Is hardiness a perishable trait?

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Most adults during the period of their life have gone through some circumstance of losing a loved one or have experienced profound psychological disturbance and mental dysfunction as a response to an event that disrupted their life, for instance, in response to the attacks of 9-11 (Bonanno, 2008). This blog's author identifies correlations between lived experiences of loss or adversity and applies the resilience traits of being hardy to current practice in organizational influence. How does being hardy support a leader in everyday life?

According to social psychologist Bonanno (2008), loss, trauma, and adverse life events can be understood by individuals who have experienced them and their relationship to being resilient. Furthermore, resilience is more common in people than one would believe. Resilient individuals are not people with some extraordinary power, ability, or coping method, but there are some mechanisms that people have that help them maintain a balanced life response to those situations of loss, trauma, and adversity.

One mechanism or function of individuals with resilience traits is being inured, tested, or tempered, which results in being seasoned and conditioned to stressful situations that promote sturdiness in response to those above. According to Bonnano (2008), sturdiness or being hardy comprises three elemental paradigms in an individual's experienced life.

The hallmarks of hardy individuals manifest first by a person's ability to assign significance to their life; second, individuals possess the ability and firm belief that they can affect change and influence those around them and their sphere of influence; and lastly, when encountering either favorable or adverse situations, they believe a lesson can be learned to improve, adapt, and augment their capabilities (Bonanno, 2008), and to the extent that an individual encounters situations to become hardy and sturdy are correlated to such events as loss, trauma and adverse life events promote resilience in individuals.

As a healthcare leader, situations of loss are often standard and not rare, and the daily challenges of operational efficiency, patient care, provider relationships, meetings, responsibilities, and the never-ending competing task management can make daily work distressing.

A component of leadership and currency of influence is the necessary ability to maintain resilience despite surrounding events. Although the blog author's life course has provided opportunities to test the character, such as military service and critical care personal life stories, resilience in all life segments is constantly being challenged, tested, and upgraded.

References:

Bonanno, G. A. (2008). Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, & Policy, S (1), 101-113. doi: 10.1037/1942-9681.S.1.101.