Increase Your Resilience Quotient (RQ) and Wellbeing Quotient (WQ)

If you are an HR manager, an executive, a leader, or someone who wants to improve performance and improve your organization’s culture, increasing Resilience Quotient (RQ) and Wellbeing Quotient (WQ) needs to be a priority.

There is untapped power in leaders for leading through a COVID world and beyond. 

Wellbeing and resilience are the superpowers for the times we are living. And if we’re being honest, they have always been. 

Some relevant questions for the present time are:  

1. Are you thriving during a global pandemic?

2. Are your leaders thriving? Why not?

3. What are your leaders’ WQ and RQ?

4. How can times of uncertainty, overwhelm, frustration, fatigue, and self-doubt help leaders grow and become stronger?

5. How do leaders use challenges to sharpen skills, self-awareness and improve health and wellbeing?

6. How does someone elevate thriving, both personally and within an organization, in challenging times?

It shouldn’t take a pandemic to spur these types of questions. Yet, here we are. And now, these questions are imperative.

Resilience is not something you’re born with. But it is a skill set you can build. Your resilience quotient (RQ) is the ability to bounce back from whatever life throws at you. Who do you think of when you think RQ?

Viktor Frankl and Mandela come to my mind because of the exceptional challenges they each overcame. We might say they mastered their state of mind. Their self-awareness was finely sharpened in their trials and tribulations.

“The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”

~Viktor Frankl

Resilient leaders exercise their power to choose their mindset, responses, moods, how they treat people, and if “triggers” will change the way they lead. They can sustain their energy level under pressure, nurture relationships, and cope with disruptions, uncertainty, and change. Adapting and bouncing back is what high-RQ leaders do. And it’s the key to measuring how well a leader does all this.

A high RQ allows a leader to maneuver through the stressors and pressure without resorting to dysfunctional behavior or harming others in the process. They are mindful of the present moment and know what the situation is asking of them. 

It’s certainly not easy! Yet, it is possible by equipping oneself with the knowledge, skills, and practices to increase personal (and collective) RQ.

You are only as strong as the weakest link. A lesson I learned in the military. Leadership is enhanced if individuals and teams are able to interdependently navigate together more resiliently. 

I believe that the buck stops and starts with the leadership. Low-RQ leaders will impact teams and organizational culture. And ultimately, it will show up in the collective performance and ROI.

Resilience is about the whole person. High RQ-Leaders are good for the workplace.

They are able to:

• Model healthier mindsets and behaviors by bringing greater emotional balance, mental agility, and energy to leadership decisions

• Integrate their three brains: head, heart, and gut – what they think, feel, and sense to discern and decide the way forward.

• Elevate the reputation of an organization to one that truly cares about its people

• Develop coherent, inclusive, and strengths-based cultures that interdependently deliver performance

• Express themselves and show up as confidently vulnerable

• Bring the collective together and believe in the power of the united collective

• Adapt and innovate in the face of challenges and obstacles

• Inspire others to persevere

• Connect with the present moment and see opportunities that otherwise they would have resisted

Your Resilience Quotient (RQ) and Wellbeing Quotient (WQ) Are Connected

Resilience is a foundational psychological skill that empowers humans l to feel capable of handling uncertainty and dealing with stress and adversity. Resilience training is not a ‘treatment’ for a disease or condition but rather an investment in an individual’s overall health and wellbeing.

A study aimed at improving health in the workplace found that resilience training lowered levels of depression, reduced sickness-related absence, and increased self-esteem. It suggests employers should encourage workers to build strong psychological foundations by developing resilience, noting that these skills appear to improve workers’ overall wellbeing, nurture their ability to self-regulate.

Interestingly, this study also found that resilience training improved employees’ perceptions of their overall work-life-balance, suggesting that resilience training helps foster the state of ‘balance’ highly valued in the wellbeing discourse.

So, what comes first, resilience or wellbeing? (It’s the old chicken or the egg question.)

I think of wellbeing as the foundation of a house. It is responsible for holding up the entire structure. Over time, the foundation can either weaken and crumble or maintain its strength and stability.

Resilience, on the other hand, is like the quality of the mechanics and materials used for your foundation. The nuts, bolts, and screws. The pipes, floors, and roof. Over time these may weaken, rust, or come loose. And when they do, the foundation is at risk because it’s an interdependent connection. 

Are you facing wellbeing and resilience challenges as a leader in the age of COVID and remote work? In my next blog, I’ll share more about the WQ / RQ interplay and how you can use it to improve your leadership skills and personal satisfaction.

Subscribe to the WELLegecy Institute’s monthly newsletter where I share the essential leadership skills required to thrive through COVID and beyond. 

Millear, P., Liossis, P., Shochet, I., Biggs, H., & Donald, M. (2008). Being on PAR: Outcomes of a Pilot Trial to Improve Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace With the Promoting Adult Resilience (PAR) Program. Behaviour Change,25(4), 215-228. doi:10.1375/bech.25.4.215

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We specialize in helping teams and organizations understand and implement practices that cultivate the power of interdependence.

The Wellsiliency™ Institute has developed a series of interdependent courses to comprehensively address the knowledge and skills leaders and teams need to build strengths-based values-driven performance cultures where all experience belonging.

Is cultivating a deliberate culture that leaves a lasting legacy of positive impact in the lives of others important to your organization?

Our institute has designed five program pillars to help leaders be well and lead well through a skill progression from Whole-self Intelligence™ integration to boost resilience and confidence, strengths-based wellbeing, strengths-based team building, strengths-based leadership, and psychological safety to unleash collaboration.

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Contact us to request our 4 page FACT SHEET to learn how our comprehensive 5 PILLAR PROGRAM helps leaders create interdependent teams and organizations.  

Let’s partner to create a more harmonious and sustainable future, where cooperation and mutual support lead to thriving.