For years I’ve written about change. How it happens (inevitably). How to prepare for it (be adaptable). How to lead it (#changepositive)
Leading change on the personal level — which is really just the work of making a life — is much the same as leading change in business. Leading change, as opposed to being at its mercy, depends on a plan, decisive action, and resilience.
Lately, I’ve been very curious about how a sense of confidence in your own resilience factors into your willingness to engage with change as an individual — and as a business leader.
My curiosity focused on three primary questions:
What is resilience?
How does it work?
Why does it matter?
What is resilience?
Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness; or the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.
It has no synonyms, which blows my mind.
The American Psychological Association states that a combination of factors contributes to resilience, including confidence, supportive relationships, the capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out, and good communication and problem-solving skills.
All of these factors are things people can develop in themselves.
Hope also plays a role in resilience — both as an antidote to chaos and as a source of inspiration for the kind of big vision needed to create a plan for a wildest-dreams life or game-changing business.
How does it work?
In 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Diane Coutou wrote about resilience in Harvard Business Review. She talks about bricolage, a word which is mostly used to mean inventiveness, but whose root literally means “bouncing back.”
“When situations unravel, bricoleurs muddle through, imagining possibilities where others are confounded.” Coutou’s conclusion is that resilient people and companies face reality with staunchness — they make meaning of hardship instead of crying out in despair, and improvise solutions from thin air. Others do not.
So, how do you cultivate this staunchness?
You saw it coming, didn’t you?
With a plan.
By making a plan and taking steps on it, a myriad of miraculous things occur: You create resilience, deepen your sense of confidence (which also cultivates resilience), and cultivate a sense of hope. The more steadfastly you are able to move towards your goals, the more resilient you are, and the more resilient you are, the more likely you are to achieve your goals. It’s a delightfully virtuous circle.
Why does it matter?
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” — Nelson Mandela
In my experience, we’re all more likely to make bad decisions — decisions based in fear — if we wait to make a plan until we need a plan. This is why I make 10-year plans. Shit happens.
And this is why, as a leader of organizational change, I advocate having a thoughtful, at least annual, look at your SWOT, and how you used it. Looking at your track record of change — the conditions of your pivots, shifts, and adaptations — is powerful stuff. Do you tend to change because of opportunity or threat, because of strength or weakness? Knowing when you tend to make changes, and being honest with yourself about it, is part of good leadership.
Having confidence in your own resilience can be a key to avoiding the paralyzing indecision that can seize hold in times of threat or chaos, in life and business.
Thankfully, both confidence and resilience are stupid easy to cultivate: Ask yourself, daily, “What’s one thing I know I can accomplish today that moves me in the direction of my dreams?” Then do that thing.