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Introduction and guidance

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Developing career resilience is a free badged course which lasts 8 weeks, with approximately 3 hours’ study time each week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week, there’s nothing to stop you pushing on and completing another week’s study.

You’ll start by exploring the meaning of personal and career resilience, identifying your own stress factors and reflecting on your current position. As your awareness grows, you’ll look at how to deal with some of the external career challenges that can feel beyond your control, such as climate change and political decision making – creating a personal career narrative and reframing the difficulties you face. You’ll focus on the support you can access, both internally and externally, to help you develop your resilience, and finish with an opportunity to identify career resilience goals and develop an action plan.

Throughout the course, you will be encouraged to reflect on your own experiences and learning through a series of short activities.

Career resilience is about what you put into practice. The weekly interactive quizzes give a means to test your understanding and are optional. Those at Weeks 4 and 8 will provide you with an opportunity to earn a badge. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.

Box _unit1.1.1 The interactive toolkit

As part of the course, there is an interactive toolkit available – you can use this to collect your thoughts together in one place as you complete activities. You will then have a resource that you can draw on in the future to help shape your career. For any activity which asks for you to note something down, there is a corresponding area for your answer in the ‘Activities’ area of the toolkit.

Using the toolkit is optional: if you would rather note your responses down in a different way, that is fine. The toolkit is available at the link below.

Interactive toolkit (make sure to open in a new tab or window)

After completing this course you will be able to:

understand the concept of career resilience and assess your own position
recognise a range of external challenges and their potential to impact on your working life
use a variety of tactics and techniques that can enhance your career resilience
identify any external support you might need to build your career resilience
set yourself appropriate career resilience goals and describe the actions required to achieve them.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you can find a link to the next week. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course.

It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.

Get careers guidance

This course has been included in the National Careers Service to help you develop new skills.

What is a badged course?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

While studying Developing career resilience you have the option to work towards gaining a digital badge.

Badged courses are a key part of The Open University’s mission to promote the educational well-being of the community. The courses also provide another way of helping you to progress from informal to formal learning.

To complete a course you need to be able to find about 24 hours of study time, over a period of about 8 weeks. However, it is possible to study them at any time, and at a pace to suit you.

Badged courses are all available on The Open University’s OpenLearn website and do not cost anything to study. They differ from Open University courses because you do not receive support from a tutor. But you do get useful feedback from the interactive quizzes.

What is a badge?

Digital badges are a new way of demonstrating online that you have gained a skill. Schools, colleges and universities are working with employers and other organisations to develop open badges that help learners gain recognition for their skills, and support employers to identify the right candidate for a job.

Badges demonstrate your work and achievement on the course. You can share your achievement with friends, family and employers, and on social media. Badges are a great motivation, helping you to reach the end of the course. Gaining a badge often boosts confidence in the skills and abilities that underpin successful study. So, completing this course should encourage you to think about taking other courses.

How to get a badge

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Getting a badge is straightforward! Here’s what you have to do:

read each week of the course
score 50% or more in the two badge quizzes in Week 4 and Week 8.

For all the quizzes, you can have three attempts at most of the questions (for true or false type questions you usually only get one attempt). If you get the answer right first time you will get more marks than for a correct answer the second or third time. Therefore, please be aware that for the two badge quizzes it is possible to get all the questions right but not score 50% and be eligible for the badge on that attempt. If one of your answers is incorrect you will often receive helpful feedback and suggestions about how to work out the correct answer.

For the badge quizzes, if you’re not successful in getting 50% the first time, after 24 hours you can attempt the whole quiz, and come back as many times as you like.

We hope that as many people as possible will gain an Open University badge – so you should see getting a badge as an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned rather than as a test.

If you need more guidance on getting a badge and what you can do with it, take a look at the OpenLearn FAQs. When you gain your badge you will receive an email to notify you and you will be able to view and manage all your badges in My OpenLearn within 24 hours of completing the criteria to gain a badge.

Get started with Week 1.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Each week of the course will start with a short video introducing the topics that will be covered. Get started with Week 1 by watching this video:

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 Introduction to Week 1

Video _unit2.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 1

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Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 1

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

This week you’ll explore what resilience means, comparing personal and career resilience and identifying some of the stress factors in your own life. You’ll see how important career resilience can be throughout your working life, in helping you to progress, achieve your ambitions and cope with change.

End transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 1

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Video _unit2.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 1

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By the end of this week, you will be able to:

understand the meaning of the term ‘resilience’
explain the difference between personal resilience and career resilience
identify some of the stress factors in your life
recognise the important role that career resilience plays throughout your career and working life
understand how an individual might transition through change in the workplace.

Before you start, take some time to consider what you would like to get out of the course. The Open University would really appreciate you taking a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations of the course. Your input will help to improve the online learning experience. If you’d like to help, and if you haven’t done so already, please fill in this optional survey.

1 What is resilience?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit2.2.1 Figure 1

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This is a decorative cartoon image of a person jumping off a spring.

Figure 1

You may have heard the term ‘resilience’ used in a variety of ways – individual or personal resilience, emotional or psychological resilience and even financial resilience.

Most people have a common-sense understanding of the word ‘resilience’ and use it to refer to the ability to deal well with problems, challenging situations and difficulties of all types. We sometimes refer to the resilience of other people by talking about their ability to ‘bounce back’ or to ‘weather storms’, and may have our own personal metaphors for resilience.

Activity _unit2.2.1 Activity 1 Picturing resilience

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Spend a few minutes thinking about what resilience means to you, how you picture it, and considering your own definition, image or metaphor for resilience. Note down your thoughts in the box below or in the interactive toolkit. As mentioned in the Introduction and guidance, there are places for you to make notes in the ‘Activities’ section of the toolkit.

To open the toolkit, click this link:

Interactive toolkit (open the link in a new tab or window)

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Comment

You may have come up with phrases like ‘Get back in the saddle’, ‘It’s a new day and a new start’, or ‘Getting my mojo back’. You might have thought of an umbrella holding off the rain, or a plant pushing through the soil. You will have thought of something personal to you. There are no correct answers here and you will build on your initial thoughts as you work through this course. What is important and meaningful varies for each individual.

Another word you may have heard in connection to resilience is ‘wellbeing’, which is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2021) as ‘the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy’.

Mguni et al. (2012, p. 3) accept that wellbeing and resilience are linked, but they also ask whether wellbeing and resilience are ‘two sides of the same coin or is it possible to be resilient but have low levels of wellbeing?’

They go on to explain the difference between the two concepts as follows:

Wellbeing describes and captures a psychological state at a point in time. It is a complex concept, which varies in different contexts and from individual to individual. It bundles together a number of different (but linked) psycho-social factors, from fulfilment, to happiness and resilience, or mental toughness.

Resilience is less about a point in time and is dynamic, taking into account the past and the future – a person can build resilience before they hit crisis and be more likely to cope with problems that may be around the corner.

Even if you think of yourself as a resilient person, this description of resilience as ‘dynamic’ means it may fluctuate during different phases of your life or in different situations. Southwick (2014) suggests that resilience ‘exists on a continuum that may be present to different degrees across multiple domains of life.’ He gives the example that ‘an individual who adapts well to stress in a workplace or in an academic setting, may fail to adapt well in their personal life or in their relationships.’

This example suggests that personal and career resilience could be perceived as two different things, albeit inter-related. You’ll explore personal resilience in more detail in the next section.

2 Personal resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Early research in personal resilience was focused on the ability of individuals to thrive after traumatic or adverse events such as the death of a relative or being in a life-threatening situation. More recently psychologists have expanded this to include responses to stress at work, illness and severe environmental events.

Figure _unit2.3.1 Figure 2

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This is a decorative photo showing a close-up dictionary definition of ‘resiliience’.

Figure 2

In their review of definitions of resilience, a team of medical professionals (Herrman et al., 2011), concluded that ‘fundamentally, resilience is understood as referring to positive adaptation, or the ability to maintain or regain mental health, despite experiencing adversity.’

Their review also identified ‘the dynamic nature of resilience throughout the lifespan; and the interaction of resilience in different ways with major domains of life function’. This perspective becomes very relevant when starting to look at that major function of life – your career.

Resilience is a characteristic that we all demonstrate to different degrees. In the next activity, you’ll start to consider times in your life when you’ve had to draw on your resilience.

Activity _unit2.3.1 Activity 2 Drawing on resilience

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Take some time now to consider occasions in the last five years when you have drawn on your resilience. It could be a one-off incident, like the two months after you broke your arm, or bigger, ongoing issues, like the strains of regular relocation with your partner’s army career.

Where were the stresses for you? What did you do to respond?

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Comment

Australian experts on resilience Jackson et al. (2007, p. 3) describe personal resilience as ‘the ability of an individual to adjust to adversity, maintain equilibrium, retain some sense of control over their environment, and continue to move on in a positive manner’.

Which parts of this definition can you see in your example above?

2.1 About you: life change and stress factors

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

In Week 3, you’ll start to look at your own career resilience in more detail, but here you’ll explore a useful tool that will help you identify the stress factors you’ve experienced over the last year. Keep them in mind as you progress through the course.

Figure _unit2.3.2 Figure 3

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Figure 3

Each of us has periods of extreme stress when just carrying on can require considerable resilience. Sometimes several stressful occurrences come together. Sometimes you aren’t at the centre of the story yourself, but major stress affecting someone close to you can affect you. You can become so used to ploughing on, troubleshooting and firefighting that you are less aware when the multiple stresses you are facing are extreme.

In 1967, US psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe looked at the medical records of patients, and asked them to tally stress factors in their lives. They then monitored the individuals’ illness levels, demonstrating the increased likelihood of illness with elevated stress levels.

Although this research is still regularly referred to today, the stress factors identified 50 years ago don’t take into account some twenty-first-century stressors. They don’t, for example, include zero-hours contracts, working multiple jobs or living through a global pandemic. Individuals react differently, but this is nonetheless an interesting way to start to identify the relative stress levels that you are facing at present.

2.2 Identifying your Holmes–Rahe stress factors

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

In the following activity you will look at your own stress factors as identified by Holmes and Rahe.

Activity _unit2.3.2 Activity 3 About you: stress factors

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Take a look through the stress factors identified by Holmes and Rahe (see Table 1). Tally up your score of the events that have happened to you in the last year. People frequently say this tool helps them see their lives in a different way, and to acknowledge why they are struggling.

Table _unit2.3.1 Table 1 The Holmes–Rahe life stress inventory:
	Life event	Mean value
1	Death of spouse	100
2	Divorce	73
3	Marital separation	65
4	Detention in jail or other institution	63
5	Death of a close family member	63
6	Major personal injury or illness	53
7	Marriage	50
8	Redundancy	47
9	Marital reconciliation	45
10	Retirement from work	45
11	Major change in the health or behaviour of a family member	44
12	Pregnancy	40
13	Sexual difficulties	39
14	Gaining a new family member (i.e. birth, adoption, older adult moving in, etc.)	39
15	Major reorganisation at work	39
16	Major change in financial state (i.e. a lot worse or better off than usual)	38
17	Death of a close friend	37
18	Changing to a different line of work	36
19	Major change in the number of arguments with spouse (i.e. either a lot more or a lot less than usual regarding child rearing, personal habits, etc.)	35
20	Taking on a mortgage	31
21	Foreclosure on a mortgage or loan	30
22	Major change in responsibilities at work (i.e. promotion, demotion, etc.)	29
23	Son or daughter leaving home (marriage, attending university)	29
24	In-law troubles	29
25	Outstanding personal achievement	28
26	Spouse beginning or ceasing work outside the home	26
27	Beginning or ceasing formal schooling	26
28	Major change in living condition (new home, home improvements, deterioration of neighbourhood or home, etc.)	25
29	Change to personal habits (dress, quitting smoking)	24
30	Troubles with the boss	23
31	Major changes in working hours or conditions	20
32	Changes in residence	20
33	Changing to a new school	20
34	Major change in usual type and/or amount of recreation	19
35	Major change in church activity (i.e. a lot more or a lot less than usual)	19
36	Major change in social activities (clubs, movies, visiting, etc.)	18
37	Taking on a loan (car, tv, freezer, etc.)	17
38	Major change in sleeping habits (a lot more or a lot less than usual)	16
39	Major change in number of family get togethers	15
40	Major change in eating habits (a lot more or less food intake, or very different meal hours or surroundings)	15
41	Holiday	13
42	Major holidays	12
43	Minor violations of the law (parking tickets, etc.)	11

(adapted from the American Institute of Stress, n.d)

Comment

Some of these factors may surprise you, in particular that events often seen as positive can be sources of stress too. The aim here is just to increase your awareness of the different stresses you might be facing. According to the American Institute of Stress (n.d.):

150 points or fewer means a relatively low amount of life change and a low susceptibility to stress-induced health issues
300 points or more raises the likelihood of significant health issues in the next two years to about 80%, according to the Holmes–Rahe statistical prediction model.

2.3 Identifying additional stress factors

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Although Holmes and Rahe identified a range of stress factors, there are many other issues that can cause stress in people’s lives.

Activity _unit2.3.3 Activity 4 Lightening the load

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

a.Are there other stress factors in your life that Holmes and Rahe didn’t take into account in their research? Note them down below.
You might find it helpful to draw a picture or mind map to get key issues down on paper. Your thoughts can be private; you don’t need to share them with anyone else.
b.Are there other pressures you can remove for now?

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Comment

You may have issues on multiple fronts – working several jobs, or different children needing support with different transitions; recovery from illness or uncertainty about finances; or just the nagging sense that there are piles of ironing in different places and you can never find a pair of socks. It is helpful to note down consciously what is going on to assist you in deciding which issues you might want to prioritise and which ones to leave to one side for now.

Now you’ve looked at your stress factors, are there pressures you can remove from yourself for now? For example, are there activities which you want to do, but can postpone for a few months? Are there roles that you used to take on, but which are less essential now, or which could be delegated to others? Try to identify at least one area where you can reduce the pressure.

Throughout this course you will consider the relationship between your personal resilience and career resilience. But what does career resilience mean?

In the next section, you’ll explore it in more detail.

3 Career resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

While personal resilience describes your ability to adapt and respond to changes throughout your life, career resilience focuses more specifically on your resilience to change within your work-life and career – whether that is within or outside your control.

Watch the video below to find out how Rebecca Fielding, an experienced leader on recruitment and talent management, defines career resilience.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 2 What is career resilience?

Video _unit2.4.1 Video 2 What is career resilience?

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Transcript: Video 2 What is career resilience?

REBECCA FIELDING

I think there’s a whole piece now about career resilience in the longer term, which is that it’s unlikely that any of us now are going to have the same career for the whole of our lives. Many of us will find that the skills or educational training we did in our early lives have become obsolete within 20 or 30 years, because of the pace of change.

And so I think career resilience in its broadest term is recognition of the need that we all have for lifelong learning, for agility and flexibility, as we move from one role to another, from one organisation to another, and potentially from one career and specialism to another. And I think that’s going to happen for more and more of us in the future.

End transcript: Video 2 What is career resilience?

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Video _unit2.4.1 Video 2 What is career resilience?

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Rebecca reflects on career resilience as a need for lifelong learning, agility and flexibility as we change roles and organisations, but there are other definitions too.

A review of the literature undertaken by Mishra and McDonald (2017, p. 216), found little agreement on how to define career resilience, with some studies describing it as an ability to recover from career-related setbacks and others seeing it as more of a developmental process. Their own definition aims to combine both of these elements as follows:

Career resilience is ‘a developmental process of persisting, adapting and/or flourishing in one’s career despite challenges, changing events, and disruptions over time.’

Another way to look at it could be maintaining equilibrium in your working life over time and in the face of organisational change and stress.

Career resilience is developed throughout our lives and embraces elements of:

the challenges and changes that people seek out and respond to
regrowing a sense of personal control
a clear focus on goals for the future.

In this course you will learn about career resilience and explore strategies for developing it. Our approach is about more than weathering stress, change or redundancy. Strategies to develop career resilience look at the bigger picture and focus on your longer-term career development. Career resilience is not about maintaining the status quo, but about maximising control over your own personal goals for the future.

There is a growing body of research linking career resilience with other important areas of career development, including the personal development and learning suggested by Rebecca in the video, as well as career change. You’ll explore these ideas in more detail in the next section.

3.1 Why is career resilience important today?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

In today’s workplace, change is almost constant, and an ability to adapt to change and demonstrate resilience is sought after by every employer.

Figure _unit2.4.1 Figure 4

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This is a decorative image of a chameleon perched on a branch. The branch is half teal, half pink. The chameleon has adapted itself to match where the branch colour splits, with its front half pink, and back half teal.

Figure 4

Schawbel (2021) describes several workplace trends that have shifted over the last eight years. The table below links some of his points to wider commentary about career resilience.

Table _unit2.4.1 Table 2 Workplace trends
Changing workplace trends	Impact on career resilience
The rise of the gig economy – with an increase in short-term contracts and freelance work.	While this approach is successful for many, managing the reduced job and financial security, and making it work for you, requires career resilience.
The emphasis on workplace diversity – changing how companies view, support and invest in diversity.	This shift could open up new career opportunities for those who might not previously have applied for certain roles – having the confidence to do so is closely linked with career resilience.
A significant widening of the skills gap, i.e. the gap between the skills employees have and the skills needed to do their jobs.	While many employers are taking responsibility for upskilling their workforces, career resilience plays a part in your willingness to embrace new skills and seek further learning.
The acceleration of digital development, e.g. artificial intelligence, social media platforms, virtual reality etc.	We all have examples of when technology has changed our working practices or environment – but the adaptability required to embrace these changes depends on your career resilience.
The demand for employee well-being – exacerbated by an increase in remote working, particularly during the global pandemic.	Employees are demonstrating their career resilience by successfully adapting their working practices, but are also prioritising their own needs and expecting their employers to provide support.

Column 1 adapted from Schawbel, 2021

These, and many of the other changes occurring within the modern workplace, require increasing employee resilience and a requirement to take personal responsibility for learning and career development. You’ll explore some of these trends in more detail when you consider external challenges in Week 3.

3.2 Career resilience and personal development

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Recent research (Srivastava and Madan, 2020), involving banking staff in India, found that ‘individuals feel more satisfied with their choice of career when they are higher on resilience, resulting in higher self-esteem and better health.’ The authors go on to suggest that employers could benefit from introducing resilience training, teaching their staff ‘the ability and tactics to deal with challenges and uncertainty about the future’.

Figure _unit2.4.2 Figure 5

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Figure 5

While many organisations do provide learning opportunities for their employees, increasingly in the modern workplace, the responsibility for personal development rests with the individual.

If your workplace doesn’t offer you resilience training, you could explore informal opportunities to develop it, such as shadowing someone for a morning at their workplace, discussing someone’s job or career and how they got there, or taking on projects as a volunteer, even in an unrelated field. All of these options can broaden your awareness of the options open to you, enhancing your career resilience.

In the workplace, change is often a catalyst for personal development, whether that is specific training to deal with something new, such as the introduction of a different IT system, or training to broaden your knowledge and enhance your future opportunities.

Activity _unit2.4.1 Activity 5 Change and personal development

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Consider an example where change was required at work. This might have been a change of role, of teams, of ways of working, of technology or something else.

Identify the change and what you and/or your employer did to ensure that it was successful. How did that change help you to learn and develop? How resilient did you feel? Write brief notes below or in your notebook.

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Discussion

Perhaps your employer or organisation provided support and learning opportunities to manage the change required. How far did this help you, or might something else have worked better?

If your organisation didn’t offer you support through this change – consider what you could have done instead to explore learning opportunities. Do you know someone who has gone through a similar change at work? What did they do? Could you have approached your line manager to ask for support?

Ultimately, your employer will benefit from boosting your career resilience and maintaining your job satisfaction. If you feel supported and involved in the change, you will be more likely to work with commitment and enthusiasm, embracing it with a forward looking approach. Taking responsibility for developing your own learning can also enhance your career resilience – you’ll look at this in more detail later.

Of course, your own career resilience extends beyond learning for an individual job role or your current organisation and can shape the whole of your working life.

3.3 Career resilience and change

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit2.4.3 Figure 6

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Figure 6

There is some evidence to suggest that the more career resilient you perceive yourself to be, the less likely you are to think about changing career (Mishra and McDonald, 2017, p. 225).

However, it could also be argued that the greater your career resilience, the more confident you will feel about proactively making the changes needed in order to achieve your career goals. In their description of career resilience, Schreuder and Coetzee (2011) talk about a willingness to take risks and an ability to adapt to changing situations by accepting job and organisational changes.

In previous generations, individuals could often expect a job for life – working for the same company for 40 years. In 2019, the average time spent in a job in the UK was estimated to be 8 years (Buchholtz, 2020), so most of us can expect to change our job or even our career direction at some point.

Another significant step away from the job for life has been the introduction of the portfolio career, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2021) as:

‘Designating, involving, or following a pattern of employment characterized by a succession of short-term contracts or part-time work, rather than the more traditional career model of a long-term, full-time job.’

From a career change perspective, this might be seen by some as a more extreme scenario – changing from one career to several. Career resilience plays a key role, as the individual is actively seeking a path that often provides less security and requires them to have greater confidence in their skills and abilities.

Activity _unit2.4.2 Activity 6 Portfolio careers

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch this video about a teacher from New Zealand and her portfolio career, and consider the ways in which she has demonstrated career resilience. Make a note of your ideas in the box below.

Video 3

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Discussion

There are a number of ways in which Bea has demonstrated career resilience:

She made a proactive decision to change her career direction after several years in teaching as she didn’t have the right work life balance.
She was able to juggle as many as 12 different work activities by being organised and proactive.
She spent time working out what she enjoyed and eventually decided to focus on teaching pilates – combining many of the skills she had developed during her portfolio career stage.

As you’ve already seen, career resilience is a very relevant theme when exploring responses to change. In the next section, you’ll look more closely at the links between the two.

4 Resilience and change

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

One way of thinking about career and personal resilience is that developing resilience leads to success in dealing with change.

Psychologist John Fisher has developed a model of personal change – the Personal Transition Curve (see Figure 2) – through work that examines how individuals respond to changes being made within their organisations. Fisher’s work is based on, and advances, earlier work in psychology dating back to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work on death, loss and grief in 1973.

Fisher identifies eight stages of personal transition in response to change in the workplace, ranging from ‘anxiety’ to ultimately ‘moving forward’ – although not all stages are of equal length or significance for each person, even within the same changing organisation.

