September 01, 2011
Three Steps to Hardiness
for the inevitable explosion. I asked him to explain what he meant.
He told me that his boss had been really great to work with the past couple of months. His boss had some vacation time, was able to knock off early to play some golf and took his kids to a bunch of baseball games during the summer. But with school starting and the fall workload picking up, he expected him to become grouchy and demanding any day now.
And “buttressing” was how he was preparing himself for this inevitable shift in boss behavior? He wasn’t sure how else he could approach it, since he knew it would be inevitable and “ugly”.
I brought up my resilience model to him and talked about the importance of having a “building hardiness” strategy to address predictable stressors that you know are coming down the highway. We talked about three keys
- Analysis: Consider what’s happened in the past that’s created good or bad outcomes. Sometimes these issues are outside your control and other times you can make real adjustments. Can my client get ahead of the curve by talking with his boss about what he (the boss) anticipates to be the challenges the next couple of months ahead?