3.1  Developing emotional competence and professional resilience

To support others, it is important to develop specific skills. Many of these are covered in Fit for Law 1 Managing and understanding yourself and Fit for Law 2 Working with others.

The following video emphasises the importance of emotional competence and professional resilience within workplaces.

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Transcript: Video 3  Emotional competence and professional resilience

MATHIJS:

Emotional competence is, of course, really important. A lot of the time-- and we can assume that all adults are going to be emotionally competent at all times and will be really skilful at regulating their emotions. But that's actually really quite difficult to do, especially when workplaces can get very stressful, and it can get really difficult to do that, especially when under pressure.

RAJ:

Yeah. So I think emotional competence is about managing your emotions, understanding your emotions, recognising them, and sort of balance that out against the challenges in the environment. And with professional resilience, I think that's a term that people are hearing a lot about now, resilience and thinking about surviving and thriving. But I think that resilience is interesting because it's dynamic. So being resilient might mean changing, adapting to your environment and basically dealing with the challenges, and reflecting that back and being resilient about bouncing back.

MATHIJS:

Bouncing back can be quite tough to do, especially during rough times at work. And I think in part it's recognising that we will have ebbs and flows, times when we'll feel most on top of our emotions, and regulating that at work, and times when I guess our resilience will be stretched and stressed.

RAJ:

Yeah, I think it's really important for employers to know that it's not just important for individuals within the firm, but it has implications for the firm as a whole, how your employees are doing emotionally and how they are resilience-wise. It has implications for their relationships with clients and coworkers, because people that can regulate their emotions really well, they can develop better relationships with clients and coworkers, and they can strengthen bonds, and they can diffuse difficult or emotional situations a bit better. And that's one of the benefits for employers.

MATHIJS:

Yeah, and that skill development is so important in terms of emotional competence, because people can have periods where they might do something that's not seen as appropriate, like laughing at the wrong time, or they might be tearful at a time when that's not appropriate. Or they could have an angry outburst. And if people have the skills to manage those strong emotions, they can avoid, I guess, times that would be really awkward and challenging at work and can potentially make it more difficult for everyone in the workplace.

RAJ:

Yeah, I agree. And I think reflecting on these, if individuals really struggle to manage their emotions, it has implications for the employers because they're more likely to find work unrewarding. They may be more likely to leave the profession actually, because it's constantly stressing them out and they can't respond to it. And so it's probably cost effective to look at emotional competence and resiliency. And also, I think a lot of people will know that if you can't really manage your emotions, that can lead to professional burnout, which also has implications for managing staff, lots of staff having sickness and burnout.

MATHIJS:

Which is not good for the firm because you're going to lose talent. You're going to have sick days when you don't want to have sick days. And you're just going to have staff that aren't going to work at their optimum.

RAJ:

Yeah. So I think that competence and resilience is important for the individuals, but also at the higher levels within the firms.

End transcript: Video 3  Emotional competence and professional resilience

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Video 3  Emotional competence and professional resilience

This section highlights some specific skills which are particularly important when you are involved in supporting workplace wellbeing. The two skills that are focused on are cultivating psychological detachment from work and assertiveness. Each of these have been found to shield legal professionals from work overload stressors. This is hypothesised to be due to developing the individual’s ability to manage and respond to their workload appropriately and with a view to their own capacities.

Read about psychological detachment and assertiveness below.