Latest / Humanity Working / Resilience, Fixed

Transcript

Resilience, Fixed · Humanity Working

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Paul.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Today's quick fix is resilience.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by that?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Hey Matt.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, everybody.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we think of resilience as your ability to cope intellectually and emotionally when change happens, when something unexpected happens.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's sort of like how you stay grounded, how you think clearly, and how you're moving forward when things are not going to plan.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's quite a specific definition of resilience versus sort of the more the more general ones you see.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: But we find that it's actually quite helpful to think about it in those terms because it helps you figure out how to hone it if you have a kind of clearer and more narrow definition of what it is.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because we talked about adaptability a few weeks a few weeks back.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So how describe the differences.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I think we have a lot of conversations about this.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think it actually does make sense to separate out these two terms, both of which are quite powerful.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Again, you often think about adaptability and resilience almost interchangeably, right?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so because, for example, the ability to adapt is a is a sign of being resilient, for example.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um but when we talk about resilience, interestingly, it's sort of connected to some of the other things that we've been talking about over the past few weeks as well.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, for example, if you think about motivation, somebody who really has mastered motivation is mastering the ups and downs of the day to day and the week to week, resilience you can think of as sort of mastering the ups and downs of month to month and and year to year, right?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: As things are not going as you would expect them to, you're able to be able to deal with that reality, the reality that life is not always sunshine and roses.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: So if you think about resilience as that sort of a of of the thing that keeps you going when when times are tough, then you can think about adaptability as being almost like the the practical response to the changing circumstances.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: It was A, it's now B, and what am I what am I now doing differently because B is different to A.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, we adapt in all kinds of different ways that are both positive or negative in nature.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just dealing with with the negative emotional response that you might have or or being able to persist through dark times, adaptability could be a very, very positive thing.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I could I could if I gave you a billion dollars today, Matt, you would adapt what you do.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: I would based on the fact that you've now got a billion dollars, right?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: You would um you would see a few differences.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not necessarily the that's that's not necessarily gonna require an enormous amount of resilience now that I've just made you independently wealthy.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: So these are different, um, these are different things, although they are connected to each other.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really interesting.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now you got me thinking about what I'd do with a billion dollars real quick.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um But uh yeah, so if you adapted, it's almost like adapting is happening anyway and is in little small pieces.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Resilience is the ability to deal with that happening over and over and over again.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I th I another way of putting it, and I think the the really interesting thing is about this is that that there are there are two components to resilience, one which gets talked about a lot and one which doesn't get talked about very much, right?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so the one that's talked about a lot is you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: This idea of of like when bad things happen, it that there's a purpose that it is serving, which is to make you be able to deal with the in that with the things that come along later, because you're like, well, it's tough, but I've been through tough times before.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, which is why assuming that you make it through the tough times, it does actually give you the ability to be able to do it more effectively.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: That is this is one aspect of resilience, but the second aspect of resilience is is really the the thing that you can learn, right, versus uh versus the thing that you naturally get.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: The things you can learn are your are your approaches, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: So what is what's your response when the bad thing happens?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: You can you can work on that.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can work on how to to respond effectively.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: And this is almost like, let's say, a skill that you might learn in an emergency room or something like that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: So let's say that you were uh let's say that you're working in an ER and you get a whole bunch of people come into the ER, and let's say there's a you know terrible incident, a mass incident, causes a whole bunch of people to come in and a whole bunch of people die.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: That will experiencing that and going through that will help build your resilience.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: But even before you got there, you have had some training in order to be able to process these things really effectively so that it doesn't pull you down in the first place.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: So there is this sort of stuff that just happens, but then there's also this stuff that you can learn.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And why do you think then that resilience is such a big deal right now in particular?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think there are two or three things that are all happening at once.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: So one is something that we've talked about a great deal, which is just this idea of in a world where work is not very clearly defined, where job descriptions are not clearly defined, where it's not clear what good looks like.