Resilience at work: Why it's about more than just toughening up
Written by Karen Robinson from KR 4 HR Coaching & Consultancy
Let’s get one thing straight. Resilience does not mean “toughening up”.
It doesn’t mean putting your head down, carrying on regardless, saying “I’m fine” when you’re absolutely not fine, or becoming so good at coping that nobody notices you’re struggling.
And it certainly doesn’t mean being able to tolerate increasingly unreasonable workloads, difficult people, poor leadership, toxic cultures or impossible expectations without complaining.
Sometimes, what gets called resilience is actually just endurance. And there’s a big difference.
What is resilience?
Resilience is your ability to respond, adapt and recover when things are difficult, challenging or uncertain.
It’s not about avoiding difficult situations, because you can’t always do that. It’s about having the resources, awareness and skills to navigate them without allowing them to completely overwhelm you.
Resilience might look like:
• Knowing when you need to pause rather than pushing harder.
• Being able to look at a situation from more than one perspective.
• Recognising what you can influence and what you can't.
• Asking for help before you reach breaking point.
• Having difficult conversations rather than quietly tolerating something.
• Recovering after a setback instead of seeing it as evidence that you've failed.
• Knowing your limits.
• Saying no when something isn't reasonable.
• Being able to adapt when circumstances change.
• Trusting yourself enough to make a decision.
• And sometimes, recognising that it might not be you, and that actually, it’s the situation itself that needs to change.
That last one is important.
Because you can’t always resilience your way out of a bad environment. Resilience isn't an excuse for bad workplaces. We can spend an enormous amount of time teaching people to be more resilient without asking a much more uncomfortable question. What are we expecting them to be resilient to?
If someone is consistently overloaded, unsupported, undermined, bullied, micromanaged or working in an environment where their boundaries aren't respected, telling them they need to become more resilient isn't necessarily the answer. It just puts the responsibility in the wrong place.
Looking at it from a different perspective
When you ask yourself, “How can I develop my ability to cope with challenging situations?” You should probably also ask yourself, “How can I become better at tolerating something that is damaging me?”
They are two very different concepts. I don’t believe that resilience is the go to answer of practicing mindfulness and having a bath, I believe there is a lot more to it. I'm not knocking the bath, but if your workload is completely unmanageable, a lavender candle isn't going to fix it.
Don’t get me wrong, mindfulness, exercise, sleep, relaxation, breathing techniques and taking time for yourself can absolutely support your wellbeing. But they are tools, not an entire resilience strategy. You can't self-care your way out of every systemic problem. Sometimes resilience requires action.
Boundaries are part of resilience
One of the most powerful ways to build resilience is to become clearer about your boundaries. Without boundaries, we can find ourselves continually giving away our time, energy and emotional capacity. When you're good at helping people, you can become the person who is always available to help, until eventually, there isn't much left for you.
Ask yourself, “What am I currently saying yes to that I really need to say no to?” That question can be surprisingly revealing.
Boundaries aren't selfish
They're how we protect our capacity to keep doing the things that matter, it’s about knowing what is yours to carry and what isn’t.
This is particularly important for people who work in people-focused roles. You can support someone without carrying their emotions home with you, care deeply without taking responsibility for someone else's choices, be empathetic without absorbing everything around you, and advocate for people without believing that every problem is yours to solve.
One of the questions I often come back to is “Is this mine to carry?” Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it’s no. What’s important is learning the difference between the two and that alone can be incredibly freeing.
Resilience is also about recovery
We often talk about resilience as our ability to keep going, but I believe that recovery is just as important as endurance.
Your brain and body need opportunities to come down from stress. That might mean switching off properly after work, getting outside, talking to someone you trust, doing something completely unrelated to work, getting some sleep, taking a day off, stepping away from your laptop instead of checking one more email, having a proper conversation about your workload or joining a like minded peer networking group with others who ‘get it’.
Needing to recover is not a weakness, it’s part of the resilience process. You don't build resilience by running yourself into the ground and then congratulating yourself for surviving it.
How do we become more resilient?
What is actually draining you? Be as specific as you can. Is it workload, a particular person, conflict, uncertainty, lack of control, constant interruptions, feeling undervalued, fear of getting something wrong, or emotional exhaustion? Once you understand the source, you can start doing something about it.
Build self-awareness
Notice your own warning signs before you're at breaking point. What does stress look like for me? What happens when I'm starting to struggle? Do I become irritable, withdrawn, indecisive, emotional, or a perfectionistic? What situations consistently knock my confidence?
You can't respond to something you haven't noticed.
