by Kirsten Fox
First, let’s state the obvious.Campus housing professionals have always had to face a variety of high-pressure situations as a part of their job. There are the student-facing staff who understand that each phone call could bring news of an incident that requires their response. Senior housing officers must manage immense budgets, set strategies, and navigate campus politics. Facility management staff must maintain demanding standards. And mid-level staff are tasked with implementing programs and assessing results.
Now let’s state the really obvious. Through this past year, working in campus housing has been all that and so much more. Campuses have had to rethink their processes for virtually every aspect of student life. Staff have had to learn new protocols and safety measures and then integrate them into their work. They have had to pivot time and time again in a quickly shifting landscape. Businesses have been disrupted. Projects have been cancelled. And many have had to cope with all this while also navigating furloughs, budget cuts, and other steps that resulted in having to do more with less. Much of what attracted people to campus housing in the first place has been stripped away. So how do these professionals – heck, how does anyone? – continue to answer the bell in the face of so much adversity?
The answer is resilience. It’s a common term with a somewhat amorphous meaning that can be applied to a variety of things ranging from coiled springs to sports teams. For today’s campus housing professionals, though, the American Psychological Association may provide the most apt definition of resilience: “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress – such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors." What that definition does not explicitly state, but has been demonstrated in a number of studies, is that resilience is a skill that can be learned and, like a muscle, it can be strengthened. But resilience can also tire. And, for many in and around campus housing, their resilience has been getting quite the workout.
Before discussing how to teach resilience, it is important to focus on why resilience matters in the workplace. Those who are resilient are more likely to be engaged at work and able to accomplish small tasks while also maintaining a focus on the big picture. Those with more resilience are less likely to experience burnout at work. Forbes magazine, which one usually equates with the cold, unfeeling world of interest rates and economic policy, recently outlined five benefits of resilience in the workplace: it creates a sense of well-being among employees, allowing them to better manage stress; makes them more adaptable, better able to maximize the benefits of learning and innovation; promotes teamwork; and contributes to career development. Within teams, those who are more resilient are likely to build up other teammates, also helping to advance the work. For Christian Rafael Suero, assistant director of staff development, engagement, and on-boarding at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, the decision to persevere is epitomized in the saying “no pressure, no diamonds.” Although that original quotation, attributed to Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, is more than a century old, this idiom has become a go-to expression for Suero and many others over the past year.
However, one can’t help but notice how many of these outcomes are framed as benefiting the organization as much as, if not more than, the individuals. Yes, organizational health is important and, yes, managers and leaders must look at the overall picture. Done well, though, resilience training results in benefits to everyone involved. If it is not, encouraging staff to thrive instead of just survive may prove to be counterproductive and, instead, be met with resentment. Kirby Gibson, assistant director of residence education at Michigan State University in East Lansing, notes that, especially in light of the complexity of stressors faced over the course of the past year, “resilience has become a buzzword within the field of higher education, and we often expect students, faculty, and staff to be resilient without understanding what it truly means. Resilience is extremely nuanced and does not look the same for everyone.”
To move through turbulence and uncertainty with greater resilience, managers and individuals can borrow from the idea of bounded uncertainty: Focus on the familiar and understand what can be controlled.
Simply asking people to keep their chin up, push forward, and overcome setbacks is not something that can be done in a vacuum. A number of environmental, cultural, and societal factors must be considered before thinking of resilience as something that can be turned on like a switch. Gibson points to how, along with a global pandemic, the past year brought an additional focus on police violence against Black Americans, as well as a contentious presidential election. An opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lee Skallerup Bessette’s “The Staff Are Not OK,” notes how those on the campus front lines are feeling the brunt of being expected to carry out top-down directives, while also dealing with the aftermath of student and parent concerns when things, albeit often out of necessity, abruptly change. Professionals of color are even less okay, given the increased stressors they face. As one Black housing and residence life staff member stated, “No matter what is going on in the world, whiteness and workplace culture continues to expect marginalized groups to show up, show out, and turn the other cheek at what is happening around and within them.” Yet without the protection of tenure or academic freedom, many are hesitant to voice concerns.