Figure _unit2.5.1 Figure 7 Fisher’s Personal Transition Curve – larger version available

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Fisher’s transition curve (Fisher, 2012) identifies eight stages in the following order:

anxiety (here there is a speech bubble asking ‘Can I cope?’
happiness (here there is a speech bubble saying ‘At last something’s going to change’)
fear (here there is a speech bubble asking ‘What impact will this have? How will it affect me?’)
threat (here there is a speech bubble saying ‘This is bigger than I thought!’)
guilt (here there is a speech bubble asking ‘Did I really do that?’)
depression (here there is a speech bubble asking ‘Who am I?’)
gradual acceptance (here there is a speech bubble saying ‘I can see myself in the future’)
moving forward (here there is a speech bubble saying ‘This can work and be good’).

There are also sub-stages that branch off from the main curve:

denial – this sub-stage branches away from happiness (here there is a speech bubble asking ‘Change? What change?’)
anger – this sub-stage branches away from happiness
disillusionment – this sub-stage branches away from threat (here there is a speech bubble saying ‘I’m off! … this isn’t for me!’)
hostility – this sub-stage branches away from depression (here there is a speech bubble asking ‘I’ll make this work if it kills me!!’)
Complacency – this sub-stage is greyed out. It begins at anxiety and continues all the way to moving forward.

Figure 7 Fisher’s Personal Transition Curve – larger version available

He also identifies three further ‘points’ where people may get stuck, rather than moving through the transition process. These are ‘denial’ of or ‘hostility’ towards change, and ‘disillusionment’ – where someone may decide that they will leave the organisation. ‘Complacency’ is another element that can run throughout the process.

The transition phases represent a sequence in your levels of self-esteem as you experience change. These changes in self-esteem appear to follow a predictable path, so identifying the eight phases can help you to understand the transition process better.

Although this model describes transition as a sequence, not everyone in job transition will experience every phase. Each person’s progress is unique: one may never get beyond denial or disillusionment; another may drop out during the depression phase; others will move smoothly and rapidly to the later phases.

You’ll explore self-esteem and its contribution to career resilience in more detail in Weeks 5 and 6.

In the next activity, you’ll consider an occasion where you faced change, and try to plot your own transition curve.

Activity _unit2.5.1 Activity 7 Personal transition curve

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Using Fisher’s Personal Transition Curve in Figure 2, and the personal example of change that you identified in Activity 5, think about whether you recognise any of the stages listed here. Make some notes about your own transition curve.

Do you remember experiencing these stages? How long did it take to make the change?

Did you move quickly through the cycle or get stuck?

If you got stuck in ‘denial’ or ‘hostility’, or even ‘disillusionment’ – think about what you could have done to take care of yourself when going through the different stages. For example, talking to others, taking action, focusing on a new activity outside work, etc. Maybe you experienced a successful transition because you did some of these things.

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Comment

If you found this a challenging activity, the thought bubbles used in the Personal Transition curve diagram can be a useful way to think about your own experience – varying from ‘Can I cope?’ (anxiety) to ‘Did I really do that?’ (guilt) and ‘This can work and be good’ (moving forward).

By looking back at previous experiences of change and analysing them in this way – you can gain insight into how you and/or your employer deal with change and perhaps make the next experience a more positive one.

4.1 Problems with a model of change?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Using models such as Fisher’s can often provide an insight that might not otherwise have been found. Alternatively, you may have had some questions about this model. There may be limits to how useful you found it for understanding and developing career resilience. Some additional points that you could consider are:

The model assumes that change is ‘imposed’ from outside the individual through workplace or organisational change. Developing career resilience also includes initiating change – taking personal action to develop your career, learning and skill set.
The model is a general one, and implies that change events happen one at a time. You, and many others, may have experienced multiple changes in your working and personal life in rapid succession or at the same time. Multiple and rapid changes in working and life events can make change seem never ending.
Presenting a model for transition can make it appear as if everyone deals with change in the same way. In his work, Fisher makes it clear that individuals move through these stages in different ways and may experience some stages unconsciously. You may have noted that you have ‘skipped’ stages, or repeated some experiences more than once.

In the final activity, you’ll consider your own learning from Week 1 and set yourself an action that takes you on the first step to building your own career resilience.

Activity _unit2.5.2 Activity 8 Taking action

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Whether you are experiencing change now, or anticipate change in the near future, building career resilience matters.

This activity is an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned from Week 1 of this course. Start by asking yourself what career resilience means to you, and by considering how you have dealt with change in the past.

Adaptability is an important aspect of dealing with change, but it is also about trying new things and pushing what you feel comfortable doing.

What could you do this week to develop your career resilience further?

One option is to find out what other career options might be open to you – perhaps you could chat to someone you know who is self-employed, or search online to find small firms in your sector that are based in your local area. Have a go now.

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Comment

In this activity, you’ve thought briefly about one action that might take you a step further on your career resilience journey. Throughout this course, you’ll focus on several different aspects of career resilience and look at ways to develop your own resilience further.

5 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Well done – you have reached the end of Week 1 and can now take the weekly quiz to test your understanding.

Week 1 practice quiz

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link) and come back here when you are done.

6 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

You have now completed the first week of Developing career resilience.

This week you have thought about resilience and its different aspects. You have considered why career resilience is important in today’s working world and assessed how your own experience of change relates to Fisher’s Personal Transition Curve.

You have also begun to explore your own career resilience, by reflecting on your experiences of managing workplace change and taking action to develop your career resilience further.

You should now be able to:

understand the meaning of the term ‘resilience’
explain the difference between personal resilience and career resilience
recognise the important role that career resilience plays throughout your career and working life
understand how an individual might transition through change in the workplace.

Next week you will explore what is meant by personal resilience in more detail, looking at why some people are more resilient than others and how resilience can be learned.

You can now go to Week 2.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Last week you considered personal and career resilience, stress factors and responses to change. You learned that everyone is resilient throughout their lives – resilience is part of human nature. But that raises a question about the ways in which people are resilient and why some people show more resilience than others in the same situation.

This week you will explore individual resilience factors in more detail. You will complete some activities that will help you to identify your own areas of strength, understand how resilience varies at different times and reflect on whether resilience can be learned.

As with Week 1, note your thoughts and responses in the toolkit or your notebook if you prefer.

Get started with Week 2 by watching this video:

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 Introduction to Week 2

Video _unit3.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 2

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Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 2

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

This week you’ll consider personal resilience, looking at the strengths of resilient people and exploring where their resilience comes from. Is it in our DNA? Or can it be learned? You’ll look at the way resilience can vary over time, and finish by reflecting on your own capacity to bounce back.

End transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 2

Download

Video _unit3.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 2

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By the end of this week, you will be able to:

recognise the strengths of resilient people
understand the different factors that contribute to personal resilience
acknowledge that personal resilience can vary over time
reflect on your own personal capacity for resilience.

1 How do we identify resilient people?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit3.2.1 Figure 1

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This is a decorative illustration of people standing on different-sized blocks.

Figure 1

Studies of children in deprived communities demonstrate that some children cope better than others with difficult environments and events. These resilient children showed particular strengths in:

confidence
intelligence
problem solving
having a positive outlook
being forward thinking.

It seems that while everyone has some degree of resilience to life events, some characteristics help people to be more resilient than others in similar situations.

The American Psychological Association (2014) has identified several factors for resilience in adults. These include:

having caring and supportive relationships within and outside the family
the capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out
a positive view of yourself and confidence in your strengths and abilities
skills in communication and problem solving
the capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses.

These are all factors that can be developed further.

In the first activity this week, you’ll consider the strengths of a resilient person who you know.

Activity _unit3.2.1 Activity 1 Strengths of resilient people

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Take a few minutes to think about someone you know, or a well-known person, who you think of as resilient. Consider in what way, or in what type of situation, they are resilient and what strengths they show. Which of the following do they demonstrate? Which others would you add?

confidence
problem-solving
a positive outlook
forward thinking
a good planner
a good communicator
comfortable with their emotions
intelligence.

Table _unit3.2.1
Name of resilient person	1, Your response 1
Characteristics	2, Your response 2

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Another familiar example of a resilient type of person is an athlete. Watch this short video to see how British gold medal winning sprinter and former gymnast Asha Philip approaches resilience.

Asha Philip on resilience (make sure to open the link in a new tab/window)

While we won’t all need to demonstrate this level of resilience in our lives, we can learn some lessons from Asha’s journey. She talks about the important of having the belief of others, taking things step by step, mental toughness and seeing change or adversity as an opportunity to learn more about yourself. Those lessons can be applied in many different situations.

Following a review of the literature, Kuntz (2020) concludes that ‘Genes, emotional regulation, personality traits, affect, and early life experiences are depicted in the literature as individual factors that influence appraisals of adversity and resilient responses to challenges.’

Next, you will consider some of these influencers in more detail.

2 Is resilience in our DNA?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

In Week 1 of the course you learned that everyone has the capacity for resilience. Looking at the specific characteristics that enable some people to be more resilient than others helps us to think about why some people show greater degrees of resilience than others when faced with a similar situation.

Figure _unit3.3.1 Figure 2

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This is a decorative image of the DNA double helix structure.

Figure 2

But why do individuals develop these characteristics differently? Advances in genetic research over the last ten years have linked various genes to a range of social behaviours. Are genes also linked to our ability to cope with life’s challenges?

Activity _unit3.3.1 Activity 2 In the blood?

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the video ‘In the blood’ with Simon Weston (make sure you open the link in a new tab or window so you can easily return to this page). You can read the transcript for the video here.

Weston is a veteran of the British Army who became well known throughout the UK for his charity work after he suffered severe burn injuries during the Falklands War. In the video he visits the Genome Centre in London to meet psychologists Dr Michael Pluess and Dr Aneta Tunariu and to see if he has the resilience gene.

Note down how Weston explains his ability to be resilient.

Did the video have any broader messages for you?

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Comment

Weston expected that he would have one of the genes associated with resilience and was surprised that he did not. He reflects that he is pleased with this and identifies family, friends and strong networks as essential to his ability to become resilient.

While the scientific community is still divided on the genetic component of mental resilience, psychologists have highlighted the importance of training ourselves to be more resilient.

3 Learning to be resilient

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Can we learn to be resilient from the way that we are brought up from childhood – our early experiences and family background?

Figure _unit3.4.1 Figure 3

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This is a decorative photo of some people who look wet and muddy, climbing a pile of hay bales. This is most likely part of an athletic competition.

Figure 3

Psychologists have argued for more than 100 years that early childhood socialisation has a significant impact on the way that individuals relate to others later in life. This socialisation also supports our resilience, through:

strong and supportive family relationships
family social networks that extend into the community
the development of good communication skills
the ability to show empathy to others
sociability, i.e. a liking for developing new social relationships.

Of course our liking for social relationships is also connected to our personality characteristics. Some people are more sociable than others.

Watch the following video to hear how chartered psychologist Professor Ivan Robertson connects resilience and sociability with personality.

Activity _unit3.4.1 Activity 3 Sociability and social networks

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the video ‘Resilience: personality’ and note how Professor Ivan Robertson explains how resilience is connected to our ability to develop social relationships.

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Transcript: Video 2 Resilience: personality

IVAN ROBERTSON

Underlying personality has an important part to play in our level of resilience. Of course, resilience can be developed, but a personality is the starting point and it's really the platform from which we can build higher levels of resilience. Let me just illustrate that by explaining a couple of ways in which personality might influence how resilient we are. A good area to look at is the area of social support. We know that having a good social support system is important for people's resilience, but building a good social support system is also related to the kind of person we are and the kind of personality characteristics we have. It links to the kind of personality we have in terms of how we relate to other people, how much we enjoy being with other people, how we behave when we are with them, how agreeable we are, how well we empathise with their concerns, and how we build, or we don't build, long-term stable friendships. So the kind of social support that we build and the extent to which we have a really good one is partly a reflection of the other people but it's also partly a reflection of our own underlying personality characteristics. Another important aspect of resilience involves actively confronting challenges rather than hiding from them. But of course to do that you need a level of confidence and self-belief, to enable you to actually take on the challenge. You also need to focus on the challenge in a practical and problem-focused way, rather than being overwhelmed by the emotions in your own emotional reaction. Again, if we look at underlying personality characteristics, those characteristics can have an influence on how we cope with challenges, what our level of confidence is, and some people are just more inclined for example to find it difficult to escape from the emotions that they're experiencing and focus in a problem-focused way on the problem that they're trying to deal with.

End transcript: Video 2 Resilience: personality

Video 2 Resilience: personality

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Consider what his explanation means for you. Can you identify whether your personality type might have a positive impact on your resilience? Or might you need to find other ways to develop it? Make some notes in the box below.

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Comment

Robertson describes the importance of personality and social support systems for resilience, but he emphasises that these aren’t static things and can be learned and developed. He identifies key factors, such as how we behave with others, how we build long-term friendships, our empathy and the ways in which we actively confront challenges. In particular, he also identifies the ability to remove ourselves from overwhelming emotions in difficult times as important.

You will be looking at both social networks and at the means to handle difficult emotions through the course.

The way we live our lives is not determined by our childhood experiences. There are many success stories of sports people, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and people in your own community who have achieved in many fields, despite difficult backgrounds and obstacles to success.

You might think that if the personality characteristics that we are born with play such a key part in our resilience – it can’t be learned after all.

CEO Genie Joseph, founder of ACT RESILIENT, disagrees. She outlines three types of resilience that she has identified through her work with US military personnel and their families (Joseph, 2012). They are:

Natural resilience – the resilience you are born with. It protects us and encourages us to play and learn and explore our world.
Adaptive resilience – which occurs when challenging circumstances cause you to adapt and grow, becoming stronger and more resilient because of what you have encountered.
Restored resilience – also known as learned resilience. This means you can learn techniques that can restore the natural resilience we had as children.

The implication here is that through adaptive and restored resilience we can certainly learn techniques and build habits that will support us in developing and enhancing our resilience further.

One thing we can certainly do to support our own resilience is build caring and supportive relationships around us.

In the earlier clip Professor Robertson talked of the importance of social support networks, or the ability to develop them, in helping resilience. Simon Weston (Activity 2) also talked about the support of his family and friends contributing to his resilience. According to the American Psychological Association (2014), many studies show that the primary factor in personal resilience is having caring and supportive relationships within and outside the family. These relationships create love and trust, provide role models and offer encouragement and reassurance. This helps to bolster a person’s resilience, particularly in times of difficulty.

So, in summary – while personality traits and strong support networks clearly have an influence on how resilient we are, resilience is also a skill that can be learned and developed.

You’ll explore strategies for developing your own resilience later in the course.

4 Your personal resilience through time

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure 2 shows how an individual’s personal resilience also can vary over time. This is an important consideration, as it can help you to see that it’s normal to feel more or less resilient at different times of your life.

Figure _unit3.5.1 Figure 4

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This is a simple graph showing resilience (x axis) varying over time (y axis).

Figure 4

In Week 1 you looked at some of your recent experiences, focusing on different stress factors in your life and analysing stages of the ‘Personal Transition Curve’. You may already have recognised that some of these changes felt easier to handle than others.

In this next activity you will focus on your own personal resilience over time.

Activity _unit3.5.1 Activity 4 About you: resilience timeline

Timing: Allow about 25 minutes

Access the toolkit, either by clicking on the thumbnail or selecting ‘View’ below. You might find it useful to open it in a new window or tab.

Click on ‘Timeline’ and then using the template provided in the toolkit, or by drawing a timeline in your notebook, think about variations in your personal resilience over time.

This might seem like a daunting task at first, so one way to start might be to divide the line into decades of your life. Then you can identify the points at which you have felt most in control of your life, able to meet and deal with challenges. Follow that by thinking about the points in your life where you have felt less resilient, and then join the points to create your resilience timeline.

Use the line to reflect on:

a time when you may have moved from a feeling of helplessness about a situation to a feeling of control and optimism about the future.
the relationships or circumstances that have made a difference for you. You might realise, for example, that being at home with a small baby removed you from the support networks you had with work colleagues, or alternatively – it might have introduced you to new support networks that you didn’t have before.
whether there is anything from your past experience that you should rebuild into your life to enhance your resilience now.

Save your notes in the toolkit or your notebook.

Interactive toolkit

Comment

This can be a challenging activity, and you may want to spend more time on it. But persevering will be worthwhile in helping you to recognise times in your life when you have felt more or less resilient. Reflecting on why you felt that way in the past could help you to identify strategies for enhancing your resilience now.

We all have the capacity to learn from our experiences and change our behaviour in the future. We can all develop our capacity for resilience – but how can we go about it?

4.1 Growing your own capacity for resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Our ability to learn is crucial in successfully adapting to new circumstances, and this is closely linked to resilience.

How do you prefer to learn new things? When you need to solve a problem, how do you go about it?

Throughout your life, you will already have experienced a variety of ways of learning as you have tackled problems, learned new things and developed new interests. These may include formal training through work or education, or informal learning strategies such as watching a YouTube video, asking others, observing those with different strengths or reflecting on how to do things differently the next time they arise.

Activity _unit3.5.2 Activity 5 About you: your learning preferences

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Understanding yourself and how you prefer to learn can make a difference to your capacity to develop new skills. What works best for you?

If you need some inspiration – think about what you do when you get a new gadget and need to set it up. Do you watch a YouTube video about it, read the instruction book, ask a friend what they do with theirs, or just start pushing buttons and hope for the best? That should give you a clue about your learning preferences.

Take five minutes to note down your thoughts.

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Comment

What did you choose? Experts now agree that this is really just a preference – there’s no reason why an individual can’t learn just as effectively through any of these methods. The difference is that by using your preferred approach, you’ll feel more motivated to learn and find it a more positive experience.

As you saw in Week 1, resilience is often discussed in the context of change. When the aim is to change, whether that’s driven by you or imposed upon you, learning ideally includes:

gaining new information
reflecting on past experiences and listening to feedback from others
assessing how you might approach situations differently in the future
developing an action plan for developing resilience skills and strategies
recognising that sometimes you need a break and respite from a situation first before you have the energy to think about change.

Resilience is also often discussed in a general context, but there are times when developing your capacity for resilience might be in response to a very specific need. In the next section you will look at one person’s experience of building mathematical resilience.

4.2 Growing resilience – a case study

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

You will now look at Heather’s case study, which illustrates a common issue – a difficulty in learning maths. The case study shows how a coaching course helped Heather to set aside her own mathematical fears and to support her daughter’s capacity for resilience, rather than trying to act as an expert providing mathematical expertise or solutions. Academics at Warwick University and The Open University, the authors of this research, describe this as developing ‘mathematical resilience’ – a ‘can do’ attitude to approaching mathematical problems (Johnston-Wilder et al., 2013).

Activity _unit3.5.3 Activity 6 Developing mathematical resilience

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

This activity presents the case study of ‘Heather’, a mother who has taken a course on how to develop mathematical resilience. The case study is in three parts:

Heather’s experience as a child
her feelings as a mother
her increasing confidence in behaving differently following her attendance on a course for parents.

Part 1 Heather’s childhood

Read the following brief outline of Heather’s childhood experience.

Reading _unit3.5.1

I remember sitting in my Year 6 classroom. My teacher was Miss Jackson. We were doing maths, we were working on long division. I got a red cross on some of my work but when I checked on the calculator the answer was correct.

This puzzled me, so when I questioned my teacher she said it was because my working out was wrong. She made me feel stupid in front of my peers when I explained my methods.

In Section 1 this week, you saw that resilient children showed confidence, intelligence, problem solving, a positive outlook, and forward thinking. Which of these traits do you see in this example?

Comment

Heather, as a child, had been willing to ‘have a go’. She had reached a correct answer and asked for clarification when she was puzzled by the teacher marking her answer wrong. The teacher’s response undermined Heather’s existing mathematical resilience, and contributed to Heather feeling embarrassed in class and losing confidence. This led to less willingness to ask questions in the future and loss of mathematical confidence.

Part 2 ‘I just can’t do maths’ – Heather as a mother

Now consider Heather’s description of her experience as a mother, wanting to support her daughter despite her own mathematical anxiety.

Reading _unit3.5.2

Throughout the years, when I've worked with my daughter on maths homework it’s been a combination of falling out, shouting, tears, avoidance, feeling stupid on both parts, her putting herself down, me trying to restore her confidence, but both of us to[o] tense and stressed for it to make any difference. In recent years she began laughing at me for using a calculator and not understanding, pointing out what year she is in and [saying] that I need to go back to school.

Consider which of the supporting factors for resilience (outlined in Section 3) Heather is able to draw upon, and which she does not put to use:

strong and supportive family relationships
family social networks that extend into the community
the development of good communication skills
the ability to show empathy to others
sociability, i.e. a liking for developing new social relationships.

Comment

In this account, Heather describes a desperately stressful situation in which her attempts to help, as she believes she should, lead to further embarrassment and undermine her role as mother, and further her perception of herself as hopeless with mathematics.

Heather’s stress involves several factors, including her expectations and self-beliefs. Heather had the expectation that, as a mother, she should be able to help as she did with other subjects, and yet saw herself as a failure in mathematics.

Although Heather shows empathy with her daughter’s mathematical struggles, communication has become difficult and Heather is not drawing on extended networks or relationships.

Part 3 ‘A can-do approach’ – Heather supporting mathematical resilience in her daughter

In the next extract Heather has changed her approach following a course at her daughter’s school to develop ‘coaches for mathematical resilience’. In this programme, which aims to train people to become effective coaches, an individual begins by working through their own anxieties towards mathematics in a safe and collaborative environment alongside other parents.

Reading _unit3.5.3

One day after she came home from school, she curiously asked me for the text book they had been working from that day in school. She confidently flicked the page open to an angles section, where there was a page full of lines in all directions. She said: ‘We were doing this today but I don’t get it.’

So I said, ‘Well let’s have a look then!’

Within a few minutes she understood. It turned out that all that really confused her was the layout of the page as it was full of lines set up in twos connecting at one point and they were heading in all sorts of directions.

Identify which of the resilience characteristics Heather is now drawing on to support her daughter:

strong and supportive family relationships
family social networks that extend into the community
the development of good communication skills
the ability to show empathy to others
sociability, i.e. a liking for developing new social relationships.

Comment

Heather’s response was getting out the home copy of the school text, being curious and supportive, and listening. There was no need for her to input any mathematics.

Her daughter expected Heather to be helpful and supportive without knowing current school mathematics. If she needed any maths help, the daughter would contact a maths expert with her mother’s support and encouragement.

Heather is now dealing with a request for help with confidence, showing good communication skills as she allows her daughter to talk through her problem and she uses the school resources effectively. She isn’t letting her own negative experiences cloud the current situation. In taking the course, Heather has drawn upon wider community networks with the school and developed new friendships with other parents in a similar situation. Heather shows empathy and a strong, supportive family relationship with her daughter and recognises the level of help that she is able to give.

While this case study started with a focus on mathematical resilience, it soon developed into a wider discussion about resilience and the advantages of a supportive environment, where Heather took on more of a coaching role.

