The Resilient Employee

Do you want an employee who over-reacts to provocation from a customer? How much business could you lose because of one overstressed reaction? No one really wants to find out.

Resilient people do good work on bad days. They don’t take it out on customers, nor on their co-workers. You can tell they are tired, you can tell they don’t feel well, but they still do good work with a minimum of drama. Tomorrow they are back at it, feeling better, listening, collaborating and doing good work.

Resilience comes from having survived tough times, coming back from events out of our control, and preserving through failures and bad experiences. It is a faith that we can make it through crazy customers, clueless bosses and co-worker visiting from outer space. Just another day folks, nothing to see here. (or is there more?)

Emotional strength and intelligence comes from knowing life is about more than you. Common Goals and values drive better behavior. It is taking care of others. Serving the public. Loving people. Especially when they don’t deserve it.

What do you do when your world changes? Where do you find your resiliency? Is it in your history? in your family’s stories? Your uncle who served in the war? Your neighbor who is always calming and interested? Or is peace something deeper. After all God is Love.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

This question is usually answered with a job or a wish. Fireman, Teacher, Nurse, or what someone in our family does. Truthfully we are so young we don’t know what it means.

One parent is looking to give up her Chairmanship. Her young son tells her he can take over. “I set up the chairs every week.” Different meanings are lost on us.

“In general we are least aware of what our minds do best.”

–      Professor Marvin Lee Minsky, MIT AI Lab

Professor Minsky studied intelligence and want to develop thinking machines to act like humans. The complexity of intelligence is our mind can learn several different ways. We observe, smell, interact, manipulate, taste, experiment, love and experience. All at the same time. Look at people interacting with their pets. How complicated are the behaviors of both human and pet?

Further our brains handles health functions like breathing, digesting and waste without much conscious thought. We pull back from hot, avoid predators, entertain others, and navigate around by distance, direction & landmarks in a complicated world. A Artificial Intelligence machine like that will require building lots different skills, and integrating them all to be like a human.

Often talents pop out and we wonder where did that come from? Why am I the only one who knew the answer? How come no one else understood him? Why didn’t they know what she meant? My favorite - “It was easy. Anyone could do it.”

We sometimes get mentors who recognize our talents and start to lead us. Often we muddle through and struggle what to do. You are far from alone. Often wonder what should be doing with these different gifts I have.

The hell of life is we are born for greatness. But we neither know why, or what our talents are. Finding out may take our whole life.

Happy hunting, and share what you learn.