resiliency
and reduce the number of those who struggle in adversity
and increase the number of those who grow.
Corporate leaders must first help employees build mental
toughness. This requires recognizing their emotional response to
failure is based solely on their own beliefs about what it means to
By Ernie Philip
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HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ MARCH 2017 ❚ 27
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