Leveraging the Power of Resilience in Your Higher Education Career

Resilience. This word gets tossed around quite a lot lately, doesn’t it? We hope our children will become resilient. We want the college students we serve to demonstrate their capacity for resilience. And for those of us building our careers on college campuses, we find ourselves wanting Resilience as well. 

Resilience is a mindset we want to pursue, master, and commit to habit. This common word comes from the Latin verb resilire, which means “to spring back.” Originally, Resilience applied exclusively to material things that when altered in shape could absorb the disruptive energy and push it back out so that the object appears as though nothing changed.

Think of the sponge in your kitchen sink. You run it under the faucet and add soap. Your sponge becomes heavy, sopping, and sudsy. When you are done washing your dishes, you probably wring it out and let it dry. The next time you grab that sponge to tackle the accumulated dishes, the sponge looks exactly as it did when you first used it. It is resilient. So are everyday objects like rubber bands, flexible plastics, steel springs, and the Slinky you played with as a kid.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that psychologists co-opted the word Resilience to describe our experience as humans. They argued that, for us, Resilience describes the human capacity to adapt successfully to disturbance. When we move through life’s inevitable transitions, easy and tough, we have the opportunity to access our Resilience, or, as we coaches like to say, to strengthen our Resilience muscle.

But in our higher education careers these days, how exactly do we do that? How do we respond to campus unrest, address student crises, and power through budget struggles and political drama? Maya Angelou (1994) once said, “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” So, maybe our Resilience is not that we return exactly to our previous state like our kitchen sponge, but rather we adapt and we change for the better.

Four years ago, we were accessing our Resilience by managing our campuses through the COVID-19 pandemic. Overnight, we vacated our classrooms, labs, residence halls, and offices. Our faculty and staff administrators pivoted like never before, and with virtually no planning time, our schools were delivering education via online learning platforms. Maybe you can recall when you got the word to pack up your campus office and go home. You didn’t know if or when you would be returning. Can you remember how you approached that crisis? And how did your approach change you for the better?

 

The Science Behind Resilience

“The world needs resilient people, not broken people,” according to New Zealand-based Sven Hanson in Inside-Out: The Practice of Resilience, a book he authored on behalf of the Resilience Institute, a research and training center he co-founded. For Dr. Hanson and his team, the study and application of Resilience represents a growing body of scientific research. We can look at Resilience as an integrated step-by-step, habit-forming practice, one that consists of four intentional efforts: Courage, Creativity, Connection, and Bounce.

• We apply Courage when we boldly commit to specific tasks and activities in order to move toward an aspirational future.

• Creativity is our insistence to stretch our talents and to leverage our innate curiosity and desire to learn from every experience we encounter. 

• We practice Connection when we engage with ourselves—our body, emotion, thoughts, and purpose—and with others.

• Bounce is our Resilience playbook, setting up a mindset of achievement, the cultivation of supporting networks, and a bias for action.

 

The Coaching Principles of Resilience

It is the habit of Bounce that most intrigues me. According to the American Psychological Association (n.d.), “As much as Resilience involves ‘bouncing back’ from difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth.” I write about personal growth in my book Tone Setters in the Academy: How to Build an Inspired Life as a University Administrator. The Resilience we demonstrated during the pandemic has been replaced with new opportunities for us to bounce and to lock in our tone, a tone that others observe, appreciate, and adopt for themselves. As I explore in the book, “Tone setters create ambiance for those they are called to serve and lead. They raise the dimmer switch. They shape experiences, add texture, and paint color onto their work. They level up the workplace with their affirming presence, eternal curiosity, and quiet generosity.”

Think about the impact of the recent Presidential election on your campus. Under a Trump 2.0 administration, how will student protests be managed? What will become of DEI initiatives, Title IX protocols, and loan forgiveness? Whatever your connection to these and other charged issues on campus, you will likely have plentiful opportunities to test your Resilience and cultivate your tone.

