Building Relationships that Weather Disruption
Realistic Resilience: A Humanistic Approach to Building Stronger Teams
Buzzwords are always exhausting, but the last four years have been exceptional. Can we read an article without being faced with unprecedented times, accelerating disruption, and resilience? Yet, one after another, the flippant listicles keep coming.
There’s nothing easy about facing a pandemic or any of the other cultural tipping points that fill our news feeds daily. The buzz is true. But I, for one, am disappointed by most rhetoric about what we should do in the face of so much tumult.
To me, the answer is quite simple: We need each other.
Our ability to weather storms isn’t defined by our strategic plans or financial forecasts. If you’ve been a leader long enough, you’ve seen them change on a dime. Instead, our relationships—with ourselves, our teams, and our communities—carry us through to the other side.
COVID-19 represented a frightening time for most of us. But for me, the biggest point of concern was seeing how it made us less compassionate, less patient, and less resilient. Companies may have navigated their way to short-term wins with their tactics, but we’re still seeing the long-term impact years later. Failed initiatives. Cynical employees. Unsustainable practices. Stalled growth.
That’s not resilience. It’s merely survival.
We need a bold shift in our thinking around resilience. The goal isn’t to protect “business as usual” at any cost. Success isn’t about avoiding the ups and downs. Realistically, our resilience should help us navigate them together—and come out the other side stronger than before.
To do it, leaders have to start by examining their relationship with themselves. We’ve got to look deep and understand how our internal worlds color the cultures we create. Our inner monologues shape our conversations. Our core beliefs influence the way we judge others. If we’re not kind and patient with ourselves when disruption strikes, we’re not likely to offer it to the people who need us most.
As I like to tell my clients, you are your own best tool. The changes you make in your relationship with yourself will help transform everything around you. Leaders who work on these issues are less likely to let them spill into their work culture.
Helping our teams build the same skills requires a different approach to leadership. We don’t need to have all the answers. Our teams need a leader who listens, not just one who directs. They need a coach who helps them trust themselves and adapt to change. It’s a messy, human journey that takes time. The best thing leaders can do is move someone’s thinking along instead of demanding submission when their safety feels at risk.
At any moment, there’s so much going on in our lives, our jobs, and the world. We are all impacted in some way. And in times like these, the smallest change can feel like too much. That’s when we all need a coach—to take us one step farther than we can take ourselves. To earn resilience, we need to support each other at each stage of the journey. These transformations aren’t as much about changing processes or structures as they are about changing hearts and minds.
The path forward isn’t always clear. There will always be obstacles we could not prepare for, but we should keep the north star of our relationships in view as we overcome them together.
Let’s partner to rethink what it means to lead through disruption. Find out more at wellercollaboration.com, send me a message, or schedule a quick Fit Call to see if collaborating makes sense.