Resilient Wednesday Weekly Memo

One of my former bosses use to ask us during times of high stress, “why do you think they call it work?” He believed that by asking that question it would give us a perspective that our work is hard, but what it mostly did was to demoralize people to expect that nothing better could […]

Keeping our immune system strong is great for being resilient so that we have “energy reserves” when we have to face the next stressor of the day. This makes sense because if our bodies are not battling inside they can better handle what is happening outside. This internal battle can create inflammation at the cellular

It was a Monday morning 6 years ago when I walked into my boss’s office at the UPMC Health Plan for my weekly meeting with him. I knew the company was planning layoffs for that week but was shocked when I saw our HR partner in the room and immediately knew what that meant. I

As I got off the elevator I saw a room full of folks with their faces buried in their computer screens. When I got down to my client’s office he told me that a chunk of his team had been pulled off their day to day tasks to work on a special project creating several

I had the opportunity this past week to speak with Dr. Marty Seligman from the University or Pennsylvania who is the founder of positive psychology and a groundbreaker in the area of resilience. He shared about a project he is working on that is using big data to assess the health and wellness of communities

The war for talent is beginning to heat up again. I hear from employees who are beginning to look for jobs with more opportunities than they have in their current position and from employers who are telling me that it is getting harder to find good people. One of the qualities both sides report needing

We use resilience not to overcome the stress in our lives but to achieve something greater…happiness. It is the sense of a satisfying and rewarding life we strive for and our ability to be resilient with stress moves us closer to finding joy. Researchers talk about three kinds of happiness that we can experience in

Conflict is inevitable but the suffering and inefficiencies that accompany it in the workplace are optional. A recent survey of workplace stressors pointed out that conflict with co-workers is one of the leading sources of distress and lost productivity. Consider the time wasted with unresolved workplace problems and the gossip, frustration, and potential retribution that

With Valentine’s Day just a few days away, it makes sense to remind ourselves that our relationships are a primary way to build our resilience. Having your best bud around to talk about, reflect and problem solve our daily and life challenges keeps us in balance and out ahead of the storms. A key measure

I was coaching a senior leader who’s been working on decreasing his tendency to micromanage his employees. He’s been making good progress but he received some feedback from his team that he was, once again, directing their day-to-day activities and failing to give them the freedom and opportunity to run their own projects. “Sometimes I