Embracing Strategic Resilience in Leadership

In this episode of the Leadership Vision podcast, we dive into our archives of interviews we've done with guests to talk about Strategic Resilience in Leadership with insights from four distinguished leaders. Featuring interviews with Rich Horwath, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier, Martin Gonzales, and Amy Schoenthal, the episode covers essential topics including strategic thinking, creating resilience plans, addressing team challenges, and reframing setbacks for growth. The guests share their expertise on managing personal and professional challenges, fostering psychological safety, and cultivating a resilient culture. This discussion is aimed at helping leaders enhance both their personal and professional effectiveness, especially during times of crisis. Enjoy!

Chapters

• 0:00 Building Resilience
• 9:12 Strategic Resilience in Leadership
• 16:28 Leadership Growth Through Setbacks

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg and today on the podcast, we're trying something just a little bit different. As you know, we have been interviewing some amazing people from all walks of leadership in the past year. These are authors and speakers and leaders that are in the field doing the hard work, and they have all offered a lesson, something to teach us that we can apply to our own lives and leadership. And in this episode, we're going to be hearing from just four of those interviews as a bit of a reflection and some combined insights around a theme. If you missed any of these interviews, we hope that you go back and listen to them. There's links in the show notes. I encourage you to do that, but if you heard them the first time, maybe you'll get something new out of hearing these clips again, and we're going to provide some, maybe new insight for you to reflect on your life and leadership that can encourage and motivate you as the year is drawing to a close. Now, these interviewees they all come from different backgrounds. They each bring a unique set of experiences, insights and expertise around the idea of leadership, from strategy and mental health to team dynamics and personal growth. Their perspectives offer a rich variety of lessons for leaders at every single level. And while I'm sure that we could draw out many different themes from these conversations, the one that I'm gravitating to, at least right now and today, is this idea of strategic resilience and leadership. Now, this concept speaks to how leaders can think strategically, not only about business decisions, but also about how they manage themselves and their teams during times of challenge and, let's be honest, most times are challenging. It's about being intentional with our actions, setting clear directions, cultivating resilience within ourselves and building a culture of resilience within our teams. Resilience in this context, here for today, is not just about bouncing back from setbacks. It's about anticipating challenges and preparing mentally and emotionally and developing the skills necessary to navigate uncertainty and difficulty. It's about fostering an environment where people feel empowered to take risks, where they feel like they can innovate and grow even when the road ahead is unclear.

Speaker 1: 2:36

One way I saw this idea show up in my own life is that recently, my daughter and I went on a run together. Or rather, I was running and she was riding her bike and it was cold it was about 25 degrees out but she insisted on coming, so she bundled up. We went on this run and within 10 minutes she wanted to turn around and come home, understandably. And she was so cold and she was trying to be tough, but she just couldn't. And at one point she said dad, how are you not cold? And I said I am cold, but I have a lot of experience running and being outside when it's cold and I know I can handle it. I know that we'll be back soon and I know that it'll be okay. And I was thinking about this and maybe the role of parenting, but really, as it relates to leadership and resilience is that sometimes we need to practice things enough to know that we're going to be okay. We can get through this. This is a challenge, this is hard, but we know how to get through it. And so what I hope that this episode brings to you is these ideas of yes, challenges come up, yes, things are going to be hard, but you can get through them with some practice and some perspective. You'll know what to do on the other side of it and what struck me in each of these interviews is the understanding that setbacks and challenges are not just inevitable because they are, but they're a necessary part of the journey. You have to struggle, you have to be cold to know that it's okay to be cold sometimes. These moments test us, they push us out of our comfort zones and they ultimately help us become better people and better leaders. So today we're going to explore how these experts think strategically about leadership, how they build resilience into themselves and their teams, and how they turn challenges into opportunities for growth. Over the course of this episode, you're going to get to hear clips from our conversations with four incredible guests Rich Horwath, marie-hélène Pelletier, mh Martin Gonzalez and Amy Schoenthal. Each of these leaders brings their unique wisdom to help us understand how we can better lead ourselves, our teams and our organizations.

Speaker 1: 4:42

This is the Leadership Vision Podcast. Let's dive in, All right. So first up is Rich Horwath. Rich is the CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute and a New York Times bestselling author of multiple books on strategic thinking and leadership. His latest work, strategic the Skill to Set Direction, create Advantage and Achieve Executive Excellence, has been recognized as a must-read book for 2024. Rich has over 20 years of experience teaching leaders how to think strategically, and today we're going to hear clips from our conversation with him about how leaders can cultivate strategic thinking in their daily practice, not only in the context of business, but in how we lead ourselves as individuals. This is a big part of his book. He emphasizes the role of self-care, how leaders need to manage their personal well-being to perform at their best in leading others. So let's take a listen.

