Flo LaBrado is a leadership and career development coach and founder of Olive and Grace Leadership Coaching. She is passionate about people discovering and realizing their goals and working in a healthy workplace.
I was in New York City in early October for a networking and professional development conference. During the evening, four of my colleagues and I took the train from Midtown to Little Italy, determined to find pizza, tiramisu, and the Little Italy sign. After a delightful evening, we were happy and tired and took the train back to the hotel. This is where we ran into trouble.
The train from Midtown to Little Italy was straightforward. On the way back, it was not. We knew we needed to take the Q or the N train but weren't confident we were on the correct ramp. Then, a sign informed us that one of the trains that would get us back to Midtown was out of service due to maintenance. The alternate routes were confusing. The posted maps began to look like colorful spaghetti thrown on the wall. We asked for pointers, but most people around were in the same situation or did not speak English or Spanish, the languages we could access. My colleagues and I were getting nervous. I could feed the disorientation turning into anxiety and frustration.
What to do? Give up? Were we to accept the perspective that there was no way back to our hotel and resign to permanent residence in the subway station underneath Little Italy?
We paused, did nothing momentarily, laughed, and then regrouped. We were determined to figure it out. One used Apple Maps to find updated directions, and another used Google Maps. One colleague studied the spaghetti map, and I asked a few more people for directions. With our collective wisdom, we reconvened and found a way back to Midtown.
What helped us shift from anxiety to action is a set of skills essential for leadership and professional success in today's ever-changing landscape.
Digital technologies, organizational change, globalization, social change, and countless other factors impact how we lead and work. The incredible amount of simultaneous change feels like chaos. The chaos is exciting and can also feel overwhelming.
To thrive in the context of chaos, we need resilience, one of today’s essential leadership skills:
"The process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands." The American Psychological Association
Why resilience is essential for effective leadership
Change is constant. The lightning speed of tech development, constant organizational changes, global and social shifts, economic upheaval, and more create turbulence mostly unimaginable just decades ago. The vortex impacts organizations, governments, and social systems. The vortex also affects each of us individually. The energy can be both thrilling and overwhelming. The rate of change creates opportunities for growth and success, but it also creates barriers that may make us want to give up. We would do ourselves a disservice in waiting for the change to stop. It won’t. Instead, we can cultivate resilience.
Before we go into how to build resilience, I will make the case for why it is crucial.
Effective leadership today requires resilience and flexibility to thrive in constant change, pivot as needed, turn change into growth opportunities, and bounce back from setbacks (Gagan Deep, 2023)
Resilience helps us respond to change instead of reacting, giving us a sense of control and sustaining wellbeing even in the chaos. (The Red Cross.)
Combined with emotional intelligence, resilience allows us to develop the spidey senses to be in tune with internal and external demands and the reflexes to respond to change without being arrested by our emotions.
As essential as they are, creativity, innovation, and growth include failures along the way to success. Resilience helps us learn and iterate from failure instead of getting stuck.
Grit, the passion and resilience that enable us to persevere in the face of constant obstacles, is more critical for performance and success than intelligence and talent. (Angela Duckworth)
Strategies for building resilience
Like other leadership skills, the beautiful thing is that resilience is not something some people are born with, leaving the rest of us out of luck. We can develop the skills to flex, adapt, and recover from setbacks. The following are practical strategies you can begin to apply today.
Understand your needs and take care of yourself
First, practice self-awareness, a fundamental aspect of emotional intelligence. Check in with yourself. Do you need a good laugh or some rest? A snack? Prioritize self-care so that you can be grounded and light on your feet in the swirl. Flexing, adapting, and bouncing back when needed is much easier when your basic human needs are met.
Recharge regularly
Don't just work less. Be and do the things that reenergize you. For example, if you are an introvert, spend time alone with your thoughts or a book or hang with close friends. If you enjoy a good sweat, go for a run. If you are more present with yourself when you create, go ahead and write, paint, or do whatever engages your imagination.
Be aware of emerging change
Change may feel like it is happening to you or around you. However, you can exercise agency when you know what may impact you or your organization.
Do you ever notice how some people and organizations are ready to respond the second that change emerges while others only react? It is as if they see the future a few seconds before it becomes the present. They could have a Time Turner like Hermione did in her third year at Hogwarts.
A more plausible reason that some respond to change instead of reacting is that they constantly scan their environments for signs of change. The goal is not to control and prevent change. Instead, the goal is to be aware of and thoughtfully adapt to change.
To be able to respond instead of reacting, develop the practice of being aware of your internal and external environments. Ask yourself the following questions.
Internal
Am I eating and sleeping well?
Am I getting exercise?
Am I energized?
How are my social connections?
Am I inspired and empowered?
External
What are the organization's priorities?
What do my stakeholders want?
What are the emerging current events?
What is new in digital tech?
How is the economy shifting?
Generate awareness so that you can create the space to respond with intention.
