E-mails, digital meetings, LinkedIn messages - in today's working world, it is difficult or even impossible to escape the constant digital barrage. This is particularly true for managers, as they are subject to different requirements than employees. Being available until late in the evening or even at weekends is not uncommon, and the boundary between work and private life is often permeable. In addition, there is also a certain tendency towards self-exploitation: the great will to shape things in an often highly political environment, the enjoyment of power and responsibility and the pronounced work ethic, even to the point of self-endangerment, are just a few examples of this. For these reasons, resilience - and currently digital resilience in particular - is a critical aspect of leadership. This makes it all the more important that managers also pay attention to their own leadership, namely that of their own mental and emotional inner world. This is the key to being able to act with lasting resilience in the digital world of work.
The ingredients of resilience
But how does resilience actually develop? In some cases, the ability to withstand setbacks is already anchored in the personality. A simple experiment shows what is meant: when a person is frightened, for example, they close their eyes for a short time - a reflex that cannot be controlled voluntarily. If test subjects are exposed to an unexpected loud bang, the length of the startle reflex can be used to predict how quickly a person can process negative events such as anger, insecurity or fear. It has been shown that people who react more relaxed to a loud bang generally have a more positive attitude towards problems and difficulties. Such characteristics anchored in the personality are referred to as traits in research. They describe a person's consistent behaviour in certain situations, such as the need for emotional stability. About half of them are innate, the rest are formed in childhood. This is why they cannot be changed at will and are referred to as ‘raw resilience’. However, traits are not the only components of human resilience. Equally important are habits, consciously and unconsciously learned behaviours as a result of socialisation, life experience, etc. In contrast to traits, such habits are easier to influence. This requires the use of energy, starting with a decision, for example: Do I go jogging or not? These coping strategies can help us to deal better with stress and the resulting emotions and thought patterns, especially if these strategies become a habit. They are referred to as ‘learnt resilience’. A third component is the so-called state. It describes the current level of life satisfaction. Of all three groups, this is most frequently subject to fluctuations and changes. The state forms the interface, so to speak, between our inner world and our environment.
A closer look at resilience
Most resilience measurement tools come from the field of personality psychology and only measure traits, i.e. personality characteristics that cannot be changed at will and are stable over time. Although these do indeed have a major influence on human resilience to crises, they only influence what is known as ‘raw resilience’ and therefore remain inaccurate. his is where the Executive FiRE Index comes into play. The abbreviation ‘FiRE’ stands for ‘Factors improving Resilience Effectiveness®’. This index measures the relevant traits as well as habits and state. It is also always used twice in practice and is typically accompanied by coaching or a resilience development programme. The first measurement takes place at the beginning of the intervention, the second measurement around six months later to allow sufficient time to establish new resilience-promoting behavioural patterns. This allows resilience and its influencing factors to be analysed precisely.
New fire for resilience
Based on the Executive FiRE Index, the Executive FiRE model of resilience was developed with the help of well-founded concepts from psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, sociologists, biologists and brain researchers. This model structures the various effective factors of mental and emotional resilience as well as the known and scientifically proven strategies for maintaining or improving one's own resilience and summarises them into a spatial construct with a holistic view. It consists of eight flame-shaped spheres with increasing diameters from the inside to the outside. The layering is intended to symbolise that the outer levels of resilience (the habits) are easier for the individual to influence than the inner core, i.e. their own biography and personality (the traits).
Figures on the Executive FiRE Index
How do executives become resilient?
