How to cope with setbacks and challenges at work

Duration: One day, delivered at a venue of your choice, anywhere in the UK.

Alison Townley spent many years in senior positions in human resources before turning her hand to training and consultancy fifteen years ago. Her encouraging and supportive style combined with impeccable subject knowledge make her a highly effective trainer. Alison specialises in communication skills and workplace well-being, and is qualified in a range of psychometrics and other development tools. Her delegate-focused approach has helped her become an indispensable partner to many of our clients.

Course details

Who’s it for?

What’s the course about?

People respond to the challenges they face at work in different ways. Some people seem to thrive on pressure and bounce back quickly after disappointments, but for most of us coping with the demands of work and maintaining optimism in the face of setbacks can be difficult.

And of course, if we allow pressure and setbacks to get on top of us we can easily find ourselves trapped in a vicious cycle where our effectiveness at work suffers, leading to further problems and increasing pressure.

In order to thrive in our jobs it is vital that we are equipped with the skills to manage and profit from the difficulties and occasional failures that are an inevitable part of today’s demanding workplaces. In a nutshell, this is what resilience is all about.

Resilient people demonstrate more flexibility, higher energy and greater consistency than less resilient colleagues. They recognise failure as an inevitable byproduct of innovation, and whilst carrying forward useful lessons from each setback, they are able to move on emotionally, avoiding the persistent negative emotions that can lead to a decrease in performance or motivation, and further problems down the line.

This course offers a range of techniques to help delegates manage their thoughts about setbacks, teaching them how to use them positively as learning opportunities that will improve future performance. It provides the tools to develop a resilient mind-set that resists the tendency to see setbacks at work as personal disasters, and helps build the self-confidence needed to sustain them through difficult times.

What will delegates learn?

By the end of this course, delegates will learn to:

Understand the personal and professional implications of resilience
Identify thinking patterns that help them to deal with setbacks positively
Identify their ‘change readiness’ and how it’s linked to resilience
Overcome and grow from setbacks, by understanding them in the context of challenge, commitment and personal control
Explore the way they explain hardships and adversity to themselves
Learn skills to develop their resilience, including building self-confidence, setting goals and raising thought awareness

What is the course content?

1. What is resilience?
- Cooper/Robertson model.
- A-B-C thinking.
2. How resilient are you?
- questionnaire.
- Change readiness & personal resilience.
3. Overcoming and growing from setbacks
- Challenge.
- Commitment.
- Personal control.
4. Explaining setbacks to ourselves
- Permanence.
- Pervasiveness.
- Personalisation.
5. Developing resilience
- You are what you eat.
- Thought awareness & emotional intelligence.
- Cognitive restructuring.
- Learning from setbacks.
- Setting goals.
- Building self-confidence.
6. Action Planning

Client feedback from our courses

“Very engaging and interactive. [The trainer] was superb.”
Director, Advertising Standards Agency

“Wonderful day. Filled me with positive energy and feeling very motivated at a much needed time.”
Delegate, John Lewis Partnership

“Very enjoyable, valuable day.”
Delegate, RSM UK

“I learnt a lot from the day. Lots of ideas to return to the office with. Very much enjoyed the course and the fantastically knowledgeable trainer.”
Delegate, IRIS Accountancy Solutions

“This course was very enjoyable, and levels of interaction allowed me to relax and feel comfortable.”
HR Administrator, Kidsunlimited

Find out more or book an in-house course

If you have any questions or if you would like to speak to Alison or one of our other resilience trainers about how this course could be adapted to work for you please get in touch.

In-house delivery prices

In most cases we can provide an all-inclusive quote to cover design, delivery and materials with some basic information:

Which course you are interested in
Where the course would take place
How many delegates need to be trained

Just drop us a line with these basic facts and we’ll get back to you with a no-obligation quote on the same day.

Cambridge Executive Development is a boutique learning consultancy with a small and select team specialising in management and communication skills training. Over fifteen years we’ve helped delegates from hundreds of companies, including many of the country’s biggest brands, boost their productivity and confidence, and transform their impact at work.