Headspace – HEdSpace Consulting

Resilience

August 28, 2020September 7, 2020
by Natalie Snodgrass

I originally wrote this article in 2018. Since then, coaching for personal resilience and mental wellbeing has seen a surge of interest, with individuals and organisations both keen to find ways to reduce the toll of ever-increasing demands on their mental and physical health, increase their ability to adapt flexibly and positively to change, and start thriving rather than simply coping.

The extraordinariness of 2020 has brought this into even sharper focus. In the early weeks of the pandemic, many of us went into a heightened energy state of adaptation – described by Ann Masten as the ‘surge capacity’ we draw upon in short-term survival situations, rather like an emotional and physical power bank to help us navigate a crisis effectively. Except that, as the acute phase became chronic, our uncertainty over how long the uncertainty would last continued to stretch out, and we found ourselves with little opportunity to recharge through many of our usual means of self-care, we were all left significantly depleted.

In the immediate crisis stage there is often increased clarity as people are forced to focus on a delimited set of priorities and they pull together more than ever before. Individually, however, the adaptation can often come at profound cost to our wellbeing as we try to prioritise performance. Crisis can bring out the best in us, but can also make us revert to a lower level of emotional function.

I’ve read a lot of very well-written pieces in the past few months about finding new ways to be in this brave new world. There is so much in the resilience science to draw from and so much good advice out there about identifying your own set of primary resilience factors – certainly far too much to distil into one short article. I hope, however, that some of this will prove helpful to you. If you’re finding life particularly challenging right now, there are really just three things that I hope you will take from this:

(1) You are not alone and there is plenty of support out there.
(2) Be kind to yourself; there is no shame in struggling and feeling overwhelmed.
(3) All you need to focus on is the next step. The rest can be something for another day.

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What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
I bend, I don’t break.
I always bounce back.

Do you use any of these metaphors when you talk or think about resilience? Personally, I like the picture of resilience that’s summed up by this plant.

It illustrates nicely the definition given by Carole Pemberton (2015) in Coaching for Resilience:

The capacity to remain flexible in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours when faced by a life disruption, or extended periods of pressure, so that we emerge from difficulty stronger, wiser, and more able.

In other words, resilience is gradual adaptation in the face of adversity. Being resilient doesn’t mean you have to be somehow invulnerable to life’s hard knocks – it’s all about learning and growth, and the ability to steer your way constructively through difficulty. I think the danger of the popular characterisation of ‘bouncing back’ is that it gives the impression that recovering from setbacks is as effortless and instantaneous as the rebound of a rubber ball. You just pick yourself up and carry on as you were, utterly unchanged by the event. Except you’re not.

Even if you’re of the true grit school of thought, it’s important to recognise that resilience isn’t a you’ve-either-got-it-or-you-don’t thing; it’s a continuum. Life continually tests us, and our ability to respond well to this can vary depending on context and domain. You may be able to cope very well with pressure in your professional life, but feel crushed by the breakdown of a personal relationship. You may historically have had no problems navigating the ups and downs of life, but find yourself unexpectedly and completely derailed after being made redundant. Our resilience can become overwhelmed in all sorts of different ways – and we will all respond differently, too.

I find it useful looking at this from the perspective of the three-factor model that combines the effects of genetics, external protective factors, and learning (diagram below adapted from Pemberton, 2015):

What this tells us is that although some people may be more naturally resilient than others, resilience isn’t just a product of our personality. Research has also shown the important contributions made by the support networks around us (the availability of ‘secure attachment’) and what we learn from experience. That latter factor is probably most crucial for me. I love the way Masten puts it: resilience, she says, is ‘ordinary magic’: something we develop through the demands of living. It marks resilience out as something that can be available to all of us, even if we haven’t had the most fortunate start in life.

So how, then, can we cultivate resilience? It’s worth spending some time thinking about resilience factors – here are some that I think are particularly important, although resilience studies have identified dozens more:

(1) Finding meaning
Purpose is a key factor in what drives us – the desire to connect to a greater and meaningful cause can give important direction and a reason to keep going. What purpose can you find in what you may be going through? What can you take from this experience that you can channel positively into something meaningful?

(2) Flexibility, Perspective and the Big Picture
Inflexible patterns of thinking stop us being able to see the larger picture and its possibilities for learning and growth. What can you learn from this adversity? How can you widen your perspective? What other ways are there to think about this situation? What can you control about this situation (conversely, are you expending energy in wrestling with what is actually outside of your control)?

