Resilience is emerging as a key asset in an ever-changing workplace. And even though it can help us all navigate this new world of work, there are some people whose life experiences have put them ahead of the game. Let’s open our eyes to what they can teach us all!

Over the Christmas holidays, I had the pleasure to talk with my super-centenarian father-in-law about his life, and he told me all about its ups and downs. For instance, he lost his job more than once and had to start all over again to feed his family of 9. He faced real financial peril, but he came back and reinvested in his businesses differently. The learning I took from this story is that you can only be successful if you learn to be resilient.

Right now, we’re in the middle of what is being called the “Great Resignation,” with record numbers of workers leaving their jobs for a whole range of reasons. With more of us trying out new career journeys, or looking for better post-pandemic working conditions, the days of the conventional resume may be numbered. And that may be no bad thing, as we’re seeing unconventional assets – like resilience – play an ever-increasing role in our modern professional lives.

Bring your whole self to work – to be ready to drive change!

Resilience, more specifically, is the ability to withstand adversity and recover from difficult events, and even emerge as stronger people. Why is this important? The world is changing fundamentally. As the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs 2020 report states, automation will disrupt 85 million jobs globally by 2025,while 97 million new roles will emerge across various fields including fourth industrial revolution technology industries like AI. At Siemens, we believe in supporting our people so that they can stay resilient as individuals and relevant as professionals. What does this mean? It means that we’re promoting continuous learning and experimenting as well as a dynamic and trust-based leadership culture whose diversity of approach reflects that of our workforce as a whole. We ask people to bring their whole self to work, to be ready to learn and grow, and to embrace change and thrive!

Yes, we have policies and tools in place to support that, but I have also come to discover that there are people whose own life experiences make them naturally more resilient, who have found strength in adverse circumstances. I’m thinking here of one of the people whose story we heard on International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPWD).

What I’ve learned from different walks of life

That man was Lex Gillette. He is a blind Paralympic athlete, who is the long jump silver medal winner at the Tokyo Paralympic Games and gold medal winner at the 2019 Para-Athletics World Championships. What stood out to me during his talk was a video he showed of him jumping and missing the pit, landing to the side of it. He had been unable to hear his guide’s vocal cues in the loud stadium.

Instead of feeling defeated or assigning blame, he dusted himself off, went again and won the gold medal. And it made the bond of trust with his guide even stronger. Having strong allies, relentlessly pursuing a vision and not being bound by others’ expectations (his mother’s sound advice) were my big takeaways from his speech – and they are as relevant to the business world as the sports arena.

Alongside putting together an inspiring event for IDPWD at the end of last year, we at Siemens have also been working on guidelines to make transgender people feel more included. This has given me the opportunity to speak with members of the trans community, listen closely to their experiences, and understand the challenges they face regularly. I was struck by their difficult journey of acceptance, both of themselves and by others, and the courage this takes, as well as how Lex Gillette’s words ring true here, too: that people are often more limited by views from the outside, telling them what is and isn’t possible.

It’s time to be unbound by limits and convention

These experiences undoubtedly bring many benefits to the workplace, but they rarely show up on a traditional resume. This underlines why it’s important to look beyond traditional recruiting – to look for diversity. We may miss many people who clearly have the ability for the role, but have not had access to gain the necessary qualifications, or who have been overlooked previously for not fitting into a “traditional” profile. We need to think differently about how to build teams and look beyond the narrow parameters of job titles and descriptions.

Looking for diversity within your organization is so important because it’s linked to greater innovation and performance – as this Harvard Business Review article on investing in unconventional talent points out. It’s true that people who share similar experiences tend to reach a consensus faster because they view problems the same way, which may at first glance seem a smoother workplace experience. However, the article says, the long-term impact is less harmonious, resulting in narrower thinking and products that don’t meet their potential.

This is why we have to intentionally change the way we recruit, opening ourselves up to people who have less conventional backgrounds – and then also invest in developing these people – to build an inclusive workplace. And in doing so, it’s important to focus on potential, rather than a certain skill set, job title or the “finished product.” So, let’s challenge our own assumptions and let’s be open to other people’s experiences and worldviews – and we might just become a little more resilient ourselves in the process.