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[Previously Culture by Design] The leader is the #1 factor in determining organizational success. If you want to become an effective leader, you have three objectives: First, learn to lead yourself. Then, learn how to unlock the full potential of your team. Finally, build a business where culture is your competitive advantage and innovation is the status quo.
0:00:02.4 Jillian: Welcome back, Culture by Design listeners, it's Jillian, one of the producers of the podcast. This week, Tim and Junior outline the resilient cycle, which similar to patterns we see in ecology, consist of disturbance, adaptation and recovery, they share five practical ways to become more resilient as a leader, and I'm excited about this episode, but I'm even more excited to let you in on a little secret we've been keeping. Culture by Design, the podcast you know and love, is getting an upgrade, so don't be surprised when the title of this podcast changes from Culture by Design to The Leader Factor. Don't worry, we'll still be producing practical leadership content, and Tim and Junior will still be your hosts, but the episodes will be available on YouTube with enhanced content and visuals that will make these conversations even more valuable to you. You can keep up with us on social media or our website for more information, and look out for The Leader Factor trailer episode that will go live this week. As always, transcripts, show notes and important links mentioned in today's episode can be found at leaderfactor.com/podcast. Thanks for listening. Get excited for The Leader Factor and enjoy today's episode on the resilient cycle, disturbance, adaptation, and recovery.
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0:01:20.1 Junior: Welcome back everyone to Culture by Design. I'm Junior, here with my co-host Dr. Tim Clark, and today we'll be discussing resilience and the resilience cycle. Tim, how are you doing?
0:01:30.9 Tim: Fantastic, fantastic. This is a topic that applies to all of us, so hopefully we can give it its due and generate some insights for listeners.
0:01:41.0 Junior: I think we can. It is relevant to everyone every day. So let's start off with a quote to set the stage, Maya Angelou, "You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated." I like this quote. Along the path of leadership, you'll fail. How do you fail and not become a failure, how do you experience defeat without becoming defeated? The answer lies in today's episode, resilience. And our objective today is to crack in the research literature surrounding resilience, which includes a whole bunch of stuff, among others, PTSD, PTG, positive psychology, neuroscience, and interestingly enough, ecology. We're gonna talk a little bit about that today, and if we begin to understand the research behind resilience, we can incorporate the principles of resilience in a practical way to become better leaders, to build better lives, build better organizations, and I'd encourage everyone to stick around to the end. I know Tim has a quote locked and loaded that was probably more impactful to me than anything I've heard in a few months, and so I'm excited to get to that at the very end today. So Tim, as we start today, are we talking about getting better or getting back to baseline? This is an appropriate question to frame at the start.
0:03:01.5 Tim: It is. I think we're talking about both. It depends on what you confront, what you're up against, the degree of difficulty, the depth of the adversity that you're going through. For example, if a tsunami ripped through your neighborhood or you had a stroke or you lost a loved one, you may never be able to get back to baseline, but that wouldn't be the expectation. The point is that you do your best to respond to the adaptive challenges that you meet in life. In other cases, you meet up with a challenge and you can come out on the other side better and stronger. Junior, I'll give you an example, so I've got a friend that developed cancer and had to have one of his legs amputated at the pelvis, so the complete leg. And that was unforeseen, unexpected, and talk about a blow, talk about adversity. And this illustrates, too, another distinction that I think we need to make, and that is, there are challenges that come around in life that you can overcome, there's another category of challenge that comes along and you don't overcome, you live with it. So there are challenges to overcome and there are challenges to live with, in this case, with my friend losing his leg, this is a live with.
0:04:30.3 Tim: He's working on using the prosthetic and learning how to use that to get around a little bit, but this is going to be difficult, it's going to be something that he lives with for the rest of his life. So I think that distinction is helpful as well, so it's the degree of difficulty and the nature of the challenge, is it something that you can overcome or something that you live with?
