Promoting Resilience (3)

Industry

"Industry is defined as working diligently at a task.

Industry is a powerful building block and is enhanced through its connection with other resilience factors.
Good role models and encouragement to be independent are important; being an achiever who plans for the future and who is responsible for his or her own behavior are helpful.

Staying with a task until it is finished, problem solving, and reaching out for help when needed, reinforce or add to the resilience factors that are being promoted.

What is different, however, is learning how to differentiate not only what resilience factors to use in any given situation, but also how to use them.

Many children and youth do not develop industry, they developed feelings of inferiority. They become extremely sensitive about their limitations. They may well have been teased, bullied, or excluded from a group because of their failures.

Adults who have not developed this stage of industry are often those who dropped out of school because of failure there, including social failure.

They lost their desire to master skills, were reluctant to deal with any more failures, and decided to get away. Many adults who had such experiences have difficulty opening themselves to similar, more sophisticated ways of being rejected.

You can encourage people to draw on their autonomy and independence to help them do their work, complete tasks, ask questions when something is not clear, assume responsibility for their work, and feel proud of their achievements. You can talk with them about developing cooperation by looking around them to see with whom they can work comfortably.

Cooperation also suggests they can resolve conflicts in decision making and in taking actions. You can point out that problem-solving skills include being willing to take the initiative, but also being able to deal with inevitable conflicts.

You can help them improve their communication skills, practice being assertive, and learn to listen.

Edith Henderson Grotberg in "Resilience for Today"