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Kobasa and ‘hardiness’
The big picture
Inevitably, there are times when you feel stressed at work, because of pressures within work, from outside work or a combination of the two. Those who are more resistant to stress have been described as ‘stress-hardy’. Suzanne Kobasa, an American clinical physiologist, studied patterns of stress in Bell Telephone Company during a restructuring programme in the 1970s and her research suggested that the ‘stress-hardy’ people displayed three characteristics that made them more resilient:
- Commitment: having a real purpose in life (which may or may not be work-related).
- Control: those who accepted that they could not be in control of everything but understood that they could choose how to react in situations ...
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