In June 2022, an initial sample of 538 data records was drawn from the Executive FiRE Index database. Here are some selected findings from this data set Resilience is gender-specific. Male executives have higher scores overall in the area of raw resilience (traits such as ‘openness to new experiences’), while their female colleagues are somewhat stronger in the area of learnt resilience (in self-management and energy management, but also in habits overall, especially in ‘authentic relationships’). The development of our resilience is dependent on age, but is not linear, but describes a kind of curve with the lowest value in the 30s (63 per cent) and the highest level in the 50s (69 per cent). The reason for this is presumably the increase in experience and stability in life. It is known that people who have a high level of resilience often have better chances of being successful in their careers. There is obviously a correlation between the level of raw resilience and the career level. The test subjects from middle management have around 5 per cent higher values than the employees (61 to 55 per cent). Up to top management, there is a further 5 per cent difference (71 per cent). The results suggest that raw resilience is a decisive factor in whether a person is identified as a manager and promoted accordingly. Habits, on the other hand, may play a role in whether someone remains in a senior management position in the long term. The results show that habits that promote resilience are on average less pronounced among employees than in middle and senior management. The difference between employees and senior management is as much as 7 per cent (66 to 73 per cent). To put it simply: traits make it easier to rise to the top, while habits ensure that you stay ‘at the top’.
The first sphere: ‘Personality’
Of all the spheres of resilience, ‘personality’ is the sphere that can be influenced the least consciously. It contains the traits and thus fundamental characteristics such as introversion or extraversion or the emotional stability of a person, which can only be permanently changed at will within very narrow limits. Nevertheless, this innermost sphere is of central importance, as the aim here is to get to know one's own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses in order to be able to control oneself better. This can be achieved through self-reflection, feedback from outside and by working on your own personality, e.g. with a coach. Methods for promoting resilience in this sphere:
Increasing self-awareness: This is achieved by taking time for self-reflection, using a daily leadership diary with goals, challenges, decisions and insights or by regularly documenting your own life satisfaction, e.g. on a scale of 0-10.
Increasing self-control: By doing good things, not just leaving it at resolutions and planning various resilience-promoting measures, preferably together with others, in order to ‘keep at it’, you actively influence your personality.
The second sphere: ‘Biography’
The second sphere deals with resources for coping with difficult situations that lie in one's own past. A conscious approach to one's own biography has a positive effect on one's attitude towards the challenges of the present and expectations for the future. Most people have experienced and overcome crises and difficult times in their lives. These are important resources when it comes to dealing constructively with new stressful situations and not letting them get you down. In fact, a person's biography can also be seen as a collection of resources. Most life stories contain four essential parts:
Positive events: Remembering such moments gives you strength.
Negative events: The fact that these crises were overcome and managed is an indication of the ability to deal well with crises.
Insights and decisions: These insights and steering impulses are an expression of the ability to lead oneself.
People who have helped you: Gratitude for the help that other people have given us makes us stronger. One method of promoting resilience in this sphere is to
Work on your own biography: The first step is to note down important life events and organise them in chronological order. In the second step, the level of life energy that was predominant at that time is noted for each event (on a scale from -10 (very negative) to +10 (very positive)). This correlation can now be represented graphically in a lifeline, e.g. in a coordinate system with the axes of time and life energy. Reflection questions can then be asked, such as: ‘What stands out when analysing the life curve?’, ‘Which crises have already been successfully overcome?’, ‘What has been learned from the ups and downs that could be helpful now or in the future?’.
The third sphere: ‘Attitude’
A person's inner attitude influences how they deal with life's challenges. It ultimately determines whether a crisis is seen as an excessive demand or a challenge. However, it is not easy to let go of the victim mentality that negative things simply happen to you and that you have no influence over them. This sphere therefore stands for internalising strategies to consciously influence your inner attitude in a constructive way. The following methods can be used to promote resilience in this sphere:
Keeping a gratitude diary: This is best achieved by writing down at least three specific events every day for which you are grateful and finding a trustworthy person, with whom you can discuss your reflections. If this routine is maintained for at least nine weeks, it has been shown to have a positive effect on emotional stability and life satisfaction.
‘Acts of Kindness": This refers to behaviour in which you do something kind for strangers, e.g. paying for another person's coffee while walking in a café without “outing” yourself to that person.
Working with perspectives: If a current problem takes over your entire thinking, it can be helpful to adopt a perspective in which this problem does not play a role. One example of this is to look at yourself and the problem from above - first from the perspective of a bird, then from an aeroplane and finally so far away that the whole earth is visible, but your own problem is no longer visible. From this perspective, the question ‘What is really important?’ can be answered more easily and neutrally.