The involvement of a coach will introduce support, respect, compassion and validation, without judgment, to a situation, and this can help the other person to feel safer in taking risks.

Is there anyone in your life who does this for you now? Or do you take on this role for others? You’ll explore the benefits of coaching in more detail in Week 6.

5 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Well done – you have reached the end of Week 2 and can now take the weekly quiz to test your understanding.

Week 2 practice quiz

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link) and come back here when you are done.

6 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you have thought about personal resilience and the strengths of resilient people. You have looked at how levels of personal resilience vary between people and over time, and considered how genetics, your upbringing, support networks and your learning can all influence this.

In answer to the question posed in the title of this week ‘Personal resilience – born or made?’ you have seen that both aspects play a part. We are all born with some resilience, but our resilience is shaped further by our experiences and the support networks around us.

You should now be able to:

recognise the strengths of resilient people
understand the different components that contribute to resilience
recognise that personal resilience can vary over time
reflect on your own personal capacity for resilience.

Next week, you’ll start to assess your own resilience in more detail, reflecting on your current situation and using different models to stimulate your thinking.

You can now go to Week 3.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week, you will draw together what you have learned so far and consider your own resilience. You’ll explore a range of different tools and actions that could help you to answer the question ‘How resilient am I?’ While some of this week’s content could certainly be applied to personal resilience in a range of situations, you’ll focus here on its relevance to your career.

As before, continue to use a notebook or the online interactive toolkit to write down your thoughts and to complete the activities.

Get started with Week 3 by watching this video:

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 Introduction to Week 3

Video _unit4.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 3

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 3

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

This week you’ll start by reflecting on your own resilience. You’ll use different models and quizzes to stimulate your thinking, and consider how understanding your values, and seeking feedback can support your resilience. Employers look for resilience too, and you’ll learn how they assess it during recruitment.

End transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 3

Download

Video _unit4.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 3

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

use models of resilience to assess your own ability to adapt and ‘bounce back’
understand the part your values can play in supporting resilience
reflect on where you gain the most support for your career resilience
recognise how recruiters might assess your resilience.

1 Reflecting on your current resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit4.2.1 Figure 1

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This is a decorative photo of a woman sat at a table with a laptop, looking out of the window.

Figure 1

Now that you have a broader understanding of resilience, this is a good point in the course to reflect on why you chose to explore your career resilience in more detail. As you learned in Week 1, career resilience can broadly be viewed from two perspectives:

Your ability to bounce back when faced with challenges in the workplace or wider world of work.
Your resilience throughout your career in seeking opportunities, setting and achieving goals, and maintaining a trajectory that satisfies your needs.

Perhaps you chose to do this course because you find change at work difficult to deal with and would like to build your resilience, or maybe you want to take steps to ensure that your career is successful, and develop your confidence in moving forward to the next step.

Activity _unit4.2.1 Activity 1 What do you hope to gain from this course?

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Choose which of these statements best describes your reason for undertaking this course on career resilience:

I find change at work difficult to cope with and would like to learn how to handle it more effectively.
I see lots of changes coming in my sector and want to learn some tactics that will help me to thrive.
I want to have a resilient career.
I want to understand more about resilience and the characteristics of resilient people.
I am worried about the potential impact of future pandemics or other world crises on my career.
I want to focus on developing a new path for the future and need to build my confidence.

If none of these statements describe your current motives for learning more about career resilience, add your reason(s) here:

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Comment

Having a clear understanding of what you want from the course will help you to recognise the most relevant learning for you. While it will be useful to engage with all the course content, you can pay particular attention to the sections that resonate with your needs.

If the idea of assessing your own resilience feels daunting, there are a number of models you could use to give your thinking some structure. You will look briefly at two of them in the next section.

1.1 Models of resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

The 7 Cs of resilience

Originally developed for children and teenagers by US-based paediatrician Kenneth Ginsberg (2014), the 7 Cs of resilience can also be used in an adult context. They are:

Competence – knowing how to handle situations effectively.
Confidence – knowing you are competent.
Connection – having close ties to family, friends and community.
Character – having a fundamental sense of right and wrong.
Contribution – contributing to your community, which can bring a sense of purpose.
Coping – learning to cope with stress.
Control – understanding that you can control the outcomes of your decisions.

Reflecting on how developed each of your Cs are can give you an insight into where you might need to do more work. For example, you might need to develop better coping strategies, or rebuild important personal connections that have slipped over time.

The Resilience doughnut

Lyn Worsley (2006) has developed a model for personal resilience that illustrates different factors of internal and external support using a clear and colourful image.

Figure _unit4.2.2 Figure 2

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This diagram shows the ‘Resilience doughtnut’. This is shaped like a ring doughnut, with ‘I Have, I Am, I Can’ written in the centre. The ring itself is divided into seven segments: The Partner Factor, The Skill Factor, The Family Factor, The Education Factor, The Friends Factor, The Community Factor, The Work Factor.

Figure 2

The model covers three internal and seven external factors. The internal factors are: I have (resources), I am (self-esteem) and I can (self-efficacy). The external factors focus on support from parents, skills acquired, family networks, education and relationships with teachers, peer friendships, community links and money, i.e. economic stability.

By identifying our strongest positive factors and reconnecting with those in times of crisis, the support and encouragement we receive can help us to be more resilient, providing a sense of purpose to help us recover, sustain and grow through a crisis.

Worsley goes on to suggest that resilient adults will have identified at least three strong factors which they can reconnect with during times of stress or crisis, enabling them to survive and thrive.

Activity _unit4.2.2 Activity 2 Choose a model

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Choose one of the two models outlined (or research another one if you prefer) and think about how it applies to you when you’re faced with a stressful situation.

If you choose the 7 Cs, consider each one and identify any areas that might need further development.

If you choose the Resilience Doughnut, which of the factors are the strongest for you? Perhaps the way you were brought up by your parents, or support from your peers? Try to identify at least three that stand out for you and remember that they can be a strong source of support when you need to boost your resilience.

Discussion

This is a useful way to start thinking about your own resilience. In Week 1 you looked at your Holmes-Rahe stress factors and your Personal Transition Curve, and in Week 2, you plotted your personal resilience through time. This activity should help you to identify where you are now. How resilient do you feel?

How did your chosen model relate to your experience of dealing with stressful situations? Is there anything you have identified that could help you with future stresses?

1.2 Resilience quizzes

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

If you didn’t find the models a useful catalyst for reflection, there are other resources available that can prompt your thinking.

Figure _unit4.2.3 Figure 3

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This decorative image shows a pile of coloured rectangular cards with question marks on them.

Figure 3

Online quizzes will ask you questions about different elements of resilience, prompting you to consider it in more depth. One example is the US-based Al Siebert Resiliency Center Resiliency Quiz, which you can access here:

Al Siebert Resiliency Center Quiz (make sure to open the link in a new tab/window)

While it doesn’t have a particular ‘career resilience’ perspective, questions about the way you think and the things you do in response to setbacks are equally relevant if you apply them in your work context.

MindTools (n.d.) offers a similar quiz but with more obviously work-orientated questions. It is based on the work of Cooper et al. (2013) who identified four elements of resilience. They are:

Confidence – taking risks, admitting mistakes and learning from them, and accepting praise graciously.
Social support – building good relationships with people at work and seeking support and help from them in dealing with problems.
Adaptability – understanding and reflecting on your failures, being open to new ideas and situations and managing stress.
Purposefulness – having clear goals and focussing on them no matter what setbacks occur.

Access the quiz here as one of the three free articles they offer prior to subscription:

MindTools resilience quiz (make sure to open the link in a new tab/window)

Quizzes such as these are often not academically rigorous, and their conclusions won’t define you absolutely, but they can play a useful part in expanding your thinking.

If you’d rather talk to a person about your career resilience, career coaches or careers advisers could help you to understand more about yourself in this context. You’ll learn more about the support they offer in Week 6.

2 Understanding your values

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit4.3.1 Figure 4

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This decorative image shows a multidirectional signpost, like you’d see at a crossroads. Four signs point in the cardinal directions. They read: respect, integrity, ethics, honesty.

Figure 4

A different way to start thinking about resilience is by connecting it with your values. Knowing that you are acting on your values can be a source of strength when things are challenging, so identifying your values can be a useful step towards greater resilience. This is equally relevant for personal and career resilience.

Cresswell et al. (2005) found that affirmations of personal values can reduce the effect of physiological and psychological stress responses. When the eighty-five participants completed either a value-affirmation task or a control task prior to participating in a laboratory stress challenge, those who had high self-resources and had affirmed their personal values reported the least stress.

In the next activity, you’ll identify your core values so you can use them to enhance your resilience whenever you need to.

Activity _unit4.3.1 Activity 3 Visually identifying your values

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

You’re going to create a values reminder that you can refer back to when necessary. Focus on general values that you consider to be important in your life – they will be equally relevant to your work and career.

Ideally, you should identify between three to five core values that you can easily reflect on. Many more than that, and it becomes much harder to keep them in mind and apply them in your life.

Here is a list of values from a Psychology Today article (Davis, 2018) that you might find useful to start your thinking:

Authenticity • Adventure • Balance • Bravery • Compassion • Challenge • Citizenship • Community • Creativity • Curiosity • Determination • Fairness • Freedom • Friendship • Fun • Generosity • Growth • Honesty • Integrity • Justice • Kindness • Knowledge • Leadership • Learning • Love • Loyalty • Openness • Optimism • Recognition • Respect • Responsibility • Security • Self-respect • Social connection • Spirituality • Stability • Status • Wealth • Wisdom

If you want a longer list, use your preferred search engine to search ‘list of values’ and you’ll find many options.

When you’ve identified your core values, look for visual images (or words if you prefer) to represent them.

Be as creative as you like with this – you can use drawings, photographs, cut things out of magazines, or use text. If you’d rather use technology – you could use a visual ideas board app, such as Pinterest or Corkulous, or even design a PowerPoint slide. The point is to create a visual prompt that you can put on your wall or keep on your desk, to quickly remind you of your values when needed.

If you don’t enjoy visual activities, print out a list of values and circle those that you feel are the most important. If you want to take it a step further, you could describe why each value is important to you or find inspirational quotes that reflect each one.

Discussion

There are no right or wrong answer with values, you are simply identifying the things that are most important to you. Once you have a visual reference, you can look at it whenever you need to boost your resilience – reminding yourself of the things that are really important to you.

For example, if one of your values is learning or growth, and there are no more opportunities for learning in your current role – reminding yourself of that value could be a catalyst for moving on in your career. Similarly, if one of your values is respect, and you don’t feel you’re working in a respectful environment, you could either take steps to address that – such as discussing it with your colleagues – or consider what type of working environment might suit you better.

3 Collecting feedback

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit4.4.1 Figure 5

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This decorative photo shows a man smiling and giving a thumbs up.

Figure 5

Analysing your own resilience can be a challenging activity, and depending on your preferred learning style, you might want to collect the views of other people in your life.

There are many benefits to collecting personal feedback from others – it can enhance your self-awareness, allow you to set goals for your personal development and help you understand how your behaviour might impact on others.

Activity _unit4.4.1 Activity 4 Asking for feedback

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Identify someone you trust and respect, and ask them if they think you are a resilient person. If you choose a family member or friend, they might not be able to comment on your career resilience, so is there anyone in your workplace you could discuss this with? A mentor or trusted colleague? Perhaps someone you’ve worked with in the past?

If you can think of an occasion where you faced a specific challenge and ask them how they thought you handled that – this could be a useful way to start the conversation.

Discussion

Although resilience is a very personal quality, a different perspective can sometimes bring us new insight into personal characteristics we weren’t aware of.

4 How recruiters assess your resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

So far this week, you’ve looked at various ways to assess your own career resilience, but the other place where resilience can be scrutinised in a career context is during the recruitment process. This is often because the role itself requires high levels of personal resilience, for example in a healthcare setting, or fast-paced retail environment.

In the next activity, you’ll consider how a senior recruiter looks out for resilience during the assessment process.

Activity _unit4.5.1 Activity 5 Resilience in recruitment

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Charlie Reeve, Group Talent Manager at the Go Ahead Group, has extensive experience leading on recruitment and training for some of the UK’s biggest employers, from retail and public transport to professional services. In the video below, he discusses how, in roles where resilience is a key part of the job, he looks out for it during the assessment process. Watch the video and note any points that are new to you.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 2 Observing resilience in applicants

Video _unit4.5.1 Video 2 Observing resilience in applicants

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Transcript: Video 2 Observing resilience in applicants

CHARLIE REEVE

As a recruiter, when I’m looking for a resilient applicant, what I’m looking to see is how well they cope with a problem, a challenge, how much they persist at trying to solve that problem, how they engage the people around them – if it’s an assessment centre, for example – to solve that problem. But more importantly, what I’ll try and do is I’ll try and push them into a position where they’re facing failure, perhaps, in some way, shape, or form. And it’s the way that they cope with that failure, the things that they do in terms of the mechanisms they have already learned to cope with that failure and how they talk about their emotions of going through that particular exercise, that for me start to denote a growth mindset. And so as a recruiter I’m looking for a series of positive indicators on a list of, a piece of paper that I can simply just check off and say, ‘Yes, this person’s got more of a growth mindset than a fixed mindset.’

End transcript: Video 2 Observing resilience in applicants

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Discussion

Charlie looks out for how well candidates cope with problems and challenges, and how well they engage people around them to help solve problems if things are going sideways. For some roles he will push candidates to a situation where they are facing failure, for example, by adding new information part way through an assessed task. This allows him to see how they cope with that failure in a stressful situation, which coping mechanisms they have already learned and how they talk about their emotions.

He is seeking positive indicators that the candidate has more of a growth mindset than a fixed one, i.e. believing they can change and improve things, and that they and others can change.

You can see how a growth mindset and a positive outlook on life in general add value in the workplace.

In the next activity, you will consider how best to demonstrate what Charlie is looking for in job candidates.

Activity _unit4.5.2 Activity 6 Demonstrating resilience in recruitment

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

What might Charlie Reeve be looking for on an application form or in the situations you’ve previously considered, e.g. at a job fair or in an appraisal? Watch this video and note down what Charlie has to say.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 3 A growth mindset in your applications

Video _unit4.5.2 Video 3 A growth mindset in your applications

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Transcript: Video 3 A growth mindset in your applications

CHARLIE REEVE

When you’re applying for a job, or you’re going for an interview, and you want to try and get across the sense that you have a growth mindset, you can do that by using very positive language, talking about your strengths and things that you’ve achieved. In an interview, it comes across in the way that you try to deal with problems. So, talking about times that perhaps you’ve faced difficult challenges and you’ve overcome those, so, the way in which you’ve approached that challenge, showing that you have passionate interest in something, but you’ve also used your network around you to help you get to where you are today. It’s not just been about you in glorious isolation.

End transcript: Video 3 A growth mindset in your applications

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Video _unit4.5.2 Video 3 A growth mindset in your applications

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Discussion

Charlie describes resilient candidates using positive language, and showing enthusiasm, demonstrating clarity on their strengths and on what they’ve achieved despite challenges. He is looking for candidates who collaborate with others within a network, rather than those who tend to operate in isolation.

Another recruiter describes how she assesses applicants for management consultancy roles by giving an hour-long, case study group task, in which they need to come up with a joint proposal for the way forward. Thirteen minutes before the end of the task the candidates are given additional information that dramatically shifts the exercise. Assessors are looking at candidates’ reactions and ability to come up with something workable in a challenging situation, a task that reflects the demands of the job.

Similarly, social work recruiters describe role-play situations where the candidate is put in a scenario where their proposal for the way forward is rejected out of hand. Recruiters are looking to see how the candidate handles their feelings of helplessness and vulnerability, how creative they are able to be under pressure, the extent to which they will bounce back and continue to make their case in a new and fruitful direction to meet the needs of their client, or whether they crumple at the first resistance.

While not all employers are explicitly looking for individuals to demonstrate their resilience during the recruitment process, they will all value a resilient candidate. As you’ll learn next week, change is almost a constant in the modern workplace and your resilience will be highly valued, by both managers and colleagues.

4.1 Coping with rejection

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Another aspect of resilience in the recruitment process is your ability to cope if you don’t get the job or promotion. TargetJobs (n.d.) offers the following advice for dealing with job rejection:

Rejection doesn’t mean you did anything wrong – another candidate happened to stand out more on the day.
Rejection isn’t personal – the outcome of a recruitment process isn’t about you as a person; it’s a ‘snapshot’ view of you according to how closely you have demonstrated a set of competencies, behaviours and values on a particular day.
Rejection happens to everyone – even current CEOs, world leaders, bestselling authors and other seemingly successful people will have experienced knockbacks in their lives.
Rejection means you’re still learning – the best way to improve your interview technique is to attend interviews; very few people are naturally good at them the first time around.
Rejection doesn’t mean you’ll never work for the employer – the recruitment process assesses you for a particular role at a particular point in time, and your chance of success depends partly on who else applies. The employer is not saying they never want you.

The best way to respond to rejection is to learn from it and use what you’ve learned to do better next time. This is resilience in action!

5 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Well done – you have reached the end of Week 3 and can now take the weekly quiz to test your understanding.

Week 3 practice quiz

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link) and come back here when you are done.

6 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you have learned about different models for personal resilience, and the part that your personal values can play in boosting it. You’ve also explored how recruiters assess candidates for resilience during their recruitment processes.

You should now be able to:

use models of resilience to assess your own ability to adapt and ‘bounce back’
understand the part your values can play in supporting resilience
reflect on where you gain the most support for your career resilience
recognise how recruiters might assess your resilience.

Next week you will explore various external challenges that can impact on your career resilience.

You can now go to Week 4.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Welcome to Week 4 of Developing career resilience. This week you will shift your attention from the personal aspects that make up career resilience, to look at external influences on your working life.

You will explore how external trends can have an impact on your career and start to look at how to respond. With external change, we can’t control whether something happens or not, but we can control our response to it.

Continue to use your notebook – or the interactive toolkit – to write down your thoughts and responses to the activities.

Get started with Week 4 by watching this video:

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 Introduction to Week 4

Video _unit5.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 4

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Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 4

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

This week, you’ll focus on how factors beyond your control can impact on your career exploring challenges such as climate change, political decision making, advances in technology, and different ways of working. You’ll also consider more personal changes including redundancy, and look at the value of team resilience in your workplace.

End transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 4

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By the end of this week, you should be able to:

identify external challenges that might impact on your career resilience
understand the value of career resilience when facing external change
recognise how a supportive employer and a positive working environment can enhance career resilience
understand the part that team resilience plays in supporting your resilience in the workplace.

Activity _unit5.1.1 Activity 1 Starter for ten

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Before you start, take a few minutes to consider external changes that have had an impact on your job or your employment sector over the last few years. A recent example for most of us would be the impact of COVID-19, but you might prefer to focus on something different.

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Discussion

Keep these external changes and challenges in mind as you continue through this week.

1 Career resilience when the world changes

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit5.2.1 Figure 1

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This decorative image shows Earth as seen from space, at a medium orbit distance.

Figure 1

In recent times, we have seen significant change throughout the world, and responding to that positively has required many of us to demonstrate career resilience. Global changes, perhaps driven by economic or political imperatives, may feel far removed from day to day working life, but many of them will eventually have an impact on us.

Climate change is a good example of something that will ultimately have a significant impact, but that may currently seem irrelevant for many of us at work.

1.1 Climate change

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

There are different ways in which climate change might impact on the workplace, ranging from increasing temperatures affecting how comfortable or safe we are at work, to new emissions regulations impacting on key industries such as manufacturing and agriculture.

The Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN) has recently developed a job tracking tool that estimates how UK employment will be affected by the transition to a green economy. Their research (Robins et al., 2019) has found that one in five workers, 6.3 million jobs in total, will be affected by the transition to a net-zero carbon economy in the UK, with around 3 million workers requiring upskilling and around 3 million finding themselves in high demand. They go on to estimate that while around 80% of existing jobs will not be significantly affected, few businesses will be untouched – needing to upskill their workers or hire new ones.

In Week 1, you considered the importance of personal development (i.e. learning new skills, gaining new knowledge) in enhancing your career resilience, and this will undoubtedly become a significant consideration for many as the climate crisis progresses.

Activity _unit5.2.1 Activity 2 Climate change and you

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Spend a few minutes reflecting on the potential impact of climate change on your own work life. Perhaps you’ve experienced difficulties on your daily commute due to flooding, or maybe your company has recently had to invest in some form of air conditioning to keep your working environment comfortable. Has the canteen stopped using single use plastics?

Wherever you are in the world, your government may have committed to reducing emissions by a certain date – what might be the impact of that on your employer? Could the tools or processes you use change?

Perhaps you’re considering a change of employer or career so you can focus on a greener way of working, or contribute to tackling climate change in a more pro-active way.

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Discussion

Hopefully you will have listed a few things that have already changed in your workplace, or are about to. Being aware of these changes is helpful for your resilience as it allows you to plan and prepare more effectively for future eventualities.

This planning might be more focused on your personal resilience at this stage, but changes to the way you work or who you work for will be easier if your career resilience is strong. You’ll look at ways to enhance your career resilience later in the course.

No course on career resilience would be complete without some acknowledgement of COVID-19, and you’ll look at the impact of catastrophic events such as a global pandemic in the next section.

While the impact of climate change has escalated over a period of decades, there are other catastrophic events that occur much more suddenly and unexpectedly. You’ll consider those in the next section.

1.2 Catastrophic events

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit5.2.2 Figure 2

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This decorative photo shows a workplace during COVID-19, with four individuals maintaining social distance and wearing face masks.

Figure 2

In early 2020, the World Health Organisation classed the COVID-19 outbreak as a disaster, one of the few catastrophic events in recent history to have affected the entire global population.

Although the issues surrounding COVID-19 may have significantly improved by the time you are completing this course, there may be other unexpected, catastrophic events that have a similar influence on our work lives, ranging from natural disasters to terrorist attacks and other infectious disease outbreaks. Resilient people, with a positive approach and a range of coping mechanisms are likely to do better in these circumstances than those without.

Kuntz (2020) collected data from 61 workers in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic, and identified the following common stressors:

role stressors, including increased workload, job complexity and added time pressure
perceived lack of managerial support and infrequent or ambiguous communication
technology, e.g. needing to quickly learn new software with limited support
feeling unsafe at work – relating to lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and poor social distancing
job insecurity
teamwork issues, including poor team coordination and strained interactions
customer incivility, such as being shouted at, insulted or ignored
work-life conflict, particularly for those working from home.

