Blog

‘Stress, pressure and mental health at work’ is the title of a video published by the BBC. The feature shines the light on workplace attitudes to stress and mental health, and points to trends we’ve been noticing for some time now. Despite ‘resilience’ becoming a buzz word in recent years, the way many of us behave under stress often amounts to, at best, ‘soldiering on’. It's much like what Tom explains in the video: “what goes through my head all the time is “don’t fall apart, don’t fall apart”... you have to not let people know that you’re a vulnerable person”.

Although well-intentioned, much of the thinking around resilience is focused on the individual’s responsibility to self-regulate, leaving the part that culture plays in causing, preventing and recovering from stress, tucked neatly away in the blind spot. We’ve been noticing a pattern of shame in the shadow of resilience narratives, and we’ve got to asking:

• Despite increased attention given to resilience, is talking about vulnerabilities becoming even more risky?

• Could an entrenched focus on individual’s ability to cope, only be tying them in more knots and dragging down productivity?

Why is it so important to get ‘resilience’ right?

Fact: people are less productive when they’re not fully engaged. A definition of fully engaged in this case, is to bring one’s whole self to their work - to be completely available for the task, without being distracted by other concerns. If we’re under strain and trying to hold ourselves together, that is how our energy is being spent - on top of dealing with the task at hand. Putting a shoulder to the grindstone only creates more resistance in our internal worlds, and when the underlying cause of the stress isn’t dealt with, we disengage.

This might explain what’s happening for the 60% of the workforce in the UK who, as the polls from e.g. Gallup show, are disengaged at work. Combine that with the decline in productivity growth over the last decade, and the £42bn a year employers spend on mental health in the workplace (Deloitte survey 2017), and you have a pretty robust case for why the UK needs to start getting resilience right. On a more simple note, being unfulfilled and unhappy is frankly no way to live, as I’m sure the Nordic region would agree. We need to start taking a preventative approach, and to echo the BBC reporter, recognise when pressure turns into stress and stress becomes something more.

What can we learn from Lean manufacturing?

To create resilient workforces we need to upgrade our thinking, and understand how personal resilience develops in a social context. To do this we can draw parallels with the world of manufacturing, and how it has evolved with the introduction of Lean.

Once upon a time factory production lines were linear and siloed. The same, however, couldn’t be said for reality. Activity at one stage of a process could create havoc downstream. The volume of output was ‘pushed’ along the line by sales forecasts, which meant if one stage slowed down their inventory would build up, as would the cost. Other features were that only managers were allowed to make process improvements, and if people made mistakes they were sent on a training course as a remedy. All in all, a reactive environment.  

Along came Lean, designed to eliminate waste by assessing how each part of a process links together. The ‘push’ approach to output was replaced with Just in Time manufacturing: volume is determined by customer demand, meaning at any stage in the process, activity doesn’t start until the next stage is ready. Employees share responsibility for making improvements, and instead of taking remedial action, human error gets designed-out from the start. Smooth.

Combined, these principles create space in the system for productivity to flow, and for the workplace to continuously improve. Lean recognises fundamentally, that systems are not effective unless all the parts are working interdependently. Like Lean, in the pursuit of productivity, we need to take the spotlight off the individual and make resilience an interdependent practice. Given their organic, fleshy pre-disposition, humans will get stressed. So perhaps it’s time to design-in what it takes to keep people afloat, and get the energy in the system moving again. Here’s our take on how.

Resilience: a collaborative practice?

Let’s imagine resilience is a collaborative phemonenon. It only exists through relationship. In this world, resilience might no longer put bouncing-back at the centre of the narrative. It would be about something much more expansive; creating the conditions for people to thrive. And that calls for every individual being responsible for the health of the organisation.

When we’re in a state of stress, everything inside narrows, and the likelihood we can overcome the issue on our own becomes slim. Many of us need an extra pair of eyes, extra cognitive capacity and a mind that’s open, either to go to for support, or to call out the issue when we’re not willing to deal with it. There’s a pivotal moment of change, when people response to their struggling colleague is open, accepting and empathic. And if at the same time, they support that person to take ownership of their situations, cleanly, then any blame, judgment or resentment falls away. Their energy restores so they can make the changes they need.

This is different from conventional approaches to resilience, which focus on fixing the problem, yet not necessarily attending to the emotional or relational dimensions that lie beneath. As Karen Young describes, being too eager to find the solution means we might skim over the deeper issue. She says: “Feelings always have a good reason for being there... It is during the withdrawal that information is reflected upon, assimilated and processed so that balance can be found again. If this is rushed, even if it is in the name of resilience, it can stay as a gentle rumble and show up through behaviour, sometimes at wildly unexpected times.” For many of us, we’ve grown up to avoid the intense emotions lying at the core of our problems. Much easier to default to a coping strategy, than to face into our vulnerability.

In a collaborative approach every instance of stress would not be seen as a failure, but a place for gaining traction. It’s an opportunity for developing deeper resilience, by bringing the issue into the light. To create those conditions, we need to be willing to listen deeply and allow our vulnerabilities to be seen. When the collective capacity grows in this way, expands and slows down in this way, we open space for people to find their own solutions, smoothing the path to productivity.

Let’s start a conversation…