Executive coaches often gravitate to trusted metaphors with their clients. One is to help them see the gift that often rides alongside the tests of their Resilience. So, think with me of a campus challenge you are currently grappling with, one that is making you wonder what your tone actually is. What skills can you as a higher education practitioner apply, day-after-day, to receive the challenge as a gift that builds your Resilience and sets your authentic tone for yourself and those you lead and work alongside? Here are four skills you can develop.

 

Skill 1: Practice Learned Optimism

We are comfort-seeking humans, always trying to remove any experience of adversity. But there is no avoiding it. All kinds of adversity surround us. As a university client recently asked me, “Where will the roulette wheel of anxiety land today?” Positive Psychology guru Martin Seligman (2002) describes a mindset of optimism where we delineate between a pleasant life, engaged life, and a meaningful life. The pleasant life is kind of the American dream life, with all the trappings of consumer wellbeing. The engaged life puts your talents to their ultimate use in fully connecting your experience to the experience of others. The meaningful life takes your talents to the next level, using them to belong to and serve something larger than yourself. Now may be a good time to master your learned optimism, ensuring that your professional and personal relationships play to your aspirational future vision in a way that is authentically “you” and is appreciated by those with whom you engage.

 

Skill 2: Practice Authentic Relationships

Americans are known for their rampant individualism. Although Resilience is about an abundance of self-care, healthy habits will elude us if we remain firmly at the center of our own universe. Use times of tremendous uncertainty to ensure that you are contributing to, and being supported by, collegial relationships that allow you to be agenda-free, vulnerable, and fully seen by others.

 

Skill 3: Practice Thriving in the Second Beat

It is interesting that stories, including our own, tend to happen in three movements, or beats. Mythologist Joseph Campbell (1949) popularized the framework of the Hero’s Journey, arguing that every story follows a common narrative. Stories always have a Departure where a challenge surfaces and the protagonists must rise to the occasion. Next comes an Initiation (the second beat) where they face trials and question if it is all worth it. Finally, our resilient protagonists Return from their journey—tested, wiser, and better for having survived it. 

Dr. William Bridges (1991) in his bestselling book, Managing Transitions, builds on the narrative metaphor to help leaders navigate through a quickly changing landscape. He too suggests three beats, or phases as he calls them. Phase 1 is the ending, the loss, the letting go. Phase 2 (the second beat) is the neutral or the “not knowing” zone, and Phase 3 is the new beginning. 

For both Campbell and Bridges, life’s richness comes right in the middle, in the not knowing zone, the second beat of the narrative. Your ability to tap your innate creativity like never before in a manner that is adaptable, open, and ultimately forgiving when all does not go according to plan will grow and sustain a habit that will serve you, time and time again.

 

Skill 4: Practice Stoicism

“You are so stoic!” Has anyone ever said that to you? It is a huge compliment, pointing to your ability to overcome hardships with low drama. Author and blogger, Ryan Holiday, is fixated on Stoicism, dedicating a collection of books he wrote, including The Daily Stoic, to the ancient philosophy of wisdom that pushes through adversity to land on the “Good Life.” 

Your “steady as you go” heroism may not win you that staff recognition award, but be assured, your get-it-done spirit and clear-eyed approach to addressing today’s higher education challenges will position you as the kind of leader your institution so desperately needs.

 

What’s Next for You?

We just don’t know when and where our next Resilience test will emerge. Rest assured it will be unexpected. How will you receive the challenge as a gift and leverage it to strengthen your Resilience muscle and amplify your tone on campus? 

 

References

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Resilience. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience

Angelou, M. (1994). Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now. Random House.

Bridges, W. (1991). Managing transitions: Making the most of change. Perseus Books.

Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton University Press.

Hanson, S. (2015). Inside-out: The practice of resilience. Resilience Institute.

Holiday, R., & Hanselman, S. (2016). The daily stoic: 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. Portfolio.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. Free Press.