From the perspective of an employer wanting to maximise the resilience of their staff, Kuntz (2020) also summarises the following as the most frequently cited resilience-promoting resources:

teamwork quality
a learning culture
participation in decision-making
flexibility
role clarity
ongoing feedback
clear organisational communications
peer and leadership support
developmental opportunities.

Even if you are not the manager of a team, there will be points in this list that you could raise with your manager or investigate further in order to enhance your own resilience.

Regarding your own career resilience, whether you see a particular stressor as an ‘overwhelming threat, manageable challenge, or opportunity – offers a strong indication of individual resilience’ (Kuntz, 2020).

Depending on your country’s political system, government decisions can also have an unanticipated impact on your career resilience. You’ll explore that in more detail in the next section.

1.3 Political events

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

So far, you’ve looked at issues that have the potential to impact on all of us globally, but there will also be changes that have a more focused impact on your country or region.

Many of these changes are triggered by political decisions, and one recent, significant change within the UK has been Brexit.

Brexit

The word Brexit is a combination of ‘Britain’ and ‘exit’, and is used to describe the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union (EU).

While industries that rely heavily on trade with Europe, or those that attract large numbers of workers from overseas are likely to feel an obvious impact from Brexit, the longer term, overall effects on business and the economy are not yet known.

Brexit, or the impact of other political decisions, on your career resilience may depend on:

a.Your own political views, whether you were able to contribute to the decision making process, and if you felt positive or negative when a particular decision was made.
b.The significance of its impact on your sector, organisation and day-to-day working life.

From an organisational perspective, the more your employer is able to anticipate, prepare for and adapt to any change and disruption caused by decisions such as Brexit, the more resilient you as an employee are likely to feel. If your employer is able to keep you informed at every stage, this will help further.

One way to enhance your career resilience during times of political change is to ensure you keep yourself informed. That way, you will be able to plan and prepare for the potential change that is coming and feel more resilient as a result.

2 Career resilience when the world of work changes

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

In Week 1, you looked briefly at changing workplace trends such as the loss of the job for life, and in this section, you’ll consider some others in more detail.

Some of these trends develop slowly over several years, so you might not notice them happening, particularly if you are at the beginning of your career. Your workplace’s response to others, such as changes in technology, could have a much more direct impact on your daily working life.

No matter what kind of change you experience, individuals who have a positive outlook and well-developed coping strategies are more likely to demonstrate resilience. From the perspective of career resilience – if you can find a way to embrace change in your workplace, you might even find it a positive experience.

2.1 Changing workplace demographics

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit5.3.1 Figure 3

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This decorative photo shows a number of blocks with cartoon heads and shoulders. The blocks and people shapes display a range of colours.

Figure 3

‘Workplace demographics’ relate to the characteristics of individuals within your workplace. Categories include age, gender, ethnicity, education and religion, essentially describing the differences and similarities between you and your colleagues.

As workplace demographics become increasingly diverse, this can play a part in our career resilience. If we don’t take the time to understand our colleagues’ perspectives and experience, this can lead to conflict – and conflict in the workplace can have a negative impact on career resilience. One example of changing demographics is the multigenerational workforce.

The multigenerational workforce

For the first time in history, up to five different generations could potentially be working alongside each other, ranging in age from 18 to 80. Each generation brings its own characteristics and priorities, and this can have consequences in a shared workplace, particularly around different communication styles. If poor communication leads to conflict, that can have an impact on our career resilience.

Watch this short video from Dignify, which describes each generation, and the way people in each category prefer to communicate and adapt to change.

Video 2 Generations in the workplace

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Boogaard (2019) describes several tips to help us thrive in multigenerational workplaces, including:

Challenge your assumptions – there’s no longer an obvious correlation between age and knowledge and experience.
Be explicit about how you prefer to communicate – some generations prefer written communication, others prefer to talk.
Explain the why behind your actions (communication again!)

As you’ve already seen in Week 2, personal resilience is stronger when backed up by supportive relationships, so ensuring that your workplace relationships are good can only enhance your career resilience.

Activity _unit5.3.1 Activity 3 Generational differences

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Spend a few minutes reflecting on people you’ve worked with who have been significantly different in age to you. Were there any challenges, for example, around communication or expectations? Make a list in the box below.

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Now think about the benefits of working with those individuals. What did you learn from their perspective? Did they have a positive impact on your own career resilience? Make a note here:

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Discussion

Looking through your list of challenges – could you have done anything differently in order to address them? Perhaps some of Boogaard’s ideas around making it clear how you prefer to communicate or explaining why you took certain actions might have worked.

If you felt they had a positive impact on your career resilience, was that because you felt you had their support? Perhaps they shared advice and experience that was useful in career decision making. If not – could you have asked them for advice that would have been valuable?

Another significant area of change over the last decade has been developments in technology, and you’ll explore that in more detail in the next section.

2.2 Advances in technology

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Over the last decade, we’ve seen the introduction of social media, cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), and for many individuals, this has had a significant impact on the work they do.

Figure _unit5.3.2 Figure 4

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This decorative image shows a robotic hand and a human hand reaching out, and touching fingers (much like in the film E.T., or the painting The Creation of Adam).

Figure 4

A 2019 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimated that ‘14% of existing jobs could disappear as a result of automation in the next 15-20 years, and another 32% are likely to change radically as individual tasks are automated’ (OECD, 2019).

More positively, a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD, 2020) suggests that the positive impact of technology – through job enrichment and new professional development opportunities – outweighs the negative. In fact, their survey showed that 35% of employers that had introduced AI and automation in the last five years saw more jobs as a result.

All this potential uncertainty can be unsettling, and your personal and career resilience will play a key role in allowing you to view this change as opportunity. Training could be a very relevant response to this particular challenge.

2.3 Flexible working

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Whichever sector you work in employers are always looking for ways to improve productivity, and this can often require greater flexibility from their employees.

Figure _unit5.3.3 Figure 5

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This decorative photo shows a woman seemingly working from her kitchen, with a laptop and some papers in front of her.

Figure 5

Many employers are exploring alternative working arrangements for their staff, often broadly described as ‘flexible working’.

Activity _unit5.3.2 Activity 4 Flexible working

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Use your preferred internet search engine to research ‘flexible working’ and list the different types you come up with in the box below.

As you list the different options, consider the following:

To what extent is this a work style in the sector or work role that you are in, or interested in? For example, homeworking is not going to be possible for aircraft cabin crew!
Is it a work style that is increasing in your preferred work role?
What benefits might there be to your employer?

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Comment

This is a useful way to explore some options you might not have considered before.

The UK government (GOV.UK, n.d.) lists the following types of flexible working:

job sharing
working from home
part-time working
compressed hours (full time hours over fewer days)
flexitime (working core hours but choosing when you start and finish work)
annualised hours (working a certain number of hours over a year but with some flexibility about when you work)
staggered hours (different start/finish/break times from other workers)
phased retirement (reducing hours and working part time).

If any of the options you researched sounded interesting, it might be something to discuss with your employer. Don’t just talk about it from the perspective of benefits to you though – think about the benefits for them. Also, are there compromises you might propose in return for this flexibility? For example, could you suggest working from the office one day a week if you were a homeworker the rest of the time?

Flexibility is an important element of career resilience. For example:

The more flexible you can be in negotiations with your employer, the more likely you are to come to an agreement that suits everyone.
A flexible working style that suits your work-life balance is more likely to make you feel supported by your employer and lead to greater job satisfaction.

Working from home

This flexible working opportunity touches on other topics you’ve explored this week. It has been a particularly common experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many workers were encouraged to stay at home. It is also something that has become easier with developments in technology allowing for virtual face-to-face meetings and access to shared documents.

For many people it has been an enjoyable and productive experience, but for some it can lead to feelings of isolation.

Watch this short video from Mental Health First Aid England to hear some hints and tips about how to reduce those feelings of isolation and support your mental health. This, in turn, will enhance your career resilience.

Video 3 Supporting your mental health while working from home

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Their advice to:

get set up
get moving
get connected
get support

is very relevant to maintaining career resilience too.

3 Career resilience when your employer makes changes

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

So far, you’ve considered significant changes that can impact on many industries and individuals. In this section, you’ll focus on the smaller scale changes that can take place in your workplace, but which can have a significant impact on your own career resilience.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

One way to assess your current workplace environment is to consider your needs and whether they are being met.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology consisting of a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as levels within a pyramid. Watch this short video to find out more:

Video 4 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

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If we apply this model specifically to the workplace (see Figure 6), we can better understand the needs an employer must meet in order for us to achieve our true potential. If any of those needs aren’t met, that can have an impact on career resilience.

View larger image

Figure _unit5.4.1 Figure 6

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This diagram shows a variation on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as applied to the workplace. This is a five-tiered pyramid. The levels, from bottom to top, are: Physiological needs, e.g. the right facilities, appropriate technology; Safety needs, e.g. health and safety in the workplace, job security; Social needs, e.g. team, colleagues, friends; Esteem needs, e.g. respect from colleagues, status; Self-actualization.

Figure 6

One of Maslow’s tiers focuses on safety. That might apply to physical safety, health and safety or perhaps security. Redundancy is a situation that certainly affects our personal sense of security as well as our economic security, and you’ll explore this in the next section.

3.1 Redundancy

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Depending on the circumstances, experiencing redundancy can be a challenge to anyone’s resilience.

Resilience coach David Ogilvie (2020) offers 8 ways to deal with it resiliently:

If you’re going to take it personally, make it quick – it’s the role that’s being made redundant, not you, and thinking of it this way can help.
Drop the cynicism about any offer of free support available – take any support offered and make it work for you. It can often open up opportunities.
Stop looking back and focus on what you want to gain – try to see yourself as a transferable skillset and consider using your redundancy money to obtain relevant skills or qualifications.
Don’t carry around baggage – don’t share your anger or disappointment in subsequent interviews.
It’s not falling in the water that makes you drown, it’s staying there that does – in other words, take action, take a first step and work from there.
Look around you – focus on the good things in your life like family, friends and activities, and make time for them.
Put yourself first and the business you are working for second – continue to be professional and constructive but realise that now is the time to put your needs and interests first.
Look after your mental health – it’s important to prioritise your wellbeing. Try to open up and talk to someone you trust about your feelings.

As you can see from this advice, using support networks and prioritising self-care are key to maintaining career resilience in this situation.

When someone is made redundant, although the impact is felt most significantly by that individual, there can also be an effect on the remaining staff. The next section looks briefly at the potential impact of staffing changes on career resilience.

3.2 Staffing changes

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Even if you feel secure and supported at work, throughout your career there will often be times when valued colleagues leave or the leadership within your department or organisation changes. These can also be moments where your career resilience is tested.

You probably see your work colleagues more often than you see some of your family, so it can be a wrench if they decide to leave, especially if they have provided some of the support that has enabled you to maintain your career resilience.

Activity _unit5.4.1 Activity 5 Losing a trusted colleague

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Think about a time when a staffing change at work had a significant impact on you. Perhaps a close colleague was made redundant, or found a fantastic new job. Or maybe the manager you had a great relationship with moved on, and was replaced by someone you didn’t respect. Sometimes relationships that have always been good, suddenly change – perhaps because the other person is struggling with stress or other issues that have arisen.

In the box below, note how you felt about that change. What were your emotions?

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Now consider what you did to move on. How might those actions have supported your career resilience?

Discussion

You might have experienced lots of different emotions, including anger, jealousy, worry or disappointment. You may have felt those mixed feelings of being happy for them at the same time.

Career resilience is all about your ability to recover from these feelings and maybe even see the situation as an opportunity. It could be a chance to take on some new responsibilities, or learn from the knowledge and experience of a new colleague with a different perspective.

Taking action is also an important way to support your resilience – for example, inviting your new colleague for a coffee so you can get to know them better, or ensuring that you stay in touch with the person who is leaving.

The resilience of your workplace team is another important facet of your overall career resilience, and much can be done to facilitate it. Find out more in the next section.

4 Team resilience and how to support it

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

As you will have realised throughout this week, the support of your team and your manager can play a significant role in enhancing your career resilience.

Figure _unit5.5.1 Figure 7

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This decorative image shows a group of people in a circle, with their hands in together.

Figure 7

A resilient team manages adversity in a way that strengthens its ability to deal with future challenges, but most researchers agree that having a group of individually resilient team members does not necessarily mean that team resilience will occur. Hartwig et al. (2020) suggest that collective responses to adversity require effective communication, collaboration and co-ordination among team members.

Facilitating an environment that supports those three things is a managerial responsibility, but you can also play your part in communicating clearly and being open to collaboration. Watch this short film from the University of Surrey on developing team resilience. This is especially relevant if you are the leader of a team, but is also useful for other team members to understand.

Team resilience (make sure to open the link in a new tab/window)

If you are a team leader – what steps could you take to implement some of the advice from the film? If you are another team member – how might you encourage your manager to take on board the changes required?

5 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

It’s time to complete the Week 4 badged quiz. It is similar to previous quizzes, but this time instead of answering five questions there will be fifteen.

Week 4 compulsory badge quiz

Remember, this quiz counts towards your badge. If you’re not successful the first time, you can attempt the quiz again in 24 hours.

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link) and come back here when you are done.

6 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you have learned about a wide range of external challenges, from those affecting everyone, to more specific ones in your workplace. You’ve considered how developing your career resilience can allow you to respond more positively to the changes and challenges that arise.

You should now be able to:

identify external challenges that might impact on your career resilience
understand the value of career resilience when facing external change
recognise how a supportive employer and a positive working environment can enhance career resilience
understand the part that team resilience plays in supporting your resilience in the workplace.

You are now halfway through the course. The Open University would really appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future improvement in our optional end-of-course survey, which you will also have an opportunity to complete at the end of Session 8. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Next week you will consider a range of different ways to boost your career resilience, learning about different strengths and tactics.

You can now go to Week 5.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Last week you explored external challenges to your resilience, from issues affecting us all globally, to changes within your workplace. This week you will look at tools and tactics that can help you to flourish and move your career forward. You’ll look at self-belief and self-efficacy, what you believe you can achieve and how people continue towards their goals in the face of difficulties.

Do continue to note down your thoughts and responses to the activities either in a notebook or in your online toolkit.

Get started with Week 5 by watching this video:

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 Introduction to Week 5

Video _unit6.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 5

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Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 5

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

This week, you’ll look at various ways to improve your resilience. You’ll start by considering self-esteem and self-efficacy, exploring your motivation, and identifying tactics for dealing with setbacks. You’ll use the GROW goal setting model, and develop your own successful career narrative. You’ll finish by learning to look at challenges from a different angle.

End transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 5

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Video _unit6.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 5

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By the end of this week, you should be able to:

explain the difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy
consider personal goals and tactics to overcome setbacks
create your personal career narrative
understand the importance of reflecting and reframing in building career resilience.

1 Self-esteem and self-efficacy

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

The concepts of self-esteem and self-efficacy are closely related but slightly different. Frank (2011) describes them as ‘the pillars of the self-concept’, influencing whether our sense of self is positive or negative. She explains that they ‘do tend to correspond, so a person who is low in one is more likely to be low in the other’ and believes that both can be improved. But what are they?

1.1 What is self-esteem?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit6.2.1 Figure 1

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This is a Venn diagram with ‘Self-image’ and ‘Ideal self’ in the two circles. The overlapping segment is labelled ‘Self-esteem’.

Figure 1

The phrase ‘self-esteem’ is used to talk about the beliefs you have about yourself – what you think about the type of person you are, your abilities, the positive and negative things about you and what you expect for your future.

If you have healthy self-esteem, your beliefs about yourself will generally be positive. You may experience difficult times in your life, but you will generally be able to deal with these without them having too much of a long-term negative impact on you.

If you have lower self-esteem, you may tend to focus on your weaknesses or mistakes that you have made. You may find it hard to recognise the positive parts of your personality. You might talk to yourself in a critical tone that you wouldn’t use with others, or might blame yourself for any difficulties or failures that you have.

Frank (2011) recommends the following ways to improve self-esteem, which echo much of what you are learning throughout this course:

Eliminate negative self-talk – be careful about how you talk to yourself and avoid being self-destructive. You’ll learn more about positive self-talk in Week 6.
Recognise strengths – pay attention to and appreciate your strengths rather than focusing on your weaknesses.
Recognise self-worth – you deserve respect and to be treated well, by yourself and others.
Accept mistakes – you have flaws and you make mistakes just like everyone else.
Accept rejection – no-one succeeds at everything and no-one can be liked by everyone!

1.2 What is self-efficacy?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Self-efficacy, a concept developed by the psychologist Albert Bandura (1995), is closely related but more specific. It refers to an individual’s belief in their ability to complete tasks and to achieve their goals. Another name for it would be self-belief.

Self-efficacy describes our judgement about our ability in specific tasks or activities; self-esteem reflects our feelings about ourselves more generally. Your degree of self-efficacy has an impact on:

the way you choose tasks, goals and actions – how high you aim and whether you risk taking on tasks that are a bit of a stretch
how you are motivated – how much time and effort you make to achieve or complete a task
how you think about challenges, obstacles and lack of achievement. For example, someone with high self-efficacy may view an unsuccessful job interview as due to too little preparation beforehand, whereas a person with lower self-belief is more likely to conclude that they are not good enough for this job, or any other job like that.

Self-efficacy makes a big difference in times of transition. It can affect whether you apply for a job that you feel might be a bit of a stretch.

So, what can you do to boost your beliefs about yourself?

Activity _unit6.2.1 Activity 1 Boosting self-belief

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Think about someone you know who has high self-efficacy beliefs in an area where you feel less confident.

What do they do?
How do they behave differently from you?
How might they behave if something doesn’t work first time?
What do you think they say to themselves or how do they think differently?

If you are struggling to think of someone you know, you could choose someone in the public eye, such as a politician or reality TV star.

Write down your thoughts.

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If possible, have a conversation with someone with high self-efficacy beliefs in any field. In Activity 1 of Week 1, you looked at what resilient people say to themselves, e.g. ‘Get back in the saddle’. What self-talk does this person have when they are aiming high, or doing something they are uncertain will come off? Are there possible lessons there for you?

Bear in mind too that self-efficacy is linked to tasks, so you might have high self-efficacy beliefs around chairing a meeting, and lower ones around changing a wheel on a car, or vice versa.

Frank (2011) makes the following suggestions for improving your self-efficacy:

Develop skill set – identify your areas of deficit and determine what you need to do to improve.
Modelling – observe others who are successful and aim to model their behaviours.
Focus on specifics – general feedback is less useful.
Reinforcement – focus on what you do well and reinforce it by giving yourself specific praise.

Having a strong sense of self-efficacy allows us to stay motivated when setbacks occur. This is another aspect of career resilience that you’ll explore in more detail in the next section.

2 Achieving goals and dealing with setbacks

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Cherry (2020) describes three major components of motivation:

Activation – the decision to initiate a behaviour.
Persistence – the continued effort towards a goal even though obstacles may exist.
Intensity – demonstrated by the concentration and vigour that goes into pursuing a goal.

Figure _unit6.3.1 Figure 2

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This is a decorative photo of a woman sat with a laptop in front of a brightly coloured wall. She is raising her arms and cheering.

Figure 2

Another definition of motivation comes from Laurie Mullins, an academic and former Territorial Army instructor. He describes it as a ‘driving force’ (Mullins, 2002), suggesting the creation of energy within us to move us into action. You have probably experienced this whenever there has been something you really wanted, such as winning a race or passing an exam.

Whatever our goals and motivations, there are times when difficulties arise and progress is slow. It is at these times that people with high self-efficacy persist in taking actions, while others give up.

Activity _unit6.3.1 Activity 2 Grit and persistence

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

In the video ‘Personal best: persistence’, OU sports academic Jessica Pinchbeck talks with athletes about developing ‘grit’ to overcome adversity and make progress towards their goals. Watch the video and note down what the athletes describe as helpful in keeping them moving towards their goals.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 2 Personal best: persistence

Video _unit6.3.1 Video 2 Personal best: persistence

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Transcript: Video 2 Personal best: persistence

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JESSICA PINCHBECK

Persistence is a personality characteristic that’s been shown to be highly important in those people who are successful. An American professor, Angela Duckworth, has coined the term ‘grit’ to explain this persistence. And she defines grit as the effort and interest over a period of years overcoming setbacks, adversity, or plateaus in progress towards a goal.

CATHERINE FAUX

I can’t truthfully say that every single training session is a bundle of laughs, because it is hard. And that’s what training is about. It’s an element of discipline as well as enjoying it. But most of the time, if I’m not feeling totally up for a training session, by the end of it I’ll be glad that I did it. And during the training session as well, I’ll be glad that I’m doing it.

OWEN DAVIES

Well, on the pitch, you know, I always have a continual optimism that I can be better. And so, you know, today it’s going to be a tough game. Last week we had a tough match, and we were 4-2 down on point. I had belief that we could go back.

We did bring it back to four. And I always have a deal of optimism that we can do that. But it’s tough.

And actually it’s looking at the facts and seeing that it’s not working. And the great thing is, sport’s not maths. It’s not a set result. And if you have the heart and you have the belief and you can fight for it, you can actually turn around tough results.

[CHEERING]

JESSICA PINCHBECK

In order to develop this grit, Duckworth has linked it to the growth mindset. So thinking that things aren’t fixed, so intelligence is very malleable, and here what we do is we look at setbacks as something that we can learn from and grow from, rather than seeing them as a failure or a reflection of our ability. So, having that growth mindset and being able to build upon that and being able to look at setbacks and problems that we encounter and turn them into a positive to help us focus and stay motivated towards our goal is really key.

POPPY BLAKE

When it gets tough, I find it easier to keep going if I remember what my goals are so that I want to make GB team again, or remembering what I’ve done in the past and how good that was and, yeah, trying to do that again. Or if I want something more than I’ve ever done before, just remembering what those goals are.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

End transcript: Video 2 Personal best: persistence

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Comment

Jessica Pinchbeck talks about persistence and having a ‘growth’ mindset. These athletes do not think that their current performance is fixed; instead, things can change as they learn from setbacks. The athletes describe times when they turned situations round, keeping positive, keeping a focus on goals, remembering the good feelings that they had at times of previous success and asking themselves ‘How can I grow from this setback?’

Keeping motivated towards goals can be difficult and require persistence. As for the athletes in the video, bigger goals can take years to achieve.

The athletes describe gaining persistence from clear goals, positive feelings of success and believing that they can turn setbacks around. The nurses in Activity 6 of Week 5 described the factors that motivate them at work, and you looked there at some of the factors that motivate you. How far might any of the tactics from the video support you? Which?

If the goal feels a long way off, noting down even small steps towards it can make a difference, in the same way that athletes note tiny fractional improvements on their personal best. Note down your thoughts.