Reconnect with your strengths
When people have been under pressure for a long time, they can become very focused on what they're getting wrong.
Resilience involves deliberately reconnecting with what you're good at, what you've achieved, what you've overcome, what other people value about you, what makes you different, and what you know that others don't.
Confidence doesn't need to be built from scratch, it just needs a little rebuilding sometimes.
Make decisions based on your values
When you're constantly reacting to everyone else's demands, you can lose sight of what matters to you.
Our values are our internal compass. Ask yourself, who do I want to be, how do I want people to see me, and what am I no longer prepared to compromise on.
That can give you something solid to stand on when everything around you feels too messy.
Separate facts from the story you're telling yourself
When something difficult happens, we can very quickly turn “they challenged my decision”, into, “I'm rubbish at my job and now they don't trust me”.
Pause.
What actually happened? What am I assuming? What evidence do I have?
This is particularly useful for people whose confidence has been chipped away over time.
Stop making everything personal
Someone disagreeing with you doesn't automatically mean you're wrong. Someone being unhappy doesn't mean you've done something wrong.
Someone reacting badly to a boundary doesn't mean the boundary was wrong. Someone else's behaviour is very often more about them and their insecurities, than it is ever about you.
What is within my control?
There will always be things you can't control, but there will also be things you can influence, like your response, your boundaries, your communication, where you spend your energy, whether you ask for help, and what you tolerate, challenge, and prioritise. Resilience grows when we stop spending all of our energy trying to control things we can't.
Develop your ability to have difficult conversations
Avoidance can feel easier in the short term, but it often makes things much harder in the long term. Resilience can mean learning to ask someone to talk a problem through, and telling people you feel uncomfortable or disagree and what you need. Being able to have uncomfortable conversations gives you more options than simply tolerating things.
Build a support network
Resilience isn't an individual sport. Having people around you who understand what you're dealing with can make an enormous difference. Try peer networking groups, a mentor or coach or a trusted colleague, friends or family. Sometimes you just need someone who gets it, and suddenly it feels a little less heavy.
What do I need to stop doing?
We tend to focus on adding things to our to do list, like another initiative, technique, or productivity hack. But sometimes resilience comes from removing something instead. Like not answering emails in the evenings or weekends, feeling comfortable saying no, not taking responsibility for everyone else's emotions, stopping yourself when you start replaying conversations you've already had, not being everything to everyone and not measuring your worth by how much you can tolerate.
Challenge perfectionism
Perfectionism looks like high standards, but underneath it can actually be a fear of failure. Except, of course, nobody is 100 per cent perfect, 100 per cent of the time. Resilience includes being able to do the best you can with the information you have and learning from it. A mistake doesn't have to become your identity it’s more of a learning opportunity.
Get comfortable with uncertainty
We often exhaust ourselves trying to work out what is going to happen next. Resilience means recognising you don't know yet, and learning that you can cope with not knowing.
Give yourself permission to change your mind
Resilient people aren't necessarily stubborn people. They are adaptable, but not inconsistent.
Leaving isn’t giving up
Resilience doesn't mean becoming someone who can withstand anything. It means becoming someone who knows themselves well enough to recognise what they need, what they can influence, what they need to accept, what they need to challenge, when they need support, and sometimes when it's time to leave.
It’s recognising that resilience isn't about endlessly bending yourself to fit circumstances that are hurting you, it's about having the confidence and self-awareness to decide how you want to respond. It’s no longer “How can I become more resilient?” but “Why am I having to be this resilient in the first place?”
If someone is experiencing persistent bullying, discrimination, unreasonable workload, unsafe working conditions or a genuinely toxic environment, the solution cannot simply be teaching them to cope better.
Sometimes resilience means recognising that something needs to change.
And sometimes that means getting advice, escalating an issue, taking time away, seeking professional support or deciding that the environment isn't right for you anymore.
You don't need to become better at putting up with more, you might just need some support to work out what needs to change.
Final thoughts
Resilience isn't about putting up with more. So perhaps the biggest shift we need to make is in how we think about resilience. It isn't about growing a thicker skin, becoming better at putting up with difficult people, impossible workloads, environments that are slowly wearing us down, or pretending you're okay when you're not.
Resilience is about having the self-awareness, confidence and resources to recognise what is happening, understand what you need, and decide how you want to respond. You might just need to work out what isn't yours to carry, what needs to change, and what support you need to make that happen. That's not weakness. That's resilience.
I’m Karen Robinson, HR consultant and coach for HR professionals. Visit my website or get in touch to see how I can support SME’s with their HR needs or HR professionals who need support with the emotional exhaustion, burnout and loss of confidence and personal identity.