How Resilient are you as an educational leader?

Educational leaders are faced with many and varied challenges across a day, week, term or year. Their ability to bounce back from such setbacks, combined with the remaining effects of these setbacks in the face of tough demands and difficult circumstances, enables a leader to grow stronger through the process. Resilience is a concept that is increasingly recognised as an essential contributor to the wellbeing and high performance of schools, their leaders and the students who attend them.

I believe that personal resilience is best understood in terms of process and outcome. Firstly, the process is about working through difficulties, challenges and setbacks as and when they occur.  Resilient educational leaders are able to systematically follow routines, or predetermined processes. And the outcomes are about the speed of your recovery from any adversity, in conjunction with your improved ability to cope with and under pressure. Resilient educational leaders are able to return to the normal day-to-day operations and carry on despite the adversity faced.

When viewed in this way, resilience is neither a fixed characteristic nor a set of personal characteristics that develops over time. The process of being resilient is, however, strengthened by a number of different traits. Many of these characteristics are personality related, including self-belief, optimism, sociability, empathy, self-control, sense of purpose and adaptability.

A resilient educational leader has the confidence to take a prepared path in the midst of challenging times with an optimistic belief that things will get better in time. They are able to make decisions calmly; secure in their own sense of purpose, certain that their decisions will benefit others around them as well as the organisation as a whole in the long run.

Definition: resilience is the ability of an individual or interdependent social and ecological system (school or organisation) to absorb adverse challenges and maintain the same structure and function.

A resilient person or organisation:

• copes well with shock or surprising incidents

• shifts from their focus from growth and efficiency to adaptability

• has the ability to recover and thrive

• Learns and maintains flexibility, and self-organization

• aims to maintain routines so normality continues

• is not easily led into an unpredictable routine or system  

Given that personal characteristics differ from one person to the next, it is not surprising that some people are more likely to achieve a resilient outcome than others, when faced with difficult or stressful situations. Viewing resilience as a process, however, means that your personal attributes are just the starting point. It is the way a situation is managed in practice that determines the outcome and this is a competence that can be developed over time.

So taking stock of your personal resilience attributes is a good beginning, but the key to building resilience lies in learning more about how to prepare for, and manage, difficult and potentially stressful situations. Developing this capability is central to coping with everyday problems and challenges - the need for personal resilience is not restricted to extreme circumstances, it is essential for day to day management of stress and long term pressures as well.

Everyone experiences adversity and stress at some level, whether it’s the pressure to perform at school or work, relationship problems, financial difficulties, or simply the number of tasks to do in a short period of time. All stress isn’t bad, but chronic stress can take its toll on our minds, bodies, and behaviour. We can all learn and use specific resilience skills in our lives to make it easier to cope in the face of adversity. I choose to maintain optimistic thinking, use relaxation strategies, and choose carefully what to pay attention to. I also maintain positive routines as much as possible. I go to bed at a routine time and try to achieve a good night's sleep. I make time for family and plan to have fun. I keep physically active and make deliberate efforts to eat healthily. All of these things help me to manage my stress better, to bounce back faster after a setback, and be more effective in managing my time for my university studies as well as my work commitments. 

These strategies also help me to develop stronger relationships with others, be physically and mentally healthy, and feel more satisfied overall. In short, resilience is ordinary magic and can be learned. It does not necessarily mean that you have to be born resilient or be a strong person. 

What do you do to build your personal resilience?