The Pyramid of Resilience Building for Business Owners & Teams

I’ve been working on some new stuff lately - some resources and training I’ve been putting together on building resilience for some work I’m doing with some companies and teams and I thought it might be helpful to share this here with you, so you can see how it might make sense for you and your work, your teams, your business.

It’s no surprise to me that I’m hearing more conversations about resilience lately, and having people come to me to support their work or their teams in understanding and building resilience. In times of rapid change and so much uncertainty, we need to get to grips with what it means to be resilient more than ever. We need to learn the tools and practices that can support us to manage ourselves through disappointment, tragedy, chaos and flux. 

What I want to use this space to share about is what I’m calling the pyramid of resilience building. The structure that needs to be in place for sustainable growth, development, fulfillment and capacity. Because resilience isn’t the end outcome of what we’re looking for when we talk about it, is we. I’m struck that when people come to me wanting to look at resilience, they’re often actually talking about a greater capacity to stay in alignment with their values, to grow as people, feel more fulfilled and have a better capacity to do the work they love and live life meaningfully and present.. That’s the goal of resilience, so we need to talk about what the pathway is to it.

I’m probably going to do this over a series of two or three episodes but today I want to break down the pyramid so you can see clearly what is most important to be in place in order for resilience to have the room to grow.

If you can imagine a pyramid structure, the bottom foundation in building resilience would be emotional or internal safety. And that’s what we’re going to cover today. 

The next layer up would be self and co-regulation 

The next layer would be resilience and then the top of the pyramid is sustained growth, fulfillment and capacity. 

So let’s dig into the first thing, the very foundation of resilience building - emotional or internal safety. 

Internal, emotional safety is so intrinsic to our ability to be able to handle pressure and stress and not have it swallow us up because if we don’t feel emotionally safe in our environment, with the people we are with, with the expectations we are being held to - the foundation is shaky from the start.

If we don’t have the tools to understand how to find emotional safety, the pyramid towards resilience is not off to a great start.

What I mean by internal, emotional safety is a strong knowledge of self - of our triggers, of the things that fire off our nervous system into fight flight freeze and fawn AND the emotional safety that comes from our environment - from people that feel safe to us, who actively promote our emotional safety and that of others’. So I want to ask you to reflect right here - maybe you want to grab a journal and pause this episode and jot some stuff down… 

WHAT DOES INTERNAL OR EMOTIONAL SAFETY FEEL LIKE FOR YOU?

Think about times where you have felt emotional safety and trust.

Take a moment to experience what that feels like in your body.

Who are you around when you experience emotional safety?

How does the structure or conditions of your work impact your feelings of internal safety?

And adversely - 

What are the triggers or threats that often make you feel emotionally or internally unsafe. We can easily name them in the physical world but what comes up for us when it comes to emotional or psychological threats?

The reason this is so important is because when we are emotionally safe, feeling like we are able to be and respond in a more rational capacity, we are more able to regulate ourselves when difficulty comes. Someone who is exposed to environments or people who don’t feel emotionally or internally safe or someone who isn’t able to understand their own inner triggers and self-doubt  is more likely to have a nervous system that is activated and be out of their window of tolerance - struggling to regulate or respond rationally. Let me share with you a quote about windows of tolerance from Linda Graham, psychotherapist, consultant, trainer on the neuroscience of resilience. She says this:

"The Autonomic Nervous System is central to resilience because it keeps us in a 'window of tolerance. The window of tolerance is a zone where our nervous system is relaxed, calm, alert, engaged. When we are in our window of tolerance, which we hope is most of the time, we feel centered and balanced. Everything is humming along in equilibrium. When we are in our window of tolerance, we can perceive-process-respond to life events with a kind of wise equanimity. We can cope. We can be resilient"

- Linda Graham

So how can we establish a sense of emotional or internal safety as a bedrock for building resilience. My advice is this:

• Self-awareness - understanding the situations, people, conditions that threaten your emotional safety. This is key - the external sources that can contribute to not feeling emotionally safe. And also what is key is noticing and coming to more deeply know how the voice of your own inner protector and how it shows up when you feel vulnerable or you are approaching something emotionally risky. Keeping a close ear to hear when that voice is raised within us rather than our sense of intuition or our inner wisdom.

• Boundaries with others - being clear about your expectations and gathering clarity from others about theirs. Having difficult conversations when you need to instead of settling for ambiguity and feigned comfort. Knowing what lines you aren’t willing to cross, or that you won’t allow others to cross. Being loyal to your needs and the conditions that enable you to feel emotionally safe and making sure that you follow through with those boundaries.

• Curiosity and compassion over shame and blame - shame and blame in most contexts will add fuel to the fire of feeling emotionally unsafe. If we are able to slow ourselves down to welcome curiosity and compassion to the things we feel are difficult or feel emotionally risky, we can gently diffuse those feelings. Not bypass them - we aren’t in the business of pretending we dont feel how we feel, but approaching our feelings with curiosity (i.e. hmm, I’m finding myself really nervous about this conversation I have to have with my boss even though they’re usually really lovely, I wonder what it is about it that I’m worried about” Or “this deadline is feeling really stressful right now - I wonder if this is something I can push back or ask for more support with so that I can approach it more rationally” instead of catastrophising or spiralling into self doubt.) and then dollopping on some compassion instead of blame (i.e. “The last time I had to have a tricky conversation it didn’t go well, it makes perfect sense that this would have me feeling nervous. I know I can do this and be ok and it’s fair that I feel worried about the outcome” or “there’s a lot to get done here and I need to make sure I’m not running myself into the ground. I deserve to feel able to complete this project in a way that isn’t so frantic.” 

• A strong sense of values alignment - being aligned more deeply to our values is going to help steer us in our decision making and give us the satisfaction of integrity that can help us feel emotionally safe. 

Ultimately emotional safety requires our willingness to be able to recognise what feels unsafe, decipher if that risk feels protective in a way that is going to move us towards our goals or keep us from them, come back to our window of tolerance so that we can respond and react to whatever is happening from a place of courage, calm, clarity and curiosity. 

If we are unable to recognise our emotional safety triggers and always feel like we are operating outside of our window of tolerance, we will find difficult situations more and more hard to manage. Our nervous systems won't ever have a proper opportunity to reset and retreat.

It’s up to us to do the work to determine what this aspect of building resilience requires from us. Maybe it’s a keener sense of boundaries. Maybe it’s a deeper understanding of the protective voice that holds us back, maybe being more clear about our values and getting into more alignment with what we believe and do.

This is really important work and a crucial baseline in the trajectory of building resilience. If you are finding yourself or your team struggling to deal with set backs, feedback or disappointment - start here. Start prioritising what emotional or internal safety looks like for you or your team. 

What can you do to help yourself or your people recognise what it feels like to be internally safe so they can turn towards that in times of difficulty or stress. 

As always, I’m here - willing to chat more - you can email me hello@melwiggins.com and if there’s anything I can do to go further with this and support you or your team in resilience building, know that I’d love to do that and you can contact me for more details of what that could look like. I have training workshops and packages for teams and leaders that I’d love to share with you. And if you’re a female business owner keen to develop some of these tools to support the building of your business and you as the business owner, we do all of this in my four month brand builder programme which is open right now and you are welcome to check that out here.