2.1 Dealing with setbacks

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Dealing with setbacks is an important part of self-efficacy, self-esteem and resilience. If you encounter a setback do you see it as a sign you weren’t meant to attempt that task anyway, or can you see it as a chance to learn and try again, maybe in a slightly different way?

Figure _unit6.3.2 Figure 3

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This is a decorative photo of a seated crowd, seemingly at a sporting event or similar. The people look disappointed, either grimacing or with their heads in their hands.

Figure 3

Joseph (2018) describes three broad ways of coping with setbacks, labelled as:

problem-focused coping – resolving difficulties by taking steps to remove threats and find solutions. Those who use this strategy can focus their attention on the problems at hand without being distracted.
emotion-focused coping – managing one’s emotions through talking with supportive others. Through these conversations individuals can seek new perspectives, correct incorrect perceptions and find new insights.
avoidant coping – trying not to think about the situation or finding ways to shut out any feelings.

He goes on to explain that none of these approaches are all bad. For example, it can be helpful to avoid a problem until we are psychologically ready to confront it. But his experience shows that the problem-focused approach is usually the most effective.

He concludes that coping is a skill that can be learned, the first step being to recognise our own preferred approach. Which do you use? Do you focus strongly on one, or combine all three?

Activity _unit6.3.2 Activity 3 Setbacks

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the brief video ‘Personal best: setbacks’ with OU sports academic Caroline Heaney, in which athletes explore setbacks they have had in the process of achieving personal goals, and the ways in which they try to deal with them productively. Note down their tactics.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 3 Personal best: setbacks

Video _unit6.3.2 Video 3 Personal best: setbacks

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Transcript: Video 3 Personal best: setbacks

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CAROLINE HEANEY

Setbacks can be thought of as challenges or obstacles or hurdles on your path to achieving your goal. And I think it’s important to think of those as natural obstacles or part the process of achieving a goal because it’s very rare that things run smoothly, and you will come against obstacles that you’re going through a goal-achievement process if you like.

POPPY BLAKE

Recently, the last couple of years, I faced quite significant setbacks in running. I had a few years where I was running really well and made, sort of, the international teams and things. And then it quite quickly went downhill because I got two stress fractures, one in each leg, which is quite – it’s not funny looking back on it, but it’s a good thing to come through. But at the time it really is quite a sort of devastating thing for a runner. And when you’ve kind of been on the rise for so long, suddenly it takes the plunge. So yeah, that’s my biggest setbacks.

CAROLINE HEANEY

I think it’s very important to have a positive mindset in how you respond to a setback, because setbacks almost represent a turning point. So, when a setback occurs, it’s either an obstacle that you’re going to overcome or it’s an obstacle that’s going to stop you achieving your goals. If you’ve got a positive mindset, you’re much more likely to approach that hurdle and overcome it and move on.

CATHERINE FAUX

So, in terms of dealing with things which are outside of your control and maybe unhelpful, I’ve said this a number of times, but controlling the controllable. So, you can’t control everything, and that’s the beauty of sport. That’s the beauty of competition. And it’s the way that you deal with those things. But controlling the controllables is exerting as much influence as you possibly can on the things which are easy to do. And you can plan for things that may or may not happen.

And you can put things in place that will help you deal with them when they do happen as far as possible. So, I would never go into a race without a plan of how I might deal with a puncture. And I think knowing that you are as well prepared as you possibly can be despite the fact that you might never get that setback or it might happen and it might all go terribly wrong, but I can do as much as I possibly can. So, I carry more tools and more ways of dealing with it than others might, which might negatively impact on my speed because I’ve got to carry all this extra stuff, but in my head when I’m standing on the start line and I know that I’m as well prepared as I possibly can be, I find that is a boost and it helps me to shut down the negative thoughts of things that might happen which I’m not in control of.

[CHEERING]

OWEN DAVIES

Often how do I overcome setbacks? It needs me to identify why it’s happened. And so with being dropped, I wasn’t sure as to the reason, so it was helpful to talk to my coach, talk to my captain, find out those reasons and then, you know … Because I thought they were valid reasons, but they were things I can change, and they’re things I want to change because I wanted to be playing for that first team.

And so it drove me on. So, I actually played really well when I was playing twos for the next few weeks. And when I come back into it, I was playing better hockey because I’ve been spurred on, because I’ve been pushed down a level to actually play better. I wasn’t so complacent with my hockey.

CAROLINE HEANEY

I think coping with setbacks, one of the key things to do is kind of learn from it. So, it’s kind of that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ kind of mindset. So, it’s important to kind of learn from your experiences and use them to your advantage.

And also being flexible in your goal achievement. So, you may have set out a target to achieve at a certain time, but a setback may mean you’ve got to be a little bit flexible, so being flexible in your goal-setting is also important.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

End transcript: Video 3 Personal best: setbacks

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Comment

Some of the tips are:

Recognise in advance that setbacks are natural and part of the process. It is rare not to encounter them!
Respond with a positive mindset.
Control the controllable, accept it might all go horribly wrong but have fall-back plans and be as well prepared as possible, which shuts down the negative thoughts.
To find out why, have uncomfortable conversations, and learn from the setback.
Be flexible in goal setting.

Which tactics do you relate to most? Could you add any of them to your resilience toolbox for future use?

2.2 Achieving goals using the GROW model

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

How can you move from vague intentions to concrete goals with a clear plan of action? You looked in Week 2 at growing resilience (in maths) through coaching. You will now look at a coaching model that you can use independently, without the need for a qualified coach to help you.

Figure _unit6.3.3 Figure 4

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This decorative image shows a leaf growing from the ground.

Figure 4

The GROW model stands for:

Goal
Reality
Options
Way forward (‘will’)

This well-known coaching model was developed by Sir John Whitmore (1992), a pioneer in leadership and performance coaching in the workplace, to provide a simple, structured approach to setting goals effectively and to increasing the range of choices you consider. If you face a setback, this approach will help your adaptability.

In the next activity, you’ll try using the GROW model to set yourself a goal.

Activity _unit6.3.3 Activity 4 Goal-setting with GROW

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Watch this video of the GROW model in action:

Video 4 The GROW model in action

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The video showed someone who was struggling with his presentation skills. Think of something specific that you’d like to achieve in a workplace context, and make it your goal for this exercise. Perhaps it could be talking to someone with strong self-belief, as outlined in Activity 1 this week.

Access the toolkit using the link below. You might find it useful to open it in a new window or tab.

Click on ‘GROW’ and then use the GROW model to consider how you can develop your insight into the goal, and plan steps towards achieving it.

Interactive toolkit

Comment

The key benefit of using a model such as GROW is that it provides structure. By thinking an issue through in stages, you can often identify and articulate the solution much more clearly.

How did you find it? At first it might take you more time to get used to the structure, but over time you’ll be able to run through it more quickly, noting progress and using it to spark new thinking if you feel blocked.

3 Developing a career narrative

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Everyone has the opportunity to star in their own lives. How much do the stories you tell yourself and others reflect the ways in which you personally shine?

Figure _unit6.4.1 Figure 5

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This decorative image shows a film clapperboard with ‘What’s your story’ written on it.

Figure 5

Some individuals create career narratives – stories which give meaning to experiences. Oscar (2015) describes a career narrative as ‘a professional essay outlining both long- and short-term career goals.’ He recommends that it should ‘elaborate on the specific steps that you will need to take to achieve all the goals’ and that ‘narratives must be focused and insightful as they give a clear picture of your future endeavours, as well as your past achievements.’

Alan Price, a lecturer in organisation behaviour, noted that career narratives may help shape what individuals strive for and commit to (Price, 2011). So, having a strong career narrative can potentially have a positive impact on your career resilience.

3.1 Successful career narratives

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

A successful narrative is one that is consciously considered and that shows an understanding of what is, or has been, happening. The explanation of events feels personally credible, sustainable and usable. It can be shared with others: ‘This is what happened to me and this is how I have coped’. It can transform a disjointed series of jobs into a brief powerful explanation.

In practice, however, career narratives are not often this simple. Because narratives evolve over time they may be unconscious. In the same way that people regularly retell the same jokes and anecdotes, over time what people say to themselves and others about their working lives can become habitual. These narratives can hold us back in times of change if they are too rigid. Effective personal career narratives help individuals to stand out.

Writing down and rehearsing your career narrative can give you a chance to plan what you want to say and how you want to say it.

Activity _unit6.4.1 Activity 5 Career narratives

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Consider this example and answer the questions that follow.

Reading _unit6.4.1

During his twenties, Jim had a series of jobs in construction, hospitality and bar work. These had all been to support his main ambition, which was to make a go of his rock band. They had some success, cutting a record and spending seven years gigging all over the country, but after hitting 30, and with the band breaking up, Jim is now planning to change direction. He wants to shift his energies from his music into a career with a steady, more lucrative income.

Imagine you are Jim, explaining your experiences to a potential employer without crafting the narrative first. What might you say? Make notes in the box below.

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Comment

As many employers do, the potential employer in this scenario might start with, ‘Tell me about your previous experience and what you want to do next’. The unprepared Jim might say, ‘Well, I’ve done a bit of bar work, and a bit of labouring, and now I’d like to try marketing.’

While true, this is unlikely to get the best results from the employer, as what it emphasises is an unrelated series of jobs, and suggests a lack of engagement with the old roles or commitment to the new step.

With a bit more preparation, Jim can show what he has done in the past in a more engaging and positive way. His motivation over the past few years has clearly been his band, and this has involved marketing and promoting it, liaising with clubs and negotiating deals, and organising for his friends to go to gigs all over the country. This is all higher level and transferable experience.

People can feel vulnerable sharing something non-work-related and personal in a work-related conversation, but if carefully selected, these can be the elements that have real power.

A better answer might be:

‘Over the last few years I’ve been the informal manager of our band. We’ve had some success, cut a record, and I’ve marketed the band nationally, developing relationships and negotiating with clubs from Manchester and Newcastle to Cardiff. We’ve done some 200 gigs over the last four years, alongside our day jobs. So I’ve tried to be adaptable with my day jobs, and have turned my hand to construction, hospitality and bar work as opportunities came up. Now we’ve decided to disband, I’ll have much more time and energy, and I’m hoping to put my experience in managing and marketing to use in my future career.’

Now review what you’ve written and consider how you might improve it to better fit your future plans. Note down your thoughts.

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3.2 Your own career narrative

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

As in telling any story, you need to think about the following:

What am I trying to say?
What do I want to achieve?
Which are the key parts of my story?
Which parts might jar for this audience and be better summarised, left out or reframed?
How far does this narrative support my next steps?

Take time to look at what your private career narrative is. Which stories are you telling yourself? Are you limiting your choices before you examine them?

Do you find yourself looking wistfully at new jobs, thinking ‘I couldn’t combine that with being a mum’ or ‘That isn’t for me’ (because you didn’t perform at your best in exams 20 years ago at a time of family crisis)?

If you’re interested in career change, one way to approach your career narrative is to complete the sentence ‘A turning point for me came when …’

For example, ‘I’ve always worked as a care assistant with elderly people, but a turning point for me came when I looked back on my experience helping out with my local youth club and realised how much I gained from that. That’s why I’m now applying for social work training.’

Examining how someone else narrates their career story can help you to identify important themes, and to explore how presenting a career narrative in different ways might provide a different perspective. Take some time to ask your family, friends and colleagues what their career stories are. As you hear how others adapt their stories, consider which bits of your career narrative you might use in different circumstances. For example:

at a recruitment fair talking with a stranger
in an appraisal discussing new projects with your manager
at the pub with a trusted friend who works in an area you’d like to explore.

Activity _unit6.4.2 Activity 6 Thinking about your own career narrative

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes.

Choose a scenario where you might be sharing your career narrative, and decide who you will be sharing it with, e.g. chatting to someone at a sector networking event.

Now make a note of the key themes you want to include in that conversation. How do you want to tell that person your story?

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Comment

Sometimes a short version of your career narrative is known as an elevator pitch (so-called because you have approximately the same time to present yourself as you would have in a lift going up to the top floor of a building). Keeping it brief is important as it means you will get to the point quickly and keep the attention of your listener.

Perhaps you could develop a full-length version with everything in it, and then adapt it to meet your needs in different situations.

When creating your career narrative, part of the process involves reflecting on what you’ve done and reframing it appropriately. You’ll look at these techniques in the next section.

4 Reflection and reframing

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit6.5.1 Figure 6

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This decorative image shows a clear triangular prism, with a beam of light shining on it. The light is refracted through the prism, breaking into different colours.

Figure 6

Another useful habit that will help you build your resilience is regular self-reflection.

People with a high degree of self-efficacy often reflect on difficult situations and emotions or unsuccessful activities and identify changes they can make if that situation arises again. The athletes in the videos you watched in Activity 2 this week identified this as one of the ways in which they kept moving forward. But what is reflection?

Reflection

Reflection could be described as:

thinking with a purpose
being critical, but not negative
analysing how effective your learning is
questioning and probing
making judgements and drawing conclusions.

Typically, you would do this by asking yourself questions about what you did, how you did it, and what you learned from doing it.

Activity _unit6.5.1 Activity 7 Time for reflection

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

You know yourself best. When might you find time to think with a purpose or reflect on a regular basis?

Julia Cameron, who works with artists, novelists and scriptwriters, advises quickly writing three pages (‘artist’s pages’) first thing each morning, just downloading what is churning in your head or going on for you, turning the soil before you start the day (Cameron, 1993). Others reflect on their day while having their last cup of tea, walking the dog or brushing their teeth.

How and when might you build this into your own life? Note down your thoughts.

If you decide to note down your thoughts regularly, what will you use? Perhaps you could buy a new notebook, or explore one of the online apps devised for this purpose.

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Comment

Making reflection a habit is a positive move towards greater resilience. Reflecting on events of the day, considering what went well and what went badly, and exploring what you might have done differently will give you greater resilience when you face similar challenges in the future.

A more formal approach to reflection is offered by Gibb’s reflective cycle (Figure 7), which illustrates the different stages in reflection.

Figure _unit6.5.2 Figure 7 Gibb’s reflective cycle (adapted from Dye, 2011)

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This diagram has six stages in a continuous cycle. From the top-left, in clockwise order, they are:

Experience: What happened?
Feelings: What were you feeling?
Evaluation: What was good or bad about the situation?
Analysis: To make sense of the situation.
Conclusion: What else could you have done?
Action plan: What would you do next time?

Figure 7 Gibb’s reflective cycle (adapted from Dye, 2011)

The key to learning from your reflection is spotting the patterns and links that emerge as a result of your experiences. Reflecting on specific situations and your responses may make your personal beliefs, expectations and any biases more apparent.

4.1 Reframing

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Resilient people have been shown to use reflection to reframe difficulties and challenges – this means looking at a situation from a different angle. For example, they might reframe problems or challenges as ‘learning opportunities’.

Everyone reframes some events without difficulty – for example, coming to see the funny side of an event, such as locking yourself out of the house, which might have felt like a disaster at the time. But reframing is also a frequent tactic used by career coaches, because individuals frequently draw inaccurate conclusions, over-personalising what has happened.

Useful questions to use to reframe difficult events can be:

What do you think other people in that situation might do?
What do you think the person you were talking to thought?
What would you say or think if you saw someone else in that situation?
What would your best friend say to you about this?
How do you think you’ll see this five years from now?

Czach gives an example of how reframing works in her Forbes article ‘How to practice reframing during stressful situations at work’. She asks you to:

Reading _unit6.5.1

Imagine that you received an email from a co-worker full of exclamation [marks] and even a few capitalized words. They are “checking in” on your progress on a project and close the email with, “I need to know what’s happening now!”

Naturally, your first reaction might be frustration, defensiveness, impatience or even anger. You might interpret this email to mean they believe you are doing a poor job or that they feel you are incapable of delivering the project on time.

In a situation like this, you would want to reframe your perspective. Before you fire back, ask yourself a few reframing questions such as, “What else might be going on?” or, “What is another way to interpret this email?” Take a moment to come up with several possibilities. Maybe your co-worker is under a lot of stress, or perhaps they have been given an assignment that depends on the completion of yours, so their boss is putting pressure on them. The fact is, there are a variety of equally plausible reasons for the email’s tone.

Reframing allows you to choose how you would like to respond, rather than instinctively react. It puts some distance between your reaction and your response, which helps you see more possibilities.

(Czach, 2020)

With this example, you can see straight away how your career resilience is stronger if you use the distance that Czach refers to and take the time to see more possibilities.

In the next activity, you’ll have an opportunity to put reframing into practice.

Activity _unit6.5.2 Activity 8 Reflection in practice

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

In the timeslot you identified in the last activity (writing some early morning artist’s pages, or reflecting while walking the dog), reflect on one new situation or challenging experience you have recently had. Briefly describe the experience and make a note of how it made you feel.

Now try to reframe your thinking about that experience – look at it from a different perspective. Use the reframing questions suggested just before this activity.

What do you think other people in that situation might do?
What do you think the person you were talking to thought?
What would you say or think if you saw someone else in that situation?
What would your best friend say to you about this?
How do you think you’ll see this five years from now?

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Comment

How did that process work for you in reframing the situation and how do you feel about it?
Which aspects worked well?
Which aspects worked less well?
To what extent did that help you feel more positive?
Is this something you might be willing to try out regularly over the next week?

Seeing the situation from a different perspective can help you to feel better and discover new ways to deal with it the next time it arises.

5 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Well done – you have reached the end of Week 5 and can now take the weekly quiz to test your understanding.

Week 5 practice quiz

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a mac] when you click the link) and come back when you are done.

6 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you have learned about self-efficacy and how positive self-belief helps to support motivation and persistence in moving towards goals. To support your own resilience you have identified a goal of your own and begun to question your personal career narrative.

You should now be able to:

explain the difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy
consider personal goals and tactics to overcome setbacks
create your personal career narrative
understand the importance of reflecting and reframing in building career resilience.

Next week you will learn about sources of support – both internal and external.

You can now go to Week 6.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you will consider some of the internal and external sources of support for your career resilience, including maintaining good physical health, emotional wellbeing and healthy finances. Some of these may feel unrelated to your career, yet finding clarity and addressing issues in these areas can make a big difference to how resilient you feel.

As before, continue to use a notebook or the online toolkit to write down your thoughts and to complete the activities.

Get started with Week 6 by watching this video:

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 Introduction to Week 6

Video _unit7.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 6

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Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 6

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

You’ll start by looking at internal sources of support, such as maintaining good physical health, and identifying rewards to help you deal with stress. You’ll also explore the external support available, including support from your employer, and the benefits of developing your social networks. You’ll finish by looking at the professional support available to you.

End transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 6

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Video _unit7.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 6

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By the end of this week, you should be able to:

describe a range of different factors that support your career resilience
understand the relevance of maintaining physical health and reducing financial insecurity
recognise ways to boost your self-esteem
explore your social networks and use them to support your career resilience
understand how professionals can support your resilience journey.

1 Internal support for resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

There are many ways to support and build your resilience, and in this section you’ll focus on the inner changes you can make.

Figure _unit7.2.1 Figure 1

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This decorative illustration shows a group of paper aeroplanes flying together in a straight line. One paper aeroplane breaks from the group, flying high along its own curved path.

Figure 1

Building your inner strength is an excellent way to enhance your resilience. Focusing on both your physical and mental health can bring many benefits, which you’ll explore throughout this section. You’ll start by looking at physical activity.

1.1 Maintaining good physical health

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

During times of stress, everything can feel out of control. Looking after yourself may not seem possible with everything else that is happening, and yet the benefits of even small changes towards a healthier lifestyle are well-documented. For example, Deuster & Silverman (2013) explain that:

Physical fitness is one pathway toward resilience because it is associated with many traits and attributes required for resilience. In addition, physical fitness confers resilience because regular exercise and/or physical activity induces positive physiologic and psychological benefits, protects against the potential consequences of stressful events, and prevents many chronic diseases.

Another reason to consider your exercise levels is because resilience is about trying new things and new approaches with confidence, and putting on your trainers or going for a walk in the rain can be a low-risk way to kick-start that process.

Mind (2019) explains several ways in which physical activity can support your mental health:

better sleep – by making yourself feel more tired at the end of the day
happier moods – physical activity releases feel-good hormones that make you feel better in yourself and give you more energy
managing stress, anxiety or intrusive and racing thoughts – doing something physical releases cortisol, which helps us manage stress, and being physically active gives your brain something positive to focus on
better self-esteem – being more active can make you feel better about yourself as you improve and meet your goals
reducing the risk of depression – studies have shown that doing regular physical activity can reduce the likelihood of experiencing depression
connecting with people – doing group or team activities can help you meet new and like-minded people, and make new friends.

When we talk about a healthy lifestyle, the common issues are usually diet, weight, physical activity and tobacco or alcohol use. Many of us know what we ought to do next, yet may not be acting on it.

Activity _unit7.2.1 Activity 1 Into action: healthier lifestyle

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Start this activity by noting what benefits there might be for you if you acted on one of your aims for a healthier lifestyle, such as increasing your physical activity, improving your diet or reducing your alcohol intake.

Now consider what, if anything, is holding you back, and try to identify one 20-minute action that you could you take now to get you started.

This could be sorting out your bike so you can cycle to work tomorrow, choosing a club or regular activity class you’d like to join, or starting a new routine of daily walks.

Don’t wait to act – take your action today.

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Comment

According to Mind (2019), even boosting your physical activity at home can be beneficial. Standing up more, doing active household chores or even dancing around the kitchen can all boost your activity levels.

You’ll find lots of other ideas on Mind’s webpage (see the references section for the link).

1.2 Developing self-esteem

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

In Week 5, you explored self-esteem and self-efficacy and their role in career resilience. In Activity 1 that week, you looked at how people with high self-efficacy (strong belief in their ability to achieve their goals) might talk to themselves.

Figure _unit7.2.2 Figure 2

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This decorative photo shows the message ‘Yes you can’ written in sand on the beach.

Figure 2

Some people think of self-esteem as their inner voice, and adapting that voice to become more positive can make a big difference. This is sometimes known as positive self-talk.

Watch this short video by PsychHub to find out more.

Positive self-talk (make sure to open the link in a new tab/window)

How do you talk to yourself when things go adrift? Are you harsher on yourself than you would be on others?

Developing your self-esteem is all about controlling your self-talk and changing the narrative from negative to positive. For example, if you tend to tell yourself ‘I can’t go for that job, I’m not clever enough’, a positive change in your internal dialogue might be ‘I wonder what qualifications and experience the employer is looking for’. If, on further analysis, you find that you don’t have the required qualifications – you could explore how to obtain them and consider possible next steps towards applying for a similar job in the future.