Specifically for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), queer, people with disabilities, and other marginalized identities, resilience is a matter of survival. “To develop resilience amongst staff, managers must first acknowledge the breadth of stressors and the individuals facing them,” says Gibson. “We must recognize the whole person and the numerous complexities of the situations causing setbacks and challenges because we are not one-dimensional beings and should not be expected to silo our trauma, grief, fear, and other emotions in a dusty file cabinet.”
Developing resilience assumes an individual’s ability to develop a sense of control over responses and actions to situations that are beyond their control. Through the years, a cottage industry of books, courses, and speakers have addressed the topic. Books like Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance have topped the best-seller charts as people search for ways to strengthen their personal and professional resilience. In addition, a number of campuses have launched programs to help build resilience in their students, and others are integrating the topic into staff professional development opportunities or when launching campus initiatives.
Those who are resilient are more likely to be engaged at work and able to accomplish small tasks while also maintaining a focus on the big picture.
Since its release in 2016, one of the definitive works on the subject of resilience is Economist Caroline Webb’s How To Have A Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life, which has been published in 14 languages and in more than 60 countries. Drawing from the lessons of behavioral economics, psychology, and neuroscience, she outlines a variety of techniques to help strengthen resilience. Her first lesson is to utilize what behavioral scientists refer to as affect labeling: “Years of research suggests that if we can name the negative emotion we’re experiencing and describe succinctly what’s causing that feeling, we can reduce its hold on us.” At an individual level, this means understanding the emotion you are feeling when facing an obstacle or challenge and then naming or identifying it. For professional managers, it also means allowing time and space for others to reflect on the hardship, talk about it, and name their personal feelings and emotions. Providing this space may take time, but it is time well spent as both individuals and the collective team move forward in difficult situations. Webb suggests writing these emotions down, allowing for what she calls structured venting, and “calling it out” by acknowledging the tension in a group or situation. The biggest potential pitfall, both for institutions and individuals, is not allowing the time or space or grace to grieve and process. Tim Leyson, associate director of residence life at Santa Clara University in California, notes that he builds this into his practice of teaching resilience through what he calls thoughtful stops. He instructs people when facing adversity to ask three questions: Where is this coming from? Why am I experiencing this right now? What can I do in the moment to get through?
One coping mechanism can be to “get some distance,” as Webb says. Adopting a distant perspective allows you to think through various scenarios and approaches to see other viewpoints and options, which can help you think more clearly about how to move forward. One way to bring a distant perspective into a situation is to ask questions of oneself or others: What will I (you) think about this a month from now? If I (you) were to give advice on exactly this situation to someone else, what would I (you) say? What would someone else say if they were describing this situation from their perspective? Another strategy is to ask a rewarding question. Pavlovian theory demonstrates that stimuli impact responses: People are conditioned to have a more positive response to a reward. To help achieve resilience, it is important for both individuals and managers to rise above challenges by reframing their minds to focus on something positive. Rewarding questions, according to Webb, can help provide motivation, establish a sense of purpose, and make one feel more confident. Examples of rewarding questions include the following: What can I learn from this? When have I handled a difficult situation well in the past? What personal qualities enabled me to overcome that? Managers should again create space to remind staff of both individual and group successes amidst difficulty and by asking rewarding questions that elicit positive responses.
There are also physical actions people can take to increase resilience in the moment. Breathing and mindful pauses often deliver calming effects. Webb states that breathing, especially diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing, can make our body more relaxed, decrease feelings of impending threats, and restore the ability to think more constructively. Plus it takes little time and can be done anywhere. Leyson recommends that even just two minutes of mindfulness practice a day can be helpful; it’s a useful strategy that “starts with recognizing the physiological response to your feelings before dealing with the emotional connections.”
