The Resilience Coach Ltd – Russell Harvey
russell@theresiliencecoach.co.uk
(Is the Path to Resilience)
As a reminder, my definition of Resilience is “Springing Forward with Learning”.
To achieve this, we need to pause, re-energise and reflect. In our reflections we need to ask ourselves two questions:
- What am I going to keep doing (behavior) that is working well for me, my team, my business?
- What am I going to stop doing (behaviour) that isn’t serving either myself, my team or the business?
As part of this approach to Resilience, Leadership Teams need to role model real Optimism too.
To be clear – Optimism starts with Reality!
The founder of Positive Psychology Martin Seligman said:
“What we want is not blind optimism but flexible optimism—optimism with its eyes open. We must be able to use pessimism’s keen sense of reality when we need it, but without having to dwell in its dark shadows.”
Leaders require a raft of intelligences, behaviours, capabilities and skills to lead a conversation that enables Optimism, well.
Reflecting upon yourself and the team that you lead:
- How truly open and honest are they about whether each individual is taking ownership and responsibility for their actions and behaviours?
- How often are you showing vulnerability?
- How well are you sharing feedback that lands and is accepted?
- How psychologically safe are your conversations?
Creating an environment where a suite of humans can share their thoughts, feelings, concerns and feedback requires Coaching, empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence, facilitation skills and a whole lot more!
Taking the time to discuss the size and scale of the challenges faced can be difficult, challenging, “depressing” and de-energising. Being able to do this well without everyone becoming stuck in a downward spiral is also an art-form, as a Leader. Consequently, too many teams shy away from it and, therefore, do not clarify the reality of the root cause of the problems they are facing.
When you haven’t truly identified the problem, then you cannot know if you have the relevant solution(s).
Therefore, those Leaders and teams that role model Optimism start with great conversations around the reality of where they are now. Once this has been achieved, then you can move onto the next phase which is focus on Strengths.
This can be a difficult “shift” to do as most cultures have a negativity bias and we are inclined to stay in the problems. Therefore, a Leader needs to put the effort into leading the conversation towards clarifying:
- What are our individual and collective Strengths, skills, capabilities, attitudes and resilience?
- What are we doing well and how come we are?
- What are the behaviours that are really supporting us well right now?
Once this has been achieved then it is time to ask a really significant question:
- How can we harness all of the above (answers to 1-3) to support us face into our challenges and overcome them?
The intention of asking questions 1-3 above is to enable and allow yourself and your people to have genuine feelings of hope.
This hope then leads to feelings of positivity.
Therefore, I support my clients to understand that the route to positivity is via Optimism.
When you take this approach then you avoid Toxic Positivity, which is when we hear the statements/comments of:
- “It’s all gone to hell in a handcart; however, we just need to be positive.”
- “I know it’s not ideal, however, don’t be negative, we need you to be positive.”
- And “keep calm and carry on”!
I’m curious to know, how well are you and your team role modelling True Optimism now?
Russell
Podcast Episode 1 Series 1 (all episodes available on website)
Website link – www.theresiliencecoach.co.uk
