Overcome All Kinds

Of Pressures And Problems In Life By Building Resilience

 

 

Interview With Sarah McCrum On Training Resilience

23 October 2006 , How organizations can best develop organizational and human capacity for success is the focus of research by Sarah McCrum, director of NZQA-registered Private Training Establishment, Academy of Potential Education. Her work with organizations and their executives has lead in particular to key training practices in resilience.

TK: Sarah, thanks for taking part in this interview. Tell me about the Academy , what are its goals? What are you wanting to achieve?

Sarah McCrum: We've developed, over several years, some methods and techniques of deep relaxation that we've applied to a range of human development settings. Particularly health. What we work from is some universal rules that can be applied to help people become stronger , stronger physically,
mentally and emotionally , so they can develop their capacity as human beings. What we're doing now is making this training available for others who can benefit from it in their daily lives. And it matches with the kinds of language we're hearing now in organizational HR circles, especially about
resilience.

TK: What is resilience?

Sarah McCrum: The ability to bounce back from anything.

TK: Why is resilience the new people development interest?

Sarah McCrum: It follows from the focus on leadership development over the last decade. We've had a good look now at the qualities of good leaders. Resilience is absolutely essential if you want to be successful, because if you can't bounce back from difficulties you'll never keep going long enough to
become successful. All successful people face challenges and problems. The more successful you are, the bigger the problems and challenges you face.

Resilience isn't really something in itself , it's just one of those qualities that if you don't have it you're really weak. Lack of resilience is what makes people complain so much.

TK: That's a really interesting comment, because we are a terribly complaining society.

Sarah McCrum: Resilient people don't complain. They just get on and solve the problem. It's very simple.
That's real strength.

TK: How do you change a society from being so complaining?

Sarah McCrum: There are two ways, as far as I can see. Some people become very resilient under enormous pressure. The other way is through education. In fact, if you want to educate people to become resilient, it's a lot more like training.

TK: What do you mean by training?

Sarah McCrum: Training involves putting people under pressure so that they reach bigger and bigger goals. It's more disciplined. You don't get resilience by talking. You get resilience through life experience, with pressure.

TK: So really you mean something more like serious sports training?

Sarah McCrum: Yes, top sports people have to be resilient. It doesn't matter how many times they make mistakes - they have to bounce back immediately and keep going. It's the same with musicians
and actors. That kind of disciplined training, organised by somebody who has the ability to apply pressure in the right direction, in a positive direction, is very rare in our society. You mostly find it in sport, in music and drama, a little bit. There's very little real training. Probably politicians have to be pretty resilient but they don't get training.

TK: So how can organisations develop resilience among their staff? Because they can't really do this kind of training you're talking about.

Sarah McCrum: An organisation that's developing , constantly developing , will be constantly putting their staff under pressure. Then they need to have the right support and right philosophy so that that pressure is like a constant positive motivation for people.

TK: But isn't that the crux of the problem: that they don't provide the right support and the pressure ends up being seen as a source of stress?

Sarah McCrum: In my view, people don't understand how these things fit together. It's lack of education in the organization. Pressure never needs to be seen as a source of stress. If you look at two people with the same difficult life circumstances, one person will take it as a terrible strain and the other person
will use it as a way to develop their experience, skills and knowledge. You just have to look at the difference between those two people and educate the first one to be like the second one. It's a question of attitudes. So when the organisation doesn't have the right attitudes people will get stressed by pressure and then you're in big trouble.

TK: So what advice can you give to an organisation whose staff are experiencing pressure as stress; what would be your first steps to remedy this work environment?

Sarah McCrum: You have to start at the top. Eventually you will have to train the whole organization, but you start at the top. You need to find out where the understanding is unclear, because from there you find the source of this view that pressure is a bad thing. It must be coming from somewhere at the top. And then you train the trainers and have a systematic way of going through the whole company. You show people how pressure provides opportunities. It's good for them. But of course it
needs to be working throughout the company.

