Prepare Your Leadership

Hello. Happy Monday. I hope you have a great start to your week so far. A couple hours in, maybe a little more or less, depending where you are. Give it about one more minute. See if anyone shows up before I start talking. We're talking about resources today, and I'll get into that a little bit. Give about one more minute. So I want to tell you about something that impacts us every single day. It's our resources. Hi, Jules. Just starting here. And we're talking about resources, and not the kind that you might immediately think about, like money or materials, but our personal and psychological resources that we all possess.

So imagine carrying a backpack, and it has a limited number of items that are vital for our daily life. These items represent our resources, things like social support, autonomy, job security, resilience, and emotional intelligence. It's going to be different for everyone. We all encompass different resources, and they are not just nice to have, they're essential for our well being. Good afternoon. Let me know if you have things that you would say is your resources. Throw it in the chat. Things like the Social Security autonomy can be anything and can be doing something, too.

It can build your resources. But here's the catch. If we don't protect or grow these resources, they get heavier and heavier. This backpack that we're carrying with our resources, they get heavier and heavier. And what we're trying to do is to protect them. And this is the essence of what in research is called the conservation of resources theories developed by psychologists Stephen Hobful and David Sharon. But so now we value these resources, and we all value them differently. For instance, consider time spent with family.

For some, family might be a resource, but for some, it might be less critical or even a source of stress taken away from our resources. So our personal experiences and situations shape how we feel and protect these resources. Picture this. If you're having a tough week at work, your boss is unusually critical and you're feeling strained. This kind of stress can make your backpack feel heavier and heavier and heavier, making it harder to carry. So when our resources feel threatened or depleted, we can't continue to carry this and we let go of them.

This is why things like stress, it can lead to reduced self control and defensive behaviors, because we lost these resources, which we could have used to help us cope in these situations. So burnout is another perfect example of kind of what you see with the conservation of resources, of losing our resources when we're stretched too thin. It's not just about feeling tired, because we all feel tired from our work. But burnout is when we feel emotionally and mentally exhausted, caused by this prolonged stress on our work.

So when we're burnt out, we kind of lose the resilience and the emotional intelligence resources that we would have had these tools that we needed to cope and recover in our jobs. And there's a specific example that you can point to, and that's found in research, is having abusive supervision, that employees will feel significant reduction in these resources or tools. This constant strain can lead them to avoid wanting feedback, engaging with that supervisor. So they might avoid or, you know, be gone that day, or schedule meetings when they might run into their supervisor and try to avoid that feedback or that abuse of supervision.

So the more we lose, the more we try to protect what's left of these resources. And that even means withdrawing or potentially hurting our performances and well being. Other research has shown that if people are feeling their resources are depleted from a certain task in their job, they might engage in stuff that's not even part of their job, where they might help other people in their work. They might go volunteer or go do other things for the organization that's not in their role, just to avoid doing the role that's depleting their resources.

So what's one thing that we can do to gain back our resources? Well, one powerful way that has been shown to help us build resilience and carry these resources with us longer is through mindfulness. Studies have shown that mindfulness can build resources, offering kind of a buffer against the stress, helping us recover from the resources loss as well. So practicing can enhance these resources, making that backpack maybe a little easier to carry throughout the day. Even if you don't have time for mindfulness, or you might not even know how to start, there's a simple way that we can start, and that's just through noticing your body.

Doctor Zindel Siegel and Norman Farg from Canada have found that even just short term noticing the body, simply being aware of your physical state, like where your feet are, maybe how the coffee tastes today, maybe just how the keyboard feels. Just different things to turn your attention towards something present in the moment and away from these emotions and these thoughts that are not helping us at the moment. This can help with your emotional regulation, possibly building up these resources and making it easier to cope with.

So as you go about your day, remember that your resources are finite. You can gain them back at night by doing something you enjoy or through sleeping or any activities. But while at work, you might be dwindling these resources sometimes. So pay attention to what drains you in your role. And what fills you up. Take steps to protect your resources in the parts that drain you, but also invest in the practices that help you gain more. Be more aware of what is building your resources and what is taking away.

Perfect. Yeah. Quick five minute walk outside is amazing. Can just help you calm down. And if you have the time during a lunch break, that would be perfect as well. So five minute walk. Maybe just closing your eyes for five minutes as well. It's a great, it's a perfect example. So think of your backpack and what you're carrying it. Keep it balanced and don't be afraid to set it down for a moment and readjust like on that five minute walk. After all, your well being and success depends on how well you manage and keep those resources.

So that is the conservation of resources, kind of bringing some research and applying it to to you in the organizations, to you as a worker, to you as a leader, to you as a parent, to you as anyone. So just think about what is draining you and what fills you up and, you know, try to mitigate what drains you and to find what brings you up and figure out a way to balance that. So keep it here on Cadre. We can check out the whole schedule here on the app. We got JC calling on at 1230. Have a great rest of your Monday and thanks for joining.

Bye. Jules.