Don't bounce back, bounce higher!

Resilience is a key characteristic of those who lead themselves and others through tough times. It’s defined as the ability to bounce back. It’s what palm trees do in a hurricane. They bend to the change in the weather, and when the storm subsides, they revert to upright.

Sometimes in life, that’s enough. Going back to not wearing a mask after Covid was a blessed relief – particularly for those with glasses that kept fogging up.

Sometimes though, it isn’t.

What’s the issue?

If resilience can only hold your position, you’re going nowhere fast. To actually move forward from adverse change, you need more; you need to be adaptable. If resilience is about bouncing back, adaptability is about bouncing higher.

They say it’s not what happens to you in life but how you deal with it. But given some of the awful things that happen to us in life, it’s sometimes hard to live by that mantra.

The loss of your job, the loss of a loved one, the diagnosis of a health issue, the failure of a project, the loss of a competitive tender. Changes like these are tough challenges, and it can be even tougher to see anything positive in them.

The problem is that when you are sideswiped at work by events that adversely affect performance, the demoralising effect it has on staff can affect their productivity. And that right there is the genesis of a negative spiral.

Consider this

Remember that the darkest hour is before the dawn. Remember that it is precisely when things are at their worst that gives you the opportunity to perform at your best, to make the kind of difference that isn’t possible in steady state conditions.

Don’t react with fear, react to the cause of the fear. When you lose – a person, a client, a career move etc. – what you are also losing is a sense of control. So take it back, by a determination to emerge not just intact, but bigger, better, faster, stronger than you were before.

If you can move forward despite setbacks, then not only do you stand to emerge ‘new and improved’, you stand to increase the distance between yourselves and your competition who were unable see negative change as a positive driver.

Necessity is the mother of invention, which is lucky given that the universe seems to think it’s a necessity to constantly keep throwing stuff at the fan.

Try this

Take a major issue you have right now. Then think about 2 or 3 ‘out there’ ideas that don’t just neutralise that negative, but could help you actually increase your productivity. Those first off-the-wall ideas might not fly, but what you’ve just established is that this issue can be tackled. And now you’re on the front foot.

At HPC, we developed Adaptability Based Leadership with the express purpose of raising productivity through more engaged, better led staff. If that approach resonates, contact me and let’s get you started on the next phase of your journey towards mastering leadership.