The Leadership Vision Podcast

Building Resilient Leaders: Transforming Challenges into Growth Opportunities with Russell Harvey

Nathan Freeburg Season 7 Episode 43

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In this episode of The Leadership Vision Podcast, Nathan Freeburg, Dr. Linda Schubring, and Brian Schubring sit down with Russell Harvey, known as “The Resilience Coach.” With over 20 years in leadership and resilience coaching, Russell shares his mission to impact 100,000 people by 2025. In this engaging and insightful conversation, Russell redefines resilience—not as merely bouncing back but as “springing forward with learning.”

Key topics covered include:

  • The Power of Adaptability: Russell discusses research that suggests spending time developing adaptability, openness to change, and curiosity can elevate individuals and teams from just coping to truly thriving.
  • Values and Resilience: How a clear sense of purpose and values is foundational for resilience within teams and organizations.
  • Realistic Optimism vs. Toxic Positivity: Russell explains the importance of grounded optimism and honest conversations about challenges, strengths, and the journey ahead.
  • Daily Practices for Building Resilience: Practical steps for leaders and teams to engage with resilience daily, focusing on adaptability, reflection, and fostering a culture of grounded optimism.

Takeaways:

  • Shift your perspective on resilience from simply enduring to thriving by learning and adapting.
  • Use challenges as opportunities for growth, practicing resilience in small ways to build strength for larger obstacles.
  • Cultivate an optimistic yet realistic team culture, encouraging open, supportive dialogue about both struggles and successes.

Listen in as Russell’s insights and practical tips will inspire any leader to strengthen their resilience and build a thriving, resilient team culture.

For more on this episode and other resources, visit Leadership Vision Consulting. Follow us on social media and join our newsletter for the latest on building a positive team culture!

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The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in discovering, practicing, and implementing a Strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. Contact us to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.

Speaker 1:

There's some research that says that the adaptability part of the wheel, it's just got extra legs to it. So those people that make the choice, the behavioral choice, to spend a third of their time engaging with their adaptability, openness to change, curiosity, then they get themselves into this place called thrive, rather than coping and surviving. Most people believe that they are only being resilient when they're coping and surviving. It's actually no. Resilience is that you shift away from those two and you shift into thriving. It doesn't necessarily mean that the challenges that you face are suddenly diminished or better. How you think and feel about them has completely shifted. Need to be managed to look better. How you think and feel about them has completely shifted your understanding about how you can manage them, face into them, overcome them, look at them, come through them. That completely shifts when you're in a more resilient place. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

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. To learn more about us, you can visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg and today on the podcast, we are thrilled to introduce you to Russell Harvey, also known as the Resilience Coach.

Speaker 2:

Russell has over 20 years of experience in leadership, resilience and organizational development, and he's on a mission to positively impact 100,000 people by 2025. And he's already touched the lives of tens of thousands. His approach is insightful, practical and refreshingly playful, as you'll soon hear in a minute challenging leaders to embrace resilience and thrive in the face of adversity. And we certainly got to experience some of that fun playfulness in our conversation here. Dr Linda and Brian Schubring and I talked to Russell about the essential role of resilience and leadership, exploring the shift from merely just bouncing back to actually springing forward with learning. We also cover a little bit about how leaders can foster optimism grounded in reality, the importance of self-reflection and practical ways to cultivate a team culture that's rooted in resilience and adaptability. Now, as you listen here to this episode. Keep an ear out for Russell's key takeaway Resilience isn't just about surviving. It's about thriving by learning and growing from every experience. This episode promises some insights for any leader that's eager to build a resilient team and thriving culture. This is the Leadership Vision Podcast.

Speaker 3:

Enjoy.

Speaker 2:

keep us up I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep us updated here.

Speaker 1:

So yep, half time I'm recording it. So actually you're all right, it's okay, it's the second half when we're done. So you're all right. You don't have to ruin it for me I shouldn't say anything that'd be the worst.

Speaker 2:

I'm here and I'm present I appreciate that well, even if they do lose, you've got some resilient skills to kind of get you out of that. So totally like that and I have some segue skills that'll just keep this conversation going. So, and I learned a new word today from your website. Is it trichle? Am I saying that right? The word for syrup? Oh, trichle, trichle, trichle. Okay, but I love that idea and it's similar to what we're doing is, how do we support leaders who feel like they're wading through syrup treacle?

