Are You Anxious, Worried, Overcome?

“Here’s How RL Can Help!

Resilient Leadership (RL) is a new way of SEEING, THINKING and LEADING. Resilient Leadership practices help us more effectively navigate our own anxiety driven reactive tendencies as well as clearly recognize these tendencies in others.

Supercharged Challenges

We live in a VUCA1 world. Daily life is filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Learning to thrive in a VUCA world is a lifelong process of new discoveries, constant practice and steady improvement.

RL’s Pathway: Self-Awareness, Self-Definition & Self-Regulation

Self-awareness, self-definition and self-regulation are three top priorities for leaders. Together, these three practices define a self-differentiated leader. A self-differentiated leader is able to observe their own behavior and ask themselves: “What is my role in this?” Then they can take appropriate action.

A self-differentiated leader will focus on three key imperatives: Stay Calm, Stay the Course, and Stay Connected.

  • Stay Calm: Manage your own anxiety.
    • Evaluate your own behavior and determine how to be a less anxious.
    • Help others make choices on how best to reduce their anxiety.
  • Stay the Course:
    • Be clear your own vision, values and principles.
    • Use them to guide your decisions.
    • Make self-differentiating moves even in the face of pushback.
  • Stay Connected:
    • Remember that it is the quality, not the quantity of your connections that matter.
    • Stay close enough to influence others but distant enough to lead them.

One Step on the RL Pathway – Stop Overfunctioning

  • People over-function when they “think, feel or act, in a way that erodes another’s capacity for ownership or thoughtful action. Ask yourself: “What am I doing for others that they should be doing themselves?”
  • If you have a tendency to Overfunction, try:
    1. Getting up on “the balcony.” Observe the flow of anxiety and reactivity in yourself and others.  Then take action to lower the level of chronic anxiety in yourself and others.
    2. Delegating, without abdicating. Give others (including family members!) responsibilities you are carrying but shouldn’t. Provide the necessary information, authority/support, and resources. Talk about the goal and expected outcomes, but resist telling others how to do complete tasks. Check in from time to time to evaluate progress until completion. Always acknowledge and celebrate progress!
    3. Being fully present. Schedule “high quality” one on one time with people in your life. Give others time to tell you what’s happening in their lives. Practice talking with others, not at them or to then.

(1 V – Volatility, U – Uncertainty, C – Complexity, A – Ambiguity.)

To learn more about how to SEE, THINK and LEAD more effectively using the principles of Resilient Leadership, please contact us at: resilientleadershipdevelopment.com