3 Resilient Leadership Strategies for Navigating Disruptive Change
Disruptive and unrelenting change is here to stay. Every day, we encounter a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) state of unease. VUCA affects our workplace, our relationships, and even our expectations for the future. In the face of such change, it’s helpful to adopt behaviors that won’t necessarily slow down the pace of VUCA challenges but will enable us to manage ourselves more successfully.
Let’s explore three concepts that will help us manage VUCA change.
- Self-Awareness: We define chronic anxiety as “an abiding sense of unease about imagined or anticipated threats.” This unease is often manifested physically as tension or worry (anxiety.) You can feel it, but you can’t see it. The first step in managing chronic anxiety is to increase objective self-awareness. The Action: Pause, even briefly, and ask, “What is my part in this?” This question allows you to consider better options, to make better, more thoughtful choices.
- Self-Regulation: Self-Regulation grows with managing one’s own self, with controlling self, with becoming a more responsible person, and permitting others to be themselves. To work on yourself means to work on understanding how you’re behaving in your emotional system and the relationships you’re in both at work and at home. A self-regulated person is able to balance how they think (rationally) with how they feel (emotionally.) This balanced thinking is not reactive, it is objective and allows us to make the best choice our emotional, rational brains, working together can make. This balance is critical to navigating disruptive change.
- Self-Definition Building Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation empowers you to make informed choices. Working on self involves understanding your behaviors within your emotional system and striving to be a more responsible person. Making choices that help you define yourself will help improve your relationships and your life experiences in general.
The Journey: Stay calm, Stay Connected, and Stay the Course by working on balanced thinking and consciously making informed choices when navigating disruptive change. As we make better-balanced choices in our daily lives, the less impact VUCA will have on us.