Speaker 2:

to rediscover their mojo and make great decisions, and I feel like that's a lot of what we're trying to do here too. So, kind of, with that intro to an intro, tell us who you are.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, so I am the resilience coach, not any old resilience coach, it is the resilience coach.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, and so very similar to to you guys all about the positive psychology, and I would actually love, a little bit later, to talk about the word optimism instead of positive, because that's something that fascinates me. And so the resilience coach was born after my last permanent role, which is a company called the co-op group. So not long after I joined the Co-op, about 13 years ago, it got itself into a real pickle as a business, so there was a £2 billion black hole in its finances.

Speaker 1:

Nothing to do with me, it's not under my mattress or anything like that Good clarification and all of my internal clients were the internal internal leaders, so me and a team of others, top 300 leaders in the group and they came to me literally the head in the hands and went what on earth we're gonna do? And I said, well, there is this word, resilience, and there is this, an acronym called VUCA, v-u-c-a, and I went all of our solutions are in there. So that's what I utilized to support them. And I also knew, because the organization going through much change, that there was a likelihood that the job, all I was doing, would go through a restructure, which it did, and, as a consequence, I left and set up the resilience coach. So that's that's what it was born from, essentially, of spending a number of years in a big corporate. Essentially, how do we lead ourself and others well in these crazy times? And that's what I've been doing since then.

Speaker 1:

So I'm in Leeds, yorkshire, so if you look it up, it's God's own country, apparently it's the Yorkshire Dales. And the end of this month it'll be the 32 year anniversary of my wife and I's first date. So we still I's first date. Oh wow, so we still mention our first date. We're 25 years married and she was doing an English and drama degree at the time, and it might have been a bit of a busman's holiday, or it worked because I took her to see Much Ado About Nothing, which is a Shakespeare play. So you know that seemed to work. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

He knows a little bit about love play, so you know, that seemed to work. Yeah, absolutely, he knows. So that's me. Yeah, yeah, that's fun, that's fun in the prep for this, I heard you talking about mike tyson and the idea about you know, I think. I think the person you were talking with was like you know, uh, it's fine having a plan until you get punched in the mouth and you're like what if you didn't get punched in the mouth? What if that was like some kind of learning about that? So I don't't, I don't, you know, I don't know if you're sick of, maybe that's a story you repeat all the time, but I I resonated with that and so I'd love for you to let's just start with that right off the bat, because I think that idea of springing you know, as I have young kids- it's like mistakes are great.

Speaker 1:

How do you learn from that so that next time you don't do that? And that applies to all of us, right? So, absolutely, absolutely, uh, and so, so, yeah, there's the springing forward, learning. It's also, I think it's the mike tyson thing, or just that general commentary of like right, you're really good at doing something until you get you know boxing to get punched in the face. There's also the thing around one of my favorite characters is jack reacher. So that whole thing of like hope for the best and plan for the worst. You know. So, absolutely, yeah, if you are going to get punched in the face, that's plan for the worst. So what are you going to do about that? But at the same time, yeah, genuinely, what could you do to ensure that you didn't get punched in the face in the first place? Essentially, you know, I mean, I suppose the extreme of that is that you wouldn't get in the ring in the first place, but then you wouldn't get paid and, yeah, you'd have to change your career.

Speaker 1:

So it is absolutely this, this whole thing, about what are we learning from our experiences? And I do think in today's world we just aren't learning enough. And in the learning, comes the adaptability, which is one of the real key elements of being resilient. Comes the adaptability, which is one of the real key elements of being resilient. So if we spend a third of our time engaging with our adaptability, then actually we get into thrive rather than coping and surviving. And that's what I talk about.

Speaker 1:

All my clients, just for the go. It still feels to me that you are hanging on, you're coping in your leadership role. To me that you are hanging on, you're coping in your leadership role, you're not enjoying it enough. And I can see, linda, you're not in a way, uh, there, you know um a lot, so that I think it's just persistently and permanently going. What am I learning from this? What am I going to keep doing that's working well for me and what am I going to stop doing because it's not working well for me? And that's where the hard stuff is. That's where the hard stuff is. That's where the hard stuff is.

Speaker 4:

I love and we're going to say well, no, I, just as you were talking, I'm I'm just going through the um, all the the film of all the clients that we've talked to. So are there any standouts that maybe a client that was really stuck to, a client that maybe was resistant to learning to the extreme of have at it Like, where do we go from here?

Speaker 1:

What are some?

Speaker 4:

of the clients that stand out to you. I'd love to hear the stories.

