I am spending time in Colorado this week with family and friends. My niece runs a kayak/raft rental company and graciously offered to take us out on the lake or down the river. I voted for the river because it is more active, adventurous, and fun. In many ways, it is an exercise in resilience with its twists and turns, slow to moderate to rapid flow, and the unknown. We have to adapt to the river just like we have to adapt to circumstances. We have to use the paddle to change our flow along the river and often, our flow in life.
We all need resilience, the willpower to handle success, setbacks, and challenging times. The past 18 months have proven the importance of being able to adapt. Resilience is about bouncing back when things are awry or persevering when the going gets tough. It also means avoiding being overconfident when things go well. The headlines are filled with success stories that bottomed out because leaders became so infallible believing they would never fail or they could not handle rapid growth.
Are you resilient? Here are a few ways to benchmark your resilience:
1. You keep your Commitments:
- You focus on your goals instead of fixating on difficulties
- You keep your foundations solid so that you can scale
- You keep your eyes and ears open for problems and opportunities so that you can adapt early
2. You find Opportunities in crisis:
- What options are now open, what options are closed?
- You keep your eyes on the river ahead instead of the rapids you just came through; you watch the windshield rather than the rearview mirror
3. You Control your response:
- You take the hit, walk it off, learn and adapt
- You maintain a level head while others are losing theirs; you boost belief in success without empty cheerleading so that you recover quickly from setbacks and avoid overconfidence from success
- You empower people to solve problems; you take the heat and pass along the credit
- You cannot always control your circumstances, but you can always control how you respond to them
Use your answers to change your flow where necessary. Like making it safely down the river, being resilient takes work. Maintain connections with and listen to your Team. Keep your head up and your eyes and ears open for what is next. Control your flow and enjoy the ride!
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