We are at the start of our twenty minute conversation on the concept of hardiness, which we are gonna talk about as a key ingredient to creating joy at work.My name is Sarah Turner, and I am a longtime leadership consultant and coach. But started my career in talent development in the world of professional services at a large organization called Deloitte, And I got a chance to really begin developing some passions around how you can set up moments of your life to create the most productive outcomes. And it's been probably about a decade ago that I got exposed to the concept of resilience in a little bit more of a formal way, and I got certified in a tool called the hardiness resilience gauge. And I am so pleased to get to bring to this team a quick conversation on how you can leverage hardiness at a time when being resilient may be one of the most valuable things that you grow. The concept and the pace in which we see change happening in our world is so fast. It is sometimes one of those things we wanna explore.

How do I make myself more capable of being productive during these really crazy times of change? And so what I'm gonna do today is give you a little bit of an insert to the start of the concept of hardiness, and then we're going to give you a couple of resources you can go explore further if you get interested in wanting to know more. But let's begin. So one of the things that I wanna do is I wanna start with a little bit of a q and a. So, again, if you've got access to the chat, I would love to have you give me a yes or a no, a thumbs up, thumbs down, or maybe, this relates to me or not to this question. So I want you to think about what you believe the answer is to this question. Stress can be good for our health. Right? So I want you to tell me, yes. I agree with you. Thumbs up. I think that too. Maybe give me a thumbs down.

I'm not sure I agree with that. So kinda getting a chance to see the chat that I'm seeing so far is very akin to what I typically see when I am doing a keynote and I ask the same question. In inevitably, I'll have both of the answers represented. Some people will say, yes. I agree. Stress can be good for your health. And some people will say, I've never experienced that. No. It does some pretty harmful things to us. Well, what I will tell you is that part of the concept of looking into resilience does begin with you figuring out how do you see the answer to this question. What is true is that there is data that backs up that stress can definitely be harmful for us. It's also true that it can be helpful.

And so part of the formula as to how you can get to the more helpful side is starting to look at how you see stress. And so I'm an avid reader. I don't know how many of you like to invest in reading and exploring, but there's a really great book that I'm a fan of called the upside of stress by doctor Kelly McGonigal. And I want you to see how she starts to help us look at the two different ways that we can view stress. Now the first one that I have on the screen is a really common one. All of us have had experiences with the threat response to stress. Now take a moment to think about what those moments look like.

So you've got something that is unexpected, unplanned, maybe something that's a little heavy or what we'll call stressful, and it's happening. And we have a physiological reaction. We start to have our body temperature go up. Maybe we have sweaty palms. We have a heart rate increase, and it seems like our heart's beating super fast. And our bodies, when we have a threat response to stress, translates those physiological symptoms into this is bad for me. And we default to either get away, get out of this stress, or fight back, push back. When we have a threat response to stress, we typically will see a higher percentage of what we would call negative health side effects. But what doctor McGonigal's research proved was that there is another way that you can view stress, and that way is what she calls the challenge response.

Now the thing is, it didn't change the fact that something unexpected has occurred, maybe a point of adversity, a challenge. It could be that we have something that feels heavy or stressful. That is unchanged. But what's changed in this side of the story is that I start to see my rise in body temperature, my sweaty palms, my really quick racing heart as a translation of meaning, of value. And as I'm experiencing those physiological symptoms, I know that it's really just a point of proof that what happens or what's going to happen matters to me. It's valuable. It has meaning. And it changes the way that my body responds. In fact, if you read the book, which I highly suggest, doctor McGonigal talks about a number of things that happen, including specific hormones that your brain releases that can decrease the inflammation in your bloodstream, which makes it likely that you have less negative health side effects, but it also increases things like focus and courage.

So one of the things that I really like about the summation of her research is that she says, when you change your mindset around how you see the stressor or the adversity, you change your body's response to it, which is such a freeing concept. So we begin with, okay. How would I do that? Well, we partly go into an exploration of, well, then how do I leverage that view or that mindset in how I build my own resilience? When you look at the concept of resilience, there have been more studies in the last two decades than we've probably seen in the last hundred years. And when you think about this, what you're gonna notice is that hardiness based on a ton of research is really made up of a ton of things. It's not one thing. It's a multitude of things.

But from some recent research in the last thirty years, one of the things that we know is that the biggest piece of resilience is something that they label hardiness. And when you think about what hardiness means, what they'll tell you is that it's set of psychological characteristics and what we would say identifiers that show up when we have this constant ability to perform successfully under stressful conditions. So when you have those repeated patterns of behaviors, we get to label our standard norms as being hearty. And what they find is that hardiness itself, being a hearty individual in all aspects of our lives, really comes down to our capability of enduring things like fatigue or hardship or even repeated exposure to stress in a very predictable but productive way. From the thirty years of research that's been done in the concept of hardiness, they studied primarily those of us who are in the most stressful conditions. Some of the ones that come to mind, I'm assuming for you as well, would be those who are in any military operation or as a first responder.