0:04:57.3 Junior: Yeah. And I'm sure everyone listening has their own list, we all have our own list of things that are put in our way, things that happen, and we're gonna get into that today, after we go through the set up, the explanation, some of the research, we're gonna get into a list of research back things that you can do to become more resilient. So the premise of this whole conversation is that the path of life, the path of leadership is a perilous road, and you won't get through the road unscathed. And in some cases, that's physical, in some cases, it's not.
0:05:35.9 Tim: Yes.
0:05:36.5 Junior: And I want to start off with an analogy, so imagine a healthy forest, trees, plants, animals all together in this forest ecosystem, it's healthy, it's vibrant, it's stable. And then wildfire, wildfire rips through the forest and destroys seemingly all of it. What happens? The ability of the forest to recover will be based on a number of ecological factors, and ecosystems experience resilience in a way similar to humans, they experience it this way, first is disturbance, in the case of this analogy, fire, then comes number two, adaptation. Evolutionary pressure has created a whole host of adaptation mechanisms that help perpetuate each species, plant and animal. So here's an example, trees with thick bark that protect from fire, that's an evolutionary adaptation. Jillian, one of the producers of the podcast, introduced me to Pyrophytes, I didn't know about this. These are plants which have adapted to tolerate fire, and some plant species actually encourage fire, they have flammable oils in them. What in the world? So this line of botany is really interesting to me. So after the adaptation, we have recovery, and that's where we get new growth. So those are the three stages of resilience in an ecosystem, disturbance, adaptation, recovery. And that's the model that we're going to use today as we explain its application to each of us. So, Tim, what do you think about that first of all?
0:07:25.5 Tim: Yeah, it's pretty incredible the adaptive mechanisms that we see in nature and in ecosystems, and so as you said, we can learn from the pattern, and that's exactly what we need to do. The use cases will be different, the application will be different, but we've got to do the same thing. Going back to the trees, I remember learning about these trees in Australia that they throw out their seeds when they are put under heat and pressure. That's when they throw out their seeds, it's the most incredible adaptive mechanism that you can imagine.
0:08:06.8 Junior: Yeah. So what would happen if an ecosystem were not resilient, what would happen if we didn't move into adaptation, we got to disturbance and we ended there? Everything would die. We wouldn't be here as a species if over hundreds of millions of years, there weren't adaptation to get us to this point. There are parallels to leadership, and we'll experience difficulty, much like ecosystems experience disturbance. And I thought it would be appropriate to frame this in the human realm that there are three types of disturbance. And the first is self-inflicted, caused by you, and at first, I threw in this category, poor decision-making, that this was a consequence of your own poor choice, but you have something to add to that.
0:08:58.9 Tim: Well, you're right, Junior. We make poor choices, and then we incur consequences that are... We don't like. And that are not pleasant. And we all do that. We've all done that. There's a further distinction now. There's plan difficulty, where we choose difficulty, we choose a challenge, we choose adversity, it's not a result of poor decision-making, and I'm simply talking about taking on a challenge. So think about getting through school while you're working full-time, think about starting a family when you're financially strapped, think about bootstrapping a startup when you don't have much working capital. We had a family member that did this last year, think about leading a humanitarian project in a part of the world that is suffering from food insecurity and abject poverty. So one of my daughters did this very thing last year. She chose it, she signed up for it, she led it, and it was grueling, it was very difficult. But she chose to do it, she came out on the other side and she made a great contribution, but she took it on, and I guess that's what I'm saying, sometimes we choose to take on these challenges, they're self-inflicted, not based on a poor choice, but based on a choice to try to make a contribution.
0:10:28.0 Junior: Yeah. I appreciate you calling that out because all the same principles still apply. So that's category one, caused by you, category two, caused by others. And this could come in many forms, it could be subtle, it could be overt, it could be abuse, it could be negligence, it could be a whole host of things, and I'm sure for each of us, it's not difficult to put down a list of difficult things that we've been exposed to, have gone through, or are going through, that have been caused by others, that's category two. Category three is circumstantial, these are just caused by life, these could be acts of God, natural disasters, disease, it's just a product of the environment that you're in, it's no one's fault, it just is.
