What is Mental Toughness?
Mental Toughness is about how effectively individuals deal with stress, pressure and challenge. It describes the mindset that every person adopts in everything they do and is closely related to qualities such as character, resilience and grit.
Paying attention to your Mental Toughness helps builds confidence and competence in dealing with stress, pressure and challenge and moves people from a Survive to Thrive Mindset. David Allen, one of our trainers, is a leading practitioner of mental toughness in the workplace and regularly leads our virtual resilience training courses.
So, what can you do to help your Mental Toughness?
You can start by taking an assessment to see where you are right now.
The MTQ Plus assessment is a unique 74 item high-quality psychometric measure that measures Mental Toughness which describes the mindset that every person adopts in everything they do. It is closely related to qualities such as character, resilience, grit, etc.
Published research and case studies from around the world show that Mental Toughness is a major factor in:
- Performance – explaining up to 25% of the variation in performance in individuals
- Positive Behaviour – more engaged, more positive, more “can do”
- Wellbeing – more contentment, better stress management, less prone to bullying
- Aspirations – more ambitious, prepared to manage more risk
What does MTQ Plus measure?
The MTQPlus assessment measures mindset on 8 scales – the four C’s and two additional subscales for each.
- Control – Life Control and Emotional Control
- Commitment – Gaol Orientation and Achievement Orientation
- Confidence – Confidence in abilities and Inter-personal Confidence
- Challenge – Risk Orientation and Learning Orientation
The MTQPlus Assessment provides a score and narrative for each scale and sub-scale as well as an overall mental toughness score. The report also contains suggestions for development activities to the overall MTQ score and also reduces any gap variances.
We recommend taking the profile and then working with our qualified coach: David Allen to see how you can increase your score and reduce the gaps in your scores.
You can do this one on one, or as a team.
The whole point of the assessment and follow on sessions is to have a good overall score and have no variance gaps of more than 2 across the 8 areas, as we are aiming for balanced Mental Toughness Profile.
People often retake the assessment after working in the areas with coaching / training and see their improved score.
Why is Mental Toughness important? What will you gain?
Being mentally tough brings a variety of benefits for individuals and organisations. Research conducted worldwide has concluded that those with higher levels of mental toughness, as indicated through the MTQ48 measure, enjoy the following;
- Better performance – it explains up to 25% of the variation in workplace performance.
- Improved positivity – adoption of more of a “can do” approach which leads to greater rapport and connectivity with colleagues.
- Greater wellbeing – more contentment and better stress management.
- Change management – a calmer and lower stress response to organisational change.
- Increased aspirations – greater ambition and confidence in achieving targets and a greater willingness to persevere in order to do so.
For these reasons being mentally tough for an individual or an organisation is immensely important, especially in times of great change. Leaders, aspiring leaders and those working in stressful, unforgiving occupations or in situations of uncertainty or dynamic change need to be mentally tough.
Organisations whether they be in the education, health, government, corporate or public sectors need to be resilient and mentally set and ready for change. To find our more about mental toughness and resilience courses, don’t hesitate to get in touch today! We can provide a wide range of courses to enhance your mental toughness!