Don’t get hooked by emotions
The constant change and chaos trigger an emotional response. Feelings and the experience of emotion are part of our beautiful human experience. However, our emotions can hijack us, clouding our ability to respond. Over-identifying with our feelings makes us more likely to become emotionally hooked, hindering resilience.
Cortisol and adrenaline take the reins.
We respond to a project setback as if a bear is chasing us.
Judgment becomes clouded.
Bias is unchecked. (Sunk cost anyone?)
The quality of decisions declines.
We get stuck.
Instead of getting hooked, we can develop emotional agility, the ability not automatically to react to our emotions and intentionally respond. Borrowing from Susan David Susan David, author of Emotional Agility, two strategies that are easy to practice can help us name and respond to our emotions:
Name it. Recognize and name your feelings. If you struggle with labeling your feelings, the Feelings Wheel may help. (If you are a client of mine, you've likely seen the Feelings Wheel.)
Experience emotions, but don't let them become your identity. Fully experience your emotions, but don't let them become who you are. Create distance by changing how you talk about your emotions, whether your self-talk or with others.
"I am happy." 🡪 "I feel happy."
"I am anxious." 🡪 "I feel anxious."
"I am angry." 🡪 "I feel angry."
"I am overwhelmed." 🡪 "I feel overwhelmed."
"I am disappointed." 🡪 "I feel disappointed."
Try naming your emotions and create the space to respond.
Build healthy social connections
Grit is vital, but there is more to resilience: our social connections. We are social beings wired for social connections to enable our very survival. Our brains and bodies (hormones) do not discriminate when reacting to stress. Our initial physiological response is the same, whether being chased by a bear or bombing a big presentation at work. Our basic human need for social connections and belonging is just as meaningful to mitigate threat and stress, whether walking down the street with a friend late at night or having a colleague to turn to after a failed presentation.
Authors and leadership experts Rob Cross, Karen Dillon, and Danna Greenberg summarize their research: social connections are essential to resilience, enabling wellbeing and recovery from setbacks. For example:
Adjusting to surges in work and navigating politics
Releasing negative emotions
Seeing new perspectives and a way forward.
Invest in your community and network. Reach out for support when you need it.
Develop rhythms and rituals
We know that creating habits to guide our day/week/month provides the structures and framework to be who we want to be and do what we want to get done. Another benefit? Resilience to persevere and adapt. Whether stretching with a new challenge or overcoming a setback, rhythms and rituals help us get grounded by giving us the next step to take.
Rhythms and rituals help us get grounded. When you can't see your way out, a habit may provide the scaffolding to determine what is next. It may be as simple as sticking to a sleeping schedule or regrouping in the daily stand-up or leadership meeting after a project miss or organizational threat.
Some examples:
The ceremonies of agile software delivery to help a product/project team regroup.
The weekly leadership meeting is a forum for leaders to analyze challenges and reconnect with strategy and goals.
Quarterly business reviews encourage assessments against SWOT and other analyses.
Rhythms and rituals can also help us be light on our feet to flex as needed. By streamlining our routines, for example, when to meet, what data to report, and how, more mental and emotional capacity is available to respond to change and adapt to non-routine events.
Multiply your leadership impact with resilience
In the constant change, we may experience both the accompanying thrill and overwhelm. However, we can lead and thrive in the chaos. We can build resilience to adapt and flex, sustain wellbeing, respond with intention, innovate and succeed. Don’t expect the change to stop. It won’t. Instead, cultivate resilience to increase your leadership impact.
If you are motivated and want to harness the chaos to thrive and exponentially increase your impact with intention and purpose, let’s connect on a complimentary call.
Flo LaBrado, Leadership and Career Development Coach Flo LaBrado is a leadership and career development coach and founder of Olive and Grace Leadership Coaching. She is passionate about people discovering and realizing their goals and working in a healthy workplace.
Flo combines over 20 years of leadership experience, academic research-based practices, and a people-centric approach to empower individuals and teams. She creates space for people to courageously discover and explore their creativity and potential as they develop grounded confidence, grow, and create the journey to reach their aspirations. She believes that integrity to one’s values, strengths, and work preferences is essential to leadership and career development and that teamwork and organizational health are crucial for high performance.
Flo's credentials include a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, a Master of Science in Leadership and Management with a focus on Organizational Development, and numerous certifications in innovative change, inclusive leadership, ethical leadership, Trust at Work®, and Dare to Lead Trained™.
References:
Emotional Agility (Susan David, 2016)
Feelings Wheel (David Molanphy)
Grit (Angela Duckworth, 2016)
Resilience (The American Psychological Association)
Resilience Building Activities to Improve Your Wellbeing (The Red Cross)
The Power of Resilience and Flexibility in Business Leadership: Adapting to Change (Gagan Deep, 2023)
The Secret to Building Resilience (Rob Cross, Karen Dillon, Danna Greenberg, 2021)
