Three Tools for Thriving Amidst Work Challenges

There are many challenges being posed in our workplaces today, and technology continues to move everything forward at a fast pace. Having skills one can call upon to overcome obstacles and manage stress is imperative to becoming resilient and having staying power in your career. Following are three tools if developed, can improve your chances of rising up to meet challenges: 

RESILIENCE 

Building Inner Strength 

• Resilience is the process of building inner strength. So, how exactly does that happen? The first step is developing a growth mindset, which includes cultivating an understanding that continuous learning and adding skills are part of staying competitive and relevant in your field. If you approach your profession with this understanding, you will not be surprised when changes are made and can shift gears to adapt.  
• Find meaning in your work. If you feel that you are contributing something of value to your work, your work quality and productivity will continue to improve. It also helps reduce stress so that, at the end of the day, you feel like you did something of value and your time was used wisely.  
• Build a support network with coworkers and colleagues, mentors, and others in your profession, and you can go to them for support and assistance with projects and ideas. Having others in your field who understand what you are trying to accomplish can be invaluable in completing your projects. Also, build personal support networks, as these are part of your stress management and work-life balance strategies. These personal networks serve as an outlet when it is not appropriate to process issues at work. They also can be a great source of fun and community. 
• Practice self-care. Resilience is all about taking care of oneself both personally and professionally. Having multiple outlets, getting sleep, nutrition, and exercise, and having friends enrich our lives and make us stronger and more knowledgeable. We get exposed to more situations and ideas when we have friends, and they increase our knowledge base as a result. Understand and practice boundaries. Personal and professional boundaries may be different, so it is good to evaluate and know where your boundaries are in both of these categories.                     

Effective Communication   

• Practice active listening. This is the first step. By listening deeply, we can ask questions if we don’t understand and understand what is being said accurately. 
• Be clear and concise. It is more important to accurately convey our message than it is to go into minutia. Keep your thoughts short and clear, and communicate with as few words as needed to get your message across. At least this way, if people have questions, they can ask. If they don’t have questions, you have gotten your point across quickly and efficiently. 
• Assertive vs. aggressive. Aggressive communication has never been effective and frequently creates additional problems to be dealt with. Practice learning an assertive style, where if you have to disagree, you can do this while keeping your focus on the issue. Managing conflict is always fraught with differing views and opinions. When facing conflict, the assertive style allows you to communicate your ideas while keeping emotions in check and focusing on resolving the problem.         
• Practice empathy. When listening to others, practice seeing things from their perspective to see if your own perspective needs to be expanded. Empathy is a good practice for understanding that life will always be filled with ups and downs. How we respond to these differing demands makes all the difference in how we resolve problems and manage stress.  

Problem-Solving Skills 

• Identify the root cause. This step cannot be emphasized enough. Sometimes, the “cause” of things can be complicated to find. The root cause or actual problem can be buried deep in layers of people issues as well as product issues. Unraveling the layers of a problem can require patience and an ability to be thorough. 
• Evaluate and prioritize the different parts of the problem. Prioritizing is important for imposing timelines and determining the parts of the problem that don’t require attention. 
• Generate alternative solutions. When tackling the problem-solving process, this is the most critical step. All of us have heard from our managers, “Don’t come to me with a problem unless you have a solution.” The solution is the part that moves the process forward, and that is the whole point of getting the problem fixed quickly and efficiently. This process can include things like brainstorming with colleagues or conducting research on your own. 

• Take Action. Once you have ideas for solutions, this is the time to present the problem, your research, and your ideas for resolving the issue. 

Navigating the Workplace

Cultivating essential skills and tools for navigating the workplace and all its challenges helps you emerge stronger, more resilient, and ready to tackle whatever challenge comes your way. Investing time and practice with these skills can also reduce overall stress and increase satisfaction with work as you feel competent to rise to whatever comes up in a day. When you feel competent and able to manage problems, your life feels balanced. Counseling is a great place to get additional training in these skills and is a resource for career counseling support. After all, gaining skills is an investment in your own well-being that will pay off on a daily basis!