Not everyone who experiences difficult times in the workplace has career resilience, but never fear, there are ways to fix that.
Whether you consider yourself settled and working life is a doddle, or in a position where each day brings new challenges, some easy to solve and others more complicated, career resilience is a crucial skill to have.
Best described as the ability to adapt to and cope with workplace stress, change and challenges, it is what enables people to persevere when times are particularly tough, so they can continue to grow professionally.
It is an absolute must-have skill for people who intend to have a long and successful career, but don’t worry if you haven’t quite mastered it. Like every skill, if you put in the work and make time to fine tune it, you’ll be flying it. So, how can you work on developing career resilience?
Get used to change
How can you become used to something that transforms so often? Well, the best place to start is by working on your response to upheaval. If you feel you aren’t adaptable, that’s fine, you can train yourself to react in a way that allows you to continue working the way you want, but still meet career expectations.
This can be achieved firstly by taking small steps that give you confidence in your abilities early on, for example you could take on additional work, request a collaboration with a co-worker on a new project, or tackle a new task that makes you nervous but you know is an area that you’d like to become more skilled.
Instead of turning down work because you are unsure of what it might take, embrace it as a new opportunity and give it your all. It might be difficult at times, but it will make you resilient and is proof that you can accept and even thrive with change.
Wear invisible armour
For long-term career resilience, it can help in tough scenarios to imagine yourself wearing an invisible suit of armour.
When you’re dealing with someone who is difficult, when work-life balance is off-kilter or when you simply don’t have the energy to give 110pc that day, just think of that transparent layer of protection and let the criticism and the doubts bounce right off you.
Today isn’t your day, but that doesn’t mean tomorrow is a write-off. Bad days happen, more than we would like them too, so don’t let them impact you in the long run. By developing counter measures to combat workplace stress and address workplace conflicts, you will find that you don’t buckle under the pressure as easily as you used to.
Crack open the books
If you want to ensure that you can handle anything that comes your way throughout your career then you are going to have to become a top-class student. One of the best ways to make yourself adaptable and ready for the future of the workplace is to load up on skills, especially the ones in new and emerging fields, such as AI, machine learning, quantum and regulation and compliance.
Not only does this give you more career opportunities down the line, it can also improve problem solving and critical thinking, making you the go-to-person when unique or complicated challenges arise.
Don’t push it
Career resilience is all about taking the good with the bad, not letting the knocks keep you down and overcoming challenges, to the benefit of your professional ambitions. But to do that, in a way that doesn’t add to your stress or lead to burnout, you need to ensure that the responsibilities you have undertaken are manageable, achievable and can happen within a realistic timeframe.
If you are burning the candle at both ends, to the point that you are exhausted, cranky, unproductive and distracted, you aren’t going to be able to endure a workplace that is subject to constant change. To be resilient, you have to look after yourself, so you can respond to challenges in a measured way.
That means getting enough sleep, taking breaks when needed, using up your annual leave and voicing any concerns you may have about workload.
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