So think about EI doctors or firefighters. They are in some of the most stressful conditions you can imagine. And what they found was that when they showed these repeated abilities to endure those highly stressful moments, they ended up having these characteristics that define hardiness. Now I want you to take a look at what's on your screen. Things like being more adaptive, having a a broader arsenal of coping skills, being more capable of being flexible, or generally having engagement even amidst points of stress. I'm a huge fan of the last one. They found that hardy individuals were even more capable of being able to help other people lead through stress. Pause for a moment. I'd love you to use the the chat.

When you look at this list, how many of you would love to see more people around you, especially in your working worlds, who are these characteristics, who are more apt to cope with stress, more engaged, more personally satisfied even amongst amongst exposure to high amounts of stress, who are willing to and capable of leading others through stress.

And so what's exciting is you are in a position to hear the concept of hardiness, know that people who are hardy look like this, and then have this landing point of reference. They have proven that hardiness is something that you aren't born with. It's something that you can build. It's not a static measurement. We have the capability and freedom to look into it and mold our responses to stress so that we become more hearty. Now as it becomes one of those tool sets that you wanna take on or explore, let me show you the what's called hardiness resilience stage. So this is a tool that was created to measure someone's capability of being hearty. And what I love about this tool is that it has three very distinct places that you can focus and measure someone's hardiness. They include the following.

They're called the three c's of hardiness. The first one is the concept of our ability to see something as a productive challenge. So they call that the challenge factor of hardiness. The second one, pretty powerful, is how we see our ability to influence the outcomes during the points of stress. Do I believe that there is self efficacy that I could make a difference in this setting? And the last one is called commitment. Do I understand the meaning or the value of what I'm doing? Why it matters to me and other people? And what they have determined is that when these three factors are in high application, we traditionally see hardiness characteristics and an ability to bounce back through repeated exposure stress. So what I'm gonna do with the brief amount of time we have left, with ten minutes, I'm going to high level explore each of these three factors and give you some of a a few tips on how you could channel that factor yourself, but also how you could encourage it in other people.

Let's start with challenge. So if you think about this, this is the moment we're measuring if something unexpected happened. Do I go low challenge and I see the moment as great? This is the worst time for that. Can I believe that this is happening to me? And we start having that moment where we fall down this rabbit hole of discontent, disengagement, pull back, get out of this. Or do I have the ability to show high amounts of challenge and I say, oh, okay. We didn't expect that. Bring it on. Bring it on. Let's figure it out. Because the more your dial is high and challenge, the more you'll bounce back during unknown change or unexpected requests. So if you wanna build this skill so if you say, okay. How do I get this one starting to show up more frequently, Sarah? Here's one of my favorites.

So as a personal reference, it sounds basic. I know. But you start by finding a way to acclimate yourself to the fact that change is going to happen. How can I make it happen in a productive way by forcing myself to see something new as an opportunity, something I wanna flex recurrently, bring on more and more application of something I never expected, something new? And overexposing yourself to that in a repeated way makes anything new more normal. The other thing I have on your screen is that I am gonna give you this caveat. Do yourself a favor and compete with yourself in the new space first. I I put a pair of running shoes on your screen because so often, we start the year with a New Year's resolution, and it's usually something health related. Like, can I start running? Everybody else runs. Can I start running? So you buy the shoes.

You put them next to your bed, and you start thinking, what should I do as my first run? Well, what are my comparatives? I got a couple friends that run two miles a day. I've got a couple other friends that run five miles three times a week. Probably should start with at least two miles. You put the running shoes on. You've never ran before. You're at the quarter mile, and what are you thinking? I should have never done this. This was a bad idea. And you start to judge yourself and say, I'll never be like them. But in the end, the version of you yesterday ran zero miles. You're already at a quarter mile. You start to really change the way you see the progress, the forward motion, and you have more enjoyment, and this can lead to joy at work.

One of the things that I will tell you, I love this, but I read a story about a lady who for her significant other's birthday, his fiftieth birthday, she created a glass jar, and she wrote 50 new things her significant partner would do one a week for fifty weeks in his fiftieth year of life.

Some of the things were simple. Try a vegetable you've never had. Tell a joke on a street corner. But some of them were also a little bit more challenging. Like, she had suggested that they try laughing yoga, which I think is awesome. Getting us out of our comfort zone and pushing us forward is a great, easy, low hanging fruit way to get started building your challenge component. Now for others, I wanna make sure that you realize you're gonna lead challenge in a culture and a team. You have got to find a way to embed growth mindset as a default. And one of the best ways to do that is to embrace failure. Make it regular. Make it expected. Make it celebrated. Make it powerful. I've read so many stories about companies who do things on purpose like having a failure Friday.

On Fridays, we celebrate the failures from the last month or the last week. And if every Friday or once a month on a Friday that was normal in your company, you would think failure is needed. It's required. It would be the thing that is a queue up or a signal to something better. So these are simple. I know they're small, but they really do change the dial on someone's factor of hardiness. Now let's switch. Because if you think about this, I want you to use each of these factors as a way to make yourself and other people more acclimated to having engagement at work, and these two are a great start. But there's more. Let's talk about the second hardiness factor of resilience. It's called control.

Oh, now this one is so interesting because if you're in a position to have something unexpected come your way or an extra request or a heavier load and you do not see yourself as having control, you're low on this dial, your response will be something like, that's above my pay grade.

How am I supposed to do anything with this? And you'll pull back from affecting the outcomes of the moment. But if you have a high belief in self efficacy and you're high in this hardiness factor, you'll say, okay. What can I do? Even if it's one thing, one small thing, how can I contribute to the next outcomes of success here? So if you wanna grow the control factor for yourself or others, let me give you two easy ones. The first one is to choose your battles wisely. Sometimes we spend time trying to fight on the top of a hill that we would never really, really need or want long term, but it felt like a hill I should be on today, so I'm gonna push for that battle. And only later do we realize I used a lot of time and energy on something that should have been someone else's battle.

I shouldn't even have tried to be in the control factor. These things over here should be my control lane. So being really intentional about what you should and shouldn't want to own is a great start to changing your dial on control. Now if you wanted to help someone else grow their level of control, here's a really easy one to start with. Find a way to do what I call right size the space for a team member. Look at the alignment of the work they're doing, the capacity, their knowledge, their need for resources, and find a way to calibrate all of that so to the person receiving the extra work, the extra challenge, they will say, logically, how you've designed this, Sarah, it feels like I can help.

I'm in. But when none of that is made known, it's confusing and scary, and we wanna pull back and say, maybe somebody else can do that. So taking a start to choosing your battles wisely and maybe rightsizing the space for other people is another great way to make us feel like we have more hardiness, and we are going to start feeling more power of engagement and thereby joy at work. Alright. Just a few minutes left. So one more to share with you. It's called commitment. Now this one is really where you're trying to align whatever you're gonna be doing even amid stress and to how it matters to you or other people. And a couple ways that you can tune the dial in to commitment, one of my favorites is to start by figuring out how to understand what drives you so that you can do what I call know your no's. Right? Being able to discern which things should I not say yes to and which things should I increase proactivity to find how I get more of it?

Because if you know your no's, you'll end up having more intentional commitment. You'll have roots in the ground of something that could make a difference for you and other people. But if you're saying yes to things that don't matter to you, you'll show up in the resilient space as a, yeah. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And that's not hearty. You won't bounce back. You'll pull away. So knowing your nose through your purpose commitment to yourself is a great start. For your team, for other people, I always tell people, learn the currency of another human, either in your personal life or in your professional life. Find out what makes them tick. Because if you can align the environment we're in to something that engages them and intrigues them, they'll be more committed.

And even amidst extra stress, they'll say, I'm sticking with this. Yep. I'm in it for the long haul. So if you can find a way to know your nose and align people to what matters to them, what I call their currency, you're going to end up having more joy at work yourself, and you'll end up having the chance to build it for other people. Well, I'm gonna land this train by asking you to do me a favor. If you were to pick some area of hardiness that resonates to a point of opportunity for growth for you, would you mind putting in the chat which of these feels like it would be a great place for you to spend time exploring further? Is it your level of challenge? When something unexpected comes, are you ready to dive in, or do you say, oh, I don't know about that? Is it your control where you're trying to figure out where you can put your handprint of contribution, or is it knowing your nose and figuring out where your meaning can drive your decisions?

So, again, in the chat, put which of the three fields intuitively where you might begin to change the platform of your hardiness. As you do that, the last thing I will share, there is so much resource available in this space. I have been super pleased to be invited last year to write a chapter in a book called Joy at Work. My chapter is about hardiness. If you check it out, I'd be happy to share with you. There's tons of extra resources that you can explore about all three of the hardiness factors, and there are some tool kits on my website on how you can engage other people in a conversation. This group has been so great to work with. Our twenty minutes is coming to an end.

If you have a question, I'm gonna stick around and answer those questions if I have time via chat. If not, enjoy this amazing conference, and, hopefully, today's discussion was one extra layer of how you can experience a value add to your life and others by taking just moments to explore a new topic and how it can be placed into value for your life. Thank you so much, team. Great to have a chance to engage with you. Enjoy the rest of the conference, and I hope to cross paths with you sometime soon. Have a wonderful afternoon and a great day.