Speaker 2: 5:41

I always think about experience and expertise, and when you look at the data, over 80 years experience is only the fifth best indicator of someone's performance on the job. Fifth, and so I'm a big believer that even though you've been in a role for a long time, it doesn't mean we're getting better. It's not like fine wine we don't get better with age. Naturally, there has to be work put in, and so I'm a big believer in this concept of strategic fitness. You know it's interesting because the average CEO exercises 45 minutes a day, which I think is pretty impressive because of you know her responsibilities day in and day out. 45 minutes a day is a lot, but I'm not finding people practicing or building up their fitness or their skill, skill sets in other areas nearly as intentionally as they work on their physical fitness.

Speaker 3: 6:32

And Rich. I think that's a great segue into your book because we didn't cover my background. But the fitness metaphor for all of us that's in fitness is important to all of us 45 minutes is an easy day.

Speaker 1: 6:45

That's what.

Speaker 3: 6:45

Brian's trying to say. He's causing a warm-up, the whole idea of strategy and fitness that you are speaking about in your book. That obviously got our attention.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Whether you play, golf, the guitar or Saturday morning pickleball if we only do something once a year, we are not going to be very good at it, and so I think people understand very easily. You know, if I lift weights once a one day out of the year, I'm not going to be strong. If I run two miles a year, I'm not going to be, you know, cardiovascularly fit. So I think it's common sense, but I think what happens is people haven't taken the time to sit down and think about this is my role. Here are the five activities that really comprise the 80% of what I do as a leader, and now I'm gonna break these activities down into the behaviors that drive that. So what are those key behaviors? And then let's develop a practice plan.

Speaker 2: 7:47

Strategy is important just from a pure setting direction standpoint, but also that we need to be, as leaders, strategic about all the things that we're doing, whether it's emotional intelligence, setting culture, presenting. If a leader is going to perform optimally in serving others, they do need to serve themselves first. So, you know, covering things like sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, exercise, I did think was important. We've got to take care of ourselves first and it's got to be the whole person emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically before we can serve others. I was talking to senior leadership teams. We were having trouble getting to the strategy and setting direction because there was dysfunction in the team itself and a lot of the dysfunction was due to people not in an optimal state for performance.

Speaker 1: 8:40

What I love about this clip here is that Rich reminds us that leadership starts with managing ourselves. His advice there to take care of the whole person emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically that's a critical reminder that if we're not in our best state, it becomes harder to lead others effectively. I mean, we've talked about that so much on the podcast but it's worth repeating over and over and over again. Podcast, but it's worth repeating over and over and over again. Next we are going to hear from Dr Mary Ellen Peltier, a business psychologist and the author of the Resilience Plan a strategic approach to optimizing your work performance and mental health. Dr Peltier has both a PhD in psychology and an MBA, making her uniquely positioned at the intersection here of mental health and business leadership.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Her work focuses on helping leaders develop resilience to navigate both personal and professional challenges, and in the clip that I'm going to play for you, Dr Pelletier or MH as she likes to be referred to as she shares her framework for creating a strategic resilience plan, she talks a little bit about this metaphor that she uses in the book of a double helix and explains how leaders can develop resilience by assessing their values, their sources of personal and professional demand and their strengths. The strategic approach, I think, really helps leaders build resilience that's sustainable over time because, as you'll hear when you assess these things, it just sets you up for success. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the double helix, because I find that to be such a great metaphor for how we go through life and the idea of, like your personal life and your professional life kind of spinning around each other and then these four pillars in the middle. How does that help one develop a strategic approach to resilience?

Speaker 5: 10:28

Yes, this emerged because I was looking for visuals I love you know different ways of communicating things and because I do keynotes and all. And I was looking for visuals I love you know different ways of communicating things and because I do keynotes and all and I was looking for models and then came across just the double helix, and so we're familiar with you know those two strands on each side and then the rungs in the middle, and then the more I started looking at this I'll tell you how I labeled this, but I also then was reminded how, in nature, trees and plants will put themselves in this kind of shape to build their resilience, and so there were just many, many points that made this work. So what I talk about in the book here, if we can think of it this way, the two sides of the double helix I'm calling. I'm saying it's as if one side is your personal life and the other one is professional, and I'm using that DNA image because it is my point, as unique as you in this moment. That's why being strategic is not Linda's plan, it's not going to be MH's plan, or Nathan or Brian, it's each of us in this moment. So there is this unique aspect that's critical. So if it's going to be very unique to us, then we want to weave in personal and professional, even if your focus is entirely on professional improvement, optimization and all this, yes, and the way to do that is to make sure you're looking at the personal side as well, because emotions don't have lanes, okay.

