How do leaders help their organization become more resilient? part #1

In the last six months, I have heard more people use the following two phrases than in the entire course of my 30+ years of doing this work: “I am stuck” and “We are stuck.” It is an acknowledgment of the depth of challenge and frustration that people are feeling at this time period. They deeply want to move forward and yet they can not overcome the problems before them. Acknowledging their “stuck-ness” is their first step in the right direction. Becoming resilient is essential to their long term success.

The technical definition for resilience is “the ability of something to return to its original shape after it has been pulled, stretched, pressed, bent, etc.”, e.g. the resilience of rubber. This technical definition does not work in the world of leadership. From my observations, being resilient is rarely, if ever, the return to a former condition or “original shape”, because the act of going through a change changes the “original form”, be that a person or an organization. 

The non-technical definitions of resilience are the following: “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”, and “the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again when something bad happens.” The two key words for me are recover & adjust.

Having worked with many leaders and many different organizations, I have learned that resilient leaders create resilient organizations. The question before us today is the following: What makes a leader become a resilient leader?

Elena Lytkina, Botel Ho, Kim Rosenkoetter Powell, Stephen Kincaid, and Dina Wag in their Harvard Business Review, May-June 2017 article called “What Sets Successful CEOs Apart” states that successful, i.e. resilient, leaders show  “decisiveness even in the midst of ambiguity and incomplete information,” “the ability to engage stakeholders,” and “adaptability when dealing with situations that are not in the playbook.” They also are able to be reliable about producing results which is based on their ability to set realistic expectations, get the “right team in place” and upgrade talent.

Adi Ignatius in the same May-June 2017 Harvard Business Review issue wrote an article called “Above All Acknowledge The Pain: A Conversation about Resilience With Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant.” Sandberg and Grant share that “Resilience is about the speed and strength of your response to adversity…. The best thing you can do is build routines that might be applicable in an unexpected situation.”

Given all the current challenges before business leaders, I have noticed the following about resilient leaders. First, they do very analog things and connect with people face to face instead of solely focusing on things. This includes visiting with people in person and respecting the daily efforts of people. These same leaders proactively listen and always conduct themselves with the utmost integrity.

At the same time, these leaders are continually focusing on the building, maintaining and execution of teams. They understand that recovery and adjustment happen outside the comfort zone and thus healthy teams are essential.

Next, these leaders are able to stay centered in the midst of all that that is happening. Being centered means drawing on adaptive expertise and not over thinking something. Instead these leaders focus on being present. As Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao wrote in their book, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting To More Without Settling For Less (Crown Business, 2014), “We used our mindset as a guide, not as the answer to every question and problem.” In essence, they did not retreat to a pre-defined solution.

Finally, these leaders respected a diversity of opinions because they were an expression of different options. They focused on adherence to the goals of the organization over the agendas of others.

This week, reflect on how you can become a more resilient leader. It is the first step to creating a resilient organization. 

Quote For The Week: The Grateful Pledge

“I am grateful for today’s problems; they will be tomorrow’s successes. I am grateful for today’s successes; they will inspire me to see tomorrow’s challenges waiting to still be met. I am grateful for tomorrow’s challenges as they will bring next day’s problems. I am grateful for those future problems as they will become our future success. I am grateful.” - Jennifer Bauer

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How do leaders prevent burnout? - part #2

The starting place to prevent burnout begins when one rediscovers their “Thinking Space”. As John Maxwell wrote in his book, How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, Center Street, 2009, “I’ve mastered the art of making myself unavailable when necessary and going off to my “thinking place” so that I can work without interruptions.”

I have come to the conclusion that I agree with John Maxwell. I can’t know everyone. I can’t do everything. I can’t go everywhere. I can’t be well-rounded. But, I can do a great deal of thinking and reflecting which can expand my perspective and generate new insights.

So, the first big question today is the following: Where is your thinking space? As Brene Brown, PhD, LMSW, wrote in her book, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution, Spiegel & Grau, 2015, “We can’t be brave in the big world without at least one small safe space to work through our fears and falls.”

The second solution to preventing burnout is to invest in meaningful connections. People who do this can handle a lot of stress because they feel connected to those who they work with plus their own friends and families. They also can handle a lot of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty because they believe they belong to something important that is larger them themselves. Finally, they can still bring their authentic and imperfect selves to work and life do so, because they have people in their life who make it a safe and trustworthy place.

When I first started teaching back in the 80’s, I created and taught a workshop on stress management. In it, I told people the only way to cope effectively with a high degree of stress and burnout, is to have three people outside your family who you could call for support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The reason why they need to be outside your family is because your family may be the problem or your family may have heard it all already and can not offer you any fresh perspective. This network of “friends” offers perspective. They love you for your strengths and your struggles. Brene' Brown, in her book, Daring Greatly, called these people “stretch-mark friends”. As she explains, “our connection has been stretched and pulled so much that it’s become part of who we are, a second skin, and there are a few scars to prove it. We’re totally uncool with each other.”

The second big question for today is the following: Who are the three people on your list that you can call 24 hour/7day a week?

The third solution to preventing burn-out is to be more grateful for the ordinary moments. Right now, many of us are so “busy” trying to fix everything. We also are busy trying to control everything and everyone. We even get so busy trying to get it or keep it all under control that in the end, we just end up numb to it all. In short, we have lost our gratefulness for the ordinary moments 

From personal and professional experience, I have learned that on the days that our lives are spinning out of control, e.g. sickness, pain, divorce, loss, etc., we pray for miracles. We pray for it all to go back to “normal”. We pray for the ordinary, i.e. the chance to get up, eat breakfast and go to work. We want to just be without pain, without sorrow, or without fear or confusion.

Our challenge is not perfection as much as the intersection between happiness and meaning. As Dr. Marshall Goldsmith and Dr. Kelly Goldsmith wrote: “In determining a personal mission, you need to make sure that you take into account both happiness and meaning. By happiness we are referring to your personal enjoyment of the process itself, not just the results. In other words, at the high end of the scale, you love what you are doing. By meaning we are referring to the value that you attribute to the results of your work. At the high end of the scale, you deeply believe that the outcome of what you are doing is important.” As they continue, “Maximize the amount of time that you are experiencing simultaneous happiness and meaning.” 

The third big question for the day is the following: What are the activities in your life where happiness and meaning intersect?

During the next two weeks, I will be taking some time to reflect on these big questions and to just ponder life in general. I will be back here in touch with all of you on the morning of July 3.  Meanwhile, I encourage you to do the following:

- Be kind to one another. We are all doing the best we can with the tools we have.

- Don’t throw any one under the bus. It hurts everyone.

- Pay attention to the daily miracles in your life. Wake up and realize they are all around us.

Thanks for reading. See you all again in early July!

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257