Course Highlights
This resilience training course will:
- Explore the factors that build and weaken resilience at both the individual and team level.
- Examine the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and how each one shapes the others.
- Introduce the RISE framework for recognizing adversity, reframing interpretation, selecting strategies, and understanding the resulting effects.
- Give participants tools for determining what they can change in a difficult situation and how to manage their response to what they cannot.
- Apply Edith Grotberg’s “I have, I am, I can” framework to identify external resources, inner strengths, and practical capabilities.
- Address cognitive distortions, stress preparation, and the practice of reflecting on what goes right.
Course Overview
Resilience is not a personality trait. It is a set of skills that can be examined, practiced, and strengthened. This half-day workshop gives participants the frameworks and the practice time to do exactly that, at both the individual and team level.
The session opens by establishing what resilience actually is and what conditions build it or erode it. The discussion covers personal and team resilience in parallel, giving participants a clear picture of how the same dynamics operate at both levels and what that means for the people they work with every day.
From there, the course examines the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, three elements that influence each other in a continuous loop. Understanding that loop is the foundation for the RISE framework, which gives participants a structured approach for recognizing a difficult situation, examining how they are interpreting it, choosing a strategy based on that interpretation, and understanding how their choices shape what they feel and do next.
The second half of the session addresses the cognitive work of resilience: distinguishing between what can be changed and what cannot, recognizing the distorted thinking patterns that make difficult situations feel worse than they are, and developing the language to challenge those patterns directly. The course closes with practical tools for preparing for high-stress situations before they arrive and reflecting on performance after they pass.
The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).
Program Objectives
At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Recognize the factors that build and weaken resilience at the individual and team level.
- Describe how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are interconnected.
- Use the RISE framework to reframe situations, select strategies, and understand behavioral and emotional outcomes.
- Assess whether a situation can be changed or whether the more effective response is managing their reaction to it.
- Apply the “I have, I am, I can” approach to identify external resources, personal strengths, and available actions.
- Identify common patterns of distorted thinking.
- Develop alternative language to address and reframe distorted thoughts.
- Plan for handling high-stress situations before they occur.
- Reflect on achievements as well as on areas needing improvement.
Workshop Modules
Core Elements: Factors that Build or Weaken Resilience
The session opens with a working definition of resilience and an examination of the growth mindset, the foundational belief, developed by psychologist Carol Dweck, that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning rather than treated as fixed traits. Participants will review two parallel frameworks: the conditions that promote personal resilience, including social support, a sense of purpose, self-efficacy, and effective coping strategies, and the conditions that erode it, including isolation, chronic stress, rigid thinking, and pessimism. The same analysis then applies at the team level, examining what team dynamics build collective resilience and what patterns quietly undermine it. Self-reflection and group reflection questions give participants the opportunity to honestly assess where they stand before the course moves into the tools for change.
The Connection: How Thoughts, Emotions, and Behaviors Interact
Thoughts, emotions, and behaviors do not operate independently. Each one influences the others in a continuous loop, and that loop runs in both productive and counterproductive directions. This module examines how a single interpretation of an event shapes an emotional response, how that emotional response drives behavior, and how the behavior in turn reinforces or challenges the original thought. Participants will work through examples drawn from workplace situations, including receiving critical feedback, making a visible mistake, and being passed over for recognition, tracing the full loop in each case and identifying where an intervention would have the most impact. The module establishes the conceptual foundation for everything that follows in the session.
The RISE Approach: Reframing Mindsets and Choices
The RISE framework gives participants a four-step structure for navigating adversity rather than simply reacting to it. Recognition is the step of clearly acknowledging the situation without minimizing or catastrophizing it. Interpretation examines how the situation is being perceived and surfaces the choices available in that perception. Strategy identifies the specific actions available based on the interpretation. Emotional and Behavioral Effects traces the outcomes of those strategies, including how they shape what the person feels and does next. Participants will apply the framework to a set of six realistic scenarios involving job rejection, public mistakes, critical feedback, poor decisions, slipping performance, and missed promotions, practicing the reframing process in each case. The module also introduces a six-step narrative reframing process for working through difficult situations systematically rather than by instinct.
