Self-Management: Understanding How Resilience Works Project Report

This project report, created by a group of students, investigates the concept of resilience, defined as the ability to adaptively overcome stress and adversity while maintaining normal psychological and physical functioning. The report explores resilience in both personal and organizational contexts, highlighting the importance of not just surviving but thriving in challenging situations. It delves into the core characteristics of resilience, including a clear understanding of reality, finding meaning in difficult times, and the ability to improvise. The report provides examples, such as the resilience of Morgan Stanley during the 9/11 attacks and the application of improvisation by UPS during Hurricane Andrew, to illustrate these concepts. It also discusses the importance of values, the role of meaning therapy, and the concept of 'bricolage' or resourceful improvisation. The conclusion emphasizes that while luck plays a role, true resilience is a unique perspective that requires embracing all three building blocks.

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................... 2
The Buzz About Resilience................................................................................................. 2
Idea in Brief.................................................................................................................... 2
Idea in Practice............................................................................................................... 3
Facing Down Reality........................................................................................................ 4
The Search for Meaning.................................................................................................... 4
Ritualized Ingenuity......................................................................................................... 5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 6
Self-Management | June 24, 2022
HOW RESILIENCE
WORKS
PROJECT REPORT
Group 1 Members
Ayesha Asif (01-112192-015)
Areeba Siddiqui (01-112192-010)
FaizanGhafoor (01-112192-020)