0:11:17.0 Tim: Junior, when you say circumstantial, it makes me think of... Well, certainly there are the big things, and as you said, acts of God, force majeure, natural disasters, diseases, we just went through a pandemic, so we'd put that in that category. But I can't help but think about the more common circumstances that many of us find ourselves in where we're simply overloaded in life, it's not one thing. I'm thinking about the weight of the daily grind, when things simply pile up and the demands on you seem overwhelming and unrelenting, it's not one thing. It's just the combination of everything at school, it's work, it's family, its sometimes you're doing all the right things, you're giving it all you've got, but it doesn't let up and there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for recovery, there's no reprieve in the future that you can see. I think a lot of us face that. Right? It's the combination of things, the demands of life that become overwhelming.
0:12:32.9 Junior: Yeah. If you looked at the difficulty that we all experience, there's some ratio across those three categories, there is a certain measure that's caused by you, a certain amount caused by others, a certain amount, it's circumstantial, you add all those together, you put them over a long timeline and you get to this place of potential overwhelm. So I appreciate that you called that out because the volume across those three categories can add up, and it may not be acute. There may not be an event, it just may be that you have the same load for a really, really long time.
0:13:08.9 Tim: Long time.
0:13:10.4 Junior: Yeah. So thanks for calling that out. So here's an interesting thought, even if you were to act perfectly and completely eliminate self-inflicted problems and you managed the difficulty level of the things you took on, you're still left with the fact that you will be affected somehow by those other two categories, the behavior of other people and the reality of circumstance. The reason I point this out is that this reality is inescapable, it's inevitable, every human on earth has to deal with this, the behavior of other people and circumstance. Now, these three categories I wanna lump into disturbance, when we talk about that model, disturbance. And disturbance...
0:13:56.9 Tim: Step one.
0:13:57.9 Junior: Presents choices. You'll be faced with an issue of your own making or of others, and you'll have to decide what to do. And there are better and worse options, some of them are obvious, some of the consequences are obvious and some are not. And that's what we're gonna dive into.
0:14:16.0 Tim: Yeah. I wanna bring another concept into the conversation, Junior, if I might.
0:14:20.7 Junior: Please.
0:14:21.8 Tim: We're talking about developing resilience, responding to adversity, we're talking about bending and not breaking, but I just wanna point out that bending is not just enduring or responding to hard things, it's also enduring suspense. And so I wanna put a huge accent on the word and the concept, suspense. Because this is part of the human condition and the human experience as well, it's universal. You may invest and work hard towards a goal, but the results are not forthcoming. And you haven't failed, you've been consistent, you've done your part, you're just suspended. There's simply delay. And so this helps us distinguish between what I would call fast and slow consequences in life. There's a category of consequences that are fast and there's a category that are slow, and often we don't have a lot of control over that. But we have to live with fast consequences, and we have to live with slow consequences. And that some are intended and some are unintended. So what does this mean? Well, we have to develop the ability to not only endure delay, but also to perform through the period of delay. We don't just stop, right? Results may be suspended, but we can't suspend ourselves.
0:15:57.9 Tim: This is what I've learned, the relationship between inputs and outputs in life is almost never linear. If it were linear, then it would be easy, we would just do what we want to do, and we would expect the outcome. Right? So life would be like a gumball machine, you don't need any faith, put in a quarter, outcome's a gumball, put in another quarter, outcome's a gumball, but often that's not what happens. Often we invest, we work hard, we try, we keep trying, no gumball, we put in another quarter, no gumballs, we put in a hundred quarters, no gumballs. This is suspense. This is a part of life, the suspension of results, the delay in the cause and effect relationship. And we're doing all that we can. I think it's important, we all deal with this, Junior.