(3) Thinking Space
It’s difficult to get perspective when you’re mired in the doing and the detail. What time are you taking to get the necessary headspace that will allow you to take a step back for a more objective evaluation? Resting from its incessant activity is what the brain needs to really harness its creativity and problem-solving capability.

(4) Support
Resilience is not helped by social isolation. How can you reach out for help? What positive and mutually supportive relationships can you build?

(5) Mindfulness
Pain is typically seen as a problem. Mindfulness helps us learn to detach from our negative thoughts and feelings in order to observe and accept them without becoming trapped in them – moving forward despite them, rather than trying to remove them from our lives. As Camus says, the human condition is absurd. But man’s freedom, and the opportunity to give life meaning, lies in the acceptance of absurdity.

(6) Proactivity
What action are you taking? Sometimes all we need to take back control is to take one small step at a time.

What someone needs in order to help them become more resilient will of course vary. In coaching, there are many tools that can be drawn upon, including mindfulness, cognitive-behavioural approaches, narrative coaching, and positive psychology. If you’re interested in how HEdSpace and coaching can help you build your personal resilience, why not get in touch?

Natalie Snodgrass
natalie.snodgrass@hedspaceconsulting.co.uk

I don’t have time to reimagine Higher Education right…

August 27, 2020September 7, 2020
by Anna Verhamme

Last March, HEdSpace Consulting started to think about COVID19, the impact on the HE sector and what we could do to help. We talked a lot about it needing to be the right time to do the right thing. We also talked about the profound emotional and societal impacts of the pandemic. At that point we anticipated that there would be periods of reaction and reflection followed by reimagining and repositioning. And back in March, we thought that cycle would at least take until the autumn.

It is clear now, after new local lockdowns and the and the A-level results crisis that we are in for a long haul… Colleagues working in Higher Education institutions have never had to react this quickly to this many unprecedented circumstances. And the sector has shown that despite its reputation, it can be flexible, change quickly and work together across institutional divisions. What I suspect has been harder to do for many leadership teams whose main focus has been keeping operations running, is to make the headspace to reflect and to start reimagining.

The two activities are very different and in normal circumstances many leadership teams create time for both. Whether it is through an away day, extended themed quarterly meetings, time spent over a sit-down lunch, the commute into work, the walk between meetings space is made to focus on the medium and long-term. But at the moment there simply might not be the time, practicalities or frankly energy to think beyond next month. And yet we know that to lead well, we need to make time and space.

So, I have been thinking about the practical steps I would take to create the headspace for myself:

I would give myself permission to work less and fill up at least 1 day out of 5 in my diary with blank space. For many leadership teams this will be uncomfortable or even unthinkable. There is so much research now that shows the importance of unstructured time to creativity and resilience that it really should be a no brainer: it improves thinking, the quality of the decision-making, mental health and resilience. It will also reduce the stress on your teams: you are the cox setting the pace for your rowing team. The harder you work, the harder your teams will need to work to keep up.

I would limit the length of my own zoom meetings to durations ending in 5 (15, 25, 35 or 45 minutes) and encourage others to follow my practice. Easy! And finally… I would have time to stretch my legs, open the window, eat lunch and “take a comfort break”

I would make time to read a novel or poem, listen to a piece of music, watch a film, go for a walk, do some yoga, gardening, or my favourite: ironing. I have realised that I have few good ideas sat behind a computer screen. Most come to me when I am doing something completely different and again there is tons of research that explains this might be how our brains function best.

Now you may ask me: so Anna how much of the advice you are now offering as a consultant did you follow when you worked in senior management roles? And you are right to challenge me in that way. I was always aware of not having enough time to think, of rushing between meetings and of feeling exhausted, yet often being unproductive. When I worked at my best, I had diary free days, made time for lunch and a walk. What I found hardest was to maintain my own discipline and boundaries. Now some of that was because of my own tendency to take on too much, but some of it was also a structural problem: most leaders have back-to-back meetings, work 5 days/week and some live for their job. Within that context it is hard to maintain your own discipline. But what would happen if as senior leadership teams we changed our expectations? What if your vice-chancellor, COO or senior leadership team agreed on and stuck to a different way of working? Would it create better quality thinking, more considered decisions, more headspace to imagine and be creative? Is now a time to experiment, give it a go and try it out?

What examples have you seen where people have seriously adopted a new way of working? How do you create headspace for yourself to be more effective?

HEdSpace Consulting can help to create and hold spaces for conversations for you and your teams.

Anna Verhamme
anna.verhamme@hedspaceconsulting.co.uk