Sisu – resilience or resistance?

Every Finn has heard the saying ”’ from an early age”Finnish interior design”, which has helped us win wars, championships and all sorts of other things. The word ‘sisu’ is used to describe tenacity, willpower, indomitable spirit, perseverance and other admirable virtues – to the very point where it has become part of our identity.

But is it really a virtue after all? Is sisu resilience Or is it, after all, resistance?

What is the difference between resilience and resistance?

To put it simply, here are a few technical terms – resilience means the ability to be flexible and adapt in times of change. In other words, it is as if one ”bends but does not break”. As the world around them changes, a person with high resilience adapts to their environment and begins to act in the way required by the circumstances

Resistance In turn, this refers to (electrical) resistance or opposition; to paraphrase the earlier example, ”withstands pressure before breaking”. So, if a person has high resistance, they are likely to cope well with the pressure resulting from changes in their environment. There is no established term for ‘resistance’ in this context, but it helps to distinguish between the concepts in the absence of a better term.

There is certainly a difference between these two, but both are needed in the world of work. If taken to extremes, however, both can also be harmful.

How are the differences between resilience and resistance evident in the workplace?

Let’s start with sales, for example, where the differences between resilience and resistance are quite evident. Sales happens to be a job where both are rewarded – and ultimately also punished. In sales, the salesperson repeatedly hears refusals on the grounds that the solution is too expensive or unnecessary, and so on, and it is in dealing with these situations that the difference between the two becomes very clear.

In such cases, resilience is evident in the salesperson’s willingness to consider new ways of offering the solution or even adapting it to better meet the customer’s needs. To a reasonable extent, this is a good thing, but on the flip side, the salesperson may end up promising an overly customised version of the solution, the production of which could prove prohibitively expensive for the company.

Resilience, on the other hand, is evident in the way the salesperson does not let rejections get them down and carries on with their work in the same way as before – after all, sales is a numbers game, and ultimately the numbers are what underpin success! Once again, in moderation, this mindset can take you a long way, but ultimately it may also burn out an energetic person, even though the solution might only need a little fine-tuning. Delivering the solution might be easy, but it doesn’t matter if selling it requires an outrageous amount of resources.

The same phenomenon is also seen in other roles. To put it a bit bluntly – as a predecessor Simply following procedures to the letter does not necessarily constitute good leadership if, for example, the workplace’s performance or well-being do not improve. Similarly, A managerial approach that merely caters to employees’ needs may please many, but it leads to the organisation transforming from a working community into Moominvalley, where productivity has begun to decline.

Resilience or resistance is therefore not required in the workplace. A workplace needs both, and in just the right balance.

Finnish ‘sisu’ is both resilience AND resistance, but not in equal measure

Depending on your point of view, ‘sisu’ can be seen as either resilience or resistance, but Actually, I reckon it’s probably both. The ability to push through grey rock and to adapt to new circumstances. It has not always been described in this way, and perhaps that is precisely why one could say that the definition of ‘sisu’ has changed over the years.

Right up until the 2000s, resilience was perhaps seen, through the lens of resistance, as the ability to withstand heavy workloads and pressure, which in turn ensured the competitiveness of Finland and Finnish companies. Nowadays, resilience brings with it the aforementioned ability to adapt and, through that, to gain a competitive edge in a situation where, in the spirit of Daft Punk, simply ”Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” is not enough.

Resilience is, however, probably the more important of these qualities, particularly in knowledge work. The ability to adapt, that is to say adaptability is a theme that ensures future success, and that is precisely what lies at the heart of resilience. On top of that, we also need as much resilience as possible, before it becomes a hindrance to performance.

How can resilience be developed?

It’s not entirely by chance that, of late, an increasing number of management or the training programme relating to line management has included a module workplace skills development. Resilience is one of the skills required in the workplace, just like, for example, prioritisation or time management.

Although it is up to each of us to look after our own resilience, a manager has a duty to ensure that even the most resilient employees are able to look after their own capacity for change. The best thing about this is that combining resilience with grit is incredibly powerful – A person who celebrates change and has the stamina to work tirelessly towards a goal is like an unstoppable force.

All of this, however, requires practice, guidance and the ability to cope with setbacks. If I had to start somewhere, I’d probably start by getting to know the first I would follow Dwight D. Eisenhower’s approach to prioritising tasks and apply it to planning my own daily life. Or I’d book an appointment with us, so that we can brainstorm this together with your team!

So, what should we take away from this?

Although the examples given are somewhat exaggerated, they are not all that far removed from the sort of people you might come across in everyday life – and whom I myself have come across. As a manager, your role is to recognise how close your team members are to extreme resilience, extreme resistance, or a combination of the two.

If your team member gets on well with both of them, that’s brilliant! In that case, carry on nurturing both of these qualities whilst avoiding going overboard, and you’ll have the perfect super-talent on your team.

If you notice that a member of your team displays, above all, resilience or resistance, start thinking of ways to foster the trait that is less prominent. Without both of these, it’s unlikely that good results will be achieved – at least not in the long term.

If your team member lacks both, then set about developing both aspects in turn. By providing tools first for adaptability – that is, resilience – then for resistance, then for adaptability again, and so on, you can ultimately turn that person into a highly competent team member.

As a brief commercial message, I would urge you, particularly in the latter cases, book an appointment with us. We’ve got quite a few good ideas up our sleeves that can help teams improve both their resilience and their resistance – and in just the right balance.

But is Finnish ‘sisu’ actually a virtue or a vice? The answer is a bit of a let-down – it’s both, but as a trait that’s too pronounced, both sides of it are, in today’s society, even more of a vice.

So let’s be resilient in just the right way. That way, we won’t burn out on the dance floor to the beat of Daft Punk, or leave the door unlocked overnight in our very own Moominvalley.