This article originally appeared on Forbes

The way we work is changing so significantly that our minds can’t keep up. Constant change is widespread, and workers are tasked with high demand while having low control over their environment. What’s the effect on the organization? A workforce with anxiety, burnout, sky-high stress, turnover and people checking out.

As we face unprecedented growth potential in this era of digitization, globalization, transformation, we are losing opportunity. At the root, employees lack one key skill essential for the workplace today: adaptability.

Adaptability allows an employee to be flexible and handle changing work conditions. As organizations, we need to help our workers build an agile mindset. It’s the key to building engagement. The good news: Teaching adaptability and agility is eminently learnable. The key? The science of resilience.

Resilience Builds Engagement

Resilience is the ability to positively adapt to change. As clinical studies show, it’s not an innate quality that some people have and others don’t. It’s a specific set of skills that anyone can learn:

  1. Emotion Control: The ability to control one’s emotions and feelings in the midst of adversity and stressful situations—a skill that’s fundamental to staying engaged and focused under pressure.
  2. Impulse Control: The physical counterpart of emotion control. The ability to control one’s behaviors and remain goal focused under stress and adversity.
  3. Active Problem Solving: Critical thinking and problem solving so that you don’t make the same mistakes again and again.
  4. Self-Efficacy: The belief in yourself that keeps you going even under adverse situations where your skills are tested.
  5. Realistic Optimism: The ability to be realistic about the situation while striving to achieve results.
  6. Empathy: The ability to see things from someone else’s perspective and to relate to other people—extremely important in teamwork and leadership.
  7. Reaching out: The ability to reach out and grab hold of opportunity and to make meaningful connections that support you through challenge and adversity.

These seven resilient behaviors help people stay engaged. Why? The science is clear: It’s not just about how we manage through adversity but how we look for the opportunity in adversity and turbulence. Resilient people can relate to others and use social networks as buffers against stress. They show high levels of initiative, are willing to try new things and involve others in their work.

Engagement isn’t just about surveying people. The way to enlist people is to get personal: It means offering personally meaningful skill development—for everyone. People need to have a stake in their own change. But we can’t address this with posters and polls; it has to start for each of us from within.

Stop bracing for change. Be the art of the change. All that spells engagement.

About the Author
Jan Bruce

At the height of her career, Jan Bruce realized that she was being pulled in so many directions – trying hard to balance being an executive, wife, and mother – and not feeling like she was performing optimally in any role. Instead of being excited and motivated, she was stressed out and approaching burnout. Jan knew she was not alone in feeling this way and recognized that stress was a big risk to both health and performance for much of the workforce. She had an epiphany: successful performance and behavior are influenced by the way we think, and lasting balance is only possible through self-awareness, self-management, critical thinking, and an overall commitment to our well-being. This is what led to meQuilibrium's inception in 2011. Built upon proprietary, clinically validated science in the field of resilience, meQuilibrium is the first holistic SaaS-based cognitive performance platform built for organizations as they navigate the need for more innovative, agile workforces and integrated HR strategies that support the overall experience and well-being of their employees. The company's digital, interactive programs help employees and companies achieve measurable, deep-rooted results in well-being and performance by giving organizations the ability to predict problems and prescribe personalized solutions at global scale.

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