0:16:51.0 Junior: That was a very important call out, almost all of us will experience this. Well, we all will experience this to some degree, and maybe you're in it now, maybe you're 75 quarters in, and unbeknownst to you, it's gonna take 101, so what happens when we don't get any gumballs? We have two choices, we encounter the disturbance so we can take two paths. Path one is negative, this is a path we don't wanna go down, this is a path that's debilitating. In the short term, when we encounter a disturbance, what happens? Hardship triggers the body stress response, fight, flight, freeze, and we're tempted to react immediately. And depending on the nature of the issue, depending on the nature of the hardship, how acute that might be, how acute the trauma might be, we may experience PTSD, we may experience a whole host of negative things, negative emotion. We encounter the disturbance and we don't effectively move to adaptation, that's path one. Path two is positive, you move from disturbance to adaptation, and that transition is effective, it may not happen immediately, but it happens. So this may be over-simplifying it, but those are our two options, path one, path two. And today's conversation, the remainder is going to be on how do we choose path two, how do we move from disturbance to adaptation? So let's get into the solution.
0:18:24.0 Junior: First we have to understand that resilience is a process, not a trait. And this is very important to understand. It's learnable, it's dynamic, it's multifaceted, it is not set in stone. You are not born with it or not. It's not that today you have it or you don't have it and forever will be the case. It is something that you can learn. So the sequence again, disturbance, adaptation, recovery. What allows an ecosystem, as we talked before, to recover better than another? There are a bunch of things, biodiversity, habitat complexity, connectivity. And there's an interesting blueprint that we can apply from nature to ourselves. So how do we apply those things? Similar to the way that ecosystems recover, we recover and hedge against the disturbance. Strategy one is to spread out. Let me tell you what I mean. Don't centralize your life such that if all the eggs are in one basket and the basket breaks, you're ruined. If you're entirely dependent upon professional success for value in life and that's taken from you, what are you left with? Tim, have you ever seen this in your professional life, other leaders that centralize on one thing and that's taken?
0:19:43.2 Tim: Yeah, and then they're devastated and they can't recover. As you said, Junior, spread out. And there's no diversification in, I would say diversification in their identity to begin with, and then diversification in their adaptive response. I think we have to be very careful if our identity is dependent on one thing. For example, what if your identity is largely or wholly dependent upon your professional life and your status and perhaps the position that you occupy right now, that could change tomorrow. So there's an example where you have concentrated risk and you're not in a good spot. So when you're tested in that way, your adaptive capacity is probably not going to be very good. What will your endurance look like? What will your stamina look like? What will your response patterns look like? I've seen that again and again. I'll give you an example from athletics. I've known a lot of athletes, and when their playing days come to an end, they live life in the rearview mirror and they don't know how to move on with life after their playing days. They just don't have the adaptive capacity because their identity was tied up in it. They did not cultivate other areas, other sources of identity or skill or satisfaction or contribution, and it became very dangerous. There was no diversification in them.
0:21:19.9 Junior: Yeah. Well, the identity piece is interesting, and I think it's a thread that we can pull on. If someone asked you, who are you? And you answered that question with, well, I'm a working professional, or I'm an athlete, or I'm a politician, well, what if that's taken away? What are you left with? And now how do you answer the question, who are you? That becomes really interesting as a thought experiment. So ask yourself, who are you? The identity needs to live upstream from the activity. If it doesn't, you're putting yourself at risk because those activities can be taken away. Think about an athlete.
0:22:02.1 Tim: That's right.
0:22:02.5 Junior: So, Tim, you've experienced injury. What was that like when you've gone from high performance, part of the team, meaningful contribution, maybe a little recognition, and then that's taken away, you're literally unable to play?
0:22:19.9 Tim: Yeah, it's over. You have to figure out a way to move on with life. I mean, I went through a knee replacement surgery as a result of that prior chapter in my life, and that was adversity. Three years for a full recovery. But you mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and physically, you've got to transition. You've got to figure out a way to transition in a healthy, productive way and find other areas of meaning and purpose in your life.
