Mental Toughness

A lot of debate about stress has focussed on the working environment and its impact on employees. This is an important area for attention however, it is also true that people react differently under stress. For instance, put two people into the same working environment and often one person will cope very well but the other may not.

So why is it that people react differently in stressful situations? The difference can be explained through the concept of ‘Mental Toughness’ i.e. how individuals develop resilience and an inner drive to succeed.

Developing Mental Toughness

Mental toughness is defined as "the capacity of an individual to deal effectively with stressors, pressures and challenge and to perform to the best of their abilities, irrespective of the circumstances in which they find themselves".

Mental toughness has been around for many years but has mainly been associated with sports performance. However, more recently it has been recognised that mental toughness applies to all types of work and professions, in order to deal with the stresses and pressures of daily life and work.

Mental toughness is about increasing mental performance to enable individuals achieve their best performance. Studies in the Occupational, Educational and Sports worlds consistently show that mental toughness is directly related to Performance, Behaviour, Well-Being and Aspirations.

The MTQ48 Mental Toughness Questionnaire, was developed in collaboration between Dr peter clough, head of the psychology department and Dr Keith Earle, senior lecturer, both from the university of hull, and Doug Strycharczyk, managing director of A&R Ltd.

The MTQ48 mental toughness questionnaire measures an individual’s resilience and ability to cope with pressure and change around scales of control, commitment, challenge and confidence. The questionnaire takes approximately 8 minutes to compete and can be completed on time.

Following completion of the questionnaire the individual will receive supportive feedback to enable them to discuss their scores and what they mean, together with indication of possible implications, and coaching development or coaching suggestions.

For organisational use of a compassion report on distance travelled can be provided on request. This report identifies areas in which an individual’s scores have changed or remained the same after a period of time and/or a period of training/ development coaching/ therapy etc to assess differences arising from intervention.

It is important to note that a mentally tough workforce is a happy and productive workforce.