Resilience programs do not fix toxic workplace cultures

Back in 2022 I wrote a blog on Medium about people I knew who were sent to compulsory resilience programs by their employers, resulting in division and distrust between employees and management.

Setting aside the discomfort I feel now reading back over my hesitant writing style in my early days of blogging, I continue to stand by the points made in the article.

At the time I was infuriated by a steady stream of stories about organisations struggling with cultural and change management issues leading to frustrated, burnt out and disengaged employees. The solution many of these organisations chose was to send their employees to a compulsory ‘resilience’ program instead of looking at the organisational systems, structures and policies that needed to change. I still see the same thing, but today we tend to call them ‘emotional intelligence’ programs which often contain a combination of mindfulness, social and emotional skills, and sometimes outdated theories or outright pseudoscience.

I know that there are people who follow me, some of whom I respect very much, who run resilience programs. If that’s you, I’m sorry that you might not be happy about what I’m about to say but I hope that you can see my point. As always I’m happy to (respectfully) debate this in the comments.

I have no problem with people wanting to increase their own personal resilience or develop social and emotional skills such as emotion regulation strategies. In fact I strongly encourage everyone to develop their emotional literacy (language of emotions), self-reflection practices, and healthy strategies for regulating their own emotions.

Having said that… Regardless of whether leaders’ intentions are honorable, they need to stop sending their employees to compulsory mental health/ emotional intelligence/ resilience training. I don’t care if you call it team building. I don’t care how much you as a leader might enjoy the experience. When organisations go through tough times and start noticing the signs of burnout it’s natural to try to do something to support your teams. A half-day resilience workshop is not it.

There are a few big problems here:

Read the full article at The Trauma-informed Leader on Substack.