What is Learned Resilience?

Learned resilience is a successful result of an individual's, team's, or organization's adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity is the extent to which an individual, team, or organization is effectively enabled to maintain  functional integrity during times of change, and adversity. Resilience is achieved through recovery and adjustment. Learned resilience is distinct in that learning is an essential competency in the construction of adaptive capacity. Reflective learning is applied during times of continual uncertainty to enable adaptation, innovation, and thriving.

Learned resilience contrasts with "learned helplessness". According the Maier and Seligman (1976, 2016), learned helplessness occurs when faced adversity, an individual "learns that its behavior and outcomes are independent, and this learning produces the motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrollability." Learned helplessness stems from an individual's acceptance of their powerlessness. In sum, they give up. They discontinue attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus, even when alternatives to it are evident.  They capitulate to circumstances, which results in undesirable outcomes. A common example learned helplessness is the overwhelmed college student who seeks the intervention of parents rather than proactively using university resources to address their concerns.

As opposed to learned helplessness, learned resilience enables awareness and agency to options available by cultivating self-reliance. Both terms are related to the psychological concept of "self-efficacy." According to Bandura (1982), self-efficacy is "how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations."  In coaching, our goal is to help clients achieve self-efficacy and self-reliance, which includes building competencies like adaptive capacity.  

As your coach, I will help you develop learned resilience to face life's obstacles confidently.  In future postings, you'll have opportunities to find out more about the cycle of learned resilience and how to make it work for you.

References:
Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist. 37 (2): 122–147.  https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.37.2.122
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. (1976). Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 105(1), 3–46. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.105.1.3
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological review, 123(4), 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000033