Speaker 1:

So the client that really stands out, that got stuck. So I can't specifically name them for NDA reasons, but they were a significant and I mean a highly significant financial sector business. Okay, so a bank and we were brought in because they were just having challenges with communicating with each other in meetings. But the challenge was because they were in finance and I understand it under the real wonderful, positive intent of recruiting to people's strengths. They had absolutely recruited numbers of people who couldn't and were struggling with communicating with human beings, with communicating with human beings. So we will did this whole program of work with them about actually how you have better meetings. This is how you need to talk to people. Emotional intelligence these are the things that you're not start to be discussing. Giving each other feedback and the real, you know, blocker was literally because they weren't able to, because they were just numbers people and the possibility that some were on the spectrum. They were just like I. I don't understand that. That. That doesn't it just does not equate.

Speaker 1:

This human side of things. I don't get it. And so we were sort of saying, well, if you want these things to improve, this is what you need to do. It was a case of, yeah, we can't and won't do that, and so it didn't go anywhere. Essentially, it ended. So that was a struggle.

Speaker 3:

That was a challenge. So when you lean back and look at that situation, is there a theme that you think about now, in retrospect of you know what their struggle actually was or where that unwillingness was.

Speaker 1:

I think their struggle was that they were too um defined in who they were and what they did. They were just far too uh defined and they weren't able to grow and they weren't able to stretch. There weren't enough, uh, of the human beings that had a variety of strengths and skills across the organization that you know. They knew that they had the challenge of we're all a bit similar, we're not doing very well, we need to get some external people into supporters, but then the external people were so vastly different to those that they brought in that we just couldn't meet in the middle. We just couldn't meet in the middle, essentially.

Speaker 3:

Was there and, a bit like after this question, I'll ask about a positive example. But in this example that you're using right now with this bank, was there a certain type of team dynamic that just resisted people?

Speaker 1:

catching the momentum, people catching the momentum, um well, I think the challenge was that there wasn't a team dynamic. It was a case. It it was. It was individuals that were concentrating on their individual role. Okay, they had an awareness that they needed to engage with others to get better at it, and that's where they were stuck. That was what they weren't able to do, essentially we've had a very we've had a similar experience.

Speaker 1:

That's why and it was in terms of the team of facilitators. We would come out of our different sessions afterwards and you know there was a fair bit of thought of going for a coffee or a drink and going is it? Is it me? Am I am? I have I got this wrong? Am I going mad? And then we would discuss it and go no, I don't think it is us. I think it's a case of we're just completely. We're all so different. They brought us in for these right reasons, but they weren't. It wasn't the fact they're necessarily willing to change, they weren't able to change.

Speaker 3:

Okay yeah, yep.

Speaker 1:

Now do you have an example of the opposite of the business that everybody was bought into. As a consequence of that, they actually loved the core of who they were. Uh, and uh, I'm pretty sure I can talk about yeah, so premier in, uh, so I don't know how they, that's who it was. Um, and when we first went in, it was a little sort of challenging because there'd been so much change and they were a bit battered and bruised.

Speaker 1:

But as soon as we tapped into the kernel of actually the way that you talk passionately about who you are as a business, this is going to be our in, this is going to be the means to keep in. And as soon as we unlocked that and realized, actually, that in working together, we were going to, um, enable them to tap into that inner passion for who they were as a business, and they just opened up, they just literally turned up to everything to get, just, you know, yeah, what can we do? What? What's the new thing? I've tried it. You know that worked. Uh, I've tried that, that worked. I've tried that it didn't work. But that's great. Spring forward with learning. Just, you know, tell me what else you can do. So when we tapped into that enthusiasm for the core of the business, they would have absolutely just ready to learn.

Speaker 4:

Wow what does that do to you as a facilitator? Um, because there's times where we'll we'll step out of environments like that and and there's a spring, a spring in our step we feel inspired ourselves. What is, you know, when you walked, totally.

Speaker 1:

It does. So you know all of those conversations we had with a bank and was like do I know what I'm doing? Am I any good? You know it was the complete opposite of those, essentially to go you know's own ego. Yeah, clearly I'm brilliant at what I do. You know, these guys are loving it and and that would feed into the things that I was doing with other clients as well and and so absolutely it was a case of feeling successful, bred to more successes, yeah, and then potentially feeling unsuccessful and I would probably be led to a bit of a dip overall in my overall performance.

Speaker 3:

So, with this example, russell, that you just named, you spoke about values, and so my question is is there a correlation between clearly defined values or a team or organization living out their values and their ability to really engage with resilience?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so there is. So there's two things of the resilience wheel that I mentioned that are spring to life, and they are. They've got values behind them. So at the heart of resilience is our attitude. So that does go into our whole life's experiences and who we are as our fundamental belief systems, which will be linked to our values as well, you know. And then one of the other dimensions of being resilient is having a purpose. So resilient individuals, resilient teams, resilient organizations, they have a purpose and that will come from your element of your values.