Speaker 5: 11:56

So where are you wanting the two sides? Not with this, but that's an important piece. The four rungs Start with your values. There's no other way to keep things personal, customized to you, than starting from this and I guide people on how to do this. It's not complicated, but it's important Then looking realistically at your sources of demands, both in the personal and professional, your sources of supply, what brings you energy, increases your resilience, and then looking at your context, much similar to what we would do in business in a SWOT analysis strength, weaknesses internally, and then opportunities and threats externally. So here it's doing a SWOT on you. So what internally is helping or not so much, and what's externally helping or not so much, on the resilient side, which then leads to your custom resilient strategic plan.

Speaker 1: 12:48

Now, what I love about this clip here from MH is that it takes the principles of strategic business planning, the SWOT analysis, and it applies them directly to personal resilience. It's a practical, actionable approach that I think leaders, I think you can use to strengthen your ability to cope with challenges. I mean, when we're talking about the big themes here in this podcast of resilience and you know being up for the challenge of things you have to think about your energy. You have to think about the one resource that we have in our life. It doesn't matter how well read you are or how much thinking you have done on a topic or classes you've taken. If you're exhausted, if you're burnt out, if you don't have you've taken, if you're exhausted, if you're burnt out, if you don't have you know the resources to keep going, you're going to fail. You're not going to be resilient when a challenge comes up. You know our body basically runs on sugar. We have these glycogen stores that have to be replaced and I know you get sick of hearing about this, but I recently trained for and ran a marathon and I did a deep dive into how the body uses and processes these things. And everyone, no matter what level of fitness you're at has approximately 90 minutes worth of glycogen stores to kind of get you going, meaning you can go run for 90 minutes and you're fine. You don't have to eat anything. But after that point you do and your body just starts it's called bonking and you just get sluggish and exhausted, your body physically shuts down, your mind shuts down, and so you have to continue to replenish those glycogen stores with honey, with, you know, banana, with these special disgusting goo packets. And my whole reason of telling this, of saying all this, is because I think that when you do that SWOT analysis on your values, you can begin to understand, like what is most important to you, what's working for you, what's not working for you, how do you find ways to replenish those things so that when you know things get difficult, you know what to do, you know when to back off, you know when you can push a little bit harder or whatever it is. I don't know if I've completely destroyed that metaphor, but I think you get the idea.

Speaker 1: 15:03

Our third podcast guest here is Martin Gonzalez, the author of the Bonfire Moment, bringing your Team Together to Solve the Hardest Problems that Startups Face. And while Martin really specializes in helping teams come together during the moments of extreme pressure, often in the startup environment. He focuses in our discussion on the importance of collaboration, problem solving and the role of leadership in fostering an environment where people feel safe enough to take risks, and I highly recommend listening to the entire episode, as I do with all of our guests. But the clip that I'm going to share here from Martin really ties into our theme of strategic resilience and leadership by highlighting this crucial but often overlooked challenge that founders face. He's focused on founders, but really leaders of any caliber anywhere is that the people issues right.

Speaker 1: 15:59

True resilience in leadership isn't just about navigating external challenges, as we all know, but it's about managing the internal dynamics of a team. That's like the whole ballgame right there. Leaders who focus on people, issues, embracing feedback, and understand how to harness these strengths during moments of crisis, they're better equipped to build a resilient organization, which is what we're talking about here Addressing these complexities head on, not from the side, or not avoiding them. Well, that's key to fostering both long-term success and a culture of strategic growth.

Speaker 6: 16:27

Let's listen. So in my work with startup founders all around the world, there's a misconception around what leads to success. It's usually a combination of having the right product, launching it at the right time and making sure you don't run out of cash. And oftentimes we forget what the research actually shows that the number one killer of startups are the people issues. We see time and time again that while these soft problems are kind of relegated, outsourced to HR, it is so important for the founders and the leaders of any company to understand that this is the number one role that they need to play in securing the future of their company. People just don't spend any time expecting that. People issues become a part of the journey, and when you give people a structured time to confront a lot of these issues, they really grab at it and they find so much value in it and then they go back into building the tech that they've dreamt of building, you know, at the beginning of this journey. I share that because I think it's so important for leaders who are in the trenches to really not forget that if you feel like this is so difficult, that the people aspect of the job is so difficult, like this is every leader out there thinks this way or believes the same.

