Developing understanding of the spiritual aspects to resilience

Developing understanding of the spiritual aspects to resilience

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to deepen conceptual understanding of the spiritual components of resilience.

Design/methodology/approach - A conceptual paper drawing on research the authors have been conducting on resilience within the police community for a combined period of over half-a-century. Findings - A more holistic conceptualisation of resilience and particularly a more detailed and accurate picture of the spiritual aspects to resilience which is applicable to a wide variety of public and private sector leadership situations, not just those within the police.

Practical implications - The paper provides an increased appreciation of resilience which the authors hope will lead to more practical research in this area, with the longer term goal being to impact positively on practical workplace issues of major current concern in a wide variety of workplaces across the world.

Originality/value - The paper's contribution is to promote the importance of resilience, provide a greater theoretical understanding of holistic perspectives of resilience and further develop the spiritual component of resilience. This contribution is important because many leaders currently have a limited appreciation of all the aspects of resilience.

Introduction

Resilience is a topic experiencing a burgeoning interest in a wide variety of areas including leadership development, the helping professions, psychology, sport, child development and the military. Despite this interest there is still much to be done; much to learn, both in the development and testing of theoretical explanations of resilience and within professional practice in using and applying these theories.

According to Richardson resiliency inquiry did not emerge from academic grounding in theory, but rather through the phenomenological identification of characteristics of survivors, mostly young people living in high-risk situations. This paper returns to these roots of drawing on practical lessons from survivors living in high-risk situations. This time rather than survivors or young people though we evaluate the lessons from a public service; particularly police officers. We focus on this area because we believe this group demonstrate exceptional survivorship as well as thrive ability. Richardson identifies three waves of resiliency inquiry, and in the third, resulting in the concept of resilience we see an emphasis emerging on "the forces that drive a person towards self-actualization". Here Richardson brings in the spiritual aspects to resilience, using the term "biopsychospiritual homeostatis" to describe the adapted state of mind, body and spirit.

A lot of the work on resilience focuses on physical, emotional or social resilience, but what is important in Richardson's ideas is the emphasis on a holistic view to resilience, which incorporates all this work. Within this holistic perspective, the most complex, contentious, often avoided, neglected and underdeveloped aspect is the spiritual component and particularly the application of this component in the workplace. This is despite there being a growing body of research on spirituality in the workplace emerging, and a real interest in the field evident within leadership studies.

This paper addresses this gap connected to the spiritual aspects of resilience; focusing largely on deepening understanding of the conceptual aspects of the spiritual components in a holistic view of resilience. This exploration draws on research we have been conducting on resilience within the police community and leadership for a combined period of over half-a-century. Whilst we draw on this public services context in developing the theory, we argue that the conceptualisation that emerges is applicable to a wide variety of leadership situations, not just within the police. The paper ends by considering the practical implications of these ideas and offers recommendations for further research and testing of the aspects discussed.

The paper's contribution is to promote the importance of resilience within leadership, and specifically a greater theoretical understanding of holistic perspectives of resilience. The spiritual component in particular is further developed. This contribution is important because many leaders have a limited appreciation of the spiritual component of resilience. Increased appreciation we hope will lead to greater consideration of the spiritual components to resilience within leadership and more practical research in this area, with the longer term goal being to impact positively on practical workplace issues of major current concern for leaders internationally including well-being, ability to cope with stress, employee satisfaction, engagement and on reducing levels of sickness absence, labour turnover and costs of ill health in a wide variety of workplaces across the world.