Speaker 1:

So once you can talk to a team about, yeah, what is your purpose of coming together as a suite of human beings, not the kpis, you know your reasons for coming together as a suite of humans. How do you want to treat each other? Um, how do you want to be able to? Uh, enabled to play to your strengths? How do you want to be treated when you're having difficult times? How do you want to be supported? Then you can actually start to get you know more of a purpose.

Speaker 1:

So behind that are, essentially, you are talking about values, and it's really interesting trying to start a conversation around either purpose or values. It's not one where we are necessarily used to. So it's the variety of ways I've tried to find for people to start to tap into their values. So sometimes it's like it's the variety of ways I've tried to find for people to start to tap into their values. So sometimes it's like what's the last thing that made you feel proud? You know, tell us about that. That sometimes taps into things and starts people think about what's important and what's what's relevant to them. Um, so yeah, the purpose piece and the attitude piece is where we would normally get into the values.

Speaker 3:

Okay, you mentioned attitude and that got my attention because we believe that attitude plays a key role in what's happening. And you mentioned it and I immediately wrote down in my notes the attitude of people, the attitude of a team, the attitude of a leader. Can you share some comments on maybe even the word choice of attitude, what it means and how it plays in creating a team culture that's resilient?

Speaker 1:

So anybody that's listening now that's a leader. It's a case of you know what are your beliefs about your people. You know it's sort of the traditional element is a bit more around two sides of a scale. It's an old theory. It's been around since the 1970s, but it's still a good debate conversation about when you think about your people. Do you think that they are just naturally, they are, trying their best, or do you actually need to be left alone to try their best, or do you believe that they need like oversight? You know they need you to come along and sort of be there, because you know your level of natural trust towards them is a bit low. And then quite often, the answer is like well, I trust those ones. I can leave them alone, yeah, but those over there, yeah, if I left them alone they'd cause trouble. And so you go.

Speaker 1:

But what's your overall belief about your people? What's your attitude to them? If it's like, if it's going to be mixed, how do you think you come across? Um, so that's one of the other ways that I sort of uh see if I can tease it out from people, and it's also about what's your general attitude to life. You know, are you of you, of the belief that you are mistress, master of your own destiny and absolutely everything in the universe you know is down to you. What happens to you is down to you, or do you believe that it's literally just happens to you and there's nothing you can do about it? And once again, you quite often get the answer of it depends, russell.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, of course. You've mentioned several times about the belief in people or attitude towards people, and I'm interpreting your use of people as individual team members. Is that correct?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's individual team members, but I suppose actually, if you think back to my strengths of strategic mindedness, big picture. So I am de-energized by detail. So I am thinking about it as people. The universe, the planet, the collective community of all humans is also how I'm thinking about it. But it does completely equate to when you're a line manager. You've got individual members on your team, so what is your attitude towards them?

Speaker 3:

but I am talking about people in a big picture sense, because that's playing to one of my strengths essentially because one of the the themes um that nathan identified in the content that we were looking at is how you speak to resilience in leadership and in teams, and so that caused me to think are you trying to help leaders understand their individual team members? Are you helping leaders understand their team attitude or their team dynamic, or a little bit of both? Because I know that resiliency is a team effort, if I can say that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's both. So once again, I'm preaching to the converted. From a leadership point of view, it has to start with self. So, to be able to build the resilient team, you do need to understand what your personal resilience levels are. So, once again and I've mentioned it a few times, but if you think about the resilience wheel, so it's like if anybody asks me so, russell, how do I build my resilience? I go there's a wheel. It's got seven things on it.

Speaker 1:

How you build your resilience is to engage with your resilience wheel, and you can look at it from an individual point of view, you can look at it from a leadership point of view and you can look at it from a team point of view and, to some extent, you can look at it from an organizational point of view as well.

Speaker 1:

All of them can be translated to those. So for a leader to build a resilient team, brian, it is to answer your question. It is to go actually, as a leader, go through all of those things about actually, what's my natural style, how good am I at adaptive leadership, linda? Back to a point you made earlier on what are my strengths? And then, actually, what are the gaps that I've got and actually can I harness those from my different team members and you want in the leader to role model all of their behaviors, that they are creating a resilient culture. Which brings me back to one of the questions I ask leaders is how optimistic do you feel about your team and actually how optimistic do your team feel about themselves and all the challenges that they've got to face?