Watch this short video in which Rebecca Fielding, Managing Director at Gradconsult, and a highly experienced leader in recruitment and talent management for some of the UK’s biggest names, speaks about how highly resilient people behave when things go wrong, She also talks about how she boosts her own self-esteem.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 2 What to do when things go wrong

Video _unit7.2.1 Video 2 What to do when things go wrong

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Transcript: Video 2 What to do when things go wrong

REBECCA FIELDING

I think one of the things that I see in people who are highly resilient are those people who are able to not only recognise when something's gone wrong but learn from it and, critically, what I always call the third stage of this process, which is, then let it go. They're able to move on from it. And those people who have high resilience are able to continuously and constantly try new things.

They're not afraid of failing, if it's new. They accept that that's a perfectly normal part of trying to do something for the first time or trying to do something new that nobody's ever done. It's perfectly normal to not do that perfectly the first time. A, they go into it accepting that. B, they're then fully willing to learn from their inevitable mistakes. But, C, the big bit, which most people don't do but highly resilient people do do, is to forgive themselves, learn from it, move on.

And it's the letting it go and the moving on, having taken something from it that, I think, most people really struggle with. A lot of us, I think, beat ourselves up for a long, long time. Highly resilient people have that thing that Soccer AM call “bouncebackability.”

In terms of developing your own resilience, I think one of the most important things that you can do is to give yourself the opportunity to reflect, and to learn, and to be very aware of your own self-talk. So, what are the things that you're telling yourself about your abilities, about your experience, and about your confidence, as you enter into new situations and new scenarios?

Are you telling yourself, I'm feeling good about this, I'm going to give it my best shot, and I believe I can do this? Although there might be things that go wrong, I'll learn from them. Alternatively are you going to those new experiences telling yourself, I don't deserve to be here, I'm going to be found out, and I'm going to fail. And if you are telling yourself those things, they become self-fulfilling beliefs.

And, for me, one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to notice and be cognizant of the stories that you're telling yourself, and to start to, you can't necessarily change them straight away, but start to recognise how that impacts your choices and your approaches to the challenges in front of you. And, if you can, start to change some of those stories.

So, sitting and reflecting, at the end of every day, as I drive home, I ask myself, what did I do well, what didn't go so well today, what can I learn, and how can I be better tomorrow? So, from a personal-development perspective, I think that's one of the most powerful things you can do to become more resilient in your everyday life.

End transcript: Video 2 What to do when things go wrong

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Video _unit7.2.1 Video 2 What to do when things go wrong

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Activity _unit7.2.2 Activity 2 Boosting your own self-esteem

Timing: Allow about 25 minutes

Thinking about what you just heard from Rebecca about positive and negative self-talk, try this activity, adapted from an exercise recommended by the NHS (2018).

Step 1 – Identify any negative beliefs you have about yourself, or negative things you regularly tell yourself, and make a note of them. For example, you might tell yourself you're ‘too stupid’ to apply for a new job, or that ‘nobody cares’ about you.
Step 2 – Think of some evidence that challenges these negative beliefs and write that down too, such as, ‘I'm really good at cryptic crosswords’ or ‘My sister calls for a chat every week’.
Step 3 – Now write down other positive things about yourself, such as ‘I'm thoughtful’ or ‘I'm a great cook’ or ‘I'm someone that others trust’.
Step 4 – Finally, write some good things that other people say about you. If you can’t think of anything, take a moment to ask someone you trust and respect what they like about you, and then come back to the task.
Step 5 – Create a list of at least 5 positive things about yourself, then put your list somewhere you can see it.

Discussion

Try to make this a habit and add to your list regularly. By regularly looking at your list, you’ll keep reminding yourself that you are ok, and this will gradually start to make a difference.

Keeping your self-esteem high

If you are going through times of transition in the workplace, such as your first weeks as a line manager or conflict with a colleague, it can be hard to keep self-esteem high.

The NHS (2018) offers the following simple techniques for boosting your self-esteem:

recognising what you’re good at and celebrating it
building positive relationships with people who appreciate you
being kind to yourself at times when you feel like being self-critical – think what you’d say to a friend in a similar situation
learning to be more assertive – respect other people’s opinions and needs and expect the same from them. Look at people who act assertively and try and copy what they do
saying no – don’t feel you have to always say yes to other people
setting yourself a challenge or goal (such as the one you came up with in Activity 4, in Week 5)

Bear in mind, too, that you don’t have to do this alone. Counsellors can help unpick where and why you are being harsh on yourself – your GP surgery can give referrals.

Which of these tips might make the biggest difference for you? How could you build it in so it becomes part of your routine, like Rebecca Fielding does on her drive home?

1.3 Motivation and reward

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Another inner resource that can have a positive impact on career resilience is your motivation. When we are motivated to achieve something, we can often overcome challenges and setbacks with a more positive attitude. If there are rewards for our brain following a particular action we take, such as the feeling of satisfaction we experience after helping someone, that can boost our motivation and support our resilience even further.

Figure _unit7.2.3 Figure 3

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This decorative photo shows a row of ice cream cones (of various flavours).

Figure 3

Motivation

Resnick (2018) explains that motivation is different to resilience as it ‘is based on an inner urge rather than stimulated in response to adversity or challenge. Motivation refers to the need, drive, or desire to act in a certain way to achieve a certain end’.

She goes on to describe motivation and resilience as being closely related, and suggests that the ‘characteristics of individuals who are motivated and those who are resilient are similar and can be developed over time’.

From the perspective of career resilience, it can be useful to learn from the strategies that other professionals use to maintain their motivation in the workplace. Some people leave stressful workplaces because of burnout, but others are able to thrive and succeed in the face of the same ongoing challenges. What can make the difference?

Reward

In Week 3, you looked at the importance of identifying your personal values and the link between affirming those values and reducing stress. In their review of the emerging literature, Dutcher and Cresswell (2018) also identified ‘the role that reward system neurotransmitters [in the brain] play in stress resilience’, and concluded that ‘a broad range of rewards, from sweet substances to thinking about important values, can have stress buffering effects’.

Lee (2019) explains the pharmacological origins of motivation in layman’s terms. He talks about the importance of a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which carries messages between the neurons in your brain. He describes dopamine’s job as being ‘to encourage us to act, either to achieve something good or to avoid something bad’ and explains that ‘motivation happens when your dopamine spikes because you anticipate something important is about to happen’.

In a work context, if we can motivate ourselves in times of stress – and identify and recognise our rewards for that motivation – we can deal with the stress more effectively, enhancing our career resilience.

Activity _unit7.2.3 Activity 3 Motivation and reward at work

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Part 1

Watch the video ‘Nursing – value and reward’ and note down the rewards the speakers identify that they gain from their work. Open the link to the video (below) in a new window or tab.

Nursing – value and reward (make sure to open the link in a new tab/window)

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Discussion

The speakers describe helping patients understand their disease, making a difference, helping children through hard times, mental stimulation, being appreciated and supporting patients’ recoveries among other rewards. They are clear about the difficulties but also recognise the rewards, i.e. what makes the job worthwhile for them.

Bearing in mind what you learned about values in Week 3, the greatest boost to your resilience should come from rewards that align with your values. Nurses have usually chosen their profession because they have strong core values around caring and supporting – so a positive response from someone they are caring for will reward that.

Part 2

What motivates you in your current role? What gives you that feel-good sense of reward? Look back at Week 3, Activity 4, where you identified your values. Are there any clues there?

Once you have identified the things that motivated you – consider whether there are ways you can increase or prolong their positive impact. For example, if you enjoy reading thank-you notes from clients, can you display them somewhere? If you are motivated by new challenges, could you plan in new projects once a quarter? Note down any thoughts you might have.

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2 External support for resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

So far this week, you’ve focused on the inner work you might need to do to enhance your career resilience. Now you’ll consider some of the external or practical support you can draw on, ranging from monitoring your finances more closely to using your network or benefitting from the expertise of careers advisers or coaches.

A major element of feeling secure and resilient is our financial resilience, defined as ‘the ability to cope financially when faced with a sudden fall in income or unavoidable rise in expenditure’ (Mainwaring, 2020). You’ll look at ways to build your financial resilience in the next section.

2.1 Financial resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Figure _unit7.3.1 Figure 4

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This decorative photo shows a stack of coins.

Figure 4

Our financial resources are made up of our assets (what we have) and our liabilities (what we owe to others, i.e. debts). Unstable earnings or debts can have a major impact on how secure individuals feel. Most of us have had periods of leaving bills unopened or may have been surprised by an unexpected car repair. It is easy to underestimate how much these nagging fears and feeling slightly out of control of our finances can drain our energy.

The impact of financial uncertainty can clearly be linked to career resilience. For example, if you are facing redundancy, worries about how you might support yourself and/or your family afterwards can significantly reduce your resilience at a crucial time, when you need to be at your most adaptable.

More positively, financial insecurity might also drive your career resilience. You may be motivated to set career goals that allow you to progress and obtain a salary that will give you the security you are aiming for.

Understanding your assets and finances is important in times of change, particularly if you are considering a career change or setting up your own business, Knowing what assets you have and tracking your income and outgoings can relieve pressure, so you know that you could afford a month off work without earning, for instance, or can identify which credit card to pay off first. Some people save towards a ‘freedom fund’, putting away 10 per cent of their income each month, to show they are committing to making their longer-term dreams possible. That may not feel possible for now, but what might feel possible today?

As you can imagine, throughout the uncertainty of the recent pandemic, much has been written about building financial resilience, particularly aimed at those in professions where the impact of lockdown and closure was felt strongly. Shaw (2020) offers four tips for building your financial resilience in tough times, that can be applied to whatever challenge you are facing:

Use free mobile apps and budgeting tools – to help you get more ‘hands on’ with your finances and keep an eye on daily changes to your accounts. Some are designed to help with budgeting and set specific savings goals.
Consider interest-free cards – a zero-interest credit card may help to spread your costs, but be sure you can clear your balance before the interest kicks in.
See if it’s worth switching your savings – the top rate deals in the savings market change frequently, so keep an eye on the best accounts.
Future-proof your retirement – bear in mind that the state pension age generally increased to 66 in October 2020 for new retirees, and younger generations face being closer to 70 when they retire. Automatic enrolment ensures that eligible employees are enrolled in a workplace scheme, and adults aged under 40 may also consider opening a Lifetime ISA.

Activity _unit7.3.1 Activity 4 Into action: finances

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Earlier this week, you came up with a 20-minute action to boost your physical activity. What 20-minute action could you do now, that would make a difference to how you feel about your finances?

You might consider some of Shaw’s top tips, or try something else. For example: you could print off bank statements for the last three months and try to identify your spending patterns; you could use a notebook or phone app to start tracking what you are spending over the next month; or you could write down what your teenage child owes you and discuss a repayment plan! Have a go now.

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Comment

If you did take action, how do you feel now? Was it as tricky as you feared? Were you over-ambitious in what you thought you could achieve? How motivated do you feel to take a second step?

Many of us feel on unstable ground about finances. However, getting clearer about your personal situation can help forestall difficulties. Taking small actions to solve problems, from opening a pile of bills to requesting a pension forecast, can build confidence and remind us of just how competent we are.

As well as supporting you financially, your employer might put other mechanisms in place to boost your resilience. You’ll learn more about some of these approaches in the next section.

2.3 Support from your employer

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

There are many ways that employers can support their staff in building their personal and career resilience. For example, you briefly explored what can be done to support team resilience in Week 4.

In some professions, where the demands on employee resilience are recognised to be particularly tough, employers address this in detail. In the next activity, you will investigate how trainee social workers are supported.

Activity _unit7.3.2 Activity 5 Boosting the resilience of social workers

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the following video in which social work recruiter, Pash Selopal, describes how Frontline, his employer, supports trainee social workers to develop resilience.

Make a note of the measures Frontline uses to help trainee social workers develop resilience.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 3 Developing resilience

Video _unit7.3.1 Video 3 Developing resilience

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Transcript: Video 3 Developing resilience

PASH SELOPAL

It's important to note that no one's the finished product. As part of the two-year programme, whilst it's still important for that individual to have their own coping mechanisms and personal support network in place that will help them, as social work's a challenging, emotionally and mentally tough job, so you'll need that personal network, yourself, it's important to note that you'll be working in a local authority with other frontline participants. So you will have that professional support network around you of like-minded individuals that would have started the same time as you.

These individuals, along with your consultant social worker, you will be working quite closely with, in regards to talking about your cases on a weekly or fortnightly basis and discussing hypotheses, discussing proposed solutions, and identifying risks and strengths. And, with that, you are able to also reflect on their observations. And they may help you uncover any of your unconscious biases you may have or perhaps act as a devil's advocate, in terms of challenging some of the hypotheses you've completed. So, having that support network, professional support network, to bounce ideas off is something that's crucial.

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Comment

As the job is challenging, Pash describes the importance of hiring mentally tough candidates who are already resilient, with their own coping mechanisms and a personal network. The programme places groups of participants in the same location to help build a professional network and they receive weekly supervision as a group with a more experienced social worker, where they discuss cases, problems, potential solutions and risks, and challenge working assumptions.

These strategies build on research by Louise Grant and Gail Kinman (2014) at the University of Bedfordshire. Their work looked at factors that enhance resilience in the helping professions. These include:

Supervision: In many helping professions, regular supervision is key. This gives a safe environment where individuals can think about their work, discuss issues with which they struggle and discuss their emotional reactions.
Mentoring and peer coaching: Conversations with others who face the same challenges can make a difference. Feeling part of a peer group, developing social connections, gaining positive role models and experiencing coaching are all successful methods for supporting resilience.
Mindfulness and relaxation: Mindfulness incorporates meditation, yoga and relaxation training. Mindfulness has been associated with increased compassion for self and emotional resilience.
Discussion of case studies: Case studies and role play can open up discussion on problems, decision-making and difficult emotions in a safe environment.

Tactics for you

The strategies used in the helping professions may not be as relevant in other sectors. But could any of them help in your work situation? If your employer is not supportive, you might introduce something yourself on an informal basis. For example, you could try:

setting up regular meetings with colleagues to work through difficult issues together, or organising informal shared lunches to get immediate peer support
joining an online LinkedIn forum, or a closed group on Facebook
exploring yoga and mindfulness groups
joining organisations linked to your sector, such as professional bodies (which often have cheaper student membership fees). They might offer business breakfasts or voluntary groups in your field.

You might find it useful to note down some initial thoughts about this.

It isn’t always about what you do personally – delegating tasks or collaborating with others can be another source of support. Watch this brief video from Rebecca Fielding, with a final tip on what she observes highly resilient, but very busy, people doing at work.

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Video _unit7.3.2 Video 4 Resilience at work

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Transcript: Video 4 Resilience at work

REBECCA FIELDING

So, one of the simplest tricks, or tactics, that I see highly resilient but extremely busy individuals using is to change the question that they ask themselves in their work. Most highly conscientious people – and that's the majority of us – want to do a fantastic job at work. And we come in, and we ask ourselves, when we're extremely busy or under a lot of pressure, how can I do this? How can I do this?

And what I see highly resilient people doing is asking themselves a different question. They say, how can this be done? And that doesn't always mean that it's you. So they are asking themselves about the activity that needs to be done and looking at a multiplicity of ways in which that can be done. It might be them, it might be a colleague, it might be their boss, they might need to insource it, outsource it, or have a temp, or just do it in a different way or at a different time.

But I think those who are highly resilient are able to separate out personal guilt and personal pressure away from the work that needs to be done. And I think that objectivity, and applying that objectivity, is one of the simplest tricks and tactics that I see highly resilient people applying in order to manage their workload.

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Rebecca identifies a key question, ‘How can this be done?’ and suggests that you don’t always have to do something yourself. This is where your professional and personal support networks might be helpful, and you’ll look at those in the next section.

2.4 Developing your networks

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

You’ve already learned how feeling part of a community and having support from others can boost career resilience. So building those networks further is clearly a sensible strategy.

Figure _unit7.3.2 Figure 5

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This decorative image shows a representation of online networks. There are various profile photos of people with lines connecting them. This is set against a cyberspace background, with strings of binary code visible.

Figure 5

But networking, and in particular career networking, can be an area where individuals lack confidence. Some people feel the word conjures up images of unfair advantage, others are unsure how to approach it.

Activity _unit7.3.3 Activity 6 Networking

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the video ‘What is networking?’, in which Wendy Woolery, Careers Advisor at The Open University, explains how you can extend and manage your network. You might want to pause the video to note some of the main points that are covered.

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Transcript: Video 5 What is networking?

WENDY WOOLERY:

What is networking?

Networking is about finding opportunities to interact with others, share information and develop professional and social contacts. It’s a way to encourage you to help yourself.

What does networking involve?

When you network, you need to identify relevant people connected with the work you want to do, build a rapport with them and an interest in what you have to offer, seek their help and advice, listen to their feedback and act on it. You need to be prepared to stand out.

Why network?

It’s a great way to tap into unadvertised jobs. It demonstrates your initiative, you make yourself more memorable by setting yourself apart from the normal application process and you hear about opportunities first, which may open up possibilities you didn’t expect.

How to start networking – key questions.

Who do you already know who might be connected to your career aims? Think about your personal contacts, those you know through your work, your study, or your leisure interests. Who of these already knows you can do a good job? Make them your priority.

How will you get in touch?

By phone, online via social networking sites, or a face-to-face chat.

What do you want from your contacts?

Is it insights on their work and experience? A list of relevant organisations and people? Introductions to others? Feedback on your CV? Advice on your area of interest?

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Now, identify three action points that would help you to extend and strengthen your community or career network.

You might have chosen to call an ex-colleague or agreed to volunteer on a project outside your immediate team – extending your connections a little bit further.

Research shows that having contact with individuals outside your immediate circles proves highly effective. It broadens your exposure to new messages and options, and the range of people looking on your behalf. So venture further afield as your confidence grows.

Online networks

In recent years networking opportunities have been considerably enhanced by the internet.

Of all the online platforms, LinkedIn is the one that can have the greatest impact on your career development. You can use it to find former colleagues or schoolmates, and to find new contacts by sector, job, company and location. It can be a rich source of new information and insight.

Activity _unit7.3.4 Activity 7 Exploring LinkedIn

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Take some time to explore the opportunities on LinkedIn. Depending on your current level of familiarity with this platform, you could:

read LinkedIn’s brief overview (make sure to open any links in a new tab/window)
set up a profile at www.linkedin.com
search for your long-lost colleagues or school friends
search an organisation you are keen to join, to see how your experience matches those who have roles that interest you
read the hot topic threads in groups for the career you’re aiming to get into.

Discussion

You might have chosen to review the Open University’s LinkedIn page, which currently has over 360,000 followers and is thus a significant hub of expertise and contacts in every conceivable sector in the UK and abroad.

Developing your personal networks can give you access to a wide range of knowledge and expertise, but you may decide you need professional support to develop your career resilience further. You’ll find out more about the support provided by careers coaches and other counsellors in the next section.

3 Professional support

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Although this course is strongly focused on using self-help to develop career resilience, there are professionals who can offer support if you need it. For example, most UK universities, such as the Open University, have dedicated careers teams providing free advice and guidance to current students and graduates.

Figure _unit7.4.1 Figure 6

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Figure 6

3.1 Coaching and careers advice

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Coaches use a range of techniques to support you in building your resilience (McFarlane, 2021), including:

Listening to and observing clues – sometimes the words you use will indicate a lack of resilience, or it might be your inability to embrace change at work, or you might feel exhausted all the time. The coach will pick up on that.
Maximising successful examples – you might dismiss your own resilience successes, so a coach can help you to see those differently. You looked at reframing in Week 5 – this is an effective coaching technique.
Developing sustainable resilience – a coach will encourage you to see the benefits of attending to your wellbeing, learning to say no, etc.
Recognising that resilience ebbs and flows – in Week 2, you looked at the resilience timeline, acknowledging that resilience changes over time. By helping you to look back and learn from times when you were thriving, the coach can support you in recognising your own resilience and drawing on it when you need to.
Learning through action – a coach will encourage you to take regular small steps to build your resilience.
Understanding that context is everything – a coach can help you to analyse your work context and see where the issues might be. For example, are you receiving enough support from your employer? How could those needs be met?

You’ve already explored many of these ideas throughout this course, but if you feel you need more direct support through the process of developing your career resilience – a coach or careers adviser can provide that accountability and give structure to your development.

If you are currently studying at the Open University or elsewhere, there may be careers provision within your institution. Most Higher Education institutions will have a careers centre with qualified career advisers/coaches/consultants who you can book an appointment with.

In a large organisation, your Human Resources team might include coaches, or there may be an affiliated service you can be referred to.

If you don’t have access to coaching or careers advice through an educational institution or employer, resources such as the Life Coach Career Directory can help you to search for someone in your local area (you can find a link to this resource in the Further Reading section).

3.2 Counselling

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

For some of the issues involved in resilience, the insight and support of a coach might not be enough, and you may find that counselling is a more productive starting point. A counsellor can help you make sense of your emotional responses to everyday situations, which can impact on your resilience.

As one verified counsellor explains it, a key factor in building emotional resilience is ‘to acknowledge and accept emotions, not to ignore and repress them. […] Knowing and understanding what is behind or underneath these “triggers” means our emotional responses are easier to manage and contain. This is one way counselling can help you build emotional resilience’ (Counselling Directory, 2015).

Mind has a really useful webpage covering how to find a therapist, including via the NHS, charities, your workplace or privately. You can find the link in this week’s Further Reading section.

4 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Well done – you have reached the end of Week 6 and can now take the weekly quiz to test your understanding.

Week 6 practice quiz

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link) and come back here when you are done.

5 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you have thought about the internal and external resources that can support your resilience, considering how you can boost each factor to enhance your career resilience further.

You should now be able to:

describe a range of different factors that support your career resilience
understand the relevance of maintaining physical health and reducing financial insecurity
recognise ways to boost your self-esteem
explore your social networks and use them to support your career resilience
understand how professionals can support your resilience journey.

Next week you will look at the employability skills and strengths that support career resilience.

You can now go to Week 7.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you will consider your existing skills, in particular those skills that support resilience. You will look at the link between resilience and adaptability and use a career adaptability questionnaire to think about your own approach to career development. You’ll also explore the concept of ‘control’ over your working life, and where you feel that currently lies.

As before, continue to note your thoughts either in the online toolkit or in your notebook.

Get started with Week 7 by watching this video:

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Video _unit8.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 7

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Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 7

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

This week, you’ll focus on your skills, identifying those that are important for career resilience, such as problem solving, and effective communication. You’ll learn about career adaptability and your locus of career control, and you’ll see how your skills and strengths make you more employable.

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By the end of this week, you should be able to:

identify the employability skills that are important for career resilience
explain the concept of career adaptability
understand the difference between an internal and external locus of career control
recognise the value of skills and strengths in enhancing your employability.