The fourth sphere: ‘Mental agility’
The fourth sphere is about the ability and willingness to remain open, to react flexibly to rapidly changing framework conditions and to deal confidently with uncertainty and complexity. Above all, this requires the willingness to leave one's own comfort zone when entering new territory, as well as the ability and willingness to improvise. In this sphere, everything revolves around learning techniques to further develop this ability within oneself. A good resource situation (see ‘energy management’ sphere) supports the ability to achieve ‘mental agility’. Methods for promoting resilience in this sphere:
Giving chance a chance: Routines help us to cope with everyday life because they save us from having to make active decisions and therefore save us energy. To increase mental agility, the routine ‘Give chance a chance’ can be incorporated into the day: At least once a day, chance should decide, for example, which route to take to work, what to eat for lunch or who to have a spontaneous coffee with.
Explore new territory: Anything that is new promotes mental agility, be it a new hobby, previously uncooked dishes, holidays in a foreign country or contact with people who have a completely different cultural background, profession or career.
The fifth sphere: ‘Energy management’
The fifth sphere deals with simple, quickly effective strategies to improve the emotional energy balance in a targeted manner. They are the first aid kit for managers who want to deal well with their negative emotions. This includes ‘grounding’ yourself, recharging your batteries and creating an inner distance from worries and problems in order to arm yourself for difficult situations. The range of possible resources from which you can can draw new energy is large and varies greatly from person to person. By working on this level, you learn to consciously control your own emotional state and the associated thoughts so that you don't get stuck in the hamster wheel, even under great pressure. Methods for promoting resilience in this sphere:
Recharging positive energy: To get yourself in a positive mood, measures such as having your own playlist with music that spreads a good mood and cheerfulness, making your own (work) environment pleasant and soothing or documenting successes, recognition and praise in a ‘success folder’ help to create a source of positive energy for bad days.
Drain negative energy: Conversely, it helps to let out negative energy and not let it build up, for example with a playlist that can be used to ‘sing out’ negative emotions, by tidying up (because external order helps to calm the inner world) or with craft or creative hobbies that help to forget worries for a while.
Becoming more effective: A good daily and weekly structure not only helps to keep an overview, it also plans in times for breaks, reflection and exercise. You should also consistently eliminate energy thieves. Digital media in particular rob us of a lot of energy. This can be avoided by avoiding them in the late evening and early morning and regularly practising ‘digital detox’, e.g. at the weekend. But it also helps to spend as little time as possible with negative people, to cancel meetings that make no difference, and to delegate actively, ideally according to the principle: “Who should actually do this task if the team’s competence is to grow?”
The sixth sphere: “mind-body axis”
We are made up of body and mind. Both are closely connected and should therefore be given equal attention. Managers in particular often have a lifestyle that runs counter to careful handling of their own bodies due to long working hours and frequent travel. In addition, managers particularly glorify resilience, toughness and robustness, which makes it difficult to manage their own energy reserves carefully. The work in this sphere focuses on using the body to achieve a greater degree of balance and more mental clarity. Promoting resilience in this sphere is achieved, for example, with the following methods:
Exercise: In order to get enough exercise, it is useful to set targets such as exercising at least 3 times a week, walking 10,000 steps every day or getting your pulse rate above 130 beats per minute for at least 30 seconds.
Sleep and recovery: This includes not only getting enough sleep, but also improving sleep quality, e.g. by reducing digital media before going to bed, but also allowing sufficient recovery time during the day, e.g. after meals.
Mindfulness: In order to act more consciously, yoga, autogenic training or regular meditation can help, as can conscious eating or avoiding multitasking.
Diet: It is important to drink enough every day, preferably water or herbal tea, and to reduce coffee and alcohol consumption. Whole grain products and fresh fruit and vegetables should also be on the menu every day instead of foods with refined sugar.
Promoting resilience properly
Permanent accessibility, a constant flood of information and the feeling of always having to be up to date can easily lead to digital stress. Resilience can counteract this - if it is properly promoted.
