A story about the US military providing $117 million worth of emotional resilience training for the troops on active service ostensibly has been doing the rounds in a number of news agencies around the world. Combat stress in the UK has called for a similar effort in the UK.
I have been doing some work with the UK Ministry of Defence in this area, but I have to agree with Combat Stress. More could and should be done and not just to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although this is an excellent reason for helping people develop emotional resilience. Emotional Resilience also helps people perform better in stressful situations, make better decisions in those situations and keep relationships healthy both at work and home to name but a few.
You really don’t need to go as extreme as the military to capitalise on the advantages of investing in developing better emotional resilience in a work force. In the organisations I work with (from the emergency services to postal workers, academic staff to admin workers) they have all seen benefits not only in reduced absences from work for stress related reasons, but also pulse surveys showing
- increased satisfaction at work,
- better working relationships,
- better decision making at all levels,
- people being more prepared to make decisions and
- people more able to deal positively with change, and
- greater levels of involvement in business innovation.
Emotional resilience is finally finding it’s feet and organisations and their people are benefiting from a real win / win. Unfortunately the levels of expertise in this area are still pretty rudimentary with consultants using inappropriate approaches in organisational settings, basically just transferring basic counselling and coaching techniques to wider settings. I am not questioning the value of these approaches on an one-on-one individual basis. Developing emotional resilience across entire organisations requires a bit more of a strategic approach than just scaling up individual personal development tools and techniques.