Speaker 6: 17:50

We start the book with a very poignant quote from Bill Curran, who is a former Google executive and is now in Sequoia Capital, one of the premier venture capitalists in the world, and he says that engineering is easy, people are hard.

Speaker 6: 18:04

How do you help smart, motivated people to grow or to develop? Right, and I think the core, the basic mechanism of growth for smart, motivated people, I think it's high quality feedback. I think it is, and this is where and Brian and Linda, we can debate this out. But this is where I think StrengthsFinder is an incredibly powerful tool, but I think it's also not enough, because I think it's so useful to understand your strengths from your own perspective, but I think it's probably more valuable to understand it from other people's perspective. Strength and possibly also your gaps in your strength. I see this workshop that we've brought to founders around the world to be almost a mechanism to engineer these moments of crisis, these moments of feedback loops, so that they can begin to see the problem. And if they can see the problem, then you almost don't have to help them solve it. They can kind of, but they need to see it in a compelling, you know, in a compelling way.

Speaker 4: 19:05

That is I don't. I think we won't debate you on.

Speaker 1: 19:08

We will agree with that.

Speaker 4: 19:10

We won't debate you on your perspective of strengths, because what we have found is that strengths is kind of oh, it makes you feel good and then when you start to apply it to your context, you realize that in crisis moments, usually your strengths come out sideways. They can either be like rise to the challenge or they can be detrimental to an organization. So we're a lot of times we're helping people with the levers, with that high quality feedback, to help people in some ways get back, get back on track, and not use strengths as an excuse. Well, I just don't do that. It's like no, we, you know, all hands on deck means all, it means all hands.

Speaker 1: 19:50

Now, as you consider this clip here for Martin and again the larger episode, I want you to consider how you're actively or not creating space to address the people issues within your team. I think it's really easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks, but the real test of leadership and resilience comes from managing those interpersonal dynamics, and it's the hardest part. It's what we don't like to do, but, as Martin has shared here, the key to long-term success often lies in giving your team structured time to confront challenges, receive feedback and grow together. The key is together. So, as you move forward, consider how you can prioritize these moments of connection and development to strengthen your team and your leadership.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Our fourth and final guest here in this highlight of highlights is with Amy Schoenthal. She's the author of the Setback Cycle how Defining Moments Can Move Us Forward and Amy's work is centered around how leaders can turn setbacks into opportunities for growth. And she argues that it's not the setbacks themselves that define us, but it's how we respond to them, and also that challenges are essential for moving forward. And so in this clip, or this series of clips I'm going to share from our interview with Amy, she's talking about her perspective on how setbacks can not only move us forward, but also how they help us discover new paths and creative solutions. She highlights the importance of curiosity I love that word, curiosity in navigating challenges and encourages all of as opportunities for, maybe, reinvention and growth. Um, I think that, as leaders, that when we foster curiosity not only in ourselves but in others, that is the key. That is really the key to finding innovative ways to move forward, to grow and to evolve. Here's Amy.

Speaker 7: 21:55

Someone recently referred to me as a leadership expert and I was like what? And they were like well, you spent years studying the habits of successful leaders and then wrote a book about it.

Speaker 7: 22:04

So yeah, and I was like, okay, yeah, I'm a leadership expert, that's fair, I'll take that title. And, and it's true, when you see something enough, you start to notice a pattern. And the pattern I noticed was that everyone's story seemed to be born of a setback and how they, you know, emerged from it and came up with their most brilliant idea or most creative innovation, and the thing that led them to whatever I was interviewing them for Forbes or Harvard business review about, like that was the thing that came from a setback. You know, and I think if you draw like the little map of your life, you can really point to some of the setbacks that propelled you forward in some way. The dictionary definition of a setback is a reversal or check in progress. So it's when you're on a path and you're moving forward and you're working towards a goal and you're unexpectedly bumped off course, and it's what you do in that moment that really sets you up for the comeback.

Speaker 7: 23:07

You know, and I think a setback is such a universal experience, whether you experience it in your career, your personal life, or if it's a societal setback like the one we all emerged from, as we all experienced the pandemic over the past few years. That was a setback for all of us in so many ways, but how much creativity came from that. You know how many businesses were born of people having to shut down what they had built, because they built it in a world that existed before March 2020. And I just I kept noticing that this like creative rebirth moment came when they found a new path forward, but it always started when they were on a different path. And that's how I came up with the setback cycle. You're going to experience setbacks and you're going to recognize them, and some of them will be easier to cycle through than others. But when you're, when you're really putting yourself out there, you're going to experience probably a lot at once, but having the tools to work through them is is going to help you get to the next phase.

