Introducing Leadership Gamechanger #1 - Resilience
Sometimes, Resilience Means Quitting The Wrong Stuff To Make Room For The Right Stuff
My goddaughter Devin is a great example of resilience. Since both of her parents are over six feet tall, she is a long-limbed child prone to some rumbling, bumbling and stumbling. I have seen her recover from numerous bloody-kneed wipeouts without flinching. She is the embodiment of a Chumbawamba song. No. You’re never gonna keep her down.
At The People Side, we believe RESILIENCE is one of the capabilities leaders should be developing. The ability to absorb the impact of adversity and keep performing is a key capability of every successful leader we work with. I like to think that you “earn” this strength by bootstrapping your way through the s#!t that happens in life and proving to yourself you can recover from it.
But like so many strengths, it can go to the dark side if you are not careful.
Seth Godin wrote a book called, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (and When to Stick). In it, he suggests that high-performing people are often blindly relentless in their drive for accomplishing goals. Their single-minded focus can cause them to invest massive amounts of energy in the pursuit of whatever they set their sights on. Even if that pursuit is not worthwhile. Even if there are four-alarm sirens telling them to stop and pay attention to something else.
Let me make this personal. Several years ago, like many recovering “trainers” I was being hired to teach leadership in corporate classrooms using slides and participant guides. I knew I was not having the impact that I wanted to have, and I was frustrated. I was leading impressive programs in front of massive audiences but sensed that leaders were going back to the office on Monday and doing NOTHING with what they learned. NOTHING!
So I decided to build my own learning experiences and offer them to the general public – no more elitism, no more sitting and getting, and no more slides and participant guides. Just help adults practice leadership the way adults prefer to learn. I was convinced that if I built it they would come.
I spent one year of my life in pursuit of this goal. One year of building leadership experiences, building registration systems, building, building, building. And no one came. Which forced me to ask myself some pride-swallowing questions.
Seth says, “winners quit the right stuff at the right time.” I knew nothing about B2C sales & marketing (selling directly to consumers) so of course I was struggling. But high performers don’t like the word “quit.” We just go find the nearest Successories poster and convince ourselves that with more inspiration and energy we will succeed. But this is not always the right choice.
It was time to ask myself if I was going to be RESILIENT and keep fighting or find another path to realizing this mission. Seth got me to ask, “Am I resilient enough to finish the right stuff and quit the wrong stuff?” I believed in my mission, and other people did too. In my case, quitting wasn’t the answer, but I needed to think differently about our company’s goals. So instead of going rogue, I decided to lead the revolution from within. And now we have built a team of incredibly talented people who are transforming leadership development, one client at a time.
Energy is a finite resource. There are only so many pursuits we can invest in fully during our lifetime. Recognizing where that effort is best invested is critical to our success. “Resilience” is a leadership gamechanger, but we cannot be blindly resilient in everything we do. Sometimes adversity is a signal to stop or pivot. Sometimes we need to recognize that the path is hard because it isn’t the right path. I believe I would still be banging my head trying to figure out Eventbrite if I hadn’t stopped and considered the power of quitting.
Our team is on a quest to shake things up in training and development. Giving away learning on LinkedIn and Facebook is just one example of a “new path” for us. Embedding executive coaching into everything we do is another. Because comfort and growth never hold hands we will certainly fail and learn over and over again in our pursuit of a better way to develop leaders in the 21st Century. But like Devin, and Chumbawamba, we will get back up again. Because this is something worthy of resilience.
So what about you? Ask yourself:
1. What in your life and work is worthy of resilience?
2. What is the “wrong stuff” you should quit for the sake of the “right stuff”?
3. If quitting’s not the answer, how do you pivot and find a new path to your goal?