1 Employability skills for career resilience

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Employability skills help to make you more employable, strengthening your career resilience. Each role requires a specific range of skills, and when you are considering a new job or career change, analysing these skills and comparing them with your own skillset is a good place to start.

Figure _unit8.2.1 Figure 1

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Figure 1

During this course you have learned that some employability skills are particularly helpful in supporting your career resilience. These include:

planning and preparation
communication skills
problem solving.

Developing these skills will be another way to build your career resilience.

1.1 Planning and preparation

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

The better prepared you feel to face challenges in the workplace, the more resilient you will be if/when they arise.

Activity _unit8.2.1 Activity 1 Using planning skills for resilience

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

In this activity, you’ll focus on using your planning skills to support career resilience. First, listen to this brief video from employer Charlie Reeve. In it, he suggests an approach you can take to prepare for challenging times. Could this work for you?

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Transcript: Video 2 An innovative approach

CHARLIE REEVE

I think the single best thing to do would be to try and practise failure. So, try and simulate the things that you know you might encounter in a particular place of work, or a particular experience, and go through the motions of practicing that, so that you start to build the coping mechanisms that will help you be more career-resilient. Now, for every single job and every single sector, that’s something slightly different. So, resilience is very, very context-specific.

But only through that process of simulation and training yourself to learn the coping mechanisms can you then become more career-resilient and confident about when you actually face a situation, that it isn’t a shock, that actually you can face it with some kind of balanced approach and confidence that you have dealt with it before in some way, shape, or form.

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Now think of something related to your career that you regularly worry about or try not to think about at all. It could be a work-related task or event, or it could be a career decision you’ve been putting off.

Take Charlie’s approach and consider all the things you can think of that might cause that activity to fail. Then look for potential solutions. Doing this now, when you’re under no immediate pressure, will help to make you feel more prepared.

Comment

Charlie suggests that one tactic people can have is to imagine failure in advance, to build up the coping mechanisms so when things don’t go to plan, it isn’t a shock. Is this something you might build into your action plan?

Sometimes, emptying your head of all the worries, and then looking for solutions can be really helpful. You don’t need to come up with solutions on your own – if you feel it is appropriate, involve your family or colleagues in your brainstorming. It might be something that has been worrying them too.

1.2 Effective communication

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Arguably one of the most important skills for career resilience is communication. There are several ways in which boosting your communication skills can have a positive impact on your career resilience.

Figure _unit8.2.2 Figure 2

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Figure 2

At work:

being able to communicate clearly with those around you in the workplace can reduce conflict and clarify shared goals, boosting team resilience as well as your own
clear and appropriate communication can enable your voice to be heard by leaders who don’t always ask for feedback
asking questions can ensure you are more informed about upcoming changes and so can plan more effectively
the ability to communicate well with clients can boost your success at work and bring you greater job satisfaction.

Progressing your personal career goals:

positive self-talk is an important form of internal communication – boosting your self-esteem and confidence
good communication skills will enable you to network more effectively if/when you are looking for a new job or career change
good communication skills will significantly enhance your recruitment performance, in applications and interviews.

Clearly, working on your communication skills can be a useful way to build your career resilience.

SkillsYouNeed (2019) suggests four key areas ‘that most of us would do well to improve’:

Learn to listen – don’t forget that listening to the response is just as important as broadcasting your message.
Study and understand non-verbal communication (including body language, tone and pitch of the voice, eye contact, facial expression etc.) – this will help you to understand people better.
Be aware of your own and other people’s emotions, and learn to manage them – this is also known as emotional intelligence.
Develop your questioning skills – crucial in ensuring that you’ve understood someone’s message correctly.

The second point raises the issue of non-verbal communication, an important element of communicating clearly.

Non-verbal communication

As you saw above, non-verbal communication isn’t just about body language – there are other clues you can pick up on that will help you understand a person’s mood and how well they are receiving your message.

Activity _unit8.2.2 Activity 2 Identifying non-verbal cues

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Non-verbal signals are in all of our everyday conversations, from formal meetings, to informal chats.

Watch the short video below and make a list of the positive and negative non-verbal cues that you spot.

Non-verbal communication skit (make sure to open the link in a new tab/window)

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Discussion

For negative behaviours you might have spotted:

looking at his phone
hands in his pockets
checking his watch
shaking his head in disagreement.

Positive behaviours in the second half of the film include:

nodding
slightly raised eyebrows
mirroring gestures
holding his chin.

If you can pick up these cues in your everyday conversations, you’ll gain an advantage in understanding how your contributions are being received.

Here are some other examples of non-verbal cues:

Crossed arms and legs present a physical barrier that can signal resistance to ideas. Avoiding this type of body language can demonstrate that you are interested in a conversation or meeting.
Gestures, such as the way someone uses their hands or arms during a conversation, can impact on the message being delivered. They can either be distracting or used for impact when making key points.
Eye contact – people who avoid eye contact can seem to be untrustworthy or very shy – both barriers to overall performance in a job interview for example. However, it is useful to note that in some cultures eye contact can appear to be disrespectful, so bear that in mind if you are working with colleagues globally.
Facial expressions can help you to understand whether the other party has understood what you are saying, or is listening to you properly.

Emotional intelligence

Another important element of communication highlighted by SkillsYouNeed is emotional intelligence. Watch this short video from MindTools to find out more.

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Transcript: Video 3 Developing emotional intelligence

NARRATOR

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognise, interpret and process emotions in yourself and others. While genetics, upbringing and environment all play a role, there are steps you can take to develop your emotional intelligence over time.

Get to know yourself. Emotionally intelligent people are self-aware. They have a realistic appreciation of their strengths and weaknesses, and how they come across to others. Peer feedback is one way of improving your self-awareness, and may uncover a few of your emotional blind spots.

Learn your triggers. Linked to the notion of self-awareness is knowing how you are likely to respond in particular situations. Think about how you felt the last time you were under pressure. Did these feelings help or hinder you? Recognising emotions, and the source of these emotions, can shift your emotional state.

Empathise. Seeing things from someone else's perspective will help you understand their values and beliefs. This is important when it comes to motivating and engaging others. Make a conscious effort to get to know your colleagues. Ask open questions and actively listen to what they have to say, rather than simply waiting for your turn to speak. Be on the lookout for body language and other nonverbal signs, as these may tell you more than someone is willing to express out loud.

Own your emotions. Part of being emotionally intelligent is about taking responsibility for the way you interact with others. If someone upsets you, pause and reflect on why their actions led you to feel this way, instead of reacting impulsively. Recognise that a conversation is a two-way interaction, and it takes two people to make you angry, sad or frustrated.

Go with your gut. Finally, listen to your body. If your stomach starts doing backflips every time you speak to a senior manager, or your muscles tense up before you go into a meeting, what does this tell you? Counterintuitive as it might seem, emotions can be a valuable source of information when making rational decisions at work.

Remember, emotional intelligence isn't about suppressing emotions. It's about learning how to recognise, process and channel them in a way that benefits you and your team. Enhancing your emotional intelligence requires effort, but it can be achieved with sustained practice.

End transcript: Video 3 Developing emotional intelligence

Video 3 Developing emotional intelligence

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Did you notice that some of the themes you’ve already explored this week came up? Many of the themes you’re exploring in this course are closely interconnected.

In fact, emotional intelligence is also closely connected to resilience. Shuman (2016) describes an interview with Dr Daniel Goldman, author of a key text on emotional intelligence, where he provides a new perspective on it as a critical factor affecting a person’s resilience during crisis:

He explains that a person who is self-aware, socially adept, and empathetic [… has] the social and relational skills to be able to handle unexpected and unfortunate circumstances. They know how to advocate for themselves, to problem solve, and to seek support when they need it the most.

Another element of resilience is boosted when emotionally intelligent individuals provide empathy to those around them:

Being supportive and compassionate to others can have a positive impact on our emotional adjustment – when we feel needed and believe that we can help others, we also become stronger and more resilient.

1.3 Problem solving

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

In Activity 1, you started looking for potential solutions to a problem you had identified, and this is a key element of problem solving.

Bransford & Stein (1993, p. 20) identified a useful model of problem solving that can be used in different contexts, known as the IDEAL model:

I = Identify problems and opportunities
D = Define goals
E = Explore possible strategies
A = Anticipate outcomes and act
L = Look back and learn

Applied flexibly, i.e. not necessarily in a fixed order, the authors recommend this framework as a method for improving thinking and problem solving skills.

The key is in really identifying the problem. For example, it’s not enough to say ‘I can’t get the job I want’ – you need to ask yourself why that is, and narrow down the problem. This brings in another problem solving model, known as the Five Whys.

Watch this short video to hear it explained in more detail:

Video 4 Five Whys

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Applying the Five Whys can be another useful approach to moving things forward if you feel stuck on a particular problem.

Another skill that is often closely linked with resilience is adaptability, and you’ll explore the concept of career adaptability in the next section.

2 The four Cs of career adaptability

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

As you have already learned, career resilience is your ability to ‘bounce back’ from challenge and disruption. Career adaptability is the more focused consideration of how you’re going to bounce back or adapt to those challenges.

Figure _unit8.3.1 Figure 3

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Figure 3

According to the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, career adaptability refers to the ‘capability of an individual to make a series of successful transitions where the labour market, organisation of work and underlying occupational and organisational knowledge bases may all be subject to considerable change’ (Brown et al., 2012, p. 755).

In the next activity, you’ll explore your own career adaptability in more detail.

Activity _unit8.3.1 Activity 3 Assessing career adaptability

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

First, think of someone you know who has made a series of successful career transitions. Which attitudes, skills or attributes would you say made a difference for them?

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Now, have a go at this career adaptability questionnaire. It is developed around the four Cs model of career adaptability (which you’ll explore in more detail after this activity).

Different people use different strengths to build their careers. No one is good at everything, and each of us emphasises some strengths more than others. Please rate how strongly you have developed each of the following adaptabilities using the table below, where 1 is ‘Not strong’, and 5 is ‘Strongest’.

Table _unit8.3.1
Strengths	Score (1 to 5)
Concern
1. Thinking about what my future will be like	3, Your response 1
2. Realising the implications of today’s choices for my future	4, Your response 2
3. Preparing for the future	5, Your response 3
4. Becoming aware of the education and career choices of others	6, Your response 4
5. Planning how to achieve my goals	7, Your response 5
6. Actively engaging with my career	8, Your response 6
Control
7. Remaining positive	9, Your response 7
8. Making decisions by myself	10, Your response 8
9. Taking responsibility for my actions	11, Your response 9
10. Acting in line with my values and principles	12, Your response 10
11. Relying on myself	13, Your response 11
12. Doing what’s right for me	14, Your response 12
Curiosity
13. Exploring my opportunities	15, Your response 13
14. Looking for opportunities to grow as a person	16, Your response 14
15. Investigating options before making a choice	17, Your response 15
16. Observing different ways of doing things	18, Your response 16
17. Probing deeply into questions that I have	19, Your response 17
18. Becoming curious abut new opportunities	20, Your response 18
Confidence
19. Performing tasks efficiently	21, Your response 19
20. Taking care to do things well	22, Your response 20
21. Learning new skills	23, Your response 21
22. Working to my full potential	24, Your response 22
23. Overcoming obstacles	25, Your response 23
24. Solving problems	26, Your response 24

(adapted from Wright and Frigerio, 2015)

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Now add up the scores for each of the four sections.

Comment

You’ll find out more to help you interpret your responses as you explore the four Cs of career adaptability – concern, control, curiosity and confidence – in more detail and move on to Activity 4.

In the context of career resilience – the more you can understand about your preferences in adapting to challenge, the greater your potential resilience. For example, if you know that your preferred focus is on curiosity, making sure you research possible future roles thoroughly and have a plan for what you might do if things change, will boost your career resilience.

In this model, as you may have noticed, the questions come in four areas – the four Cs of career adaptability. These four dimensions, devised by academics Toni Wright and Gill Frigerio at Canterbury Christ Church and Warwick Universities, are:

Concern: the key question here is ‘Do I have a future?’ – individuals with high concern are seen to be looking ahead, scanning their environment for the need to change and taking a planning, future-oriented approach to their career. Individuals with low concern may need support to help them believe in the future and extend their thinking. You’ll explore the concept of control further in the next section.
Control: characterised by the question ‘Who owns my future?’ – high control is evidenced through a disciplined, organised, deliberate approach to moving through work life.
Curiosity: this addresses ‘What will I do?’ – it involves exploration of options, through experiences or daydreams, the seeking of information and clarification of values to allow a sense of calling to develop.
Confidence: this refers to the question ‘Can I do it?’ and looks at self-esteem, self-efficacy and courage.

(adapted from Wright and Frigerio, 2015, p. 9)

Activity _unit8.3.2 Activity 4 Assessing your own career adaptability

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Now take a few minutes to look back through your responses to the questionnaire.

Start by considering your current preferred approach (highest score), i.e. whether your career adaptability is mostly driven by concern, control, curiosity or confidence.

Now look at an area where further development could be beneficial (your lowest score).

Does this give you any insight into developing your career adaptability further? For example, if you’ve scored low on curiosity, you might benefit from some wider exploration of the options open to you. If you’ve scored high on concern, you’ll clearly have greater adaptability if you maintain a disciplined, organised approach to your future planning.

Note some possible actions you could take.

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Comment

Looking at your lowest scores can indicate areas where you could develop your thinking further, for example:

If your lowest score is in concern – you might benefit from greater engagement with general career development processes such as exploring career ideas, making decisions and taking action.
If your lowest score is in control – you might benefit from setting yourself some clear goals and reflecting on previous positive experiences where you felt you had more control.
If your lowest score is in curiosity – you might benefit from widening your horizons, using your network to explore career information, finding a mentor etc.
If your lowest score is in confidence – you might benefit from boosting your self-esteem, or exploring the idea of positive self-talk.

One of the four Cs in this section is ‘control’, characterised by the question ‘who owns my future?’, and you’ll explore this idea in more detail in the next section.

3 Understanding the idea of ‘control’

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This course has emphasised the idea that career resilience is not only about managing and recovering from the difficulties thrown up by changing economic and working environments, such as those you explored in Week 4. It is also about taking things in hand so that, over time, your working life reflects things that matter to you, your goals, needs and values.

You may feel in a place where ‘control’ over your working life and its direction feels distant. You may have other people fully dependent on you, and little space to exercise personal choices. Nonetheless, over time, understanding this concept and carving out a space to act upon it can make a difference.

Figure _unit8.4.1 Figure 4

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This decorative photo shows a signpost, with two signs pointing in opposite directions. These read ‘internal’ and ‘external’.

Figure 4

‘Locus of control’ relates to an individual’s belief that their actions can control events affecting them. Individuals with a strong internal locus of control believe events in their lives derive mainly from their own choices and actions. These people are also more resilient. People with a strong external locus of control tend to believe that their life events are controlled by external factors that they cannot influence – ‘fate’, in other words.

Activity _unit8.4.1 Activity 5 How much control do you feel you have?

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

What is your life most influenced by? If you imagine a spectrum where one end is ‘my own choices and actions’ and the other end is ‘external factors I can’t control’, where would you place yourself?

Comment

You might feel that you have more control in some areas than others. For example, you feel an internal locus of control over your personal and family life, but that the locus of control over your work life is external. It might even be more nuanced than that: for example, you might feel you have control over your employability skills, but little control over whether your department closes.

If you feel that the locus of control over your working life is largely internal, then you are already demonstrating your career resilience. If you don’t feel this way, your learning throughout this course should have already shown you how to approach any imbalance – developing your career resilience.

Some aspects of your career might be entirely beyond your control, such as your employer going bankrupt, but what you can control is how you prepare for and respond to that.

If your locus of control isn’t as internal as you’d like it to be, Scott (2020) suggests the following:

Phase out phrases like, ‘I have no choice’, and, ‘I can’t…’ You can replace them with, ‘I choose not to,’ or, ‘I don’t like my choices, but I will…’ Realizing and acknowledging that you always have a choice (even if the choices aren’t ideal) can help you to change your situation, or accept it more easily if it really is the best of all available options.

Her other advice includes:

Review your options – make a list of all possible courses of action and keep adding to it. Brainstorm with a friend if this helps. This will remind you that there are choices available.
Choose what’s best for you – evaluate each option on your list and decide on the best course of action. This can open your eyes to the number of choices you have, and over time, seeing new possibilities should become a habit.
Watch your language and self-talk – you’ve already heard about positive self-talk several times during this course and here’s another example of when it can help.

In the last section this week, you’ll change perspective slightly and look at another aspect of linking skills with career resilience – making yourself more employable.

5 Making yourself more employable

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Another way that your skills relate to career resilience is the role they play in making you more employable. The more employable you are – the greater your career resilience.

Figure _unit8.5.1 Figure 5

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This decorative photo shows a notepad with ‘Employability’ written in red marker pen across the page.

Figure 5

You might have heard employability skills referred to as ‘transferable’ skills, and this is because you can develop them in one environment and transfer them to another, for example when changing jobs. It is your skills, strengths, knowledge and experience that make you attractive to future employers.

So, being aware of the skills you have, and knowing how you plan to develop them further, is a strong element of career resilience.

Increasingly, you’ll hear employers refer to strengths during recruitment and in the workplace. A strength is a skill that you have that you enjoy using, use often, and demonstrate across a range of different parts of your life. For example, you might have strong skills in written communication – you enjoy writing reports at work, write short stories in your spare time, and your friends and family often call on you to help them with tricky emails, or poems for a special occasion. Writing is one of your strengths.

Identifying your skills and strengths helps you to build your career resilience in a number of ways:

it can help you to build a strong career narrative to share with your wider network and potential employers
it can boost your self-esteem
matching your skills with a range of job roles can broaden your awareness of the opportunities available to you
knowing what you have to offer can make you more confident in volunteering for new projects or responsibilities – enhancing your job satisfaction and personal development.

Activity _unit8.5.1 Activity 6 Mapping your skills and strengths

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Spend some time listing your employability skills – they could be skills you use at work or in your home life, hobbies or voluntary activities. If you need some inspiration, the University of Kent careers website includes a list of skills commonly looked for by graduate recruiters.

University of Kent – Employability skills (open in a new tab/window)

Now look through your list, and try to identify those that you think might be strengths. If you need some help, think about how time passes when you are using a particular skill. If it flies by without you noticing because you are so absorbed in your task, that’s known as ‘flow’ and means it is likely to be a strength.

Make a list of your strengths. This will be much shorter than your list of skills. We all have things we’re good at that we don’t particularly enjoy – these are skills and not strengths.

Discussion

Now you have a list of your skills and strengths. This will be useful when assessing and applying for future job roles, but also when reviewing your current personal development needs, or when taking on new responsibilities in your current workplace.

If you feel that your list is too short, think about how you can develop your skills and strengths further. You could also ask people who know you well what they think your skills and strengths are – you might gain some unexpected insight that you can add to your list.

5 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Well done – you have reached the end of Week 7 and can now take the weekly quiz to test your understanding.

Week 7 practice quiz

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link) and come back here when you are done.

6 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you have learned about the employability skills that can enhance your career resilience. You have explored ideas of career adaptability and control, and the part they can also play.

You should now be able to:

identify the employability skills that are important for career resilience
explain the concept of career adaptability
understand the difference between an internal and external locus of career control
recognise the value of skills and strengths in enhancing your employability.

In the final week of the course you will learn how to bring all of these concepts together in your own context and draw together your action plans for boosting your career resilience in the future.

You can now go to Week 8.

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Congratulations! You’ve almost completed this course on developing your career resilience. Hopefully it has helped you recognise areas in which you are already resilient, spurred you to take small actions to build your resilience in new areas and given you food for thought. This week you will consider your future. You will reflect on your learning from the whole course and identify the next steps that motivate you.

When you finish the course you have the chance to claim a badge and add this course to your personal resources.

As before, continue to write down your thoughts in your toolkit or notebook and put them into action.

Get started with Week 8 by watching this video:

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 Introduction to Week 8

Video _unit9.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 8

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Transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 8

[music plays]

TEXT ON SCREEN:

This week you’ll explore your next steps, reflecting on your learning, setting yourself SMART goals and developing your action plan. You’ll also look at some future scenarios for the world of work, preparing for issues that might be on the horizon. Congratulations! You have reached the end of the course!

End transcript: Video 1 Introduction to Week 8

Download

Video _unit9.1.1 Video 1 Introduction to Week 8

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By the end of this week, you should be able to:

identify and reflect on your key learning throughout this course
set yourself SMART goals to support your career resilience
bring together your action plan for your next steps
recognise that change is always present, but feel better prepared for the future.

1 Reflecting on your learning

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

You’ll start this week with an activity that encourages you to look back over the course and reflect on what you’ve learned each week.

Figure _unit9.2.1 Figure 1

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This is a photo of a woman sat in a chair, with a lightbulb superimposed above her, and a cloud of small cartoon symbols symbolising her ideas.

Figure 1

Activity _unit9.2.1 Activity 1 Pulling it all together

Timing: Allow about 40 minutes

Review your notes and responses to each activity, then summarise your key learning points in the boxes below. These notes don’t need to be too detailed – thinking in bullet points, or using a mind map if you prefer a more visual approach, should help to capture the key points.

Week 1 – What is resilience?

You looked at understanding what resilience is and how it can impact on your work life and career, and started to consider some of your own stresses.

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Week 2 – Personal resilience, born or made?

You focused on understanding where our resilience comes from and recognising that it can be learned and developed.

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Week 3 – Assessing your resilience

You explored your own resilience and learned how recruiters value and assess it.

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Week 4 – Understanding the external challenge

You enhanced your awareness of the external challenges impacting on your career, exploring ideas for dealing with those issues.

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Week 5 – Career resilience – moving forward

You explored tools and tactics to enhance your career resilience, learning how to flourish and move forward in your career.

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Week 6 – Building resilience – sources of support

You built your awareness of the different building block that help to develop resilience, from physical health to professional support.

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Week 7 – Building resilience – skills

You focused on the skills you can develop to support your career resilience.

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Discussion

Summarising your learning in one place should illustrate how your knowledge and understanding of career resilience has developed over the last eight weeks. You can now use that to work out your next steps.

What did your reflection in that activity tell you? Where are you strong already? Did you identify any areas where your resilience could benefit from a boost?

The next stage is to set some goals that will help you to enhance your career resilience further. For example, you might have realised that you need to work on your self-esteem and practise positive self talk. Or you might benefit from broadening and developing your support networks.

2 Setting your goals

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Throughout this course, you’ve been exploring what career resilience is and how you can build and enhance it. In Week 5, you looked briefly at setting goals when you considered the GROW model. This week, you’ll consider some goals and break them down into actions.

