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 was being let go. Laid off. Position eliminated. Not needed any more. Kaput! It took me awhile to overcome my shame about that event and...

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 new web features for their marketing and sales team. “Its really mentally challenging work” he told me “They have to analyze this data, make a...

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 across the country. His research is important because most research around things like employee satisfaction and even happiness is based on survey type data such...

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 are people who are resilient to the challenges facing the workplace. This week I want to share a few ideas for job hunters about how...

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 our lives. These include: Moment to moment happiness that relates to the small pleasures we encounter each day. A blooming flower or an acknowledging word...

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 accompany conflict among your workplace colleagues. Developing a conflict resilient workplace means that you and your team have an effective process for recognizing and addressing...