0:22:54.0 Junior: Yeah. And that's the crux of the issue. So if the idea is spread out, how do you spread out? You effectively tie meaning to more areas of your life, that could include a romantic relationship, friends, meaningful hobbies, goals, education, so on and so forth. And if you put meaning into each of those categories and you spread out across eight meaningful categories and one of those is taken away through who knows what, you're okay, you're going to be okay. There are other things to lean on. So that's, it's biodiversity in the ecological sense. You're putting your eggs in different baskets. In the case that one of those is taken away, I think this is a very powerful thing. So that's number one, spread out.
0:23:50.7 Junior: Number two, harness the power of positive emotions. Now, there's a time where if you read this as a headline to me, I'd say like, forget it. Like that... Okay, that doesn't sound very real to me. That's nice. Let's move along, give me something practical. But I've done enough research over time to understand that that's ignorant. There's something here. Hope is a positive emotion. Optimism is a positive emotion. We'll talk a little bit about both. Hope's an interesting one. Hope to me is focus on some north star. Langston Hughes said, "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." I think this is true.
0:24:41.7 Tim: Wow.
0:24:42.2 Junior: And how beautiful is that?
0:24:44.8 Tim: That's powerful.
0:24:46.8 Junior: If dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. So what are your dreams? Dreams are those things that are so far ahead, yet so proximal that you can feel them. They will pull you through a lot of the suspense that Tim talked about before. So what do I think about when I think about the distance between the inputs and the outputs? Hope. There's this belief in something more that's coming down the line. And if you lose that, if you lose hope, especially when things are really difficult, you're going through a lot of suspense, it's really dark, it's really foggy, and you lose that, you lose your bearing, you can do almost nothing but wander. You lose the ability to hang on. So hope is terribly powerful. What do you think about this one?
0:25:48.5 Tim: I couldn't agree more. Hope is a force. It's a propelling force, right? As we say, hope springs eternal in the human breast. We've got to have something that we're working towards, that we're excited about, that motivates us, that gives us motivation beyond simply the survival instinct and wanting to survive. There's got to be something out there. We've got to believe that things can get better, and that propels us forward.
0:26:24.3 Junior: Here's another one. Optimism. Optimism does not change reality, but it changes our perception of reality. It's the difference between offense and defense in my mind. I've thrown some references that we'll put in the show notes, four different studies about positive emotion and in some cases, optimism and resilience, specifically the relationship between them. But four academic papers, that if you were like me and said, ah, this sounds a little soft, go read those. And the research is pretty convincing. So, Tim, what do you think about this one?
0:27:04.5 Tim: This is massive. You could make the argument that the biggest, single most important discovery in psychology is simply the sequence that humans have thoughts and then they have beliefs, and then they take action. That sequence, that linear sequence, which obviously goes around in a loop, but that linear sequence may be the biggest discovery in psychology. We have thoughts, and then we have beliefs, and then we have actions. That's the backbone of cognitive behavioral therapy. Now, let's just think about this for a minute. Why is this so powerful? What do we do in cognitive behavioral therapy? We go back to step one, thoughts. And what are we trying to do? We're trying to identify and isolate thoughts that are either incorrect or are incorrect and negative. Because that starts the whole sequence. What comes out of those thoughts are beliefs and assumptions, and then what comes out of those beliefs and assumptions? Actions and behaviors. So this whole thing, this whole sequence gets started with your thoughts. So optimism is an emotion. It's a perception, but it's based on thoughts.
0:28:28.5 Tim: So the thoughts that you entertain, the thoughts that you give time to on the stage of your mind, that's what you begin with. Those will lead to optimism or pessimism. And then we go from there, then we move into action. So this is fundamental. That's the role that it plays. This is not some secondary, peripheral thing. This is central to how humans operate.
0:28:55.0 Junior: Yeah, and I think part of what's practical in the optimism is the idea that we can take action after the thoughts and the beliefs that we have power to change the situation. You mentioned before catastrophizing. Tell me more.