Speaker 4:

um, and that's a really great conversation so I would love to hear now how you see optimism and positivity similar, different. How do you leverage that? I'd love you to speak about that.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, completely. So if you look up the dictionary definition of optimistic, it includes the word positive, so they're completely intertwined as words. What I would like everybody to think about is you start, as a means to feeling positive, start with this word optimism. So optimism is grounded in reality. So what I'm concerned about is toxic positivity. That's why I want to, you know, talk about this particular way.

Speaker 1:

So what leaders need to be really good at to create an optimistic culture is having the quality conversation with their people about the challenges that they face, how difficult it is, the size and the scale of the problem. No, burying our heads in the sand. Talk about the behaviors that aren't happening in the team for the things that we need to achieve in terms of KPIs. You know what's not happening, what's the conversations aren't happening, what's the leadership values that aren't taking place, the leadership values that aren't taking place, the team values that aren't taking place, and have that quality conversation about that. So it's absolutely real that we know where we start.

Speaker 1:

Okay, then after that, you look at yourself as the leader and the rest of your team and go so what's my strengths, what's my skills, what's my capabilities, what's my attitude? What's my strengths, what's my skills, what's my capabilities, what's my attitude, what's my levels of resilience, what's my experiences that I've got, ah, ok, I'm starting to feel slightly better about this now because I've got all these things. What's the ones that all of my team have got? Do you know what I am feeling genuinely hopeful about? How we will face into the size of the challenge that we've got, about how we will face into the size of the challenge that we've got? And do you know what Hope makes me feel positive? So it's trying to avoid people going. Yeah, it's really horrible. You've just got to be positive. That drives me mad when that happens, because I go come on, you're just literally burying your heads in the sand.

Speaker 4:

Well's why we, when we were wrestling with trying to cultivate positive team cultures uh, with organizations, we're quick to define that positive isn't just, you know, grinning and bearing it, it's, it's saying, okay, grounded in reality, we're going to link arms and we're going to, you know, we're going to tackle this together and infuse that sense of hope and optimism.

Speaker 1:

So it's really refreshing to hear your if those messages of like I can't remember what the moniker is, but it's like keep calm and carry on. You know, keep calm and drink coffee. I'm just like, yeah, they're funny, but some people people are actually putting that as like a team mantra and you go. Well, actually I can't keep calm because the size and the scale of the challenge is really scary. You know, if you ask me to be calm, I can't do it. You know I need to have a better conversation about how I'm feeling about it.

Speaker 4:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

You've got a quote on your website or in one of your blog posts A pessimist I think this is a Churchill, maybe A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity and optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. And so my question is how do you teach optimism, or how do you grow optimism? Or how do you help someone who's a naturally you know, this glass is half empty type of attitude to not be toxic about it, but to develop a little bit more of that like are there maybe it's using your wheel, but are there specific I hate saying this, but tips and tricks you can share, or yeah, so I think, first things first.

Speaker 1:

I'm also reminded of uh you're familiar with I know it's um edward de bono's six thinking hats.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, yeah, I've heard of that, yeah yeah, so there are black hat thinkers, white hat thinkers, you know, yellow hat thinkers, essentially. So, yeah, because a lot of the time when I run programs, I talk to clients, it's like I've got a member of my team who's just a negative Nelly, you know they just. You know they just complain all of the time. And that's not me. You might have noticed. I know you've known me for about 20 minutes. That isn't me. So I struggle with people that are like that.

Speaker 1:

However, I had a good boss at one time and said, yeah, but you think about russell, think about what you do, what's their value? So I had to accept, with good grace, that not everybody was as happy and as bouncy as me, essentially, um, and then, uh, and then I had people that I led or on my teams that were like that, uh, a number of years later, and then absolutely had to go back to them and any idea that I had was my baby. I would literally hand them my baby and go okay, destroy it, you know, pull it apart, tell it how ugly and horrible it is, you know, um, and I would able to hear that and go. You know, that was some great points, um, but what that enabled me to do is, uh, to answer your question, hopefully, nathan is. In terms of tips and tricks is step one is like appreciate somebody, that is glass half empty for who they are and the value that it brings. So appreciate them first and then you can have the conversation, the feedback conversation around.

Speaker 1:

I've noticed, you know and I did say this to um some people I've led. So I've noticed, every time I come anywhere, anywhere near you with an idea, you pull it apart and tell me how terrible and awful it is okay, and I come away from my conversations with you feeling deflated and just wait to see what they do and they're all the time they've gone. Huh, interesting, sorry, that was not my intention. You go yeah, that's fine, I'm just letting you know. So it's like then it's being able to have the good quality conversation and say you know how much do you think other people feel deflated when they come away from you?

