Resilience + Energy + Positive leadership = A happier and productive organisation

Over the past couple of months, my consultancy, writing and lecturing has focused repeatedly on the following interlinked topics:

• Resilience in stressful times (namely change)
• Energy (maintaining this in an even way)
• Well-being (doing things that give you positive sense of self)
• Leadership style (and link with mental health and performance)
• Confidence (to handle bigger roles, tougher situations)
• Managing time (to feel more in control and less stressed)

In this article, I'm going to share with you three of the main things to emerge from my recent work and writing.

1) Building and maintaining your resilience

I recently delivered a workshop on resilience at a national conference for public sector communications professionals. We started out by discussing stress and recognising that not all stress is 'bad'.

The media can sometimes simplify things and make stress and stressful events a homogeneous lump. That's why it can be helpful to understand the Yerkes-Dodson Law.

Whilst most psychologists and neuro-scientists know about the Yerkes-Dodson Law, I still find that the average lay person doesn't. So, I find it helps to start with this and that, more often than not, it helps people understand and reframe what's going on for them.

In 1908, two researchers from Harvard University, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson, identified a causal relationship between arousal and performance. They found that performance increases with physical or mental arousal but only up to a certain point.

If you work somewhere where there is often low pressure, low challenge and little stimulation then you are likely to experience apathy. And yes, there are teams who are in this state. Clues that people are in this state are low motivation, low engagement and interest.

At the other extreme, you have constant high pressure, high challenge, little to no support, always-on environment. This is the place that leads to burnout if people are here to long. Clues that people are here are physical (e.g. insomnia, stomach ulcers) and mental (e.g. more loss of temper, depression).

My own experience of burnout saw me being physically sick each morning before going in to work, exacerbated by lack of quality sleep, a poor diet, and little to no time with my family or friends.

The 'sweet spot' is having a balance of challenging work combined with support from those around you (your boss, your colleagues). In this place, people experience flow, focus and can see the tangible value they are adding.

What are the characteristics of resilient people?

In their book, Jane Clarke and Dr John Nicholson suggest that resilient people tend to:

• Be more open to new ideas (they are good listeners, curious, keen learners and prepared to try different approaches)
• Assume the best rather than the worst of other people
• Find opportunity and risk equally fascinating (recognising that the link between the two is crucial to success)
• Embrace positive change
• See what needs to be done and are happy to lead the charge
• Prefer dealing in transparency and honesty rather than obscurity and deceit.

This book is a great investment and is filled with practical tools and advice to help you. I suggest it to clients who are struggling with stress and have low resilience.

What can you do to build and maintain your resilience?

In 2012, Shawn Achor wrote about an experiment with a group of managers in a large, global consultancy. He asked managers to choose one of five activities to do every day for three weeks. The five activities they could choose from were:

1. ?Jot down three things they were grateful for
2. ?Write a positive message to someone in their network
3. ?Meditate at their desk for two minutes
4. ?Exercise for 10 minutes
5. ?Take two minutes to describe in a journal the most meaningful experience of the past 24 hours

A few days after the activity concluded, the participants and a control group were evaluated for their general sense of well-being.

The experimental group were significantly more engaged and happy. This remained even when both groups were tested again four months later. The experimental group was more optimistic and satisfied with life.

For more practical ideas on things you can do to help build your resilience, check out my blog post from March 2017.

2) Manage your energy, not your time

You might have heard of Tony Schwartz, the founder and CEO of The Energy Project. For those of you haven't, Tony is passionate about changing how we think about productivity and performance. His mantra is "Manage your energy, not your time".

I had a chance to learn about this idea at a recent workshop held by the British Psychological Society. The session was run by Dr Magdalena Bak-Maier, founder of Make Time Count and a neuroscientist and productivity expert.

Magdalena took us through her Grid concept which is a different way of planning your day, your week, your month and your year. Essentially, the four quadrants focus on (1) Personal life - relationships, home etc. (2) Self-care - exercise, meditation, fun etc. (3) Career/Progression - learning, developing etc. (4) Work - projects, tasks, admin etc.

Once you've mapped out what you want/need to achieve in each quadrant, you then focus on where your energy takes you. What happens is your energy helps build momentum and focus, leading you to the next activity and so on.

By getting a balance between the four aspects of your life, you are more likely to enhance your wellbeing and increase your resilience.

Having been an exponent of the Stephen Covey approach to managing time - Urgent/Important; Not urgent/Important; Urgent/Not important; and Not urgent/Not important - I thought I'd find it tough to switch to a different way of thinking. Particularly one where I need to tap in to my energy and how I'm feeling, as opposed to blocking out my diary with activities scheduled at a specific time.

I could not be more wrong.

I've been using the Grid for the past three weeks and I've found that I'm getting more work done, connecting more with friends and family, taking time out for myself and building great professional relationships.

Although I am mindful and critical enough to acknowledge that I tend to get excited and overly evangelical about new concepts in the beginning so the test will be whether I continue to use this approach. My instinct tells me that I will but probably merge it with other useful productivity tools. I tend to do that and I think that's the trick with this stuff is to make it work for you.

If you're interested in trying out the Grid yourself, then you can buy Magdalena's book here.

3) The impact of your leadership style

My most recent blog post seems to have hit on something as it my the most viewed and shared post ever.

The post was about research published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior which looked at the link between leadership style, mental health of employees and performance.

The results tell us what we no doubt already know - i.e. that transformational leaders, and those with good quality relationships, impact positively on the mental health, well-being and performance of their employees - it reinforces the importance of getting your leadership development right.

Whilst 'the dark side of leadership' is gaining popularity across the media, I still don't come across it enough when I go in to organisations and look at their leadership development programmes. Typically, the 'good' styles of leadership are explored and advocated.

But I think it's important to raise awareness of the destructive behaviours in leaders. The research I wrote about talks about destructive leadership in terms of narcissism, manipulation, aggression, overly-controlling and in extreme instances, psychopathy.

This is why tools like 360-degree feedback will always be so valuable as a way to try and make these things visible. Increased self-awareness is crucial to emotional intelligence which, in turn, can help build a more positive leadership style.

Although this won't work in extreme circumstances - a narcissist or corporate psychopath will more than likely justify any negative feedback, or just ignore it altogether - for the average leader, who might display some destructive characteristics, it can work effectively. This is particularly the case when used in conjunction with a leadership coach.

How employees feel about their leaders can also impact the bottom line. The more a leader creates the right kind of environment (see start of article on Yerkes-Dodson Law), the more likely it is that employees will be happier and more productive.

Perhaps if more organisations understood this, they'd develop more bespoke programmes and invest more in the right kind of leadership and management development.

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Hayley Lewis is a chartered psychologist, consultant and university lecturer specialising in organisational behaviour and performance. She shares new insights on work and psychology every month in her consultancy's newsletter: HALO Psychology