Three Choices That Build Psychological Resilience
Recognizing that psychological resilience is the capacity to respond quickly and constructively to uncertainty and complex change, there are three choices leaders can make on a daily basis to become better at being psychologically resilient.
First, they must choose to respond rather than react to change. On the surface, this seems pretty simplistic, but in reality it is hard to do in the world of leadership because we are constantly bombarded with questions and problems that have no easy answers. Furthermore, many of these questions and problems arrive before us with incomplete information, biased opinions, and numerous uncontrollable variables. In short, we are handed a mess and expected to deliver an elegant solution.
At the exact same time, many leaders are caught in a continuous partial attention syndrome. This phrase, coined by Linda Stone, a tech writer and consultant in 1998, is the choice to continuously divide our attention between several sources of information while scanning within each of them for what is relevant and applicable. The outcome of this choice is that a leader is in constant interaction with everything and everyone around them, but not with much focus or depth in the level of interaction. As a result, when leaders are paying partial attention to many things and many people at the exact same time, those around the leader feel like the leader does not care about them as a person, and/or does not respect the challenges they are bringing to leadership.
Moreover, leaders, because of this choice, tend to react rather than respond thoughtfully to people and the questions and problems people are bringing to them. Their constant partial scanning does not give them adequate head space, for lack of a better term, to think through a thoughtful response, especially when it comes to setting precedent or impact. In addition, many people feel, and then believe that the leader is not giving them or their problem the proper attention and respect that it and they deserve. Until leaders learn how to give others their full and undivided attention, they will usually default to control and command rather than collaboration and connection. In summary, the key is to make a conscious choice to focus and respond rather than just to focus and react.
Second, leaders must avoid getting caught in the cul-de-sacs of their mind. A cul-de-sac, as defined in urban planning, is a dead end street with no through road. It only has one way in and that is the same way out. Furthermore when you are in a cul-de-sac, you can only move in a circle or an endless loop with no forward progress.
When a leader gets caught in the cul-de-sacs of their mind, they are engaged in an endless, reactive cycle of thinking and working. They are not engaging with any new information or fresh insights or perspectives. Instead, they are just looping over and over through the same information. When this happens, leaders need to ask themselves two important questions: Is this a useful course of inquiry? Will this result in a useful course of action? Nine times out of ten, they will realize they are stuck and not being productive.
When I encounter this cul-de-sac level of thinking, I am reminded of something Richard Rohr wrote years ago: “It is ironic that you must go to the edge to find the center.” The challenge most leaders have forgotten is that within a cul-de-sac, there is no edge and the center is small and not very “centered.” Father Thomas Keating understood this perspective when he wrote: “Discernment is a process of letting go of what we are not.” And the reality of it all is that we do not have to be limited in our thinking and we do not have to get trapped in the cul-de-sacs of our mind.
For a new level of clarity to emerge, we need allies and confidents. These key people help us to gain perspective and to put issues into perspective. Allies stand with us and support us. Confidents, who can come in the form of elders, mentors, executive coaches, and wise friends, ask us questions that make us think more creatively and holistically. It is the combination of the two that helps us to get out of these cul-de-sacs, and to stay out of them. And that helps us be more resilient.
Third, leaders need to create an organizational culture of welcome and belonging. Given events of the last three years, I believe we need and want to feel like we belong, and like our voice and our efforts matter. We also need and want to feel supported and to feel like we are part of a community, a team, and a family. If we seek to build resilient people, teams, companies, and communities, then we must build a culture of welcome and belong. The two are interconnected.
Everything Changes Over Time
To develop psychological resilience and a way of working that is generous and equal to the complexity of these times, we must choose to respond rather than react, avoid the cul-de-sacs of our minds, and create a culture of welcome and belonging. And as we do these three important steps, we will come to understand that, over time, people do not just respond or react to the environment in which they live and work, they adapt to it.
We forget as leaders that all involved are active participants in the events and the environment around us. And through our choices and actions, we are creating a better environment and better outcomes for ourselves and others. As Fred Provenza, retired Utah State University professor in the College of Natural Resources, notes: “Individuals are involved in the world, which allows them to evolve in the world.” It is this evolution that gives each of us the capacity to become psychologically resilient.
Still, we must recognize that psychological resilience is an on-going evolution. It is aspirational, not just a fixed operational state of working and living. We become resilient rather than just do resilience. It is an on-going and evolutionary internal process more than just an external action of getting something done and checked off a list. When we grasp the magnitude of this work, we understand what the Irish poet, John O’Donohue, was saying when he wrote, “Every human person is inevitably involved in two worlds: the world they carry within them and the world that is out there.” When both of these worlds are united and moving in the same direction, we create a life where all are welcomed and all belong. And this is a transformative action on so many levels.
© Geery Howe 2023
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