How can you integrate resiliency into your performance management system?

One thing I've found helpful was to always incorporate a few key questions during my check ins with my team, such as, "What has been your work-life balance been like the past week?", or "How can I support you to elevate you to the next step/level?". These open-ended questions allow me to assess how my team perceives their own work and see if they feel overwhelmed or stressed. Furthermore, it allows me to support them in the way they find most helpful, from their perspective.

I think it is helpful to explain why resilience is important to the individual from a health and well-being perspective. There can be a feeling that a focus on resilience means things are going to be hard/ harder with lots of hurdles to overcome. Appreciate that resilience is a positive for the individual with benefits inside and outside work.

If we remember that the best PM processes are essentially there to support continuous performance dialogue then I think the answer lies in equipping leaders to have conversations that really allow them to know ‘how it’s going’. The suggestions around open questions are key and creating the environment in these conversations that allows the leader to ask, “what is one thing that hasn’t gone as well as you would have hoped / expected” and “how did you respond to that,” enables them to gain insight into their colleagues resilience.

Assessing resilience could create additional stress and potentially stigmatize those who may struggle with it. Also placing too much emphasis on individual resilience can shift the focus away from addressing the workplace factors that contribute to stress and burnout. So my question is why would we do that? What’s the benefit?

To improve the performance management system, leaders can integrate resiliency by implementing a feedback and coaching loop and encouraging regular check-ins with frontline employees. Doing this will foster a supportive atmosphere where workers can develop resilience through learning from mistakes, adapting to challenges, and acquiring new skills. Additionally, leaders can enhance integration by recognizing and celebrating resilience. This includes acknowledging and appreciating employees who demonstrate resilience, sharing success stories, and providing public recognition or rewards.

Resilience is not just about enduring difficult situations but is strongly linked to one's mindset and how one navigates challenges. It is the ability to bounce back from adversity, and it's closely tied to how individuals cope with events happening to or around them based on their personality or past experiences. Using performance methods to 'score' employees' resiliency is unequal. Instead, the focus should be on fostering resilience by helping individuals develop the mindset and coping techniques necessary to navigate challenging situations. Especially putting the emphasis on creating an environment that helps people develop and strengthen their resilience rather than merely assessing or grading it.

Feedback is critical in resiliency. It will make confidence each other to give constructive and possitive feedback, although not all feedback are constructive but it will give equality and inclusivity to all. As a voice, feedback can give improvement and sometimes an be out of the box insight. One thing is critical in feedback are give confidence ans encourage employee and team to be more active to give feedback.

When it comes to resiliency feedback, it's helpful to have "what a good job looks like" clearly defined with behaviors. When those behaviors for resiliency are clear, it's essential to provide regular feedback via day-to-day coaching.

Performance management, in a modern approach, with short and frequent cycles, is an extraordinary opportunity to review failures and errors that have been made. These failures and errors are fertile ground for learning and strengthening skills, working on failures and errors in a nutritious way, lays the foundation for building the confidence required to overcome them and come out energized and strengthened….and this is what We call resilience.

Resiliency is a superpower that requires us to see stressful situations as opportunities for growth in life and work. Awareness is critical in becoming more resilient. How do you deal with unexpected events, how do you deal with disappointment? When things don't go your way many people respond by saying what's wrong, why did this happen or blame others. A resilient way to see it is as a learning opportunity. When things look wrong, ask yourself what's right about this I'm not getting. See situations as a lesson for growth and a challenge that motivates you to use your resiliency in a positive way. Once you know how you typically respond to stressful events, you can choose to bounce back quickly using tools to improve your resiliency.

Resiliency goals aren't any different than other behavioral goals. It requires clarity of what a good job looks like and agreements about how progress and success will be measured. Then it's helpful to have a conversation about how attainable, relevant, and motivating (i.e., energizing) the goal is for the team member.

In my experience the most effective goals are created through mutual discussion. Leaders may be clear what benefits the desired change will bring, so can set the direction of travel. Inviting others to share their experience and define their own measures of success is a powerful way to engage people. Forward looking questions are helpful - 'What will you or others be experiencing when you've achieved this?' 'What will be different?' 'How does that benefit you and the people around you?' 'How will you feel?'

Sometimes all you need to do is listen, observe. Be the sounding board. Enable your staff to reflect. Create a safe space to vent. Sometimes we just need to tell someone how we feel. How we feel does not have to determine what we think. Once we facilitate a process where feeling, thinking and acting is objectified, you make quality decisions.

The best type of support you can offer as a leader is be a role model. Demonstrate the behaviors you want to see and talk about what you're learning with your team members. Too often leaders don't talk about their failures, setbacks, challenges, etc. in a way that models resiliency.

Actually I disagree with incentives for resilience. According to Susan Fowler's research on motivation incentives are the equivalent of motivational junk food. Instead focus on connecting with employees about resiliency, tie resiliency to the company's mission and values, and connect resilience to the person's strengths. These strategies are long lasting and don't rely on the old carrot and stick approach.

Check in frequently, loop it as a strategy that plays on repeat. Employ listening strategies that take a pulse on employee and team sentiment. Integrating resilience into performance management offers a wonderful opportunity to discern confidence levels and alignment to culture goals, track progress to desired outcomes and exchange two-way feedback. Additionally, one-on-ones invite discussion to be more intentional and focused with the advantage of adjusting expectations as you improve. Employee resilience is achieved because of planning, asking questions, actively listening, setting goals, acting on feedback, making adjustments and recognizing efforts.

There are some great tips here but you may struggle to build resiliency if you don't do anything to address the underlying causes of workplace stress. The (UK) Health & Safety Executive have researched these at length and identified demands, control, support, relationships, role and change. They have produced a series of 'Talking Toolkits' to help managers discuss these with their teams. If they can be addressed successfully, then individuals can be developed to cope better with high pressure (before it tips into stress) and will then be building their resilience. I believe it's impossible to get a great performance out of individuals who are feeling stressed so deal with the causes first, and don't expect individuals to cope by themselves.

Consider training people for resilience. Too often leaders expect certain behaviors and competencies, but forget those behaviors and competencies need to be developed. Invest in learning strategies and learning supports if you truly want to create a resilience workplace.