Refining Reactions: Altering Situations or Adjusting Responses
Not every difficult situation can be changed, and treating them all the same way is a reliable path to exhaustion. This module introduces a framework for distinguishing between situations that call for task-focused action, because aspects of the situation can be changed, and situations that call for emotion-focused work, because they cannot. It also addresses the third case: situations where emotional distress is blocking the person’s ability to see that change is actually possible, requiring them to manage the distress before they can act on the situation effectively. Participants will then examine fourteen cognitive distortions, including all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, catastrophizing, mind reading, fortune telling, and personalization, and practice rewriting distorted thoughts in language that is accurate, balanced, and actionable. The rewrite exercise connects directly to the narrative reframing work introduced in the previous module.
Three Key Supports: I Have, I Am, I Can
Edith Grotberg’s resilience framework, developed for the International Resilience Project in 1999, organizes the building blocks of resilience into three interconnected categories. I Have addresses external supports: the people, relationships, and resources available when things get hard. I Am addresses internal strengths: self-respect, personal values, and the qualities that guide behavior when circumstances are difficult. I Can addresses practical capabilities: the social and problem-solving skills that allow a person to navigate challenges, communicate effectively, and persist through setbacks. Participants will map their own resources across all three categories, and the team version of the exercise applies the same framework at the group level. The module makes the case that resilience is not something a person either has or does not have — it is a set of assets that can be inventoried, developed, and drawn on deliberately.
Handling Stress: Preparation and Reflection
The final module addresses the two moments most people ignore: the time before a difficult situation and the time immediately after it. Preparing for a stressful situation, by recalling past success, building self-encouragement language, and committing to a strategy in advance, is one of the most effective tools available for managing performance under pressure. Reflecting on a difficult situation after it passes, by acknowledging what went well, identifying what to carry forward, and naming the skill demonstrated rather than only the outcome achieved, is what converts experience into durable resilience rather than just another hard day. Participants will practice both, leaving with specific language for preparation and reflection that they can apply before and after the next high-pressure situation they face.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for groups that want to:
- Build practical resilience skills for navigating stress, adversity, and change in the workplace.
- Develop the cognitive and behavioral awareness to respond to challenges rather than react to them.
- Strengthen both individual and team resilience through a shared framework and common language.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should attend this resilience workshop?
This course works well for professionals at any level who are managing significant workload pressure, organizational change, or high-stakes environments. It is not a clinical intervention. It is a practical skills course grounded in cognitive behavioral principles that gives participants tools they can use immediately. Teams that attend together benefit from the shared language and the group reflection work, which surfaces dynamics that most team conversations never reach.
Does this course address both individual and team resilience?
Yes, and the two are treated as connected rather than separate. The opening module examines the conditions that build and erode resilience at both levels in parallel. The “I have, I am, I can” module includes a team version of the mapping exercise. The group reflection questions throughout the session give teams the opportunity to examine their own dynamics honestly rather than in the abstract.
Is this course appropriate for teams going through significant change or disruption?
Yes. The framework for distinguishing between what can be changed and what requires an adjusted response is particularly useful in change environments, where the instinct to take task-focused action on everything produces exhaustion and the instinct to simply accept everything produces stagnation. The RISE framework and the cognitive distortions module address the thinking patterns that change tends to activate most reliably.
How much of the session involves individual reflection versus group discussion?
Both run throughout the session. The self-reflection questions, the cognitive distortions rewrite exercise, the “I have, I am, I can” mapping, and the stress preparation and reflection work are individual. The group reflection questions, the scenario discussions, and the reframing exercises involve the full group. The balance is intentional: participants need space to examine their own patterns, and they benefit from hearing how others navigate the same challenges.
Can this course be customized for our organization?
Yes. Before the session, we gather information about the specific pressures your group is facing, the nature of the work, and any organizational context that would make the scenarios and examples more relevant. We adjust the emphasis accordingly. Groups navigating significant change or restructuring may spend more time on the task-versus-emotion-focused response module. Groups dealing with performance pressure may go deeper on cognitive distortions and stress preparation.
What do participants leave with?
Participants will leave with a clear picture of what is building and weakening their resilience, the RISE framework applied to a realistic scenario, a personal inventory of resources across the “I have, I am, I can” categories, a set of rewritten distorted thoughts from the rewrite exercise, and specific language for preparing for and reflecting on the next high-stress situation they face.