0:29:10.1 Tim: Yeah, well, it's one of the skills that we have to learn to take things well if when we encounter adversity, we've got to figure out how to take things in stride and not catastrophize the situation. What does that mean? So a catastrophizing mindset is a mindset that sees the current situation, begins to see it as permanent rather than temporary, number one. Number two, you start to see yourself as powerless instead of having efficacy and the power to change things. So you start to see yourself more as an object than an agent. So again, two things. Number one, it's permanent, not temporary. Number two, I'm an object and I can't change things versus I'm an agent and I can change things. This is huge. So we've got to avoid catastrophizing at all costs, even though there will be times when it is overwhelming and we need to take a minute.
0:30:18.7 Junior: Yeah. Part of what fascinates me about positive emotions is that they don't change reality. At least right now, the most immediate situation stays the same. So two seconds from now will be exactly the same whether or not I bring the positive emotion. But positive emotions equip us with broadened perspective, a better chance at developing social connection. And believe it or not, go read one of those papers, a boosted immune system. So think about social connection. This one is fascinating. Are you more or less likely to develop strong social connection if you bring positive or negative emotion? Positive.
0:31:02.8 Tim: Positive.
0:31:02.9 Junior: If you want to harness the abilities of other people, if you want to collaborate, you want to work together as a team, you want to develop connection, man, positive emotions are what you're going to have to lean on to do that. Otherwise people are going to say, I don't want to be with this person. No, thank you.
0:31:18.7 Tim: Well, the positive emotions, Junior, are contagious. People want to be around you. There's a magnetism. There's a desire to engage with you.
0:31:29.1 Junior: Yeah. And you'll realize, and I realize, we're saying harness the power of positive emotions in the context of resilience when many times it's precisely the most difficult thing to do. How do you summon positive emotion when that's the farthest thing from your mind in many cases, when the difficulty is that acute, yet precisely that is what you have to do? So to me, there's some irony there that is sometimes almost comical. Like, okay, it's the hardest that it might be, yet now is exactly when you need to summon positive emotion. That's interesting. Okay.
0:32:10.3 Tim: And I also think, Junior, that we need to add that part of positive emotion is also bringing in humor, bringing in laughter. Poking fun at the human condition, finding the ironies, and having fun with that, we've got to be able to do that. That helps us decompress. It just makes everything better.
0:32:29.7 Junior: It does. So we've got a few more for you. That was harness the power of positive emotions. Three, develop effective and varied coping mechanisms. Now, to me, this is back to basics. If anyone comes to me and says, I'm having a really hard time, what's the first thing that I tend to dig into? First of all, I've trained myself to try and ask, do you want me to listen or solve your problem? If the person says, hey, I want some help with solving the problem...
0:32:58.9 Tim: That's good.
0:33:00.0 Junior: Then I'm going to ask some questions. And you want to know what my most three basic questions are? How are you sleeping? What are you eating? And how's your exercise? And there are others, right? Do you have friends? Do you have meaningful relationships? Do you have a hobby that's meaningful to you? Do you have career goals? So on and so forth. But those are the big three when we talk about going back to basics, sleep, food and exercise. So when I talk about effective and varied coping mechanisms, I'm not talking about something very mysterious. These are the building blocks, and these are the things that we have to go back to. And these are the things that I have seen over years that have worked most effectively for me. When things get out of whack, especially when you're in suspense, these three things will help like almost nothing else will. And we have to realize we experience life and we experience leadership in a very real sense through our bodies, you don't experience anything outside of your body.
0:34:07.2 Junior: This is the vehicle. It's the medium. So the quality of the vehicle must necessarily dictate a portion of the quality of the experience. It's necessarily true. So if the vehicle is in a better condition, everything else is better, literally everything else. And if it's worse, everything else is worse. And part of the reason I like this is that we have huge control over those three variables, sleep, food, and exercise. So I'll appeal to those three in a very real sense. Almost every time someone brings something difficult to me, says, what should I do? Even if it's completely unrelated or seemingly unrelated, because your ability to grapple with the uncertainty, your ability to adapt and overcome the problem, will largely be dictated by those three things. You don't sleep enough for a long time, see how that goes. We've all probably been there.