Speaker 1:

I go yeah, actually, I think most, I've realized actually a lot of people do. So they've got to understand the impact of their behavior upon others with a quality feedback conversation from somebody, and then you can start to say which I did with one of the people that I led. I said so I am interested in what you think might be good and right about this idea that I brought to you. And then they go well, actually that bit's good and that bit's go. Well, actually that bit's good and that bit's good and that was good, and you go. Yeah, you've never told me that ever.

Speaker 3:

You go ah, ah, yeah right.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, so value them for who they are essentially, give them the feedback you know and then see if they can sort of turn it around. Because if you if've got an individual like that, it's like if you're waking up every single day looking for the negative in the world, then you've got the attitude of your confirmation bias that you're only ever going to see the negative and the bad things in the world. So once they've realized that, it's like, what could you do to start to see actually something better in the world around you and use your confirmation bias for that?

Speaker 3:

So you're saying a lot of things about the role of the leader. You're also touching on a lot of self-reflective practices, accepting where other people are coming from and their perspectives. Where other people are coming from and their perspectives, can you talk a little bit about the role of how you coach executives on their role in how resilience is either anchored in the team culture or how it plays out in that context?

Speaker 1:

So I think one of the first things I do is it's my opinion, but I think it's reasonably valid. I say to leaders, because a lot of the time they come to us with some level of confusion or demotivation or overwhelm or wading through treacle, slash stirrup Nathan.

Speaker 4:

There you go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah and I go look, you're only responsible for three things. Ok, so if you've got all of these things that are on your to do list, you're only responsible for three things Delegating brilliantly, removing the blockages to your people performing, and creating a resilient culture. So once they wrap their head around what that actually means, so they need to be delegating brilliantly to their people's strengths, have good conversations with them about actually, when they're not able to play to their strengths, what strategies they're going to put in place to actually just be able to face into. That is that at their level, the senior level, they need to be talking to their peers about the things that they literally in their meetings, go my team can't perform at their role because this system or this process or this approach, this doesn't work. We're the more senior level, so we need to talk to each other about getting rid of that. You know that's our responsibility. It doesn't matter how much I coach my people to do it. It's like we've got to the stage where it's on me as a line manager to remove the blockages and then creating the resilient culture.

Speaker 1:

Brian is. It is absolutely all aspects of the resilience wheel. That's what I do with my clients. I go so right.

Speaker 1:

What's your leadership purpose? What conversations you're having around the team purpose, you know, um, how can you cultivate adaptability, openness and curiosity? So that's all the psychological safety and the trust and the vulnerability part of being, as it is, the support network. So how do you make sure that every single one of your team members knows each other's strengths? They are supporting each other to be at their best, as much as humanly possible, and compensating where they're not. Then it is, you know, absolutely great conversations about their inner self-talk around, their confidence and their attitude and their internal stories. They're telling about things in in the lens of optimism to get to positivity and, um, just once again, it's, it's back to strengths, strengths, strengths, because it builds natural resilience and natural confidence. So that's what I do with the leaders to sort of say, okay, how much are you actually um using these seven aspects of the wheel to create the resilient culture, uh, within your and you know it works well, essentially.

Speaker 3:

Have you noticed anything in with your coaching clients? Have you noticed anything in the last two or three years that would hint at a greater need or a sense of urgency for this different type of inner self-talk, and how people are are telling stories to themselves yeah, I do and it is.

Speaker 1:

It's all down to the pandemic. It's not all down to the pandemic. I think that the pandemic has exacerbated all sorts of um different things. So there's been you know the law of, you know positive consequences. There's been some really you know amazing things that have come out of the pandemic. About that we've realized, about actually the ways that we worked. Um, some of them were a bit crazy. We don't need to do them. Actually there's better ways of working and with the law of positive, you know, sort of negative, unintended consequences has happened as well.

Speaker 1:

There's just so many behaviors that have come into the come into play around sort of basic human interaction and and line management and just not finding a, a simple, smart way to do hybrid working. It's. It's just we've got too many people keep saying everybody stay at home or everybody back in the office. It's a sweeping statement, doesn't work for us anymore. You know it's like a stable door horse bolted Employee power has now happened in the fact that we understand as employees that actually I don't have to work in the way I've been told, that I have to work.

Speaker 1:

Actually, you know, if somebody comes along and says, do it this way, you go no, I don't have to, it's, this is better, so I'm going to. I'm going to do this suits me well. And so I think we aren't well equipped with that change, because we haven't recovered from the pandemic. So resilience is about recovery. We haven't recovered emotionally well enough from the pandemic and also we haven't done the spring forward with learning. We haven't had a collective conversation about what are we generally going to learn from our experiences around, what are the behaviors that work really well, that helped us, and what are the behaviors that haven't worked well for us and what we're going to stop doing. That's what I notice, that's what I see.

