The Resilient Researcher

The challenges of research life can make it hard to sustain a sense of personal resilience and well-being.  Research life can be unpredictable, precarious and challenging.  Research life can feel chaotic and throw up a whole barrage of challenges that can include feeling overwhelmed at the tasks in hand; insecurities about funding uncertainties; self-doubt in a world of knowledgeable experts; confusion about the best way forward; and the impossibilities of balancing research and the rest of life.  The list could go on. It can be easy to lose yourself, your sense of direction and well-being. Indeed, it can be hard to sustain your personal resilience when you’re feeling insecure about the next stage of your work and yet resilience can be key to maintaining your research effectiveness.

Unique to this workshop, you are not going to be told what resilience is, and what you SHOULD do to build it.  Resilience comes in many shapes and forms, generally pointing to the ability to recover from setbacks, to adapt to changing circumstance and keep going in the face of adversity.  However, the workshop is designed to build on your experience and the collective wisdom of the group, to develop an understanding of what resilience means for you and how you can develop strategies to nourish and sustain it in everyday life.

This one-day, experiential and interactive coaching-based workshop will create an opportunity to re-engage with your own sense of personal resilience and well-being and be challenged with how to bring that into your everyday life.

Who is it for?

The Resilient Researcher is for academics and researchers at any stage of their career, who could benefit from exploring how to nourish their personal resilience: for example, you may feel out of balance, overwhelmed and overstressed, or lacking confidence in some way.  The workshops have been attended by PhD students, researchers, lecturers and Professors, sometimes at the same time.  They have been attended by people from all disciplines – from physicists to creative writers, sociologists to mathematicians, health researchers to economists.

What’s involved in the day?

The day is designed to build on your experience, identify what resilience means for you and explore possible approaches you might use to nourish and build your resilience and well-being.

• Setting up: introducing a coaching approach and the relationship between performance, potential and interferences; sharing current experience of research and life; identifying what we want from the day and agreeing how we’ll work together.
• Experiential exploration: exploring what it feels like when we are ‘resilient’ and when we don’t feel ‘resilient’; locating a sense of personal vision and values, how in balance they feel, and the implications for personal resilience; learning what knocks you off balance and how to come back to your centre; identifying personal strategies to sustain everyday resilience.
• Throughout the day we’ll be moving between whole group exercises and discussion, small group exercises and personal reflection time (the balance will depend on the group and what we collectively agree). When appropriate, there will also be individual interventions from the coach.

What will I get out of the day?

• Recognise what resilience means for you.
• Reconnect with what resources your resilience and well-being.
• Explore what knocks you off balance and how to regain it.
• Identify personal strategies to sustain everyday resilience.
• Learn from the collective wisdom of the group.

This is a full day workshop from 9am – 5pm, held at Federation House in Manchester City Centre.

This workshop is £45 + vat to attend for NHS staff, 50 % is funded by HEE.

For non-NHS staff it is £90+ vat to attend. A purchase order number will be required upon booking to secure your place.