{"id":2337,"date":"2023-10-23T17:21:35","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T15:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog?p=2337"},"modified":"2023-10-23T17:29:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T15:29:32","slug":"resilience-for-legal-advisers-a-conditio-sine-qua-non","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/resilience-for-legal-advisers-a-conditio-sine-qua-non","title":{"rendered":"Resilience for legal advisers \u2013 a conditio sine qua non?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does resilience mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The term \u201cresilience\u201d (from Latin resilire, meaning to leap back or rebound) does not have a standard definition. One nice instance is provided by materials science, which defines those materials as resilient which return to their original state even after have been subjected to extreme tension (cf. elastic vs plastic deformation). And according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, resilience is an \u201caction of rebounding or leaping back\u201d and the \u201cability to recover readily from, or resist being affected by, a setback, illness, etc.\u201d [und] Bamboo may serve as an analogy here, or \u2013 for those with a more athletic approach \u2013 Thera bands.<\/p>\n

The necessity of resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than ever, today\u2019s environment is characterised by rapidly and massively changing framework conditions. It is not an exaggeration to describe the last two decades as a polycrisis, marked with terrorism, the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, the pandemic, Russia\/Ukraine, the climate crisis, the energy crisis, inflation and trade wars. Disruptions with global changes and impairments (keyword: VUCA world), from which there was no escape, have been chasing each other at short intervals. As if this were not enough, the focus of the Western world is increasingly on the issue of values, which is exerting pressure at further levels. Everything is interconnected with everything else, and all individuals are linked up with their environments several times over, as well as being systemically integrated. We have to be able to react flexibly and resistantly, and this without the remedy of finding sufficient time for appropriate regeneration in between. To be able to do so, we have to believe in our own strength to change, and to be able to muster it.<\/p>\n

Its relevance to the legal profession<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today lawyers \u2013 and here, we primarily refer to those in legal departments and law firms \u2013 are under great pressure from a variety of quarters. Customers have high expectations, competition is on the increase, progressive digitalisation is important for \u201cknowledge workers\u201d, in particular, and the management of new generations with changed requirements is challenging successful business and working models.<\/p>\n

Superiors share this pressure with their staff, or pass it on to them. Staff members, in turn, are not only under professional pressure to make no professional mistakes (keyword: liability), but also under high pressure regarding time and deadlines, since many pending cases have to be worked on in parallel. Juggling all these balls at the same time is already a challenge for them. Added to this, their expected daily performance is relevant to their careers, i.e. it provides the basis for decisions concerning their further employment, salary increases and bonus payments, promotion and other development opportunities. And women have to cope with additional challenges. If professional performance pressure is compounded with the private environment \u2013 partner, children, family, friends, spare time \u2013 the working day can soon turn into an endurance test. It therefore does not come as a surprise that issues such as stress, well-being, burnout or alcohol\/drug consumption are already being discussed as a profession-specific problem.<\/p>\n

Resilience as a topic of self-management<\/strong><\/p>\n

Basically, above-average performance, high working intensity and ambitious goals are not a bad thing. Also, resilience is not tantamount to standing still; rather, it does not only guarantee the preservation of one\u2019s own employability but also allows for sustainable growth. However, the point is to recognise one\u2019s own limits and to take one\u2019s bearings from them. Primarily, every individual is responsible for himself or herself \u2013 to ensure that the stress imposed on body, mind and soul will not cause any lasting damage and that \u2013 to return to the analogy of bamboo referred to earlier on \u2013 despite adverse circumstances, it will always be possible to return to the original state while continuing to grow at the same time. The secret may well also be to discern coming disruptions and challenges in good time, to carefully prepare for them in advance and to continually reinforce one\u2019s robustness. In that case, there will be no need to react to surprises in an impulsive and erratic manner. However, employers and professional associations bear an equally great responsibility. Indeed, resilience is not only an individual issue, but also applies to other systems such as a company, the economy, a society, a nation and the whole planet. Which brings us back full circle to the initially mentioned principle of sustainability.<\/p>\n

Result<\/strong><\/p>\n

Strategies, models and approaches abound as to how we recognise individual and situational risk factors, how we can protect ourselves against injuries and boost our own resilience. The main point is to become aware of the problem, to question ourselves self-critically and if need be make \u2013 possibly disagreeable \u2013 decisions and trigger off change. As people say: you can\u2019t prevent bad weather, but it\u2019s easier to bear if you\u2019re wearing the right clothes. And a spot of optimism and hope can never hurt.<\/p>\n

About us<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Law & Management division of the Executive School of the University of St.Gallen (HSG) has been providing executive education at all levels (week-long seminars, CAS, DAS, Executive Master) as open programmes and tailor-made in-house courses since 2007 and is currently doing so in eight subject areas. To date, more than 1,600 participants have attended the open executive education pro-grammes, which are continually being updated and extended. The comprehensive executive education format that was introduced in 2021 is expressive of a clear commitment to lifelong learning in that all the courses are modular in design and can be arranged flexibly in terms of time and according to individual requirements. Above and beyond this, the following executive education objectives are being pursued: get-ting to know many-faceted career perspectives and options, establishing and expanding networks, benefitting from new methods and tools, and generally extending participants\u2019 personal horizons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does resilience mean? The term \u201cresilience\u201d (from Latin resilire, meaning to leap back or rebound) does not have a standard definition. One nice instance is provided by materials science, which defines those materials as resilient which return to their original state even after have been subjected to extreme tension (cf. elastic vs plastic deformation). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"acf":{"excerpt":"

A list of terms that are being used in an inflationary manner today would certainly include sustainability and resilience. Actually, the two even go together. But what precisely is resilience, and why is it relevant to lawyers?<\/p>\n","school":{"ID":166,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2017-12-04 17:17:12","post_date_gmt":"2017-12-04 16:17:12","post_content":"The Law & Management department provides world-class executive education at the intersection of law and business management. The programmes are designed for legal professionals interested in acquiring management skills and executives keen to learn about commercial law.","post_title":"Law & Management","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"law-management","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2017-12-04 17:17:12","post_modified_gmt":"2017-12-04 16:17:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog?post_type=school&p=166","menu_order":3,"post_type":"school","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}