Resilience at Work

INTRODUCTION

As a people, we want to believe that we can learn, change, and master whatever comes our way. The ability to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” has long been one of our most treasured workplace traits. We have continually wanted to reinvent ourselves at the organizational and employee levels, which speaks to our longstanding ability to adapt to stressful changes.

What’s different today? Contemporary social and economic pressures on an unusually massive scale make it harder for us to adapt in the highly developed ways we expect. Although we still want to believe in our ability to learn, change, and master stressful situations, today’s tumultuous changes can be undermining, if we lack the capabilities that lead to resilience. Resilience ...