In a series of six blogs, I’m going to explore 5 top tips under each of the GROWTH headings, with the purpose of generating ideas on how we can be the best version of our leadership selves.  Some of you may be pausing at this point to say you are not a leader, however, we are all leaders of our lives and make choices every day to enable great outcomes for our personal growth and learning.

Intrigued… please do read on.

Personal growth

Resilience & agility

Optimisation of people & performance

Why: delivering results

Transformational change

Healthy teams

Today is the turn of Resilience and Agility

1. Freedom

In Viktor Frankl’s beautiful book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ he describes his experiences in a concentration camp and “can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

Inspired by Viktor’s work, Declan Coyle in his book ‘The Green Platform’ further develops this concept of our freedom to choose and describes our ability to either react or respond to situations – the Red or Green Platforms. Typically if we react, we may find ourselves on the Red Platform – whinging, whining, moaning, complaining, blaming other people, conditioned reflexes, reacting as if we have no choice in situations. Declan describes a ‘white space’ in which we have the freedom to choose either the Red or Green Platforms.

Responding from the Green Platform is a place of inspiration, creativity and alignment to our Why. It is where we respond and acknowledge our freedom to choose a response regardless of the situation. This freedom sits at the heart of resilience and whilst it does require practice, the power of that ‘white space’ is huge – simply pausing, giving yourself a moment, noticing if you are about to react, notice if your instinct is telling you ‘this doesn’t feel right’ or if you are about to do something you don’t want to do and then say afterwards ‘they made me’. Remember… pause, respond. You have the freedom to choose.

2. Positive Re-Framing

The art of positive re-framing works well for our own personal resilience and agility and also when working with others. Simply put, if you find yourself on the Red Platform or you are working with someone else who is saying things like ‘that will never work’ or ‘we can’t do that’ you can use some language techniques to help shift either yourself or the other person, to the Green Platform. Jump on the Red Platform with them and you’ll just be having a ‘whinge-fest’ with them and disappear into a ‘rabbit hole of negativity’!! Simply ask a positive open question in response to their negativity, turn things into something full of possibility – for example:

That will never work!                  What would it look like if it did?
We can’t do that!                        What would it be like if we could?
They never listen!                      What would it be like if they did?

Notice the patterns? Simply turning the ‘can’ts’ into ‘coulds’ is full of possibilities. As much as we can ask these questions to others, we can also ask them of ourselves when we get stuck.

3. Learning and Modelling

There are many different perspectives and just because we’ve always done things in a certain way, it doesn’t mean to say there aren’t different ways to explore. This lies at the heart of continuous improvement and having an openness to learning and personal growth we can avoid getting stuck in the same patterns of thinking and doing things. Be curious, ask how other people tackle projects, see different perspectives, challenge your existing patterns, practice new ways of doing things, listen to podcasts or audiobooks, read blogs, just simply be curious…. Then when we come across new things we’d like to adopt in our own way of working, find someone who is good at that thing – break it down into steps and copy what they do and most importantly, keep practising it as we need to overcome old habits before new ones can become engrained.

4. Live every day in alignment to your ‘Why’

In the G Blog there is an exploration of the importance of establishing your ‘why’ and this will not be found out by following the paths of others or doing what someone else tells you to do as it was good for them! Finding your ‘why’ is the first step and the second step is to live it every day of your life. Ensure it is catchy and short enough that you can recall it in an instant. Then when you are making decisions, you can check in whether that decision is in alignment with your purpose. Use your ‘white space’ to pause and reflect.

As Oprah Winfrey describes in her book, ‘What I know for sure’. “Doubt means don’t. Don’t move. Don’t answer. Don’t rush forward”. She waits to see whether things deeply connect to her heart and her purpose before moving forward.

Live every day according to your ‘why’ – practice reciting it and reminding yourself of it.

5. Accountability

‘You are the captain of your own ship, don’t let anyone else take the wheel’ – such a simple quote that describes the responsibility we have for living our own lives. Resilience is as much about saying ‘no’ to things if they don’t connect with our ‘why’ and our ‘values’ and occasionally we may make some ‘not so good decisions’ which we take personal accountability for. Seeking blame or being a victim to those decisions is a Red Platform position and will not serve us well. Being accountable for ourselves is a Green Platform position that is full of personal growth and learning – taking responsibility for ourselves and being agile in our approach.

If you have found this helpful, please do have a read of my other news posts and watch this space for my upcoming blogs in this series.