Year-end fatigue: let’s rethink resilience, aim for antifragility
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Peter Laburn is the founder of Lead with Humanity talks about Resilience fatigue has hit. Global economic upheaval, the climate crisis and social turmoil — to say nothing of our local experiences of load shedding, water cuts and political instability — has made the expectation and experience of being resilient exhausting.
And yet there’s no doubting its ongoing relevance. The challenges of the day are showing no sign of abating. In fact, they’re likely to continue to morph into ever-more complex scenarios. We still need to be resilient (or something like it), even though we feel increasingly disinclined to do so.
As we look forward to a new year — and hopefully a better one at that — how do we reframe resilience?
Defining resilience, and seeing its pitfalls
Resilience is the ability to go back to a previous state of equilibrium — to where you were before a current challenge or crisis hit. It assumes that you have already experienced an optimal or balanced state, that you want to return to it, and that you will recognise it when you come across it again.
The ability to be resilient requires several key ingredients. It requires self-compassion, an understanding for who you are and what you’re capable of, and support from people who know you and whom you trust. And it takes the ability to be creative and innovative, to set goals, and to try new things.
While the business world is often better at resilience than many of us are in our personal capacities — thanks, in part, to the risk assessment and disaster management plans many have in place — this does not make them immune. And even large companies require mentorship, coaching and advice, especially when it comes to large and unpredictable events, as the pandemic taught us.
In most definitions, resilience implies an element of regression, though this is often considered a positive occurrence rather than a negative one. You go back to a previous position. You return to your former health after an operation. Your business recovers from a setback and becomes what it was before.
But this assumption is counterintuitive, even dangerous. Perhaps you don’t want to go back to how things were before, or can’t. Perhaps part of the reason you’re in the current predicament is because what came before simply wasn’t working. Rather than resilience, then, isn’t there an alternative? A way of moving forward through the crisis and into a better, more robust future?
And yet there’s no doubting its ongoing relevance. The challenges of the day are showing no sign of abating. In fact, they’re likely to continue to morph into ever-more complex scenarios. We still need to be resilient (or something like it), even though we feel increasingly disinclined to do so.
As we look forward to a new year — and hopefully a better one at that — how do we reframe resilience?
Defining resilience, and seeing its pitfalls
Resilience is the ability to go back to a previous state of equilibrium — to where you were before a current challenge or crisis hit. It assumes that you have already experienced an optimal or balanced state, that you want to return to it, and that you will recognise it when you come across it again.
The ability to be resilient requires several key ingredients. It requires self-compassion, an understanding for who you are and what you’re capable of, and support from people who know you and whom you trust. And it takes the ability to be creative and innovative, to set goals, and to try new things.
While the business world is often better at resilience than many of us are in our personal capacities — thanks, in part, to the risk assessment and disaster management plans many have in place — this does not make them immune. And even large companies require mentorship, coaching and advice, especially when it comes to large and unpredictable events, as the pandemic taught us.
In most definitions, resilience implies an element of regression, though this is often considered a positive occurrence rather than a negative one. You go back to a previous position. You return to your former health after an operation. Your business recovers from a setback and becomes what it was before.
But this assumption is counterintuitive, even dangerous. Perhaps you don’t want to go back to how things were before, or can’t. Perhaps part of the reason you’re in the current predicament is because what came before simply wasn’t working. Rather than resilience, then, isn’t there an alternative? A way of moving forward through the crisis and into a better, more robust future?