Speaker 3:

That's what I notice, that's what I see. Well, I applaud you for naming all of the dominant factors that have been happening since the pandemic, so I applaud that. I also appreciate your recognition of the need for healing or the need for restoring or the need for reevaluating. You know what's needed of me and what do I need. Um, we find ourselves in similar situations, kind of why ask the question to see if you have um a similar experience? Because I think that, um, what we are learning is that leaders are often um being asked to navigate those external new barriers and challenges that weren't around four or five years ago without those same leaders taking the adequate time to ask themselves who am I now in this new environment? What skills do I bring? Because the landscape before and landscape now is dissimilar in how it functions, but similar to their eye, if that makes sense yeah, it does, it does.

Speaker 1:

I was chatting to somebody the other day, um, who, they were really interesting individuals and all sorts of things, uh, but they were involved somewhere and I think they were being coy. They're involved somewhere in the uk government's response, um, to the pandemic as a consultant, and I don't think there was a lot that they could officially say, but they just made the comment of like no country got it right and so there wasn't a blueprint of like these are the ones that did it perfectly. We, we are being told by governments. You know some are saying yeah, we did brilliantly or we have not. We will might acknowledge behind closed doors, we didn't do it brilliantly and everything we're trying to do now is like a version of like, be quiet, move, move on. That's over. We've shifted on to something else now and that isn't springing forward with learning.

Speaker 3:

Right right, I was going to tie that in because you, you know, part of the theme of the work that you're doing is that realistic understanding of what's going on around you and even though we may want to say it's the same, you're pressing people to say what is really happening and like naming it with a sense of honesty, whether they like it or not. Is that correct? Like just that?

Speaker 1:

no, it absolutely isn't that. That's that optimism piece, um, that just seems to resonate well me of right grounded in reality. How, how well have we accepted with good grace, which is really hard? It's a sentence I keep saying and I apply it to myself find it difficult. You know, there was things in life I don't like. You know and you know I go right, russula acceptance with good grace, right, how on earth you're gonna do this? You know it's brilliant words that I can say and I am still, you know, finding ways to do it and certain aspects of life. So, yeah, we, we haven't done the grounded in reality well enough about the good quality conversation, about what actually happened, what worked well and what didn't, and it. But it turns into an argument, unfortunately. So it requires the skills of a leader to have these conversations. So it turns into a quality, restorative, resilient, optimistic conversation rather than a fight, and that takes a real set of soft skills which are harder to do most of the time.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Something that I can't remember if you said it here or if I read it, but this idea of engaging with resilience on a daily basis.

Speaker 3:

Ooh.

Speaker 2:

I wonder what that looks like, because when I think of any skill that we're trying to grow, a muscle we're trying to strengthen. You know, learning a musical instrument, learning a language, whatever that is like it's you know, learning a musical instrument, learning a language, whatever that is like.

Speaker 2:

It's putting the reps in right. It's doing it over and over and over again. That's how you get better With something like being resilient. To hear something like that engaging with your resilience on a day-to-day basis, it almost feels like you have to fail and get back up, get knocked down. Get back up again. To quote the Thub Thumbin' song from the 90s.

Speaker 2:

So maybe just talk a little bit about that. How does that, what does that look like on a practical basis, and how can leaders practice that without having to get punched in the face?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I was lucky enough to see Chumbawumba. Live Chumbawumba, that's what it was.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm jealous.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, it was after an all-day drinking session with two friends, and I remember that I fell asleep in some of it.

Speaker 2:

I love that we managed to work that in here today.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so engaging with your resilience wheel. So you know, it's the fact that it's trying to find a way to support people to understand that it is going to take some effort to build your resilience, yeah, but how can we do that in a way that is energizing and interesting and motivating for them? So that's why I sort of say, rather than you have to work at your resilience wheel, that's why I'm saying no, no, you need to just find a way to engage with it in a way that works for you. So it is making the decision and the choice. It's about having a personal development plan around your resilience. Essentially, we do talk about the fact that we would like to get better at things as leaders. You know, or I would like my situation to improve, or I want to go to my own performance reviews and be able to turn up to them and say to my line manager even if it's like CEO to chairperson I want to be able to say, yeah, this is going better, I'm meeting these, these are happening To be able to achieve. That is the realization that actually I'm going to have to engage with myself around this to build my resilience. And then it's just when you look at their resilience wheel and I talk about it.

