Organizational Resiliency Begins with Personal Resiliency

I recently attended an industry conference and had the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and colleagues and meet many new ones.  Scanning the room at the post-event happy hour, looking for my next great conversation, a business acquaintance saw me from across the room and motioned me over.  What happened next became the basis for a powerful discussion panel at a prestigious industry gathering four months later.  My colleague stated he felt overwhelmed, stressed, after digesting days upon days of all the threats, risks, and awful things happening globally.  And then he asked, “Brian, how do you do it?  How do you, and those in your industry, deal with this stuff day in and day out for careers of 20, 30 plus years, and not let it affect you?”  I looked him dead in the eyes and said, “We don’t.  We suck at it.  Look around the room, most everyone here are current or former military, law enforcement, and security professionals, and anecdotally most have undiagnosed PTSD issues, most are divorced or on their second or third marriages, and plenty are functional alcoholics.”  Then I raised my whiskey glass as if to toast that revelation. 

Of course, I exaggerated a little, but the point was salient and impactful.  And, there is a lot of truth behind it.  As an industry we are terrible at self-regulation and personal resilience.  As security industry professionals we spend time and energy developing our organization’s business continuity.  Incident management plans, drills, and compliance audits consume our energy but ensure we are ready to mitigate risks, react to incidents and quickly return to revenue and business.  But how many of us have a personal continuity plan, a system and process to ensure our own resiliency?”  Organizational resiliency begins with personal resiliency. 

Few leaders and managers would deny our people are the most valuable assets in our organization.  You can have the best business continuity and incident management plans in the world, but if the human beings in your organization are on empty or burned out, it will not be executed in the best way at the time of your crisis.  Personal resiliency is the foundation upon which organizational resiliency is built, and leaders must invest in the personal resiliency of their employees if they desire to build and lead successful teams. 

The discussion panel at the conference included two security industry leaders and two renowned industrial and occupational psychologists.  We shared experiences and discussed effective strategies for developing a high degree of personal resilience in ourselves and in the employees in our organizations.  After the panel, a former colleague of mine, who now manages a professional coaching business, asked me “If I had a client, a Chief Security Officer, or other industry leader, who was completely burned out, what advice could I give him or her to develop personal resiliency?” 

Welcome to the point of this article, a little concept I like to call “Your Cup of Energy”. 

Your Cup of Energy

We can all probably agree, good health, fitness, healthy relationships, and a strong sense of purpose are key elements of personal resilience.  The Cambridge Dictionary defines resilience as “the ability to be happy, successful, etc., after something difficult or bad has happened.”  When we are resilient, we bring more positive energy to our work, our relationships, and our lives.  The key element here is energy.  We are better and more energetic leaders.

Our level of resiliency is directly connected to our energy level.  If our intention is to increase our personal resiliency, we need to fill our cup of energy.  When we learn to see and experience the world energetically, it changes everything.  Energy is not something we ‘think’ it is something we ‘feel.’  And when we are low on energy and depleted, we are not our most resilient selves, we are not showing up for our teams the best we can be. 

Imagine yourself of as having a cup of energy.  That is, the daily energy we to do our work, give attention to our family and friends, manage challenges, and deal with our job’s inevitable crisis du jour.  It all takes a finite amount of energy.  Every activity, every task, you do either gives you energy, depletes your energy, or is otherwise neutral.

Often, we find ourselves in a perfect storm of stress and busy-ness depleting our energy.  We feel overwhelmed and wish we had a few more hours in the day to “get it all done”.  Frequently more time is not the solution, and we would likely fill it with more activities and work that cost us energy.  We don’t need more time, we need more energy, more resiliency, to endure and bounce back from those difficult and bad times. 

Take an energy inventory.  Write down the daily, or regular, activities that give you energy.  This may be exercise, reading, spending time with family and friends, travel to new places, enjoying a great meal, playing an instrument/listening to music, yoga or meditation, or being in nature.  There is no right or wrong.  It’s healthy activities that give you energy and make you feel good.  Now make a list of things that cost you energy, deplete it.  This could be long workdays, conflict with co-workers or a boss, your commute, health problems, relationship stress, and more. 

Now here is the part that takes discipline. Look at that list of activities that give you energy and do more of them.  To the greatest extent you can, chip away at the list of things that cost you energy, eliminating or mitigating those you can.  What we fail to realize is our own personal resiliency suffers when we do not take the time to put energy back in our cup. When our resiliency suffers, our leadership, our relationships, our work product suffer alongside. 

When we don’t do the things that put energy back in our cup, it negatively affects everyone and everything in our lives.  Conversely, when we exercise the discipline to do activities that increase our energy it builds personal resiliency, fills our cup and allows us to show up, lead, and endure the inevitable stressful situations life throws our way with composure and success. 

As an industry we need to wake up and change our perspective.  We historically accept being “so busy” and stressed out as a sign of importance, self-worth, and a badge of honor.  In truth we are low on energy, personal resiliency, and not showing up as the most effective leaders we can be. 

When we make time for daily practices that give us energy and improve our personal resiliency, we are doing this for others, for our employees, our teams, our families.  Our commitment to improving our personal resiliency while filling our cup of energy, is a selfless act.  It is acknowledging organizational resiliency begins with personal resiliency. 

What fills your cup?

Brian Cooke

Editor’s note: Brian is a senior security executive for a large energy company. He has also been a faculty member of The Great Conversation in Security. If you would like to reach Brian with a question, please feel free to contact us at info@The-Great-Conversation.com