If you put people under pressure so they develop new skills and experience and then you don't give them any opportunities to use their new skills and experience you'll have a difficult situation. People will be stressed again, but out of frustration. It's no good having a company that develops for a while and then stops, because then people get stuck. It has to be constantly developing and then you get a really positive system.

TK: So really, resilience is a fundamental key to developing the whole organisation, in all its aspects, not just its people; more fundamental than anything else.

Sarah McCrum: You can't say more than anything else. If you've got a bunch of really resilient people with no vision then they just bounce around. But without resilience you can never be really strong, you can never lead.

TK: Why do you think we're lacking in resilience?

Sarah McCrum: Who's we?

TK: I suppose just the generality of Western society?

Sarah McCrum: Lack of education. We educate people to be weak, not resilient.

TK: How are we educating badly?

Sarah McCrum: Too academic. Too much focused on verbal knowledge rather than life experience. There's very little done in school or university or any of the formal education systems to teach people any of the personal skills that are needed to be successful - personal and life skills. And very little experience is provided to young people so that they can learn it for themselves. We're so protected all the time. Everyone's so scared. There's a need for some really wise education. It needs a kind
of wisdom that's totally lacking at the moment, a much deeper understanding of life. When there's wisdom behind education it's not so risky to be more creative, to do things that are different, to let children experience real pressure, and real challenges.

TK: So what are the key first steps to developing resilience?

SM: First step is to understand that any kind of pressure or difficulty in life is a chance for you to develop. The second step is to have some kind of training or support to help you handle the challenges of solving problems and overcoming difficulties. The third step is to get lots of experience. And then you'll be resilient. You need to be constantly reminded that problems are positive, and constantly supported to overcome the increasingly difficult challenges, and then you need lots of practice, and you automatically become resilient. You can't get it from a one-day seminar, that's for sure.

TK: This really requires an enormous commitment, in resources, from an organization.

Sarah McCrum: No, I don't think so - probably one or two people who are already in the organization, and an attitude change. It requires support from the attitude point of view. That will make far more difference than throwing money at it. One single person in an organisation with support from the top can make a big difference.

I would train one or two people in a company and support them regularly over a long period (at least one or two years), while they have responsibility for training everyone else. But they can't be expected to learn it in a one-day seminar! It needs to be seen as a long term process which will produce sustainable results.

TK: What things have you seen organizations doing to develop resilience?

Sarah McCrum: There are some people in most of the better employers that I've seen , usually in the HR area , who are interested in things like resilience and developing resilience in people. They're genuinely interested in it, but it's often difficult for them to get strong support from management. They're not usually strong enough themselves to lead the whole process, so things tend to move pretty slowly. I believe that can be turned around quite quickly because those HR people are very willing to learn , they're quite open , they just need a bit more support.

TK: You've got this magnificent facility, Takaro Lodge. Aside from being the base for the Academy,
what part does the facility play in achieving your goals?

Sarah McCrum: Takaro's unique. It's in a special location , surrounded by bush and mountains. People come here to relax and rejuvenate. It's not like other luxury lodges , of course it's very comfortable because we want to meet the high-end needs of people who are usually very busy and successful. But this place is intended to provide a chance for people to experience deep rest and relaxation and also, if they want, it provides an opportunity to experience some pretty powerful development.

TK: So senior executives can come here, maybe with their teams, and really work on building their
capacity.

Sarah McCrum: Yes, that's the best way. You come here first to get an in-depth experience, and then we will continue to support key staff for as long as is needed. Our whole philosophy is based around the concept of developing capacity. When people start to work with us they are surprised how quite small changes produce big results , that's what capacity is all about.

TK: What about training for resilience?

Sarah McCrum: That's one of our major strengths and it's directly linked with capacity. I can't imagine any other organisation can provide what we can in terms of resilience training , but this is not superficial. It's real resilience for handling the big challenges, whether personal or professional. We have a clearly developed process for training people to become more resilient. It's powerful. It makes a sustainable difference for people and their organisations.