resilience beyond resources
Last week I reflected on some of my key learnings from my time at Harvard Business School and one of these was about the importance of resilience.
As leaders, it's essential not only that we are mindful of our own resilience, what bolsters it and what drains it, but also that we nurture the resilience of our teams. What actions can we take, what support can we provide and what behaviours can we model to grow, rather than to erode, the resilience of the people we lead?
It's hard to grow resilience if people feel that they are seen as mere resources. The language of 'human resources' focuses on the value that can be extracted from people for the benefit of the company. A resource is something we exploit for money. The more we extract, the more depleted the resource becomes.
There's no doubt that people around the world are feeling depleted right now. It's been a tough few years of crisis upon crisis. It's perhaps no surprise then, that people are choosing to leave organisations where they don't feel nurtured.
What if instead of focusing on what we can extract, we focused on what we could generate?
What if instead of extracting from 'resources', we generated resilience.
What if the outome was personal growth, instead of depletion?
In my recent paper on 'Why your people are not your greatest assets' I challenge the use of this terminology and in turn a number of other terms that have a similar meaning, including 'human resources' and 'human capital'.
This isn't about simple semantics. What we say influences what we think and how we behave. Despite the controversies and complaints about these terms over many decades, their use persists and is even championed by some.
Are there any other terms that you find de-humanising - I'd love to know.
To re-energise a depleted world, we first need to re-humanise.
How are you generating resilience, for yourself and for your team?
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