Help Your Adversity-averse Workers Develop Resilience

If your younger workers seem especially stressed, it’s because they are. Gen Z is often described by experts as the most anxious generation, with the American Psychological Association declaring that one in seven children and young adults are dealing with mental health issues. At the same time, despite having to face it on a near-daily basis, the newest generation of workers might be the most poorly equipped to deal with adversity.

That’s a challenge not only for Gen Z workers, but for their colleagues, managers and supervisors as well – leading to misunderstandings, conflict, and one more layer of adversity.

The first thing to remember is that difficulty in dealing with challenges – in life, at work and to worldviews – is not confined to any conveniently labeled generation. However, Gen Z workers have grown up facing not only a wide variety of challenges, but also in a culture that (rightly or wrongly) has tried to actively shelter them from adversity.

Your youngest employees have come of age in the era of school shootings, a pandemic lockdown (and ensuing return-to-office orders after settling in to remote work), runaway student debt and increasing social isolation – but also in a time of safe spaces, trigger warnings, book bans, helicopter parenting and rampant grade inflation.

It’s small wonder, then, that a cohesive inner plan for dealing with adversity might be hard to come by when moving into a results-first work environment.

What’s required to develop that attitude of resilience?

Grace, for one thing. Extend the same consideration to someone struggling with adversity that you would want extended to yourself or a loved one. Remember the humanity in your human resources.

Active leadership and intentional management make up the other key aspect of instilling resilience in adversity-averse employees. And while every worker is different, it’s useful to have a basic framework for the process that can be adapted as needed.
 

Three steps you can take to help workers better deal with adversity

1. Give praise that’s due, not overdone

   Not every achievement should be remarkable. Don’t denigrate the routine work that people do, but save the superlatives for outstanding effort and results. When you give kudos to one person, don’t feel that you have to give everyone praise so that no one feels left out. (Do, however, be careful not to overlook quiet but important contributions.)

   It’s enough to simply acknowledge completion of routine tasks to an acceptable standard. Note the completion, then move on to what’s next on the employee’s to-do list.

2. Provide employees with “adversity coaching”

   Failures and setbacks are “coachable moments,” but they must be handled carefully. Coaching and issuing consequences should never be done in the heat of the moment. Deal with the effects of the failure, take a cooling-off period, and only then should you go back to discuss what went wrong, what can be learned from it and what needs to happen in the future.

   The key word here is “discuss.” Don’t lecture. Let the employee work out their own understanding, offering prompts only when necessary. The more involved they are in identifying the cause of failure, the more engaged they’ll be in learning from it.

   Also, remember that coaches don’t step in and play when their players are struggling. You might have to make substitutions. You might have to put someone on a figurative bench for a while. But if you constantly take over and do the work for someone, they’ll never figure out how to do it themselves.

3. Model the resilience you want to see

   To develop a consistent culture of resilience, and help employees to fit into that culture, it’s crucial for managers and leaders to model resilient responses – rather than emotional reactions – to adversity.

   Let people see you acknowledging the challenge, accepting that getting through it will take work, and then taking action with a positive attitude. And when your workers do the same, make sure to give them a message of acknowledgement and appreciation.

No plan or policy can take away adversity; nor should it. Facing adversity is how workers of all generations get sharper, discover inner strengths, define and redefine their convictions and priorities. But sometimes, people just need some guidance getting to that point, and it’s on the people who have already developed those skills to pass them on.
 

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