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um and in a world where there is much less high quality human interaction, in that kind of of uncertain world, it can be uh it it can cause pull an emotional toll on us.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then related to that is the fact that our society is very divided right now.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so the sort of underlying climate in which we live is one of division, sometimes anger, and then economic uncertainty.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then on a work level, you layer on top of that, there's a huge amount of uncertainty for many people about our roles, right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: We don't we don't know that the job that we do today will still be there in for many of us, we don't know if it's gonna be there in six months' time, but we certainly don't know if it's gonna be there in three years' time, five years' time, ten years' time.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And most futurists believe that the roles that we the people will be doing, if they'll be doing them, don't even exist today.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a climate that has a bunch of fear and a bunch of uncertainty associated with it before you get to the individual challenges that individuals face.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so the backdrop of all of this is one of is one of great uncertainty, which is why you see the measures, even measures that don't seem even directly connected to this, but for example, consumer sentiment is way down, way down right now.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a reflection of just how people are feeling about the uh the environment that we're we're in.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: So it's very easy to get overwhelmed and and uh just feel like you've lost your mojo in this in in this type of environment.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, overwhelmed, stuck, just frozen.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so where does resilience come from?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we've talked about the sort of core elements already.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it does come from from you know getting through tough times, and then it also uh comes from uh from sort of short-term or techniques that you can learn.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I'll dive in a little bit more to the to the technique uh technique part of it.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: The real key is to be able to effectively and dispassionately gain an understanding of what is going on, um clear as much uncertainty as you can, um, prioritize how you're going to uh how you're going to respond, and specifically understand how you're gonna what your what your best first step is in responding.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: There's something that I've taught for a while now called CTA or collect triage act.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's it's really simple, which is the collect part is okay, what's what's everything that I that I know about this?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: And what are the what are the various, you know, all of the pieces of information that I can know?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's knowable, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is what I can know about this, this is what I don't know about this, um, but this is the understanding that I have about the situation as a whole.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then the the triage part is of all the things that I could do in response to the thing that is impacting me right now, what's the what's the most important thing to do?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next most important thing, and then the next but most important thing.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that first and that most important thing could be as simple as here's where uncertainty persists.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna go after that piece of uncertainty.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because the more we know about something, even if it's bad news, the more we know about something, then the less paralyzed we feel, and the more ability that the we the more ability we have to take action.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then that last part is act, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: What's that first um specific activity that I'm gonna perform as a result of the challenges that I face?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so a lot of that is sort of moving you from somebody who is paralyzed by what's happening and towards being somebody who is accepting the reality of what is happening and now understanding what you're gonna do about it.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a resilient behavior.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's something that you can learn regardless of the various things that have happened to you in the past.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, on one hand, it's sort of a a privilege to have the time to think and not react immediately.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, uh, of course, and and that's like part of the battle for a lot of people, I'm sure.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: But uh gritting and bearing it and just pretending everything fine is certainly not a solution uh to building that resistance either.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and the thing is, what's really interesting is that you're you're right, there is this challenge that goes on in our in our heads, which is, oh, I haven't got time to like step back and stop and think and so on.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: But it relates to that stuff we've referred to before, this sort of slow down to speed up type thing.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes this is why what I just described, similar versions of this exist on the battlefield and in the in the emergency room, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's why triage nurse nurses exist and things like that, right?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: This is actually a more efficient approach, but it does take that that courage is probably the wrong word, but it takes that that discipline to to actually stop and pause at the exact moment where you feel like you're you must respond, you must respond, you must respond.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: And people will be familiar with this, right?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, in personal relationships, sometimes the the our resilience is tested in a very personal way.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: When, for example, you've got a friend who you're planning on doing something with and they inexplicably ghost you or something or something along those lines.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it might not feel like much.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: If you're looking at it externally, it might not feel like a big deal, but if you're inside it, it can feel awful, right?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and so sometimes people like knee-jerk respond to that situation, or they're like, oh, they've cut me off, I'm cutting them off, or whatever it happened to be.