Speaker 1:

I just do a simple self-assessment. When I take people through the wheel and say these are all these components are, it's like, as you listen to me, it's just do your own. You know, finger that score out of 10, you know happy face, smiley face, give it a colour. You know. Just do a self-assessment on it about which ones are in an okay place, which are in a good place and which would you like to be better. And then it's strengths based start with a good. If there's a particular aspect of your wheel that's already in a good place to go, I'll do more of that, make it even better, get more success from it. And then pick another bit of the wheel that's not quite as good as you would like it to be and do some engagement around that.

Speaker 1:

And going back to something I said earlier on, so there's some research that says that the adaptability part of the wheel, it's just got extra legs to it. So those people that make the choice, the behavioral choice, to spend a third of their time engaging with their adaptability, openness to change, curiosity, then they get themselves into this place called thrive. Rather than coping and surviving, most people believe that they are only being resilient when they're coping and surviving. It's actually no. Resilience is that you shift away from those two and you shift into thriving. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the challenges that you face are suddenly diminished or better. How you think and feel about them has completely shifted your understanding about how you can manage them, face into them, overcome them, look at them, come through them. That completely shifts when you're in a more resilient place. Um, did I answer?

Speaker 2:

your question. I like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, you know, I was hoping for just a quick do this answer, but it sounds like it takes work which is so sorry, come on, russell, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit of time, you know yeah, no, and that's I mean, that's just what it is right Is you have to make that decision, to invest in it and to work on it on a daily basis. So, russell, thank you so much. We have kept you up almost till 10 pm at your time. Is there any final thoughts you have, or last little nuggets that we didn't get to? Things that you'd like to say, as we kind of get this?

Speaker 1:

to a close. No, it was all the things we talked about, so I think I've said it a few times I'd really love everyone listening to consider resilience as springing forward with learning. That's what I would love people to just get their heads around, you know, shift away from bounce back and actually think about it as springing forward with learning.

Speaker 2:

That's what I'd love everybody to remember Wonderful Well Russell. Thank you again so much. We really really appreciate it. I took down the Liverpool score, so I won't tell you anything about that.

Speaker 4:

Thank you.

Speaker 2:

I hope you're able to enjoy the rest of the match tonight. Brian Linda, any final thoughts from either of you?

Speaker 4:

No, I just really appreciate your sentiments, Russell, and I know that our, our listeners will find value from your perspective, and um just appreciate getting to know you in this way.

Speaker 1:

No, it's brilliant, I've loved it. Thank you so much for having me on, and I really appreciate it, so thank you.

Speaker 3:

And Russell, I appreciate the way. That's because I listened for all the layers and what people are talking about. Um, and you, you boil down some complex thoughts and as you're speaking, you're you're layering them in your delivery and that's what I really enjoy, because I just think people who are who will be hearing this will be able to pick up something meaningful in the layers. Just the way that you communicate around those central topics Excellent job, excellent delivery.

Speaker 1:

I'm very impressed. I appreciate that that's lovely. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

As we wrap up today's episode, remember Russell's call to action Resilience is more than bouncing back. It's about springing forward with learning. Building resilience is a daily practice, and so we wanted to give you a couple of practical ways to start. Number one engage with adaptability. Spend time each day doing something that's maybe new or different or makes you just curious or maybe even a little scared. This can, I think, shift us from just coping to truly thriving, to truly thriving. It can create things in our life that will cause us to pause and wonder and maybe throw us off enough to be able to figure out how to deal with that when the stakes are perhaps a little bit lower. Number two reflect and learn. Yeah, we should always be doing this all the time, but make it a habit to ask what am I learning from every challenge, from every situation, from every setback? Use those things as fuel to grow by taking time to recognize lessons and apply them forward. This can be big things or small things. Again, it's about practicing when perhaps the stakes are a little bit lower. And the third thing is we would love to challenge you to figure out how to foster an optimistic culture. Lead with grounded optimism. Create space for those honest conversations about both challenges and strengths and empower your team to feel hopeful and confident in facing what's ahead.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for joining us today and remember that resilience is built in all of these small choices to grow and adapt. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. If you found value from any of the information in this podcast or any of our other resources, we would love it if you could share it with somebody who you think could benefit from this material as well, and we really wanna thank Russell Harvey again for spending some time with us and just teaching us a little bit more about what it means to be resilient. You can find more information about us, as well as show notes and a longer description of this podcast episode in written form on our website and blog, leadershipvisionconsultingcom. Please follow us on all the socials and join our email newsletter. My name is Nathan Freeberg and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.