Social and organizational influences on psychological hardiness: How leaders can increase stress resilience

Abstract

Today's security forces must operate in environments of increasing complexity, uncertainty and change, a fact that has led to increased stress levels along with the challenge to adapt. For many people, such stressful conditions can lead to a range of health problems and performance decrements. But others remain healthy, showing resilience under stress. What accounts for such resilience? This paper focuses on psychological hardiness, a set of mental qualities that has been found to distinguish resilient from non-resilient people. Those high in psychological hardiness show greater commitment -the abiding sense that life is meaningful and worth living; control -the belief that one chooses and can influence his/her own future; and challenge -a perspective on change in life as something that is interesting and exciting. This paper begins with a brief discussion of the major stress sources in modern military and security operations, and the broad range of factors that can influence resilience in organizations. Next the concept of psychological hardiness is described, including theoretical background, representative research findings, and biological underpinnings. Finally, some strategies are suggested for how psychological hardiness can be built up in organizations, primarily through leader actions and policies. By focusing more attention on increasing psychological hardiness, security organizations can realize enhanced health and performance in the workforce, while also preventing many stress-related problems.

Predicting Job Strain with Psychological Hardiness, Organizational Support, Job Control and Work Overload: An Evaluation of Karasek’s DCS Model

“…Roth, Wiebe, Fillingim, & Shay (1989, p.136) reported that life events, fitness, hardiness, and health were significantly related while hardiness was found to have stress-resistance effects. The recent empirical studies have also reported the negative correlation of high psychological hardiness with negative individual outcomes (e.g., Britt, Adler, & Bartone, 2001;Bartone, 2012;Kalantar, Khedri, Nikbakht, &Motvalian, 2013;Khaledian, Hasanvand, & Pour, 2013). Klag & Bradley (2004) found a strong relationship between stressful daily experiences and mental health problems and reported that psychological hardiness had an intervening variable role in that relationship.…”

Military Leaders' Leadership Styles and Subordinates Hardiness Level: Can Transformational and Transactional Leadership Influence Soldier’s Hardiness?

“…Similarly, few studies also supported the idea of how hardiness contributed to trained soldiers been a better military leader [14], [19], [32]. However, very few attentions have been given to the possibilities of leaders enhancing military subordinates' hardiness, as conceptually proposed by [17][18]. Evidently, hardiness plays an important role in influencing an employee's commitment and performance.…”

“…Besides, there has been a debate within the theoretical context of hardiness, whether it could be developed and changed due to the factors of leadership influences. Conceptually, scholars have suggested the roles of military leaders in enhancing soldier's hardiness [17][18]. For instance, [19] found a significant empirical longitudinal evidence, although, there has been no change in the level of hardiness in three years of cadet training, a difference in cadet's hardiness variances, in which some of the cadets have shown the increase of hardiness were identified during the training processes.…”

“…Therefore, the use of EVM of leadership styles was employed in the present research as an avenue to examine the gap of leadership-hardiness relationship. On the other hand, scholars have proposed the possibilities of military leaders that can influence soldier's hardiness [17][18], but until now this has not been implemented within the military organization, except there has been a study involved a white-collar employee in Italy. Hence, the present study examines the effect of the MA unit commanders' transformational and transactional leadership styles vignette experiment, on subordinate's hardiness level.…”

Managing women presenting with urinary incontinence: is hardiness significant?

“…While the trait of hardiness is unlikely to respond to significant modification, since it is inherently stable, the associated transitory state of resilience offers more opportunity for change, and there are several examples of such training programmes [21][22][23]. In this context, teaching patients coping strategies to manage their UI may help to decrease the severity of the condition or avoid its development.…”