Workplaces and life are full of uncertainties, and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, campuses are facing more uncertainties than ever before. As Webb explains, the human brain is conditioned to prefer effects that have certainty, and not knowing what is going to happen increases our “sense of threat.” While people sometimes enjoy uncertainty (for example, an amusement park ride or a television program that builds suspense), we are able to enjoy these exceptions because they are bounded. We trust the ride’s cart to remain on the rails. We know that the plot of the television show will be resolved. To move through turbulence and uncertainty with greater resilience, managers and individuals can borrow from the idea of bounded uncertainty: Focus on the familiar and understand what can be controlled. In addition, managers can help individuals leverage skills that are certain to be resourceful and focus on taking actions that bring success, even if the victories are small. As Pam Schreiber, assistant vice president and executive director of housing and food services at the University of Washington in Seattle, notes, “The pandemic has been a clear reminder that there is a difference between crisis response and resilience. The pandemic has of course caused significant business interruptions – much like other crisis situations – but the impacts have persisted well beyond the typical stages of a crisis including and especially moving into recovery. This situation has clearly taught us that resilience is not about toughing it out. Resilience is about having enough resources in reserve to mitigate impacts, having the ability to create some normalcy and predictability in the midst of great disruption, and recognizing opportunities to contribute to a better outcome.”
In difficult times, it is important to pay attention to what’s going on and intentionally reflect on and process the situation. Individuals must take time not merely for self-care but also to identify the challenge and their own feelings, reflect on the situation by creating distance, focus on small wins and positives, truly breathe to find calmness, and focus on the known and what we can control. However, to be resilient (and, ideally, productive), it is important to focus on moving forward.
New and unexpected responsibilities, duties, and workloads arise quickly in times of strife and often without much time to plan. Managers can, and must, build a sense of connectedness to core values during these difficult times.
Teaching or building resilience requires an intentional focus on the past, the present, and the future. Resilience assumes actionable forward progress, as individuals, teams, and organizations. The action itself may be of little importance; it is the coherence of the action to goals, missions, and personal values that can make a difference. According to Jim Collins in his bestselling book Good to Great, organizations that are able to make successful progress during periods of difficulty and change are those that focus on preserving core values. However, in times of exceptional hardship, people and organizations often find themselves in survival mode, focusing on crisis response and forgetting to make the connections. Sometimes teams may stray away from their core values with the intention to return when things once again have a semblance of normalcy. However, at other times they are still in alignment with their core values but did not take the time to recognize how and where that focus remains. Rarely are managers ignoring the core values altogether, but in times of crisis and difficulty, there needs to be a greater focus on the core values. New and unexpected responsibilities, duties, and workloads arise quickly in times of strife and often without much time to plan. Managers can, and must, build a sense of connectedness to core values during these difficult times. With the sudden onset of “other duties as assigned” roles, the more an intentional connection can be made between the duties and the goals, the more resilience can be developed.
Having an understanding of the “why” and how this relates to core values will help bring both motivation and purpose to teams. “Staff need to know they are supported and that they alone are not being called on to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic,” says Schreiber. “Rather, it’s a full team effort. Placing value on personal self-care and not rewarding (even inadvertently) work-a-holic behaviors may be one of the most powerful ways organizations can help staff develop resilience.”
Resilience isn’t an unlimited resource. Those in campus housing often discuss the idea of impact over intent, which is applicable in this instance as well; to build resilience in oneself or within organizations, there must be a focus on impact. Individuals must have a space to name the hardship and also be encouraged to talk about their feelings – and managers must then acknowledge the impact as truth. Rachel Anne Hopper, associate director of housing and residence life at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, notes that leaders need to carefully select time with their teams to process what they have experienced. She suggests that managers can help show teams how to move forward in a situation, but individuals need to make a decision on how that lived experience will impact them in the future. It is this decision that will impact their resilience.
Truly building resilience requires a simultaneous focus on both impact and intent. As Hopper explains, even as people process what has occurred during the past year, the marathon is not yet complete. Housing and residence life professionals will continue to learn a lot about themselves and their colleagues, and the lessons learned now likely will shape how the profession will work with and support others into the future. To move forward requires reframing thinking and also seeking good intentions in addition to acknowledging real hardships and bad circumstances. This must be done without minimizing impact or feelings. It is not “instead of” – it is “in addition to.” To be resilient is to comprehend the “both/and.”
Kirsten Fox is director of The Placement Exchange. Previously she was the director of career education and campus engagement at Denison University.