Speaker 1: 24:09

I just want to say that kind of. My two favorite chapters were four and five. What babies can teach us in cultivating your curiosity?

Speaker 1: 24:18

Because yeah, and not so much that, but I think what I do learn from my kids is just this idea of being curious, constantly asking questions about things, and too often I think leaders or just adults, leaders, adults, whoever we get in this place of feeling like I have this position of influence, of power, of whatever, and I have to know everything, I have to be the expert, and sometimes I think that we lose that sense of curiosity and being willing and open to learn new things about ourselves, about the people that we're leading. There's two chapters, basically about curiosity. How important is that in this whole process?

Speaker 7: 24:57

It's one of the most important things that's going to get you through the setback cycle. I feel like we talked so much about the introspection and getting curious about yourself and what you can learn from what you did wrong or what someone else did wrong and how you responded to it, and about getting curious in the explore phase about what you're passionate about and what you might be good at. I mean, there's a chapter dedicated to curiosity, but it's really a theme throughout the whole book, because if you're not curious about what more might be possible for you, you're never going to know, you're never going to learn. That's. That goes back to the floating along. You can float along and stay in your comfort zone as long as you want and if you're not curious and you don't take action to really like foster that curiosity, you'll never know how capable you are.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Now, considering what you just heard from Amy, and also for Martin, I guess think about how you're not only creating space within your team for feedback, as Martin talked about, but also for that curiosity and growth in the face of setbacks. When something happens, do you just freak out and try to fix it or do you try to be curious about well, why did this happen and what can we learn from it? Setbacks are inevitable, that's going to happen, but how we respond to them, that determines, again, our success. By fostering that culture of curiosity, where team members feel safe to ask questions and take risks and reflect on their challenges and exploring new solutions, well, we can help our team not only recover from the setbacks but again emerge stronger and more innovative.

Speaker 1: 26:42

Throughout this episode here we have heard from four amazing leaders, authors, speakers, who each brought and shared a unique perspective on this theme of strategic resilience and leadership. Rich reminded us that leadership starts with how we manage ourselves and that part of that strategic resilience is practicing self-care and purpose. Dr Mary Helen Peltier showed us, shared a little bit about how to build a personal resilience plan, focusing on values and using a SWOT analysis to sort of understand what we need to survive and thrive and be most resilient. Martin Gonzalez focused on the importance of thinking about people and creating space to kind of work through those problems. He even talked about psychological safety and really embodying challenges as opportunities for team growth. And then Amy Schoenthal encouraged us to reframe these setbacks that we have in life as necessary for personal and professional development. I think that these conversations really show us that, maybe more than anything else, that leadership is a continuous process for growth, which might seem so obvious, but too often I think that we get stuck in our roles or stuck in our positions, or even stuck in our thinking and feel like this is it, I'm set, this is what I am, this is who I am. But it's not about having all the right answers or avoiding failure, but it's about strategically navigating those challenges to build resilience and really to help others thrive. You know, if you think back to what I shared about my daughter on the bike ride and the run, it's about using every opportunity to build resilience, to remind yourself that you can grow, you can change, you can experience some level of improvement in whatever it is that you're doing so, if it's a failure to load paper into the copier, or if it's a multimillion dollar mistake that you copier, or if it's a multi-million dollar mistake that you made with a client. All of those things are just opportunities for us to grow.

Speaker 1: 28:44

And as we close here, listeners, I just want to share three reflection questions for you. They're going to be in the show notes, so just think about them here and then maybe go back and reflect on them at a later time. But number one how can you be more intentional about building resilience in your life and in your leadership? Maybe those three things can't be separated. Number two what practices can you put in place to better lead yourself and your team during challenging times? I think the episode with Rich really talks a lot about this. And number three how can you reframe setbacks and challenges in your life as opportunities for growth? So you missed your flight. How do you reframe your thinking into? What is the growth opportunity there? You screw something up. You yell at your kid, whatever it is. How do you use that as an opportunity for growth? Not as a way to beat yourself up for making a mistake or not doing things right, but as a way to build back strategic resilience in your leadership?

Speaker 1: 29:40

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. If you found value from this episode or any of our other material, please share it with somebody that you think would benefit from this stuff. You can find us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom. There's links in the show notes to some other resources. We would love it if you'd follow us on social media, review us on Spotify and iTunes and you know whatever it is. That just helps kind of get the word out about the work that we're doing. We also have a free email newsletter where we send this information out, along with a couple other free and fun tools to help you build a positive team culture. My name is Nathan Freeberg and, on behalf of our team, thanks for listening.