Several researches conducted in the last decade suggest that Resilience is one of the key attributes of successful leaders. Resilience can help you face challenges, navigate obstacles, and thrive in your role. What more? It can also aid you lead your team and your business to superlative results.
In this article, I wish to call attention to three aspects of building resilience. They are:
- Developing a resilient mindset
- Grooming a resilient team
- Building a resilient organization
When you develop the dexterity to tune up these three dimensions, you can weather any risk that approaches your way.
Let’s begin with developing a resilient mindset.
Simply said, resilience is the art of bouncing back from setbacks. It is your capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, troubles, failures and setbacks. It’s about being tough. It’s in your mind.
In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, author Carol Dweck introduces the terms, Fixed and Growth mindsets.
If you have a fixed mindset, you’re essentially self-limiting your abilities and your potential. You see things in black and white. You see limitations and roadblocks at every turn, rather than questions or possibilities to bridle them.
In contrast, if you have developed a growth mindset, you’re much more resilient. You can see opportunities, even in the midst of challenges. Rather than viewing yourself as defeated before you begin, you’re able to sight diverse ways to make something work.
Additionally, if you hold a resilient growth mindset, you believe you can continually grow and learn throughout your life and career. You see the possibilities in life and are able to adapt and evolve into better versions of yourself over time.
Do you know Arthur Ashe, the only black man ever to win the U.S. Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon? He was celebrated by millions of fans and was ranked #1 by the Daily Telegraph and the World Tennis Magazine in 1975.
Arthur was infected by the blood that he received during a by-pass surgery and contracted AIDS. The disease could not be bypassed. Letters poured in from his fans around the world, one of which conveyed: “Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease”?
Arthur’s response: “The world over — 50 million children start playing tennis, 5 million learn to play tennis,
500,000 learn professional tennis, 50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 reach the Grand slam,
50 reach Wimbledon, 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals.
When I was holding a cup, I never asked GOD ‘Why me?’.
And today in pain I should not be asking GOD ‘Why me?’ ”
Resilience starts with acknowledging that all is not unfair.
“Rock bottom became the solid foundation in which I rebuilt my life.”
― J.K. Rowling
So, how can you develop this resilience mindset: Here are some tips.
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- Ask deeper questions –
Ask “Why” several times until the root of the problem appears without disguise. - Align to the future –
If you are concerned about the future, you can idealize. If you can idealize, visualize and form habit loop, you can create a perfect future. - Be solution oriented –
Ask, “What is the next step?”, “What can I learn from this situation?” When you ask this question, the grind in your mind becomes calmer and you turn out to be ‘creatively constructive’. - Become Optimistic –
Optimistic people are cheerful and nice in spite of the situation in hand. It enables them to see the big picture.
Next, let’s look at how to groom resilient teams.
Grooming resilient teams:
You cannot pour from an empty glass. The right way to build resilience for a leader is to first look inward, and striving to identify areas you need to work on, and what’s really going to help you thrive as a leader when faced with adversity. You are then qualified to think about resilience for your team. So how does resilience apply to a team environment?
- Start with telling your team how you have dealt with a situation and, how you emerged out of your comfort zone and what you performed to build your resilience muscle. Then, work with individual team members.
- Impart how they can be strong when faced with adversity. Tell them what new skill they should develop to grow their resilience.
- You can then work with the whole team by giving them opportunity with challenging assignments. Let them face tricky situations and observe how they handle it. As a leader, remember that these situations would cause stress, and temporarily impact the mental wellbeing of your team members.
- Step in. Help them to resolve the issues so they are able to enhance their productivity, happiness and health.
Watch how Freddie, the Father Manager uses a powerful story of Zebras to shift the mindset of an agitated team member.
Finally, let’s look at building a resilient organization.
As the leader of the Organization, you are mostly focused on targets, numbers, on the bottom line, and also at the same time keen about a resilient workforce to overcome business uncertainties together.
- The cardinal rule here is, putting your employees first ahead of your customers. It is your employees who build great connection with your customers and clients.
- Fortify the collective ability of your employees for problem solving and, their working relationship to churn acceptable solutions. Teams that trust each other come through challenges quite easily.
- Another aspect is their level of adaptability. How well are they being flexible and adapting to the current needs, by being innovative and creative. Adaptability can be coached.
- Increase their risk appetite. You can accomplish this by providing an environment where they can thrive by taking calculated risks without fear. Early mistakes are important to long-term survival of your organization.
‘Brands are used by customers. Remember, Brands are built by employees’
-Father Of Your TeamAccess your exclusive collection of impactful quotes from https://www.authorvenkat.com/quotes/)
Here is a quote from, ‘Father of Your Team – A soulful guide to Modern Day Managers’
“Mistake – What a powerful word! We shouldn’t ‘Miss to take’ something from it”.
That is the essence of building resilience.
After reading this, I’m sure you’re more resilient and you’re confident, you’re adaptable, you expand your learning from your mistakes, you’re creating this growth mindset with continuous learning, and ready to lead a resilient workforce.
If you found this article useful, I request that you leave your comments below and I would be glad to reflect on your valuable feedback.Venkat Kumaresan
Keynote speaker, Communication Coach
Author of ‘Father Of Your Team’, the World’s First Book on implementing Paternalistic leadership
www.authorvenkat.com - Ask deeper questions –