Figure _unit9.3.1 Figure 2

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This decorative photo shows a lightbox with the words ‘goal’, ‘plan’ and ‘action’ spelled out.

Figure 2

The key to effective goal setting is not to set yourself too many at once. If you have too many things to achieve, you can end up feeling overwhelmed and demotivated.

Another important element of goal setting is to make sure your goals are SMART. Watch this short MindTools video to find out more:

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Transcript: Video 2 How to set SMART goals

NARRATOR

Welcome to Mind Tools’ video learning series. How often do you set goals for yourself that somehow end up falling by the wayside? Chances are you set out with great intentions and loads of enthusiasm, but then, all of a sudden, you lose track of your goal. Perhaps you got distracted by the pressures and demands of daily life and work. Or maybe your goal was so overwhelming that you just didn’t know where to start. If you’re serious about increasing your goals though, you can increase chances of success by making them SMART. This means that your goals should be: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Let’s look at each of these points in turn.

First, your goal should be specific. Be precise. Ask yourself: what do I want to accomplish? Why is this important? Who is involved? Where is it located? What resources will I need? And what restrictions might I encounter?

Next, your goal needs to be measurable. If you’re going for a promotion, for example, what training courses will you need to pass? How long will these take? And what length of experience will you need in your current role? Setting concrete objectives and deadlines like this can help you to measure your progress, and stay focused and motivated.

Thirdly, make your goal achievable. Your goal should stretch your abilities, but it should also never be out of reach. Ask yourself: how can I accomplish this goal? And how realistic is it?

Then, examine whether your goal is relevant. Make sure that it mattters to you, and to your organisation. Ask yourself: is this goal worthwhile? And is this the right time?

Finally, make your goal time-bound. Set a target date to work towards. When you have a deadline in place, it will be easier to focus on achieving your goal, and to keep other, less important tasks from sidetracking you.

When you frame your objectives as SMART goals, you take woolly thinking out of the equation, and replace it with clarity, focus and motivation. In short, you make it easier to achieve the things that matter most to you. To learn more about SMART goals, read the article that accompanies this video.

End transcript: Video 2 How to set SMART goals

Video 2 How to set SMART goals

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Although there are some slightly different ways to define each letter in the word SMART, the MindTools team chooses one of the most widely recognised, which is:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Achievable
R = Relevant
T = Time-bound

Keep those categories in mind during the next section.

2.1 Long-term goals

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Setting a long-term goal usually involves looking five or even ten years forward. In the context of career resilience, these are likely to relate to your longer-term career plans or other significant changes in your approach to life. For example, you might say ‘in five years’ time I want to be a qualified accountant’ or ‘in three years’ time I want to be an individual with high self-esteem’.

Usually, a long-term goal is one that will require planning and time, so it’s important to set the right goal in the first place, or your time could be wasted. To get you thinking about possible long-term career goals, Morris (2021) has the following suggestions:

Secure a promotion
Gain management experience
Increase your salary
Switch careers
Set up your own business
Establish yourself as a brand
Have work published
Become a certified professional
Become a thought leader
Step back

Activity _unit9.3.1 Activity 2 Setting long-term goals

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Decide whether your goals are going to be focused on your career progression or life changes to support your overall career resilience (such as improving your physical fitness or developing higher self-esteem).

Quickly write down three career resilience goals that you’d like to have achieved in five years’ time. (Make this time period longer if you think you’ll need more time to achieve it. For example, people sometimes set a 10 year long-term goal.)

Don’t think about them for too long – try and do it within one minute.

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Discussion

You might think this is a very short activity for such a big topic. But as life coach Bennie Louw (n.d.) suggests:

when you only have 30 seconds to write your three most important goals, your answers will be as accurate as if you had 30 minutes or three hours. Your subconscious mind seem to go into a form of ‘hyper-drive’ and your three most important goals will pop out of your head and onto the paper, often to the surprise of the person doing the exercise.

Sometimes your long-term goals might seem overwhelming and difficult to achieve, so a useful starting point is to set ourselves smaller steps that will take us in the right direction and maintain our motivation. You’ll start to think about that in the next section. One technique is to work backwards from your goal, setting yourself medium- and short-term goals that will help you to get there.

You’re not going to focus on medium-term goals in detail here, but you get the picture – if your long-term goal is five years away, you might want to be achieving any medium-term goals at around the 2-3 year point. Depending on your long-term goal, and how informed you currently are about what it will take to achieve it, you might be able to set some medium-term goals now.

2.2 Short-term goals

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Most business writers agree that a short-term goal should be achievable within a month or two. So, in the next activity, you’ll spend some time identifying short-term goals that can take you forward incrementally. Reflecting on the learning that you outlined in Activity 1, and the goals you set yourself in Activity 2, try to come up with at least three short-term goals that will help you to move in the right direction.

Activity _unit9.3.2 Activity 3 Three short-term goals

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes

Choose a goal from Activity 2, and think about three steps that will help you to get there. Outline them in the box below.

For example, imagine you’ve chosen to develop your self-esteem. Your short-term goals might include building on Activity 2, Week 6 and making sure your list of five positive things about yourself is somewhere you can see it; or building regular reflection into your working week, making time each day to reflect on the things that have gone well alongside trying to learn from the things that haven’t.

Remember to make your goals SMART and give yourself a deadline for introducing any changes.

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Discussion

By breaking down your long-term goals into shorter, more achievable steps, you can set yourself on a realistic path towards something that currently may seem distant and unattainable. As you progress through each step, this should boost your confidence and motivate you to continue towards your long-term goal.

2.3 Taking action

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

The final step is to turn your short-term goals into more concrete actions, and the scenarios in Tables 1 and 2 show one method you could use.

Table _unit9.3.1 Table 1: Scenario A
Goal:	To build my physical health in order to support my overall resilience.
Current status: a.What experience do I have? b.What knowledge do I have? c.What skills do I have?	a.I have done regular exercise in the past but not in the last year. b.I know that it will be good for me but can’t motivate myself to do it. c.I have the ability to walk/run etc. but need to develop my stamina.
Development/training/knowledge needed to reach my goal:	I’d like to identify a form of exercise that I can enjoy and feel motivated to engage with on a regular basis.
Action plan:	Find out about exercise classes in my area Join a class to start next month Attend regularly
Outcome:	I’ve signed up for a Pilates class that starts next week
Evaluation:	This is a positive first step towards improving my fitness
Next step:	Ask for regular feedback from the instructor to help me measure my progress

Table _unit9.3.2 Table 2: Scenario B
Goal:	To explore alternative career ideas.
Current status: a.What experience do I have? b.What knowledge do I have? c.What skills do I have?	a.I haven’t really researched careers before as I just took the first job that was offered to me. b.I know that there are useful websites available but need to identify them. c.I have the required research skills.
Development/training/knowledge needed to reach my goal:	It would be useful to talk to someone about my career options.
Action plan:	Look at my university careers website to investigate career information and/or book an appointment. Research three career ideas – find out what skills and qualifications are needed for each. Use my list of skills, identified in Activity 6 in Week 7, to match against what I find out.
Outcome:	I’ve visited my university website and they have lots of careers information on there. I can book an online alumni appointment when I’m ready.
Evaluation:	Using the resources on the website, I’ve already researched one new career area.
Next step:	Decide whether the sector I’ve researched is interesting or not and move onto the next.

Now it’s your turn!

Activity _unit9.3.3 Activity 4 Planning your actions

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Use the template below to work through each of your three short-term goals from Activity 2. If your workplace has a template that is used to support performance review processes etc., use that if you prefer.

Table _unit9.3.3 Table 3: Three short-term goals
	1	2	3
Goal:	Table 3: Three short-term goals 1, Your response 1	Table 3: Three short-term goals 2, Your response 2	Table 3: Three short-term goals 3, Your response 3
Current status: a.What experience do I have? b.What knowledge do I have? c.What skills do I have?	Table 3: Three short-term goals 4, Your response 4	Table 3: Three short-term goals 5, Your response 5	Table 3: Three short-term goals 6, Your response 6
Development/training/knowledge needed to reach my goal:	Table 3: Three short-term goals 7, Your response 7	Table 3: Three short-term goals 8, Your response 8	Table 3: Three short-term goals 9, Your response 9
Action plan:	Table 3: Three short-term goals 10, Your response 10	Table 3: Three short-term goals 11, Your response 11	Table 3: Three short-term goals 12, Your response 12
Outcome:	Table 3: Three short-term goals 13, Your response 13	Table 3: Three short-term goals 14, Your response 14	Table 3: Three short-term goals 15, Your response 15
Evaluation:	Table 3: Three short-term goals 16, Your response 16	Table 3: Three short-term goals 17, Your response 17	Table 3: Three short-term goals 18, Your response 18
Next step:	Table 3: Three short-term goals 19, Your response 19	Table 3: Three short-term goals 20, Your response 20	Table 3: Three short-term goals 21, Your response 21

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Discussion

Your next step should be to prioritise these action plans. Which goal will you work towards first? Are they actually sequential goals or can you do them alongside each other? Make sure you don’t take on too much alongside your day job – if you don’t achieve all your goals this can be a negative experience.

You should now have a set of SMART goals and an action plan for achieving them.

2.4 Be realistic

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

If you are in the middle of a difficult and stressful time as you’re undertaking this course, you might not feel able to tackle all the goals you’ve identified at this point. There are times when just maintaining the status quo is all that is possible.

In this situation, a positive step forward is to choose one goal to focus on at this stage and then actively note the things you want to work on next, deciding to look at them again in two to six months’ time. In fact, that could become one of your goals – to revisit your plans for developing career resilience in six months, when things feel less overwhelming.

This type of positive thinking does not mean ignoring difficulties or the negative aspects of a situation, rather reviewing them objectively and using your problem-solving skills and strengths to generate solutions when you have time to apply them.

Another tactic is to take courage and ask for objective feedback from others. For example, after an unsuccessful job interview it can be easy to persuade yourself it was all a disaster. Having the courage to ask for feedback can help you obtain specific comments from an objective observer, even on weaker areas: ‘X and Y were great, but you gave weaker examples for Z’, or, ‘You did well but it was a very competitive field, and other candidates had several years more experience than you.’ Feedback is almost never as dire as our darkest imaginings, and fuels positive action.

Figure _unit9.3.2 Figure 3 See the glass half-full

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This figure has two columns. The left column shows a man holding a glass half full of water and the heading reads ‘See the glass half full.’. Underneath the heading is a letter:

‘Dear Optimist, Pessimist and Realist, While you were debating whether the glass was half empty or half full, I just wanted to let you know, I drank it! Kind regards, The Opportunist.’

The right-hand column has the heading ‘How to be positive’ and lists the following points:

Make a conscious decision to be an optimist
Take personal responsibility for everything you do
Listen to and examine your internal vocabulary
Challenge every excuse you make to yourself
Embrace mistakes and see them as learning opportunities

Figure 3 See the glass half-full

Activity _unit9.3.4 Activity 5 The TV interview

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Through the course you’ve watched several interviews with resilient individuals, just like you. In this activity you will be imagining that you are the interviewee. What could you say?

First recall three major events in your adult life. How did you change your behaviour as a result of them? This could be moving to a new area, taking on a major challenge, becoming a parent, responding to a health scare, and so on. Take some notes.

How might you finish these sentences?

My tips to my younger self would be …
I think I’m proudest of …
The turning point came when …

You could even video your responses, if you wanted.

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How does it feel to stand back from the events you have lived through, and major changes you have adapted to? How far does it help you to see yourself differently? This could be a useful exercise for promoting positive self-talk and boosting your self-esteem.

3 Careers of the future

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

To finish this course, you’ll take a moment to fast forward to the long-term vision, to gain a sense of the kind of changes the government anticipates might – or might not – come in the next 15-20 years. No one can predict the future, but awareness of potential change in your chosen occupational sector can help you to assess levels of risk and respond ahead of time – enhancing your career resilience. How future aware are you?

Figure _unit9.4.1 Figure 4

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This decorative image shows three androids sat at laptops.

Figure 4

In 2014 the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) produced The Future of Work: Jobs and Skills in 2030. In it, they suggested different possible scenarios for work in the future – each dependent upon the way in which the economy may, or may not, grow (UKCES, 2014). Two of these scenarios are presented below:

Figure 5 shows ‘business-as-usual’, which looks at how the way we work now will gradually change in the future.
Figure 6 shows a more disruptive ‘skills activism’ scenario.

Common to both the scenarios presented here is the increasing influence of online working, which you looked at briefly in Week 4 and which of course has been accelerated by the pandemic; and creation of a ‘virtual’ workforce, artificial intelligence and robotics. Some projections from the United States have robotics and artificial intelligence automating more than 40% of jobs in the US in the next 20 years.

The business-as-usual scenario (Figure 5) looks at the implications of greater business flexibility and incremental innovation. The report describes an ‘hourglass-shaped labour market’ where highly skilled individuals have greater autonomy and a better work life balance, while lower skilled workers face increased competition for jobs, potentially trapping young people in low-level entry positions as older people stay in employment longer.

Three disruptive scenarios are presented in the report, but the one shown here (Figure 6) projects what could happen if technological change and automation leads to large-scale job losses. The report describes the prospect of people being hired on a ‘project-by-project’ basis, requiring increased creativity, adaptability, self-promotion and management skills.

View larger image

Figure _unit9.4.2 Figure 5 Business-as-usual scenario

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A diagram detailing the ‘business-as-usual in 2030’ scenario. In this scenario the world economy is becoming more volatile, with fewer opportunities for low-skilled workers and less job security. In healthcare, for example, artificial intelligence is enabling self-diagnosis of diseases, and in retail, stores are using sophisticated technologies to engage with customers. The trends in education are to online virtual learning and increased use of bite-sized apps.

Figure 5 Business-as-usual scenario

View larger image

Figure _unit9.4.3 Figure 6 Disruptive scenario

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A diagram detailing the ‘disruptive scenario for 2030’. In this scenario, automation has brought large-scale job losses to many administrative and professional fields. Many jobs now require skills to manage and validate automated systems. Many people are hired on a project-by-project basis, requiring increased creativity, adaptability, self-promotion and management skills to move from gig to gig.

Figure 6 Disruptive scenario

In the next activity you’ll consider these two scenarios in more detail.

Activity _unit9.4.1 Activity 6 Looking to 2030

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Note down what you think is most striking about the two scenarios and how this information might relate to the sector in which you are working.

What action do you think an individual could take to respond to these suggested pictures of the future?

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Discussion

The Future of Work report identified that increased individual responsibility would be a key aspect of working life in the future. As the world of work becomes more flexible, employees will be expected to shoulder more and more responsibility for their own skill development. Self-management (e.g. juggling part-time roles with two employers), project management expertise and the ability to promote your personal brand will become increasingly vital.

Developments in technology, ICT and high-tech industries are a common theme. A commitment to learning new skills, and to updating existing ones, will be increasingly important.

International competition and technological development are likely to continue to increase the flexibility that employers demand from their employees (UKCES, 2014).

As change becomes more rapid or significant, personal agility – the ability to adapt to or embrace change – will be an important aspect of your career resilience.

These are scenarios of possible futures. No one can know what will actually happen, and it is likely that wholly unanticipated trends will also play a part. This research is from 2014, and we can already talk about developments and impacts that weren’t anticipated then. However, given the scale of the possible change, and the increased responsibility individuals will need to take for their own career progression, career resilience looks likely to become increasingly important.

4 This week’s quiz

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Congratulations on getting to the end of the course successfully. You have tried a range of new things and learned a great deal along the way – well done! Most importantly, you should hopefully now feel more aware of how resilient you are, and encouraged to engage with life’s uncertainties.

Now it’s time to complete the Week 8 badged quiz. It is similar to the badged quiz that you took after Week 4, with 15 questions in total.

Week 8 compulsory badge quiz

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link) and come back here when you are done.

5 Summary

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This week you have spent time thinking about your goals, and actions you could take to move towards achieving them. You’ve also considered a possible future for the world of work.

You should now be able to:

identify and reflect on your key learning throughout this course
set yourself SMART goals to support your career resilience
bring together your action plan for your next steps
recognise that change is always present, but feel better prepared for the future.

Don’t forget that in order to finish the course and get your badge you will need to complete this week’s quiz.

Tell us what you think

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

Now you’ve completed the course we would again appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us a bit about your experience of studying it and what you plan to do next. We will use this information to provide better online experiences for our learners and to share our findings with others. If you would like to help, please fill in this optional survey.

Where next?

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

If you’ve enjoyed this course you can find more free resources and courses on OpenLearn. If you have not already done so, you might be especially interested in looking at another of our badged couses, Understanding your sector.

New to University study? You may be interested in our Access courses or certificates.

Making the decision to study can be a big step and The Open University has over 40 years of experience supporting its students through their chosen learning paths. You can find out more about studying with us by visiting our online prospectus.

Get careers guidance

The National Careers Service can help you decide your next steps with your new skills.

References

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

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Acknowledgements

The Open University — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:41:53 GMT

This free course was written by Catrin Davies and Ann Pegg. It was first published in November 2016. It was reviewed and updated with new content by Liz Smith in 2021.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Course image: flyparade; Getty Images

Course video: rusm; Getty Images; gorodenkoff; Getty Images; Khosrork; Getty Images; kukhunthod; Getty Images; thatadamlad; Getty Images; fizkes; Getty Images; Artfoliophoto; Getty Images; Matvey Cherakshev; Getty Images; logvinov Dmitrii; Getty Images; monkeybusinessimages; Getty Images; shironosov; Getty Images

Images Week 1

Figure 1: Mark Bonett; Dreamstime.com

Figure 2: Vitezslav Vylicil; Shutterstock.com

Figure 3: Phynart Studio; Getty Images

Figure 4: JoZtar; Getty Images

Figure 5: master1305; Getty Images

Figure 6: Rawpixel; Getty Images

Figure 7: John M. Fisher

Videos Week 1

Video 1: miljko; Getty Images; Synthetic-Exposition; Getty Images; Vadim_Key; Getty Images; Pukkascott; Getty Images; Train_Arrival; Getty Images; fizkes; Getty Images; Daisy-Daisy; Getty Images

Video 3: Tertiary Education Commission; www.tec.govt.nz

Images Week 2

Figure 1: Glasgow Centre for Population Health

Figure 2: ktsimage; Getty Images

Figure 3: SolStock; Getty Images

Videos Week 2

Video 1: fizkes; Getty Images; Yuriy Kryvoshapka; Getty Images; gorodenkoff; Getty Images; iLexx; Getty Images; shironosov; Getty Images; mphillips007; Getty Images; monkeybusinessimages; Getty Images

Images Week 3

Figure 1: monkeybusinessimages; Getty Images

Figure 2: Lyn Worsley / The Resilience Doughnut Pty Ltd; https://www.theresiliencedoughnut.com.au/

Figure 3: Professor25; Getty Images

Figure 4: 3D_generator; Getty Images

Figure 5: fizkes; Getty Images

Videos Week 3

Video 1: fizkes; Getty Images; ronstik; Getty Images; konstantynov; Getty Images; sibway; Getty Images; fizkes; Getty Images; gpointstudio; Getty Images; AnnaStills; Getty Images

Images Week 4

Figure 1: MarcelC; Getty Images

Figure 2: Prostock-Studio; Getty Images

Figure 3: takasuu; Getty Images

Figure 4: ipopba; Getty Images

Figure 5: Lordn; Getty Images

Figure 7: Prostock-Studio; Getty Images

Videos Week 4

Video 1: SpaceStockFootage; Getty Images; Davman; Getty Images; Visual_Bricks; Getty Images; PhonlamaiPhoto; Getty Images; fizkes; Getty Images; silverkblack; Getty Images; Vadim_Key; Getty Images

Video 2: Generations in the Workplace: courtesy of Dignify

Video 3: Supporting your mental health whilst working from home: courtesy of MHFA England, https://mhfaengland.org/

Video 4: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Video by Sprouts: https://www.youtube.com/c/sproutsvideos; https://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Images Week 5

Figure 1: Louise Porter

Figure 2: Damir Khabirov; Getty Images

Figure 3: Image Source; Getty Images

Figure 4: ArtRachen01; Getty Images

Figure 5: bombermoon; Getty Images

Figure 6: ktsimage; Getty Images

Figure 7: adapted from Dye, V. (2011) ‘Reflection, reflection, reflection. I’m thinking all the time, why do I need a theory or model of reflection?’, in McGregor, D. and Cartwright, L. (eds), Developing Reflective Practice: A Guide for Beginning Teachers, Maidenhead, Open University Press, pp. 217–34

Videos Week 5

Video 1: nattavutluechai; Getty Images; Kanizphoto; Getty Images; Wavebreakmedia; Getty Images; RaptTv; Getty Images; antoniotruzzi; Getty Images; ipuwadol; Getty Images; Yuriy Kryvoshapka; Getty Images

Video 4: The GROW Model: courtesy of Michael Heath

Images Week 6

Figure 1: Yutthana Gaetgeaw; Getty Images

Figure 2: anyaberkut; Getty Images

Figure 3: Fascinadora; Getty Images

Figure 4: Lemon_tm; Getty Images

Figure 5: metamorworks; Getty Images

Figure 6: stefanamer; Getty Images

Videos Week 6

Video 1: silverkblack; Getty Images; Lyndon Stratford; Getty Images; Jeremy Lopez; Getty Images; gorodenkoff; Getty Images; fizkes; Getty Images; VectorFusionArt; Getty Images; Motortion; Getty Images

Images Week 7

Figure 1: marchmeena29; Getty Images

Figure 2: fizkes; Getty Images

Figure 3: Fokusiert; Getty Images

Figure 4: stanciuc; Getty Images

Figure 5: designer491; Getty Images

Videos Week 7

Video 1: monkeybusinessimages; Getty Images; Klockaren Productions; Getty Images; Standart; Getty Images; fizkes; Getty Images; Vadim_Key; Getty Images; Wavebreakmedia; Getty Images; gorodenkoff; Getty Images

Video 3: Developing emotional intelligence: Mind Tools Video courtesy of Emerald Works Limited

Video 4: courtesy of Jeff Cole

Images Week 8

Figure 1: Peshkova; Getty Images

Figure 2: HAKINMHAN; Getty Images

Figure 3: LWL Limited; http://www.liggywebb.com/files/id/541/view/the-little-book-of-resilience.pdf%20page%205

Figure 4: PhonlamaiPhoto; Getty Images

Figures 5 and 6: UK Comission for Employment & Skills; www.ukces.org.uk/thefutureofwork

Videos Week 8

Video 1: fizkes; Getty Images; George-3d; Getty Images; Wavebreakmedia; Getty Images; gorodenkoff; Getty Images; Zyabich; Getty Images

Video 2: How to set SMART goals: Mind Tools Video courtesy of Emerald Works Limited

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