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: And in reality, just like stopping, pausing, saying, okay, what do I know about this situation?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: What do I not know about this situation?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what can I uh collecting all of the information associated with it?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: What does this mean dispassionately and what should I do about it?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Will often result in a different set of outcomes, it's a different set of activities that you perform, and a longer-term, better outcome overall.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: That can happen over the course of minutes, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it doesn't have to be a huge big deal.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's just an approach, a disciplined approach that you can use anytime that your resilience is challenged.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's almost like a you know, meditation practice is the same kind of thing.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Slow down, observe, you know, kind of that's really interesting how how much they they meld together.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so uh what's one simple thing someone can do this week in terms of resilience?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: If we turn the one into two briefly, I think, I think one activity is just to to literally go back and obviously be careful about this.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want to dredge up old memories that um that can be really challenging for people.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: So and if you need a thinking partner or if anybody's fortunate enough to have a therapist, it can be a good way to uh to do it with some uh with some supervision.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: But to consciously go back to a time that where things have been tough and you've made it through, that just that reminder can be really, really, really helpful in the medium term.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um but then secondly, in a very small level, at a very small scale, pick something that is either happening right now or has just happened and go through a version of this uh of this uh CTA or collect triage act activity.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and particularly focus, I would say, on the collect piece.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: If you talked about meditation, uh, I would say stoicism is is a uh is is a really good backdrop to this as well.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: On this collect piece, the key here is to be um is to try to be as dispassionate as you uh as you can be about it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: What you're doing is you're collecting the inf your information gathering, and you're doing it in a neutral way.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're looking to gather the information that is associated with this so that you call so that you understand all of the information that you have and you know what you and what you know is what you know, and what you don't know is what you don't know.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Dispassionately gathering that information will guide you towards the activity that is uh that is happening.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: So try doing that, I would say, with a relatively small thing, and then get into the practice of regularly doing it anytime that your resilience is challenged.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we did it again.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Resilience fixed.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh before we head out though, uh maybe give a couple of seconds to talk about uh the number of uh longer form interviews you've been doing on this channel in case folks uh have missed them.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's been really good.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: We've we've reverted to doing some more of these of these long form uh interviews, which I absolutely love doing and I and got some great feedback from people.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I really, really do appreciate that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um so these the ones we're doing here, these fixed uh episodes, they drop every Tuesday.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And whenever we have interviews, which is actually most weeks now, um, we drop the interviews on a Thursday.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And in addition to the interviews, typically um once I've interviewed somebody, I'll I'll do a kind of write-up of not just the interview itself, but what I've discovered from the interview.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I put that on humanityworking.net.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um so humanityworking.net is if you like our one-stop shop where we have like a newsletter and then there are links to the podcast and and so on and so forth.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's free to subscribe.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: So if you go to humanityworking.net, you'll see uh you'll see those uh those various interviews.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been great.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's been really fun.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So uh what's next?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: What's the next interview?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so that's dropping, so today's Tuesday, that's dropping uh this Thursday.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's with uh Reza Kaladar.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and he's the president of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, and he's the author of a book called Uh The Contemporary Leader.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: I found it really interesting, Matt, because his views on leadership have changed quite a bit, and they've been influenced strongly by different generations coming into the workforce, but then also by what's happening internationally in parts of the world outside, say, uh the US and Western Europe.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a we had a good chat.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be releasing uh that in your feed uh on Thursday.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you can get it in your podcast feed, and as I say, we we drop these on YouTube as well.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's out on Thursday.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: So listen to that.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And in the meantime, we'll be back with another quick fix next Tuesday.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks a lot, Matt.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, everybody.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: It makes a huge difference in helping others find us.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget, you can find all episodes and get our weekly newsletter at humanityworking.net.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.