Adversity. Crisis. Storm. These aren’t situations we look for at work. These are not the conditions that any business owner, organizational leader, or family member seeks out. But adversity is part of life. Crises slam into us without warning. No one gets through life without facing a few storms.
As I noted in a previous post, we face adversity across the spheres of our lives: personal, professional, local community, global community. It’s resilience—the capacity to manage under pressure, recover from turmoil, survive, thrive, and learn—that enables us to bounce forward from that adversity.
I’ve been thinking a lot about adversity and resilience, thanks to recent opportunities to lead a session on resilience in the workplace at Innovate New Albany and NEWORK Space.
Like a muscle, resilience strengthens with use. So, those times of crisis, small or large, “sucky” as they may be, provide opportunity to develop resilience. It’s our choice whether we take advantage of that opportunity or not.
the 5 Cs
There are lots of ways to talk about resilience. Five pillars. Seven resilience skills. Six ways to develop resilience. From my personal and professional experiences with crises, I see five moves that are important to take when we face adversity. And these five moves, what I call 5 Cs, are especially important when we’re in leadership roles:
- Claim
- Communicate
- Care
- Critique
- Celebrate
So, here’s a summary of each, with more to come.
Claim
When storms strike, we have immediate, visceral reactions. We want to run, hide, freeze, or lash out. We may want to ignore the crisis and pretend that everything’s fine. But it’s not fine. When adversity hits, it’s important to claim the reality and claim a new goal.
Claim the reality? By “claiming the reality” I mean admit and acknowledge the situation. Don’t pretend it hasn’t happened. Don’t ignore the fact that work, processes, and lives are suddenly upended. This doesn’t mean a two-hour gripe session. It does mean giving yourself and your employees time to express their feelings about it all. If we don’t, we risk—
- Losing team members’ or employees’ trust. If we don’t acknowledge the crisis, our colleagues and employees begin to wonder if we care about the situation and its impact on them. “Doesn’t she know what this means to our department?” “Does he realize that six months of hard work is now down the drain?”
- That feelings will sneak out later in unhealthy ways. Psych. 101: We can only ignore or bottle up difficult feelings for a period of time. Eventually those feelings will seep out in unhealthy and even destructive ways. We’ll yell at someone for no apparent reason or break down into a pile of sobs, for example.
Claim a new goal. When the storm hits, you either change course or sink. If you want everyone in the boat to row in the same direction, then everyone needs to know the new destination, the new goal. With a clear goal, the team can keep their focus forward.
Communicate
“Common sense,” you say. Yes. But when crisis hits, thinking can become narrow. We tend to laser-focus on what’s in front of us: Pay the bills. Finish the proposal. Get that last shipment out. When we keep our focus narrow, we risk making decisions that jeopardize the organization or squander resources of time, money, people, and energy. We risk leaving important people out of the loop!
That’s just what I did recently—leave someone out of the loop. Recently I’ve been focused on some worrisome personal and family health matters—my current storm. I’ve barely been able to stay on top of basic tasks and accomplish my Daily Big 3. I’ve been plowing through each day with blinders, focused only at what needs to be done today for family matters and the Daily Big 3. Sadly, I’ve neglected to communicate with Lindsay, my colleague who, among other things, keeps my Instagram account alive. With my attention narrowed to what’s immediately in front of me, I’ve neglected to create content for Lindsay to post, and neglected to communicate why!
Care
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a bit about Care. I neglected to point out in that piece that a leader’s ability to care for self and for others during times of crisis has a cascading effect on the organization. Note the following:
- Resilient leaders nurture resilient and engaged employees. And, resilient employees mean resilient organizations.
- Resilient organizations “have stronger financial health,” including 22% higher annual income and 60% higher five-year revenue growth than those with lower resilience levels.
So, if you care about your organization, care about yourself and your people.
Critique
Critique your product and your process. The product is the what you are doing—creating a new widget, designing new systems, solving the problem at hand. The process is the how you are working—your lines of communication, your decision-making process, your quality assurance system, the way you support and encourage team members.
Critique during the storm. You’re flying the plane while you’re redesigning and rebuilding it. Plans made yesterday suddenly upend tomorrow. The person who was responsible for completing Step C runs into a glitch that needs to be resolved before anyone else can move forward. The daily roster that informs everyone of who’s in charge of what and whether they’re onsite or remote is no longer necessary.
Critique after the storm is over. Crises are learning opportunities. Don’t lose them. Make time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Review procedures you developed that you can carry forward now that the crisis is past. Assess skills and strengths. What new skills did people develop that can benefit the team going forward? What strengths did team members demonstrate that you had never previously known?
Celebrate
Once the storm is over, make sure to celebrate. Why? Celebrating is one way to affirm the individuals in your team, work group, or organization. Affirmation builds connection, one of the basic needs that has to be met before we can engage in complex and creative work.
Celebrate in any way that fits your context:
- Take folks out to lunch
- Bring lunch in
- Write thank you notes
- Close the office early
The 5 Cs as Dance Moves
Finally…Consider the 5 Cs as a set of dance moves. You don’t just do one, check the box, and go on to the next. You dance between these moves, sliding in and out, leaning into one then another, always paying attention to the theme of the music: resilience.