The Resilience Breakthrough opens with a powerful story that nearly made me cry on the train. Christian Moore tells his story of academic success despite learning difficulties. He was told that he would never be able to make it big in life.
He gets up and keeps going, proving his doubters wrong with each new knock. Moores explains and describes this ability to persevere despite hardship in his book.
This is called resilience. It is a quality that good project managers possess, even if it isn’t obvious. Moores describes it as follows:
“Resilience is the ability to bounce back from situations that seem overwhelming. But you keep fighting. People who are resilient have both untapped as well as tapped resources that enable them to overcome everyday setbacks and fears and thrive.
Where is resilience found?
Moores identifies four sources of resilience. These are the places that you can draw from to feel more capable of tackling life’s challenges.
Street: The skills that you learn from working as Moores as children.
Resource: The ability and willingness to face challenges with the resources you have. Many project management setbacks can be easily overcome or mitigated if you have the right resources.
Relational: This is where your strength comes from the fact that others depend on you, whether they’re your family or your project crew.
Rock bottom: When you have no other option but to climb up after hitting rock bottom.
How to be more resilient
Moores says resilience “helps to deal with the daily grind.” It allows you use every No as an opportunity to fight for a Yes. Moores believes that resilience can be taught but that some people are naturally more resilient than other.
Being open to life and authentic can help you be more successful. This will allow you to be open-minded and able to solve problems in a way that suits you.
Moores states that being resilient means being able to see problems differently and look at them from different perspectives. Moores speaks about the ability to turn a switch and reframe a problem to make it a challenge or opportunity.
He suggests that you use difficult situations as an opportunity to increase your ability to focus on the positives and not see them as a reason to give up.
A communication breakdown could be seen as an opportunity to create new communication channels, rather than a failure of a project. Although you can see the problem from both sides, a resilient project manager will focus on the positives and move forward.
A less resilient project manager might let the problem fester rather than doing anything to stop it from happening again.
Moores would be a great motivational speaker. This book isn’t about project management but it is a great read for anyone looking to improve their soft skills. I did.