Process

Clients | Instructional Style | Process

NRRC guides clients through phases of systems change. The primary goal is to teach individuals within systems to tap their own natural resilience. As "helpers" discover their resilience and health, they naturally begin to extend essential protective factors to others—caring and support, encouraging high expectations, and meaningful opportunities for participation. The first phase facilitates individual understanding until changes in personal and work life become apparent. "You cannot lead where you have not been."

This is followed by a period of confidence and skill building to strengthen participants’ ability to communicate what they know. The third phase emphasizes and supports customization or application of the understanding to specific projects or situations. The goal is for members of the organization to be able to be so confident, capable, and experienced with this understanding that their lives and work transform the lives of others. This kind of "learning community" can transform systems in a natural way.

In educational and youth-serving settings, for example, NRRC’s combined resilience philosophy and health realization strategies are initially designed to assist educators in understanding and accessing their resilience—natural common sense or innate health. As adults learn, they begin to teach students, first by role modeling, and then with formal instruction and with new approaches to student services. Students are viewed as "at promise" rather than "at risk."

This NRRC systems change effort is an inside-out process. Its positive, contagious effect strengthens or recaptures the health and resilience of an entire system and the individuals in it.

Outcomes include both improved individual student performance and behavior. Because this approach begins with and continually supports the health and well-being of employees, school climate, organizational health, and relationships with students are enhanced. Peer relationships for both students and staff can also be significantly enriched. This NRRC systems change effort is an inside-out process. Its positive, contagious effect strengthens or recaptures the health and resilience of an entire system and the individuals in it. In this manner, the Center-led change process, grounded in the resilience paradigm, can be institutionalized in school districts and other organizations. The community-based or organizational change process is similar.

More detailed discussion of the organizational and individual outcomes associated with NRRC systems-change Resilience/Health Realization services are located in the NRRC Resource Room and in the Making a Difference section.