Remember these lessons in 2025.

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Lesson 1: Difficult Times Separate Growers from Groaners

Our character comes out during challenging times. If we’re?growers, then we’re the kind of person who rolls with the punches, looks for options and opportunities, hopes for the best while working to make it happen, and keeps putting one foot in front of the other because we know it will help us in the long run. Growers stay in the fight because they believe in possibility.

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Groaners, on the other hand, give up the fight (if they ever took it on to begin with!). They’re the kind of person who stops dead in their tracks, complaining—loudly—about how much they wish things could just be like the used to be. They groan about having to change and then groan when those changes are painful. Groaners don’t do anything to make the difficult times any easier.

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Lesson 2: There’s No Such Thing as Fully Prepared

In the midst of challenging circumstances, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that we don’t know the future as well as we think. Even the best prepared leaders can be caught out by the unexpected—something that COVID illustrated pretty well. We might prepare for one set of circumstances only to face something completely different.

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Even the smartest person cannot plan and prepare for?every?contingency; there are limits to what we can know, see, and plan for. Because of that, being caught off-guard isn’t a crime, or even a bad thing—provided we acknowledge the truth of our situation. When anyone refuse to accept and address reality, they compound the trouble that’s in front of them and make it harder to resolve.

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Lesson 3: There Is Nowhere to Hide in A Crisis

When things are going well, it’s easier for people to get by with poor work habits, unintentional growth, and middling relationship skills. Prosperity covers a multitude of sins, and often we as leaders excuse things in ourselves and our teams that would cost us dearly if circumstances were different. Well, in a crisis, circumstances are different, and the lax attitudes and habits that we glossed over during the good times come directly to the front in the bad times.

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Think of a lake in the middle of a drought; the longer the drought, the less water there is in the lake—as the water recedes, you begin to see more and more of the trash that the water covered over. The good news is that once the trash is revealed, you can clean it up and establish better habits to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

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Lesson 4: Hope is a Choice

This one is my favorite. While many companies have done what’s necessary to pivot and remain in business, not all companies have actually embraced hope. Sometimes, we choose to act out of desperation; we swing for the fences simply because we don’t know what else to do. That’s not the same as hope.

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Hope takes big swings, but it does so with the expectation that things will get better—that the actions we take today will produce positive outcomes tomorrow or down the line. Hope says there is a way forward as long as we work to find it; all other positions, from pessimism to pragmatism to optimism, suggest that the future is out of our hands. Hopeful leaders know this is simply not true—we can choose to shape the future, even if we can’t control it.

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Whatever the rest of your year holds, I encourage you to set aside time for genuine reflection on the year that was and the year that is to come. While we don’t know what next year has in store, I am positive that if we’ll combine the lessons of 2024 with the power of reflection and review, we can make 2025 an even better year than we could imagine.

God bless, Brian Swift? brianpswift.com

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