Tough times are a true test of leadership. Some people bounce back from mistakes, mishaps and misunderstandings stronger than before, while others flounder, blame circumstances and fester, perpetuating the pain for days, months or years.
This article provides a few simple and effective steps you can take personally, and as part of your company to work through challenges, bounce back from difficulties, and discover opportunities even within the hardships you face.
Brad Henry, former Governor of Oklahoma, described it this way: “Resilience is woven deeply into the fabric of Oklahoma. Throw us an obstacle, and we grow stronger.”
Do You Demonstrate Resilience?
If your organization has been tested recently by significant challenges and changes, you may have observed yourself and your colleagues in action. Reflect for a moment: how did you and your colleagues respond? Did you prioritize the most important aspects to discuss? Was a lot of time spent analyzing who or what was “at fault”? Did you quickly move in a productive direction?
You’ll recognize the resilient people in your life and work because they spend their time and energy dealing with reality in a constructive way, rather than denying it or defending against it.
When leaders approach adversities with a sense of discouragement, convinced that the situation is terrible, blaming and bickering along the way, they are not demonstrating resilience. Without a resilient mindset, you can still get results and create significant achievements, but it takes a mighty toll on you and those around you.
A lack of resilience is characterized by defensiveness, cynicism, burnout, fatigue, and hopelessness.
Resilience Creates a Competitive Advantage
Given the uncertainties and adversities all organizations are facing, those who are most effective under difficult circumstances have a significant advantage.
Making decisions, solving problems, and remaining focused even when work is chaotic, emotional and demanding is worth cultivating for your own peace of mind, as well as for business results. Retaining employees, increasing engagement and improving morale are all organizational benefits or resilient responses to adversity.
The good news is that resilience can be taught, strengthened and developed, like a muscle.
Strengthen Your Resilience
Here are some exercises you can use next time you experience a hardship or need to respond to intense stress.
1. Separate events from responses.Distinguish between the issue and the response. While we cannot often control the events, we can always increase our mastery of the response. No matter how dire an issue may seem, it is our response that determines what happens next.
Expand your options by asking high-quality questions to prompt new thinking, such as: “What could you do to increase the chances this might work out well?” In situations where events are completely outside of your influence, focus on controlling your own reaction so that your attention remains on creating a positive outcome.
2. Renew relationships.When people hunker down in response to challenges, they lose out on a community of support. People we are connected to personally or professionally can act as role models, and offer encouragement and reassurance to help bolster one’s resilience. They may also have new options to suggest, or a perspective that helps inspire you to lead forward in new ways.
3. Draw on past strengths. Apply what you know. Ask “When you have faced difficulties in other areas of your life, what did you do to get to the other side of it?” See if you can draw on your own inner mentorship to help you chart a path forward.
4. Do something, no matter how small, to improve the situation, even if your formal responsibility does not require such an action. By taking action we start forward progress that we can feel, and then it helps us keep going, taking the next and next steps forward.
See if there are any immediate actions you can take that will help you get through the worst of the situation as quickly as possible.
5. Direct your attention.Focus intently on the aspects of the situation that you can influence, rather than those you cannot. In many circumstances, we have much more control than we realize. Contain adversity, minimize its size.
You can also direct your attention to positive imaginings about what an upside from this situation might look like. Enact a thought experiment to see past the adversity — paint a vivid picture of what it will be like after this adversity has passed. We don’t know if there is a silver lining to the adversity you face, but it is much more likely to be apparent if you are looking for it.
You can incorporate these small changes in your mindset into the busiest of schedules because they help you get work done, and build your resilience at the same time.
Resilience-Building Reflection Exercises
Start by focusing on a challenging situation you are facing, then ask yourself:
1. How could this challenge be a part of a larger arc of progress and success? What could be the best possible outcome?
2. What were the most important aspects of your best outcome—what made it great? What would have made it better? What conditions would support this better outcome?
3. What learning can you extract from this experience? What will you know on the other side of it that could be useful to you?
Make your challenges and problems at work start to work for you by using them to build your personal resilience as well as the resilience of your organization.
Latest posts by Jessica Hartung (see all)
- Strengthening Your Own And Your Company’s Resilience To Adversity - November 10, 2022
