OPINION Understanding personal resilience


Ten years ago, few people were discussing resilience other than in the terms of business continuity. Questions put to the business community, and to some extent healthcare providers too, were, ‘is our business aware of what can go wrong?’, and ‘have we mitigated that?’. We learned to think about the inconceivable events and ensure that had been addressed in our future plans. A more important type of resilience is personal resilience.


How many times as a worker, a team


leader, a manager or indeed the director of a large company or even the CEO of one of our NHS Health Boards/Trusts have you woken up, groaned and simply felt unable (not through ill health) to get up and face the work of a day? Never? Often? How many of those times did you mentally kick yourself, get up and get on with your day?


In doing so you have made a withdrawal from your ‘resilience account’ Simply, resilience is about not waiting for the storm to pass, but getting out and dancing in the rain. It is the ability to push through whatever problem or difficulty there is in your life, which feels like the millstone round your neck, and face the day. It is the ability to dig deep, and as many will have seen on mugs t-shirts etc ‘Face your fear and do it anyway,’ or in the words of the song, ‘When the going gets tough the tough get going’. Everyone has their own personally identifiable wording with which they can connect, to verbalise what resilience means to them. Easy to say! The problem is if your


resilience account is depleted what to do then?


What does resilience look like? Those who have high energy, mental agility, flexibility and a consistent high-level performance with strong relationships and support networks are the epitome of a someone with full resilience ‘account’. There are those who think that’s just their personality, to some extent that may be indeed true. However, we can all train ourselves to be more resilient. To top up and maintain our personal resilience ‘account.’ What impacts our resilience? Stress, money worries, illness (personal or in those we care for) relationship difficulties, study, exams, difficulties at work, the list is endless. Anything that we find exerts us beyond normal comfortable functioning. Knowing our resilience is being depleted we must then work


to restore it. To do that we need to understand it.


Understanding resilience Resilience is multifaceted and encompasses primarily eight elements, on which we can work to boost and replenish our resilience. Self-awareness, vision, determination, and self-confidence are the first four to consider, if you are self-aware, you understand yourself and your needs and how what you do and say impacts you and others. Having vision means you ‘see’ where you want to be and can imagine how you will get there, determination is the element that will keep you focussed on what you must do to achieve that goal, and self-confidence is the belief that you are good enough and can achieve that goal. Think of driving a car. It is not as simple as knowing how to operate the car, how the car works and knowing the Highway Code, more importantly it is the belief that you can do it out there on the road with millions of other cars! The next four elements are


organisation, problem solving, interaction and relationships. To achieve the goals you have set, whether they’re daily, weekly, or even life goals, takes determination, setting a schedule, managing your time and not being waylaid by uncontrollable events. Things may not go to plan, so problems must be solved. No one operates in isolation, therefore interactions are important to perhaps solve problems and maintain organised schedules. Interaction is the building block of strong relationships. We as humans and indeed the entire animal kingdom are an example of interactions and relationships. What we get from our relationships helps us to be resilient. Even more important is what we put into them. The ability to develop and nurture healthy relationships is central to personal resilience.


Boosting resilience


So how can we train ourselves to increase our personal resilience? Firstly, believe that it is possible. It requires you to give yourself back personal time. Identify resources that ‘speak‘ to you. Work on one element of resilience every day. Whether it is just smiling at yourself in the bathroom mirror and saying ‘Hi’ to yourself every morning or identifying a self-affirming mantra in your head and repeating it to yourself over and over on the way to work. Simply telling yourself you will have a great day today is


WWW.PATHOLOGYINPRACTICE.COM MAY 2025 About Mairiead MacLennan


Recently retired from NHS Fife, 50 years after starting working in the NHS and then veterinary medicine, Mairiead now has a consultancy business specialising in quality management, and staff training and development. She continues to work as a Technical Assessor for UKAS. She works part time as a tutor for the University of the Highlands and Islands Previously a member of the IBMS- associated Scottish Quality Management Discussion Group and also Scottish Training Forum Group for almost 14 years, Mairiead also continues to work with the IBMS on the CEP for Quality Management and on the Quality Specialist Advisory Panel.


mlabconsulting@outlook.com surprisingly effective.


Anyone not at work because they can’t face it, or they are at work but only in body, that represents absenteeism and phychopresenteeism. These are two of the most impactful occurrences in the workplace. The individual does not feel good, and they impact those around them. We have all felt down but gone to work anyway on occasions and haven’t we all felt better for having achieved that? The pandemic diminished the


resilience of many individuals and prevented others from developing it. Learning about personal resilience and bringing that into the workplace has proven benefits, not only to the workplace but for individuals and their personal lives. From personal resilience, team resilience can be built through those sustainable relationships and common goals and this is what will impact organisational resilience. It is imperative in our society today we are actively addressing this in the workplace, and this must start in schools, through the teaching and nurturing of self-awareness, vision, determination, and self-confidence. Teams working in the NHS can support staff personally and in groups by initiating resilience training using a self-help methodology.


A key understanding of resilience is that we must be who we are without causing others to have to take a withdrawal from their resilience account. I’m certain I didn’t achieve that every day as a manager. It didn’t stop me trying.


Dr Mairiead MacLennan BSc PhD CQP MCQI ChMgr MCMI FIBMS CSci 5


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