Keeping diaries
Diaries help you sort out your thoughts and bring order to your emotions – both important prerequisites for effective resilience. A management diary can be used to record goals, challenges, decisions and insights from everyday management. If you also regularly rate your own life satisfaction, for example on a scale of 0-10, you can use this to determine the factors in your everyday work that have a particular influence on it. This makes it easier to deal with negative influences and, if necessary, to encourage positive ones. A gratitude diary, on the other hand, helps you to notice the small positive things in life so that you don’t lose courage even in times of crisis. All you need to do is write down at least three specific events every day that you are grateful for and then talk about them with someone you trust. Studies show that those who practice this routine for at least nine weeks will improve their emotional stability and life satisfaction in the long term and thus also their resilience.
Working on your own biography
In a similar way, you can also learn from the past: If you note down important life events, identify the lessons learned from them and reflect on your own gratitude for them, you can gain a deeper understanding of your own past and better understand how it influences your own behavior in the present. This can, among other things, help you to deal with challenges better.
Breaking routines
Routines provide support, but also limit our psychological resilience to spontaneous changes. But routines can also be integrated into everyday life that give chance a chance. For example, you can let a coin or dice roll decide on the route to work, the choice of lunch or who you spend your break with. In this way, we train our resilience to change. New hobbies, unfamiliar dishes or holidays in previously foreign countries are other methods of systematically breaking new ground and thus generally strengthening our resilience.
Charge up with positive energy, drain away negative energy
To charge yourself with positive energy, a playlist with music that lifts your mood, a pleasant, bright work environment or even a special folder in which successes are documented can help. To drain away negative energy, a playlist with music that lets out your emotions, eliminating clutter to create external order for inner peace, or even taking up a hobby in which you can lose yourself in the flow and distract yourself from worries.
Maintaining physical health
A healthy body also has a positive effect on our mental resilience. Therefore, regular physical activity, whether through sport or simple exercise in everyday life, not only helps with your own fitness, strengthening the immune system and general well-being, but also with resilience.
Promoting mental stability
Practices such as mindfulness and meditation help to calm the mind, find inner peace and reduce stress.Regular breaks in the daily routine allow you to relax and recharge your batteries. This gives us more strength in difficult and stressful phases.
The seventh sphere: “Authentic relationships”
Trusting, honest relationships are particularly important for managers, as they do not have to play the role of the always sovereign decision-maker who has a solution to every problem. Being allowed to show doubts or fears also makes such relationships valuable. In this sphere, it is therefore about creating awareness of the stabilizing effect of these relationships and, as a result, making contacts with your own advisory board more professional and regular. Methods for promoting resilience in this sphere:
No one is an island: Many managers believe that their success is solely due to their competence and performance, and underestimate the importance of professional networks. But not only in times of crisis you need personal or digital contact with trustworthy people.
Build and maintain your personal advisory board: Which people are trustworthy? Who can question and strengthen without pursuing their own interests? You should consciously invest in relationships with such people, as they can be a great support. However, this can only come about through years of investment of time and attention and, above all, thrives on giving.
The eighth sphere: “Meaning”
Those who see meaning in their own actions – for whom their own actions feel not only right but significant – can better withstand crises and uncertainty. The “meaning” sphere is about making a positive difference in the world through your own actions and feeling better as a result. This can be achieved, for example, through the following methods:
Becoming aware of your own values: By asking yourself which behavior evokes pride or gratitude and which anger or fear and reflects these emotional reactions, you can determine your own values. In order to follow these more closely in the future, you can carry out a target-actual comparison of the five most important values: What would be desirable? What do these values actually look like in everyday life? And how can the gap between what should be and what is be reduced?
What remains: In order to bring more meaning into your own life, you can also explore the questions of what difference you want to make in the world, how you can be a role model for your own children or what you want your friends to remember later.
Conclusion
The ability to be resilient may be partly innate. But in order to grow regularly and be successful in the long term, you should not rely exclusively on “raw resilience”. Rather, you also need a well-developed repertoire of regularly practiced, resilience-promoting strategies, routines and rituals, as summarized in the Executive FiRE model, in order to withstand daily pressure with this learned resilience and to feel comfortable there in the long term, even in the face of constant digital bombardment.