Resilience & Reality Drive Organizations

This article is going to potentially rub people the wrong way and I would ask anyone reading this to read it from start to finish and truly embrace its intent. It does not mean people have to agree. I want to share a perspective with you that I think is starting to occur.

The world of business especially with bank failures which certainly trigger reactions with the Great Recession and major companies like Microsoft and Google doing layoffs it leads people to start to think differently. Let me just share running albeit a boutique coaching firm making those decisions are tough and the concept I want you to realize more than anything whether you're a leader, a business owner, or individual contributor is the concept of: Resilience & Reality

Resilience is the ability to overcome difficult times by reacting positively and engaging in a process of overcoming challenges within an enthusiastic demeanor.

Reality is businesses are in the business of making profits.

What complicates this notion of resilience and reality is that people are also struggling mentally and emotionally. When I hear companies are providing unlimited time off due to stress I asked myself how the heck can they be paying the bills? Think about a company with 200 employees and 30 people are off due to mental health issues? Again mental health, anxiety, and stress related issues are very real and very important. You have 30 people out of a 200 person company are not working that means the other 170 people have to pick up that slack. That is reality! That is tapping into resilience!

Here's the objective of this article and this is where coaching comes in and I share it with a very quick story about somebody that I'm coaching. The person had a health concern and she recently went for a promotion and did not get it she quickly and I don't think this is as unusual as we might think said maybe I'll take some time off and go for some paid time off from the company due to mental health. What I'm about to share might seem extremely insensitive but again I ask you to read this from start to finish. I challenged her. I asked her the following questions that triggered a different conversation than one I think she was expecting:

• What if it was just disappointment and not really mental health?
• If you were to get time off how will this affect your teammates?
• What if you were to embrace the rejection and overcome this setback positively how will that differentiate you?
• What if you demonstrated resilience and went back to the person who did not hire you and ask for feedback how might that position you for the next promotional opportunity and how would that honestly differentiate you from most people's reactions?

These four questions led into a totally different discussion about her career and what she needed to do to progress. Now if I was a family member or friend I would probably start to show empathy and say things like I understand how you feel and you should take some time off if that helps you. I'm not saying whatsoever that those are not plausible reactions - what I'm saying is we also have to challenge people to realize that resilience is a great attribute and it helps ourselves and our organizations deal with reality more successfully.

Our Podcast Episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/705024/12465267