I was interviewed recently as part of panel discussion on resilience. I found the discussion raw and honest and helpful – especially in light of the challenges that many are and/or will be facing in relation to current career path hiccups and the need for adaptability.
Its a 60-minute video, and worth the time – if you, or someone you know, is wrestling with resilience. Please Continue Reading …
A friend recently encouraged me by saying, “its at times like this that we need to hear from others” – isolation may be the best approach for communicable disease management, but it is not kind to our psyches. Accepting her encouraging nudge, I decided to write to you regarding how the Resilience Credo might help you today – as we grapple with what some are calling a pandemic: COVID-19. Please Continue Reading …
All of us at one time or another have self-doubt. We look at the challenge before us and wonder if we have what it takes to overcome. As leaders, we may look at the organization we lead and wonder if our people are up for the challenge and/or equipped to face it. Please Continue Reading …
A leader’s life is filled with a barrage of external challenge of adversity, change and crisis, as well as with personal failures and lapses in judgment or will power. As leaders, we all want to finish well, but at times we may be tempted to quit.
American author and Presidential advisor Napoleon Hill once said, “Character is to man what carbon is to steel.”
Steel is forged in fire. The evidence of resilience in any great leader will be forged in the fires of daily life, and it is the very heat of the challenge that forms the strength of character that makes us resilient. Though carbon is used for steel, it is also used for pencil lead. As such it is soft and smudges easily on paper. This would be our character, and our resilience, without the fire of challenge. Please Continue Reading …
Search “uncertain future” in Google and you will receive 56,000,000 results in .04 seconds. If you are feeling the negative affects of uncertainty in your emotions, take heart – others who also are feeling it surround you!
Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with many people experiencing the effects of uncertainty, and the price they (we) have been paying emotionally, mentally and even physically is significant. Some of these people are going through work-related uncertainty due to role changes and/or the possibility of dismissal because of corporate downsizing. Others are going through health-related uncertainty, such as the second round of cancer therapy or a battery of tests to determine the unknown cause of symptoms they are experiencing.
As I reflect on our collective wrestle with uncertainty, I find myself wondering: Please Continue Reading …
I have been engaged in several conversations of late wherein we have discussed the felt impacts of deep challenge. Some were under attack at work, others finding too much month at the end of the money, and still others longing for more meaningful impacts through what they do.
In all of these situations I find myself remembering that there is a blend of BE-ing and DO-ing — unto BECOMING. Who we are and what we do will lead to what we become. Please Continue Reading …
Values are the foundation of culture. A healthy culture has healthy values…but furthermore is one wherein the behaviors, articulated statements – and assumptions – are in alignment.
Assumptions are the subconscious motives for the way we act. We can hold a value for something (example innovation), but our assumptions will lead us in differing directions on the same value.
“Unresolved conflict represents the largest reducible cost in many businesses, yet it remains largely unrecognized…Chronic unresolved conflict acts as a decisive factor in at least 50% of departures. Conflict accounts for up to 90% of involuntary departures, with the possible exception of staff reductions due to downsizing and restructuring.” (Dana, Daniel – Measuring the Financial Cost of Organizational Conflict)
Sure, establishing a healthy culture of workplace partnership, where trust and respect flow abundant, takes time and effort. Maybe some are not up for what it takes…maybe it doesn’t seem like it is worthwhile.
An unhealthy workplace is not a high performance workplace…the bottom line suffers due to extraordinary expenses of hiring, retraining, lost efficiency, customer relationships and much more.
The cost in the lives of people…who knows how great this could be to our society overall? I hope we are not naive enough to think that it all stays at the office…and doesn’t have any adverse affects in the lives of our marriages, kids, extended families…etc.
What would make the effort worthwhile?
Here’s a logic stream for you to consider…
1. Sustainable high performance is 50% dependent on the team (the other half is sound strategy/Structure/process…which by the way are developed best through a healthy team)
2. Team performance is dependent on culture
3. Culture is leadership behaviour
4. Leadership behaviour is determined by values lived out
So, question: Can we really change anyone else…or if we focused on personal mastery, aligning our personal behaviours with positive values…would the rest follow?
I received the following comment from Alan Weiss (Summit Consulting) in my email inbox this morning, and found it to be well worthy of a re-post. It’s crazy how zeal and insecurity can mix to have us overwhelm the people we work with…betraying the mission in the pursuit of the mission…
“This week’s focus point: Brevity isn’t merely the soul of wit (Hamlet). We seem obsessed with telling people everything we know rather than what they need to know (hence, all those boring undergraduate lectures). Keep two factors in mind in business: speed and brevity. The more quickly you help others, the more valuable you are. Of course, that entails the suppression of ego and a true focus on helping, and a strong self-esteem that doesn’t require that you continually prove how smart you are. Enough said.” (Alan Weiss)
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“’Resilience’ describes the importance of having a compelling vision and working together to serve customers and create a profitably growing company. Thank you, David, for telling the Ford story!” – Alan Mulally, President and CEO, Ford Motor Company
