Resilience got a bad name during the pandemic, with many public sector employees reporting feeling like a frog who went for a nice soak and wound up as dinner. Fast forward a few years, and the public sector’s attempts to focus on wellness appear largely ineffective at addressing the wave of disengagement and disillusionment of employees.

 

In this session, we are going to dive into a research-backed model of whole person resilience at work: what goes into it and how institutions can support it. Because employee resilience – especially the individual resilience of leaders – has a demonstrable impact on retention, engagement, and productivity. Resilient leaders, those in the classroom, the laboratory, or the administrative suite, help their teams  sustain performance during times of high pressure, complexity, and change. 

 

The Resilience at Work framework offers leaders at all levels of an organization practical strategies to create and sustain a culture of resilience in the workplace. Rather than yoga in the rec center or Mindful Mondays, these strategies are actionable steps built on a foundation of institutional and individual values, team alignment and communication, cultivating belonging, and –importantly – how the leader embodies resilience as part of culture change.

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During this session, you'll:​​

1. Discover the seven interrelated elements of resilience at work.

2. Delve into the connection between your institution's mission, vision, and values and employee resilience.

3. Learn some strengths-based approaches to promote your own resilience and model that in your workplace.

4. Understand the significance of leader resilience--in mindset, body, and action--for the resilience of your institution.

 

Speaker Bio:

Jennifer Askey is an individual and group academic coach with over 25 years of experience in higher education in the U.S. and Canada. Her career has included work experience all over the academic map as both faculty and staff. Her last academic role was collaborating with the Office of the Provost and Human Resources to create leadership and professional/personal development programs for Chairs, Vice Deans, and Deans. As a coach, she helps her clients achieve clarity around the impact they want to have as an academic and the habits they need to develop to reach their goals.

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Jennifer enjoys leveraging assessments (e.g., DISC, Emotional Intelligence, Belbin Team Roles, etc.) for individual and team clients to boost their self-awareness around key workplace behaviors and motivators. In service of helping universities become the best possible workplaces, she brings focus to the humans and their systems. Her work with clients is grounded in the client’s values system and their self-awareness. A core of her coaching philosophy is to help clients establish patterns of noticing and recognition around self-sabotaging behaviors and to choose more resonant and empowering options. Mindfulness and emotional intelligence form the foundation for much of her coaching work, as does an intersectional feminist lens on work-life issues.

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Jennifer holds a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages & Literatures from Washington University in St. Louis, was Associate Professor of German at Kansas State University, and has taught literature in German and English at universities in the U.S. and Canada. She continues to develop her own repertoire of skills and reads and speaks widely on emotional intelligence, faculty resilience, and mindfulness. She is a Certified Positive Intelligence Coach and a Certified Professional Co-active Coach, both frameworks that help clients work with their strengths and their values to create the career they deserve.