0:35:09.6 Tim: Yeah. Well, and you can't compensate with other things, really?
0:35:11.8 Junior: Not long term.
0:35:13.3 Tim: Yeah, not long term. We can do a lot for a while, but those are fundamentals, as you said, Junior, those are building blocks. Ironically, what we are often tempted to do is to compensate or find sources of recovery that are counterproductive, even destructive and harmful. Where we are not taking care of ourselves. We get into substance abuse, we get into addictions, we get into things like this that just make it worse. And then we're in a vicious cycle and we are spiraling downward. This is where it gets tough. So we want to avoid those things at all costs.
0:35:58.0 Junior: So if those are the basics and we're talking about coping mechanisms, what are some other avenues? Well, you have to put the coping mechanism through some filters, and two of the filters that I would run the hobby through, or the coping mechanism through, are meaning and productivity. Now, you may have different filters, and maybe you should, but to me, these are two things that check the boxes. If the coping mechanism is meaningful and it's productive, it's contribution oriented, that has a greater chance of making me feel better, of being able to help me get through whatever it is. And there have been times where the coping mechanism, it doesn't get a lot of time, and so there will be occasions where that coping mechanism may be, I just need to sit down by myself for two minutes. That's all. That's all you get, right? And so I want to just take that into account and help people understand. I know like, maybe you're not going on a fly fishing trip for five days, right?
0:37:12.0 Tim: No.
0:37:12.8 Junior: But there are things that we can do that are small, that can aid in that recovery and adaptation, and we have to be thoughtful about what those are.
0:37:21.1 Tim: I'm glad you said that, Junior. If you know that you're in a period of prolonged stress and adversity and there's no opportunity for fundamental change or recovery, and you're locked into this mode for a while, what can you do? You have to think small, not big. As you said, you've got to think about little things that will bring you some measure of renewal. And just line those up and make a list of those. And we're talking small. It could be a short walk. It could be reading for 10 minutes. It could be standing up and doing some stretches. It could be having a conversation with someone that you know is encouraging. It could be going out and getting something that you like to eat. Some little treat, right? Rewarding yourself and setting up rewards and things that you can look forward to. Little things. Sometimes that's all you've got. And maybe for a long time, right? You're just locked into that.
0:38:41.1 Junior: So that's number three, develop effective and varied coping mechanisms. Number four, adopt a growth mindset. Now, the big thing here, I mean, if you haven't read Carol Dweck's Mindset, do it. I think it's a must read. There aren't tons of books on that list, but for me, I read that book a very long time ago, and it was very useful to me. And the fundamental idea coming away was frame challenges as opportunities to learn. See your failures as stepping stones on the path to success. That takes persistence. It requires durable motivation. And there are some other things in there, too. You're embracing feedback, you're celebrating progress. And then one that I wanted to call out that might be, I don't think it's unique, but it's been useful to me, is to use the word 'yet'. This has been terribly useful for me. I don't have this thing that I want yet. I'm not as good as I want to be yet. I can't see a light at the end of the tunnel yet. If you just ended the first pieces of those sentences with a period, I'm not as good as I want to be, period. And you speak that over yourself for long enough, that's detrimental. If you add yet, it's this glimmer of hope at the end that says there's distance between where I am and where I want to go, but there's an opportunity to get there.
0:40:06.6 Junior: There's an element of hope, and there's also this element of imminence if you can continue to do the inputs. I know that if I continue to do the things required, I will be as good as I want to be. I can't see a light at the end of the tunnel now, but if I keep doing the things I know I need to do, I know that it will inevitably come. So there's this optimism, forward looking, this offensive nature by adding yet to some of these statements that I think is powerful.
0:40:41.2 Tim: Related to that, I think you have to be able to identify and call out the small wins. So I'm not as good as I want to be, but I made an inch of progress here or there. I did this or that. Some, even if it's the smallest milestone that indicates progress, forward motion, fantastic, make note of it, acknowledge it, recognize it, celebrate it.
