Abstract
This case illustrates the communication processes involved in developing resilience when facing cancer diagnosis and treatment in the workplace. Beyond just the initial decision about whether to share the news of cancer, individuals enact ongoing communication behaviors that may enhance or detract from their ability to build resilience when going through this level of hardship, loss, and trauma. The case describes communication choices made and the dialectics faced by two women during breast cancer treatment in two different workplaces. The five communication processes of Patrice Buzzanell's communication theory of resilience are described in some detail and applied to these cases. The goal is for managers and others in workplace settings to gain a better understanding of ways to communicate that help someone going through a hardship, loss, or trauma build higher resilience and to better understand the communal nature of resilience in organizational settings.
TopIntroduction
Facing a cancer diagnosis introduces a significant disruption in the life of patients and those who know them. Couple that diagnosis and the prescribed treatment with a desire or need to continue working throughout, and the stress level rises. This experience often taxes or exceeds any individual’s resources. Cancer patients must manage complicated health and treatment information, adapt to changes in body and lifestyle, and figure out how to talk about their cancer with others. When someone is continuing work during this cancer experience, not only must that individual balance the need to seek support and share personal information with those surrounding, but others are also called upon to make decisions about how to talk to the cancer patient (Elkins, 2020; Venetis et al., 2020). The decisions and behaviors of those involved can result in added stress or lessened stress on the individual. This case study intends to explore experiences of two female breast cancer patients in different workplaces to better understand the communication processes that developed their resilience.
Resilience has been the focus of research across multiple disciplines and has been generally viewed as a process of creatively adapting to disruptions and losses in a way that stimulates empowerment to achieve productive outcomes despite adverse circumstances (Buzzanell, 2010). The communication theory of resilience seeks to situate resilience in the face of disruption and hardship not as an individual trait but as a process that is constructed through communication that results in “co-crafting productive narratives, identities, emotions, and networks that enable reintegration and/or transformation after change” (Agarwal, et al. p. 411). The five specific communication processes identified in the theory as building resilience are: (1) crafting normalcy, (2) affirming identity anchors, (3) maintaining and using communication networks, (4) putting alternative logics to work, and (5) legitimizing negative feelings while foregrounding productive action (Buzzanell, 2010).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Communication Networks: Those people around an individual who are in regular communication with that individual and who may hold useful information or other means of support.
Social Support: An interpersonal communication process that ameliorates the harmful effects of stress on an individual experiencing various hardships. Social support can include both verbal support and tangible, practical support.
Dialectics: Tensions that arise in relationships or within individuals that require balancing two opposing forces.
Resilience: Facing hardship, trauma, or loss in a way that allows for creative adjustment and stimulates empowerment to achieve productive outcomes despite adverse circumstances.
Communal Coping: Viewing hardship suffered by one person as a stressor to be acted upon collectively.