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I wanted to cover the topic of learning and developing in this issue - in a 'day-to-day' experiential sense and not in the formal classroom way - and how
1. It's more difficult to learn and develop if we're stressed, anxious, depressed etc and
2. If we're not progressing and learning and developing as an organisation, we're going backwards (because others ARE progressing)
We're going to look at this subject from the individual perspective and apply pretty much the same rule to the organisational perspective, since
- If it's good for the individual its going to benefit the organisation, e.g. if staff are content, engaged, well etc they're more likely to perform, to the benefit of the business
- We can apply the same principles at the individual and the organisational level: if you don't adapt to change, you're going to struggle
We can thus talk about adapting to change, evolving, being able to adapt to the environment for ourselves and for the business too, and it follows that if we don't do this well, at best we'll be an also-ran and won't prosper, and at worst we'll wither and flounder and fail.
I don't know about your particular situation, and that of your workforce, but it's probably a good idea, whoever you are and wherever you are, if you have staff who are adept at the following:
Changing
Adapting
Evolving
Being flexible
Being resilient
Recognising they're resourceful (as that way they'll be pro-active and expect to cope and succeed)
How good are you/your people at these things? If you're not very good, we better crack on and do something about it.
I'm paraphrasing here, but Darwin's theory of evolution speaks if I've got it right about the 'survival of the fittest', and adapting to the environment, and how the human race didn't survive and prosper because of man's 'god-like intellect', it was more to do with our ability to adapt and change relative to our environment. So, you as an individual and you as an organisation better make sure that you can adapt and change dependant on your circumstances/environment, because if you don't you wont' survive. Bit dramatic perhaps, but you're not likely to perform and prosper and compete and maximise your potential as an organisation if you don't pay attention to this rule, and you're not doing what you can to ensure that you can place a tick against those criteria mentioned above. Coupled with this, if we're going to learn and develop as individuals and as an organisation, to do this well, we need to avoid stress and worry, anxiety and concern, and being in a situation where everyone's in survival mode. If we ARE struggling with those things, we're going to find it very difficult to learn, develop and grow.
(You might say that because of the prevailing economic circumstances - e.g. slow economy, re-structuring and redundancies, uncertainty etc - that learning and development and growing are not top of our agenda. However, we do need to ensure that, as far as is possible, we do what we can to learn and develop, adapt to and deal with our circumstances, and support our people to do that, since if we do, we are better placed to survive and prosper, now and in the future).
What this means is if that we want the organisation and the individuals who lead and work in it to evolve and grow, and to continue to do so, well-ness and wellbeing are amongst our top priorities.
If we choose just one of those criteria mentioned above - 'being resilient' for example - let's take a look for a minute at how we could work towards that. I've chosen that one, since if we can crack that, most of the others will probably fall into place too. In terms of interventions at the level of the individual, I wanted to let you know if you're not familiar with it about a free tool called 'i-resilience' from Robertson Cooper, which is a personality questionnaire that assesses those elements of our personality and behaviour that help our resilience and those that hinder it. It also suggests ways we can work on any areas for improvement that we have identified. It's based around four main areas associated with being resilient: Confidence; Purposefulness; Adaptability and Social Support. As above, we can apply these criteria as much to the individual as we can to the organisation, and here this means:
- how good relationships are, with customers, suppliers and so on
- how clear our objectives and goals are
- how well we can adapt to change and
- collectively how good the organisation feels about itself, how positive it is etc.
Alternatively, if you're interested in providing training for your staff, have a look at our session 'Developing and Maintaining Resilience'.
Let's not forget finally that resilience is a skill, and we can get better at it as individuals and as an organisation with practice and for example working on those criteria mentioned above.
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