0:41:06.1 Junior: Yep. So that's a big one. Adopt a growth mindset. I mean, we could do a whole series on this and it deserves more time than we can give it today, but that's it. And then the last one, seek strong social support. This one may be easy for you, this one may be difficult for you, depending on a number of reasons. Inherent in this one is the acknowledgement that many of your problems are bigger than you are. And then a thought, even if you could do it all yourself, should you? That's an interesting question. Why should we seek strong social support? For an emotional buffer, increased sense of belonging. Sometimes it's very practical, like I need some very practical help. Sometimes it's equipping yourself with role models. Many of the problems that we face today can't be overcome by a single person. They need many hands or a different perspective. They need to be shared. So there's an element here that can be difficult, yet is very useful and sometimes necessary, depending on the nature of the problem. What do you think about this one?
0:42:20.5 Tim: I love it. And I want to add a point. Sometimes with social support or moral support, it's not the advice, it's not the counsel, it's not the guidance, it's not the direction that someone gives you, it's simply their presence. That's it. It's simply their presence. They are there with you and their presence is a source of strength, and that's it. So just think about that. Nothing else. It's just their presence. I think that we should not overlook the power of that.
0:42:58.6 Junior: Well, in that comment, I think, is recognition that this is a two way street, that we need to be there for others in our networks when they need us. And sometimes all that means is just being there. I think that that takes some of the load off, is just an understanding that maybe all you need to do is just be there. It's not the advice, it's not the contribution. And in some cases, that's literal. Sometimes you just need to be in a physical space with somebody who needs some help, and that's all you need to do. You don't even say anything. Okay. In that, I think here's, I guess, to wrap that piece up, becoming more resilient yourself enables you to help others in a way that you couldn't otherwise. So there's this part of this that's very beneficial to others if you become a more resilient person, 'cause it may seem like we've been talking a lot about self, but there's a very positive externality in this type of self development because others can lean on you, and that is a useful trait. So that was number five. Seek strong social support. So, Tim, any final thoughts before we summarize and conclude?
0:44:11.2 Tim: I do. I want to share a quote from Thornton Wilder that really got my attention. He was a famous playwright, and he wrote My Town and other pretty incredible plays. This is what he said. He said, without your wounds, where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble in the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love service only wounded soldiers can serve. Are we not all broken on the wheels of living, Junior? I think we are. But there's hope, because in this paradoxical way, that qualifies us as wounded soldiers to help each other. That's beautiful.
0:45:09.5 Junior: Yeah. I want to unpack that quote, but I think I'm just going to leave it be. It deserves to just be left there for each of us to think about and maybe reread. So, in summary, you'll experience difficulty. That difficulty can be debilitating. The way that you respond to that difficulty will dictate the quality of leader that you become. And our recommendation is to respond by doing five things. One, spreading out. Two, harnessing the power of positive emotions. Three, developing effective and varied coping mechanisms. Four, adopting a growth mindset. And five, seeking strong social support.
0:45:50.7 Junior: So that's it for today. We hope that this was a useful conversation. It certainly was for me. We appreciate your time and your listenership. If you liked today's episode, please leave us a like, a review and share it with a friend. Here at LeaderFactor, we are here to support you. If there is another way that we can provide help to you or your organization, don't hesitate to reach out. Take care everyone. We will see you next next episode. Bye bye.
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0:46:15.4 Junior: Hey Culture by Design listeners, this is the end of today's episode. You can find all the important links from today's episode at leaderfactor.com/podcast. And if you found today's episode helpful and useful in any way, please share it with a friend and leave a review. If you'd like to learn more about LeaderFactor and what we do, then please visit us at leaderfactor.com. Lastly, if you'd like to give any feedback to the Culture by Design podcast or even request a topic from Tim and Junior, then reach out to us at info@leaderfactor.com or find and tag us on LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening and making culture something you do by design, not by default.