Monday Mentor-Week 25-Persistence and Resilience

When I was a child, I always wanted the blow up clown that when you punched his nose, he bounced right back up. Never got it but always wanted it.



That clown teaches us a valuable lesson in the resilience needed by effective leaders. The one certainty is that you will get smacked down. You will have obstacles. You will have setbacks and defeats. You will get criticized. You will not always be liked or even loved.


The true measure of an effective leader is not about the setbacks or obstacles but how you choose to respond after them. The effective leader must be resilient and bounce back just like the inflatable clown. Smacked. Right back in the game. No pouting time allowed.


Resilience is affected by many factors. Your physical health, emotional well being and rest all impact your resilience responses. When you are tired, worn down and beat up, resilience is hard to summon. If you have dysfunction in your personal life, resilience at work is difficult.


Restoring and maintaining resilience is often a matter of being in close contact with your physical and emotional status. How does your body feel and what is it telling you? How is your emotional composition? Do you feel sad, blue or down? When you hear these signs it is time for a recharge because your resilient responses will be down.


One of the best tools for restoring resilience is to immediately return to a productive activity. There is nothing like a full task list or appointment schedule to take your mind off of a set back or defeat like immediately getting busy. This strategy is also an important sign to your team that you will not be distracted by minor bumps in the road. When you are down, get right back to work doing something different.


The old saying goes that the best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer up someone else. As a skill, assisting others is a powerful method to restoring your own resilience. The self-satisfaction obtained by helping out someone or encouraging someone is a tremendous method to restore your own personal resilience. When beat up, down or losing battles, go an help someone else.


Another tool to restore resilience is to redirect energy into an area in which you know you will be successful. You have areas in your life in which you are very good. Go do those things and restore your confidence in your abilities. Maybe you are a good golfer. Go golf. Maybe you are artistic. Create a masterpiece. Maybe you coach a soccer team. Go engage with them.


A final tip for restoring resilience is about surrounding yourself with positive people and those whom you can rely upon to provide some positive feedback. When you are feeling a little down, seek out the trusted sources that can pick you up and restore your responsiveness.


Persistence is also a necessary ingredient in effective leadership. Leaders must persist in doing the right thing without becoming stubborn or pesky. You must have the judgment to know when to continue plowing forward and when to give up, defer and move to other issues.


One of the most common challenges to persistence is related to the disciplining or firing of a team member. In some organizations, the human resource function produces obstacles and barriers to eliminating a team member. The effective leader responds to these obstacles in a persistent manner and enhances documentation, completes another probationary period or provides additional coaching to the employee. Unfortunately, some leaders respond to the obstacles by giving up and declaring the team member cannot be terminated.


Persistence is also challenged by organizational realities and sacred cows. When a leader wants to innovate and they run headlong into a pet project or sacred cow, only through persistence can they achieve the desired change. Often the best persistence comes in the form of a temporary withdrawal followed by seeking a new path beyond the barriers or obstacles being faced. Poking an issue in the same manner over and over again is not persistence. It is stubborn and unyielding.

The Case for Training and Development NOW!!

It is sure easy to delay, defer and cancel training programs in this economy. As a lot of training professionals will tell you, it is one of the first line items to be axed from any budget.

Unfortunately, reductions in training also carry a significant penalty. It will prolong the length of time needed to recover from a downturn. It will limit the ability to capitalize on the faltering of competitors (in fact, they may prey on you). It will reduce your ability your ability to perform at the high levels required when staffing is cut. It will harm your ability to attract and retain good talent when the economy recovers.

Below is a brief synopsis of some types of training that are most necessary in an economic downturn:

1. Leadership, Supervision and Management
More is asked from the leadership team and they must rally troops in time of difficulty. Innovation is needed. Fresh outlooks and a critical view is required. This takes skills and competencies obtained in training.

2. Customer Service
The one proven factor to retaining market share in a down economy is service quality. Doing it right requires a training commitment.

3. Sales and Marketing
To capitalize on competitors when they fail, your sales team must be poised with axes sharpened. This honing can only be accomplished through learning and growth.

4. Teamwork
Never has the ability to work together been more important. The synergies needed to produce more with less is critical in difficult times.

Ways to Improve Resilience

Resilience is the ability to respond back to a productive and useful state after an incident or set-back. Many people, especially those in leadership positions, report their resilience has been hampered or reduced with increased time and stress on their jobs.

Steps to Improving Resilience:

1. Build and utilize relationships. People are the best possible support mechanism in times of difficulty. Rely on family, friends and co-workers.

2. Maintain physical health. A healthy system will greatly enhance the ability to respond.

3. Use humor as a coping skill. Laugh at the situation. Laugh at yourself and your response to the situation.

4. Provide assistance to others. Helping others often provides the esteem that aides in personal resilience.

5. Devote time and energy to other projects. A failure within a single focused individual can be devastating. Diversify your interests and seek satisfaction in other areas.

6. Obtain knowledge and history about the situation. Know about what to expect and past outcomes.

7. Avoid seeing difficult times as insurmountable. Difficult times pass as do successful times. All part of the circle of life.

8. Establish and maintain positive image and self-talk.

9. Maintain hope and optimism.

10. Accept and embrace change.

11. Continue headway towards longer term objectives. Even in chaos and difficulty, progress towards meaningful objectives.

12. Take decisive actions. Do not be a victim. Be active and do something.

13. Maintain perspective.

14. Keep routines during difficult times. Routines help grounding and grounding helps perspective. It is also a great distraction from difficulties.