Resilience and grit: can they be learned during challenging times?

In times of stress and uncertainty, we’re often encouraged to draw on resilience and grit to get us through. But with the pace and magnitude of changes in 2020, business leaders are increasingly asking, can we learn these strengths on the fly and if so how?

It will be good news to many – particularly those managing their teams through these challenging times from afar – that both resilience and grit can be developed and can even complement each other.

First, let’s consider these as separate concepts and define them.

Resilience is an outcome. It’s what’s achieved and improved upon when you flex your ability to recover, adjust or bounce back after adversity in a healthy positive manner.¹

There are numerous determinants of resilience, including genetics, personality and social factors. For some the qualities that make us resilient are inherent to some degree, but for everyone these are qualities that can be learned and developed.

It’s helpful to keep in mind resilience, once attained, is not set in stone. It will vary for the individual depending on the situation and will change over time. For example a person may be adapting and coping in their professional life but not on a personal level.² They may be resilient working in an office team environment but struggle to cope when working from home in solitude.

Research has found that these five factors are common in resilient people:

• they are more likely to seek help
• they are resourceful and have the skills to problem-solve
• they have strong and positive self-belief
• they have social support mechanisms
• they are well connected with family, friends and others.³

Grit on the other hand is a driver, helping us to sustain interest in and effort toward long-term goals.4 This ties into resilience because, by taking a longer-term view, we’re better able to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life.

Psychologist Angela Duckworth, a leading researcher on grit, says it “entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”

Importantly, you don’t have to have oodles of natural-born talent to be gritty. Duckworth recommends adopting a growth mindset.5 This refers to the belief that you can continue to develop your talents with hard work, positive strategies and embraced feedback.

As part of her grit formula she additionally identifies six key factors: effort, precision, passion, ritual, prioritisation and, importantly in the current seachange, hope. Hope can help you identify goals and provides motivation to attain them.

Reflect for a minute on these six factors: which ones resonate and come easily to you and your team, and which ones might need some more focus and fine-tuning? (you might like to find out how you rate on the Grit Scale).

Where grit could be described as having the drive, passion and perseverance to fulfil your goals and succeed, resilience could be described as having the optimism to continue and overcome setbacks. Both are hugely beneficial in keeping us productive and mentally healthy during any challenging circumstance.

Strategies to reset during the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has ushered in a time of heightened fear, anxiety and uncertainty. But this period could also be viewed as an opportunity to draw on our qualities of resilience and grit to review and reset our career and life goals.

With this in mind, here are some suggestions to reboot the year in a way that helps promote these two key strengths:

• re-examine your goals – are they aligned with your values? do they bring you meaning and purpose? are you passionate about them? can you see yourself crossing the bridge that connects your short, medium and long-term goals?
• embrace the lessons of failure – what can you learn from it? how can you shift your mindset to one of hope?
• reflect on times in your life when you have relied on resilience and grit to get you through difficulty – what can you draw on from those earlier experiences to help you now?
• be cautious of burnout – set realistic goals for yourself and celebrate the successes along the way; review and refine what is achievable as you move towards your goals
• ensure you have balance – physical activity is important for your brain’s ability to develop and change; exercise, relaxation, practising mindfulness are necessary to counter stressful times6
• finally, be kind to yourself – try to let go of ‘striving’; the path towards your goal is equally as important as reaching the goal itself and remember to savour the moments of joy in each day.

Are your people needing to increase their resilience and grit? En Masse has been providing tailored programs in this space through the pandemic, and is a leading provider of resilience training to government, education and private sector organisations. Contact us today to discuss some options to suit your team.

---

References

1. Ackerman CE (2020). What is resilience and why is it important to bounce back? [accessed 2 October 2020 from https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-resilience/]

2. Southwick SM, Bonanno GA, Masten AS, Panter-Brick C, Yehuda R (2014). Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: interdisciplinary perspectives. European journal of psychotraumatology, 5, 10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338.

3. Brown B (2020). The gifts of imperfection. Penguin Random House: New York.

4. Duckworth AL, Peterson C, Matthews MD, Kelly DR (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087–1101.

5. Dweck C (2015). Carol Dweck revisits the growth mindset. Education Week, 35(5), 20-24.

6. Katz L (2020). Building grit in this pandemic. Psychology Today [accessed 5 October 2020 from https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/here-we-are/202007/building-grit-in-pandemic]