Stress Resilience: Beyond Coping

Building stress resilience is the key to personal and organizational health in times of uncertainty!

Would you agree that in this time of unprecedented change, we need even greater skill in responding positively, flexibly, and creatively to the unexpected events cascading through our lives and workplaces?

If you do, now is the time to take your resilience and stress hardiness to the next level.

Create a culture of stress hardiness, resilience, and optimism in your organization
Decrease conflict and the hidden costs of conflict
Help your employees improve their level of energy, focus and clarity
Improve your team’s productivity
Improve morale and organizational climate so that folks like being at work
See increased quality and speed of decision making
Reduce quality and safety errors
Improve customer and patient satisfaction
Reduce your organization’s healthcare expenditure due to stress-related illness

Financial crisis, increasing pressure to do more with less, you or your employees worried about losing your jobs, no high-growth mode in sight any time soon, management torn between hunkering down or looking for the opportunity to exploit.

No one is sure what the future holds… Is this stress or WHAT? Is it possible to find stability, peace of mind, and well-being in these tumultuous times?

Stress Resilience: Beyond Coping
I want to learn more about implementing stress resilience training in our organization.

Unlike what most folks think, stress is NOT the external events that befall us. Rather, it’s our RESPONSE to the events. Plus we need a certain amount of stress to be productive. Challenging and unexpected circumstances have always been, and will always be present. Change is a reality of life.

That being said, the 21st century is bringing an avalanche of change, whether it’s consequences of the socio-economic-political events of the past decade (or the current economic debacle), or the ever-increasing globalization with new emerging powers that is affecting us all and will continue to dramatically impact every aspect of our lives and economy.

What’s different now is you’re probably noticing signs and symptoms of increased stress, in the workplace or at home, from top management to the line worker, that are everything from people’s sense of well-being and stability to workplace productivity and quality of work-life.

Now, more than ever, HOW we respond to change is the key to our personal well-being and that of our organizations and communities.

It might seem counterintuitive to be spending money on something that in better times seems like a luxury, but the SINGLE most important investment you can make at this time, in your self and your employees, is instruction in stress resilience and extraordinary self-care.

Just as various plants have been bred to be drought resistant, a trait that can be very valuable in areas of uncertain rainfall, so too do we need to promote stress resilience in times of change and uncertainty. Stress resilience confers a hardiness that allows people to not only survive in dry times, but to thrive. Stress hardiness and resilience is preventive medicine, buffering us from a cascading downward spiral that can end in personal illness, and loss of organizational health.

We may think we’re coping fine but many coping strategies ultimately lead to decreased effectiveness, because we develop bad habits that cause us to deny what’s happening inside us or around us. Habits such as more frequently indulging in that extra drink or doughnut, or being tough and heroic, all of which replace reaching out, a key factor in stress resilience. When we’re anxious, our “fight or flight” mechanisms are engaged, and research shows that people are less open, flexible, and creative in this state.

As a physician, healer, and educator, I can assure you that if you don’t pay attention to the signs that personal and organizational well-being and wellness may be slipping, then they sure enough will and you may find yourself with greater challenges ahead. There will be tangible, cumulative, and potentially costly problems for you, your employees and your organization:

This is not the time to tough it out. It’s the time for self-care and attention to the basics, with a 21st century approach.

Welcome to Stress Resilience: Beyond Coping

What participants will learn:

How and why resilience training is so helpful in today’s climate of constant change
Signs and symptoms of stress
Their personal stress profile
The Five Dimensions of Health and Wellness
How to read their personal (and team) Energy Fuel Gauge
How changing the mind changes biography and biology
Quick and simple strategies that get you on the path of stress resilience - real, actual, specific things you can do that integrate easily into your life and work
An accountability system that helps them stay on track after the seminar

Format and Structure of the seminar

The foundational seminar is a half-day program. Our time together includes presentation, individual reflection and other exercises, and dialogue in small groups (of 2, 3, or 4).

The seminar is offered at your work site (or location of your choosing). For those who want to continue their learning in how to customize a stress resilience program for themselves, additional individual and group coaching is available.

Who should attend?

Learning stress resilience is appropriate for anyone and everyone. This program works for the executive management suite as well as line workers and everyone in-between. The program can be tailored to address specific needs of participants.

What’s different about our program?

No doubt, many folks have learned the basics of good health, and stress management, such as getting enough sleep, exercise, and taking a deep breath.

Stress Resilience: Beyond Coping, has several unique elements that are key to strengthening both your employees’ understanding of stress resilience and their ability to implement and sustain a stress resilience program. You may be wondering if they will really learn enough in 4 hours to make a difference. The answer is yes, and here’s why:

Participants learn quick, easy to implement, techniques that integrate seamlessly into their work day.
Participants create an action plan that continues into the future.
Everyone receives a 90-day Stress Resilience Conditioning workbook plus an audio CD that reinforce exercises and techniques learned during the seminar.
We use a training methodology that promotes accelerated learning.

What’s your commitment?

The foundational program is a 4-hour seminar packed with information, learning specific techniques, goal setting, and action planning. There is no preparation necessary prior to the seminar.

Participants leave the program with a personalized action plan, an audio CD, and our 90-day Stress Resilience Conditioning workbook which helps folks structure and reinforce what they learn at the seminar. These tools not only help employees implement their plan but should they choose to accept the challenge, they can create their own fieldwork to continue developing their resilience. Like anything, you get out of the program what you put into it.

What are my qualifications to teach this?

I’ve worked for 35 years in the fields of healing, complementary medicine, internal medicine and psychiatry, as a clinician, an educator and a coach consultant specializing in individual and organizational behavior change. This seminar draws on my years of training and experience to bring you what I consider to be the most effective and efficient tools to build your resilience.

I am confident your employees will learn things in this program that give them greater insight and greater ability to change their behavior, to take new action, and to restore, if not achieve, even greater levels of wellness, inner peace, and the ability to take charge of their future.

How can I know if my organization really needs this?

We know that people contain and hide their stress and how they handle it. So how do you know if stress is taking a negative toll on your employees and the organization? You can see these signs and symptoms…..

People are worried, edgy, fly off the handle more, seem to have decreased energy and loss of focus
Significant decrease in productivity
Increased absenteeism due to stress-related health issues
Possible loss of customer/patient satisfaction as employee morale deteriorates
Increased errors and accidents as people are distracted or end up rushing to get things done
Higher worker’s compensation claims
High disability claims
Unnecessary health service use
Excessive medical leave
Early medical retirements
Excess worker conflict
Family disruption
Social disruption

All of this translates into increased cost to the organization due to a decline in productivity, increased absenteeism, and greater direct healthcare costs as stress tips people into more acute health problems. Stress Resilience builds workplace wellness.

How this will help your organization

To the extent that you help your employees take care of themselves, the better able they will be to take care of business and the organization. Stress resilience is a leading indicator…..as your employees learn to manage and respond to change more resiliently, you will see:

Improved focus and productivity
Improved quality and speed of decision-making
Less wasted time
Fewer errors
Less absenteeism
Decreased stress-related healthcare costs
Decreased interpersonal friction and conflict which contribute to hidden costs (absenteeism, sabotage and petty theft, decreased quality of decision-making, etc.)