Introduction
Resilience is the capacity to adaptively overcome stress and adversity while
maintaining normal psychological and physical functioning. Being resilient does not
mean that people don’t experience stress, emotional disturbance, and suffering. Some
people compare resilience with mental toughness, but demonstrating resilience includes
working through emotional pain and suffering. Claus Schmidt face many difficulties in
his life he lost his best friend and three kids that’s why he milled around the newsroom
day after day, mentoring the cub reporters, talking about the novels he was writing, and
always looking forward to what the future held for him. He could have reacted very
differently. It takes time, strength, and help from people around you, and you’ll likely
experience setbacks along the way. But eventually, you reach the top and look back at
how far you’ve come. When facing difficulties in life, some people seem to cope easier
than others. Is it genetic or can it be learned?
The Buzz About Resilience
In the business arena, resilience is not only surviving the chaos but thriving in it
and growing from it. It is bouncing back and jumping forward and resilience has also
found its way onto the list of qualities sought in employees.
Idea in Brief
"More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person's level
of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails." Theories abound about what
produces resilience, but three fundamental characteristics seem to set resilient people and
companies apart from others. These are first a (black) sense of humor, providing a critical
sense of reality. Second is the ability to form an attachment to others, which gives
meaning to life. And third, the ability to improvise, protecting them from the intrusions of
abusive others. These three characteristics hold for resilient people in whatever situation
they are in but also for organizations. Their level of resilience will determine whether
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they will succeed or fail. They can only be truly resilient when they take on all three
building blocks. People carry through tough times and deep recessions are its Resilience.
These three building blocks of resilience with several clarifying examples. One of these
examples is the empirical study on the survival of Holocaust victims in concentration
camps. Researchers found out that these people had a “plastic shield” that consisted of
these three building blocks of resilience.
Idea in Practice
In order to develop resilience, apply the following practices:
1. Face Down Reality
By examining the reality of your situation with a clear mind, you will be able to
deduce ways to cope up with the difficulty. Questioning your survival abilities only will
not help you at all.
2. Search for Meaning
Instead of considering yourself as a victim and constantly thinking about the
question “Why me?”, search deeper for meaningful reasons behind your suffering. This
will make it easier for you manage the situation and better prepare you for the future
ordeals.
3. Continually Improvise
Being creative and thinking out of the box will aid you much in devising solutions
for your problems. Utilize the available resources to the fullest and search for sensible
and innovative possibilities.
Past theories about resilience mostly focused on the connection of genes and
resiliency. However, empirical evidence suggests that role of genetics is not always
important; resiliency can be learned. Moreover, theories suggest that truly resilient people
/ organizations have three common characteristics: a staunch acceptance of reality; an
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unshaken belief that life is meaningful; and a distinctive ability to improvise. These three
are discussed in detail below:
Facing Down Reality
The belief that resilient people are highly optimistic is incorrect. A level of
optimism that does not distort your sense of reality, should be present but anything
beyond that can be dangerous. The more rose-colored thinking you will have, the more
distant you will be from reality and this can be damaging for you as an individual or as an
organization. Resilient people view reality in its most raw form so as to better cope with
it no matter how painful it is.
Here is an example of organizational resilience. Morgan Stanley (the famous
investment bank located in the south tower of the World Trade Center), received an
almost direct hit by the terrorist plane on September 11, 2001. Luckily, the first plane hit
the north tower and the very next minute, Morgan Stanley offices were evacuated. Thus
when the second plane hit the south tower, the organization only lost 7 out of its 2700
employees. Although the company was lucky to be situated in the south tower, but
management’s hard-nosed realism enabled the company to benefit from this luck. The
employees were already taught how to act in catastrophic situations because the company
knew that World Trade Center was prone to terrorist attacks. On that day, the employees
were asked to stay calm and collected and follow the previously learned instructions.
Such resilient organizations prepare themselves for the worst before the
catastrophe actually strikes because they really view reality in its truest, almost
pessimistic form. This way they benefit from their survival training and back-up plans
when faced with a disaster.
The Search for Meaning
The ability to see reality is closely linked to making meaning of terrible
times. Resilient people under pressure, plan and build through their suffering to create
meaning for themselves and others, unlike others who consider themselves victims
when faced with hardship.
Victor E. Frankl, an Australian psychiatrist, invented “meaning therapy” a
technique that helps individuals make decisions that create meaning in their lives.
Resilient people build bridges from hardships to better constructed future. These bridges
then make the present more manageable.
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In his book, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, Frankl described the pivotal moment
when he developed “meaning therapy”. On his way to work, he wondered about his
foreman whom he knew to be sadistic, he realize how trivial and meaningless his life had
become and in order to survive, he had to find purpose in his life.
Salvatore R. Maddi, a UCI psychology professor explains that psychotherapy is for
people whose lives have fallen apart badly and need repair. However, resilience training
is for everyone: showing people life skills and attitudes. He is of the opinion that such
things should be taught at home and in schools.
The main challenge that resilience trainers face is that meaning of life, even if
found, can be elusive. In not all cases people are able to hold on to their meaning in life
and live the rest of their lives on the basis of that meaning.
Most successful organizations and people possess strong value systems which
infuse an environment with meaning because they offer ways to interpret and shape
events. Businesses that survive also have their creeds, which give them purposes beyond
just making money. For instance, parcel company UPS talks constantly about its Noble
Purpose. Such resilient companies use their unvarying value systems as support systems
in times of trouble.
Resilience is neither ethically good nor bad; it is only the ability to stay robust
during trials and tribulations. Companies, like Phillip Morris, hold ethically questionable
values and still are very resilient. One of its values is ‘adult choice’, but it still has
demonstrated impressive resilience in the face of increasing unpopularity because of its
strong values.
Values, positive or negative, are actually more important for organizational
resilience than having resilient people on the payroll. If resilient employees are all
interpreting reality in different ways, their decisions and actions may well conflict,
calling into doubt the survival of their organization.
Ritualized Ingenuity
This is the third building block of resilience that teaches us how we can benefit
from whatever is in our hands. Psychologists call this skill bricolage. In the modern
sense, Bricolage is a skill that allows us to do our work without the necessary equipment.
Bricoleurs always like to adjust things easily, such as they make radios out of household
items and fix cars by himself. They try to make the most of what is around them.
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In tough situations, bricoleurs imagine possibilities and try to improvise solutions
at a whole new level because the ‘bouncing back’ instinct is strong in them. This ability
can be extended to what is known as ‘intellectual bricolage’. Richard Feynman, 1965
Nobel prize winner in physics, became an expert in safecracking but not only learning the
mechanics but also the psychological insight about people who used safes and set the
locks. In this way he was able to crack many safes at Los Alamos.
Surviving companies, like UPS, see improvisation as a core skill. UPS gives its
drivers the option to deliver packages on time and do whatever they want in order to
succeed. This was the very skill that helped UPS delivery team to deliver packages to
customers in southeast Florida where Hurricane Andrew (1992) has just struck and
devastated millions. This way the delivery teams was able to give others a sense of
purpose and meaning in life amid the chaos.
Moreover, UPS employees were able to improvise in such tough situations
because the company lives on rules and regulations. According to Karl E. Weick, a
professor of organizational behavior at the University of Michigan Business School in
Ann Arbor, being creative is hard in life-threatening situations where pressure is intense.
However, if there are existing rules and regulations to follow, companies will turn out to
be more resilient in difficult times.
Conclusion
Resilient people often credit their ‘bouncing back’ power to luck. Luck does play
a role in survival, but being resilient is different. Resiliency is a way of facing and
understanding the world from a very unique perspective which not everyone can
undertake, because it requires all three building blocks of resiliency.
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