In the workplace, problems are prevalent. You need resilience to handle these problems and do well in spite of them. You can use the skill of being resilient at any point in your career. In this article, we talk about what resilience skills are, give examples of resilience skills, explain how to improve your resilience skills, and show you how to highlight these skills when you apply for jobs and interview for them.

What are skills for bouncing back?

Resilience is the ability to face problems and find ways to deal with them. People who are resilient can deal with setbacks because they don’t let them stop them from moving forward. They have problems and stress just like everyone else, but they look at these things more positively and don’t let them stop them from succeeding. For example, a resilient person who gets a rejection email for a job may feel sad but also determined to use what he’s learned from the experience on his next job application.

There are three different ways to be strong. They’re:

Natural: You are born with a natural ability to be tough. It usually means that someone is excited about life and likes to try new things.
Adaptive: Adaptive resilience comes from hard times that force you to change and grow, making you stronger than you were before.
Restored: You become more resilient by learning and doing things to improve your skills.
No matter what kind of resilience someone has, they often have similar traits. They tend to have a positive attitude and view of themselves, be able to adjust to changes, see challenges as opportunities, and know their own limits. People who are resilient also have patience, hope, a sense of humour, and the ability to deal with bad feelings.

Their resilience is both a part of who they are and something they have learned. To build resilience, you have to feel uncomfortable and push through it, like a runner who pushes through exhaustion to finish a race. The more difficult situations you face, the better you can deal with them and adjust to them.

Examples of skills that help people stay strong

There are a number of skills that come from or help with resilience. Here are several examples:

Self-confidence

Self-confidence means that you believe you can do well. It’s a kind of courage that lets you face a hard task with full confidence that you can get through it. Self-confidence can help you at work in many ways. For example, if you’re in charge of a big project at work, self-confidence can help you stay focused on finishing the project well instead of worrying about what could go wrong. This skill can help you focus on your own strengths in job interviews instead of comparing yourself to others.

Optimism

Optimism lets you focus on the good and think about how things could turn out well. For example, you might think that writing reports takes a lot of time and effort. If you’re optimistic, you don’t think you’re bad at writing reports. Instead, you think you haven’t mastered the skill yet. You know that you can get better as you gain more experience, and that you can always get better.

Flexibility

As a job skill, flexibility means being able to deal with stress without letting it hurt your health. When you’re flexible, you can deal with difficult situations. For example, if a client asks you to make big changes to a project plan after you’ve already started working on it, being flexible will help you deal with the stress of having to do more work and possibly losing work.

Responsibility

Resilience is the ability to deal with outside forces, so people who are resilient need to believe that their actions can change their situation. They have a strong work ethic because they know that their actions and how they react to situations are things they can control.

Patience

Patience lets you handle problems and pain with grace and keep your emotions in check. A patient person knows the value of delaying pleasure and knows that putting up with pain now can lead to rewards later. Patience can help you ignore the emotional side effects of challenges and stay focused on your personal and professional goals. It can also make your coworkers see you as someone they can count on.

Communication and working as a team

People who are good at communicating do things like listening and asking questions a lot. When you run into problems, it may help to know all the facts and ask questions to help you adapt and get back on your feet. To be resilient, you may also need to know when to ask for help or reach out for support, because working with others and telling them about your problems can reduce stress and keep you from getting more upset.

Problem-solving

Having answers to problems can help you be more resilient by letting you solve problems that may push you to your limits. Also, being a proactive problem solver who works to avoid potential problems can go well with resilience, which often comes from a lot of experience with tough situations that required creative solutions. For example, if you’ve ever been short-staffed while working on a deadline, you may know to have backup plans for how to divide up the work so you and your team are less likely to fall behind.

Self-awareness

Being aware of your emotional responses to challenges is part of being resilient. This can help you figure out what makes you happy and what makes you mad. Being aware of your own weaknesses and trying to avoid them or find ways to work around them is another part of being resilient. This can help you look for ways to improve yourself and your ability to deal with stress.

How to get better at staying strong

Follow these steps to get better at being resilient:

1. Know your goal
   Having a reason to be tough can give you the push you need to learn how to be tough. Your purpose can be anything that pushes you to get stronger and more resilient in the face of challenges, like wanting to be a reliable coworker, trying to get a promotion, or learning new skills to move up in your career.
2. Boost your confidence
   Believing that you can handle problems and do well in hard times can make you much more resilient. When you start to doubt your ability to succeed, try to remember your past successes. This will show that you have succeeded before and can do it again. Also, try to imagine how you think a person with resilience would act and try to do the same.
3. Set goals
   Having a goal can help you figure out how to handle hard times. Find out what your goals are and why you want to reach them. Then, come up with a plan you can use when things get hard so you don’t lose sight of your goals. Then, when things get hard, think about your goals and plan and stick to them.
4. Work on your problem-solving skills
   Knowing that you can find solutions can make you feel ready and boost your confidence the next time you face a problem. To get through hard times or get back on your feet after them, you need to feel confident and ready. Think about the creative people you’ve met and how they solved problems. Remembering how you solved problems in the past can help you come up with new ones right now.
5. Trust people you care about
   When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can help to have a strong group of friends and family to talk to. Your friends and family can tell you they believe in you and encourage you to keep going even when you don’t think you can. This may be just the boost you need to keep going when things get hard.