Five tips on building your personal resilience

Coping well and bouncing back from setbacks, failure and difficult conversations is a must-have skill for project professionals.

鈥淭he ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and look at a situation objectively without drama or emotion will set you apart from other project managers,鈥� says Rosella Taylor, Senior Director of Clinical Trial Capabilities at Gilead Sciences.

Karolina Taflaj, PMO Director for EMEA Value Realisation Office at Aon, agrees: 鈥淩esilience plays a critical role in your wellbeing, but also your self-development and, as a byproduct, contributes to overall project and organisational success.鈥�

Yet learning to build and boost your level of personal resilience can be hard work.

鈥淩esilience is ultimately your capacity to manage stress, stay consistent, and reinterpret pressure so you perform better, feel better and grow. It takes effort and repetition, but the more you exercise it, the more naturally it comes and the more powerful it becomes,鈥� says Taflaj.

Looking for help? Try Taylor and Taflaj鈥檚 five tips:

1. Pause, acknowledge and reflect

鈥淏iopharma sees project failures often, and there鈥檚 nothing wrong with taking a certain amount of time to process the situation, go for a run, get the emotion out of your system and take a moment to hold up a mirror to ask yourself: could I have done something different?鈥� says Taylor.

The ability to self-reflect is a key skill for any project manager or leader, she argues.
鈥淲hen you dig deep and identify a moment where you weren鈥檛 your best self or where you might have rushed through something without proper consideration, the answer is always to fix it.鈥�

Have that difficult conversation; give that piece of feedback; send someone a thank-you or an apology.

2. Reframe failure

Don鈥檛 catastrophise after a setback. Instead, think of failure as an opportunity to learn.
鈥淩emove the emotion and make it a collaborative exercise with the team: what can we learn from this together and what can we do differently next time?鈥� counsels Taylor. 鈥淲e can be even better project managers through our experiences and what we learn from them. We all build contingency into project plans 鈥� I expect someone learned that the hard way, as many failures occurred from not building in some extra time, resulting in a fundamental lesson: build in contingency,鈥� she adds.

鈥淚nstead of thinking, 鈥楾his is stressful鈥�, think, 鈥楾his is an opportunity to learn.鈥� This perspective may seem difficult, even impossible to begin with, but it will make sense when reflecting on the situation after a while. Each new challenge will become easier,鈥� says Taflaj. 鈥淔ailure does not equal identity; it is just feedback. Instead of saying, 鈥業 failed鈥�, ask, 鈥榃hat specifically didn鈥檛 work?鈥�, and you will lose the emotional load associated with the challenge you have come across. In project management, we excel at capturing lessons learned for a project, but we often don鈥檛 consider applying the same approach to ourselves.鈥�

3. Create some team space to ask important questions

Allow yourself some grace 鈥� some time to think and reflect as a team or with a mentor 鈥� advises Taylor. 鈥淏uild yourself a list of questions that resonate with you.鈥� Hers are:

Was the issue at hand predictable or preventable? Should we have identified the risk and treated it accordingly?
Could I have done something differently resulting in a better outcome?
What can we learn from this that can inform projects in the future?

4. Get comfortable being uncomfortable

Taflaj has learnt that avoiding doing difficult things reduces levels of personal resilience.
鈥淒oing small uncomfortable things regularly makes them just another mundane task at some point and builds tolerance to stress. Try managing difficult conversations 鈥� perhaps with support at first 鈥� or stepping into new situations, like approaching a new stakeholder. Soon you won鈥檛 break a sweat when explaining to the sponsor why the project cannot go faster and be cheaper without compromising on quality,鈥� she says.

5. Don鈥檛 take resilience too far

A word of warning. There鈥檚 a trap you can fall into when becoming too resilient turns into a risk factor to your own ability to cope. 鈥楩ake resilience鈥� is something that can happen when high achievers power through so much that personal resilience turns into a harmful game of endurance that sets you on the road to burnout. Consistently over-extending yourself leads to exhaustion, so don鈥檛 make resilience a badge of honour.
To mitigate the risk, be sure to build in time to rest often and every day as part of your routine 鈥� micro resets like a five-minute walk are a valuable tool in personal performance.

Want more? Listen to the APM Podcast episode 鈥楳anaging stress and avoiding burnout鈥� on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube.