Find the opportunity in all setbacks
There’s an old truism that’s been turned into many memes over the years, that when written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters – one representing “danger”, the other “opportunity”.
It’s not always easy to stay positive when faced with a crisis, but by maintaining the right attitude, we can build the resilience that allows us to find an opportunity in the darkest of spaces.
Life and business will always face setbacks, it goes with the territory and the pandemic has exacerbated these challenges over the past year. The negative feelings that accompany difficulties, however, can either hold people back in their careers or motivate them to work harder. As business magnate, Richard Branson says: “A setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve.” This doesn’t mean it is not really tough, energy sapping or stressful, but what’s important is how we bounce back.
The ADP Research Institute recently conducted a global study of resilience and engagement, which yielded some surprising results as a result of COVID-19. Here are some of the findings:
1. The most powerful driver of both engagement and resilience is trust.
2. One is the loneliest number. It is almost impossible to be engaged or
resilient if you do not feel like part of a team.
3. Office space isn’t essential. Virtual workers are both more engaged and more resilient than those who are physically in an office or shared workspace. This in itself represents an opportunity for Kyocera as it plays directly into our Smarter Workspaces campaign.
4. It’s good to be in tech. The most engaged industry is technology – once again this result represents opportunity for a technologically driven innovator like Kyocera.
With COVID-19 and virtual work testing everyone’s engagement and resilience, people are better able to discern and highlight these long-standing systemic concerns – which better enables leaders to tackle them.
The study highlights that, “Leaders need to see their employees not as “labour” but as the messy, complex, emotional beings they are – dealing with real-world human challenges, just like they are. The more leaders can infuse these findings in their organisations’ policies and practices, the more likely we will all be to flourish, both during these difficult times and beyond.”
Michelle Frenzel - Human Resources Manager - KYOCERA Document Solutions South Africa
