Resilience and agility. These are buzzwords we hear all the time. But what do they actually mean? What tangible things can we do to drive up our own capabilities? And why are they actually so important?
Resilience and agility. These are buzzwords we hear all the time. But what do they actually mean? What tangible things can we do to drive up our own capabilities? And why are they actually so important?
Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hey, it’s Rachel Cooke, your Modern Mentor. I’m the founder of Lead Above Noise—a firm specializing in activating workplaces. Helping you discover ways to amplify performance AND employee engagement. Together. We do leader bootcamps, keynotes, and Pulse checks. Just let us know what you need.
So, I love my job. I love lots of things about it. That I get to be creative, to build relationships with all sorts of people, that I get to help infuse ease into stressful working situations. And something else I love is the incredible opportunity I have to spend time in lots of different workplaces. Across industries, for profit, non-profit – you name it I’ve hung in it.
This constant dipping in and out really allows me to see – and to feel – what teams are experiencing universally. Like there are some things pretty unique to tech right now. Others to healthcare. And on and one. But the things that seem to be living and breathing across it all? That’s where I think we have the most to learn together.
These days, unlikely to surprise anyone – it’s the extraordinary pace and volume of change. Like, overnight, whiplash-inducing change. Whether it’s priority changes, resources reallocated, reorganizations coming down – things are constantly changing on us, and we’re left to just keep going.
Frankly it’s kind of exhausting us. But we can’t stop or slow the change. So what can we do? We can build up our resilience and our agility – so we’re just better equipped to power through it.
And while those admittedly sounds like buzzwords, today we’re gonna talk about some specific and tangible things you can be doing to bulk these essential muscles up.
Ok. We hear a lot about being a continuous learner – about always building new skills to stay fresh and edgy. But sometimes we set the bar too high. And it freezes us like a deer in headlights.
I’m not saying don’t dream big. I’m saying set lots of small goals – achievable ones – that ladder up to something bigger.
Maybe you’re a marketer and you really want to build your skills around social media marketing. That’s a big space. So rather than deciding to dive head-first into the world of social media marketing, try taking a small bite. Maybe just one platformplatforms – or one form of media, like writing or video or audio. And find a few quick-hit ways to take in some knowledge.
There are platforms like Blinkist or Coursera that offer quick book summaries of micro-courses that allow you to learn in just minutes and moments versus weeks or months. You don’t need a full-blown certification to do a new thing. You just need to know something more today than you knew yesterday. Then again tomorrow. Test, implement, and see how you feel. Do this until you hit a wall. And then decide – “am I good? Or do I want to get certified in something new?”
As things continue to change around you, the more things you know how to do, the more likely you’ll be to find a fresh, innovative approach to managing that change.
There’s that old Mark Twain quote I love – “I wanted to write you a short letter but I didn’t have time so I wrote a long one instead.” I love it because it’s a delightful reminder that only when you understand something really well can you explain it simply and concisely.
This is a lot of what I love about teaching – which is core to so much of what I do.
When I’m building a workshop for a client, I generally start with a skeleton of 50 slides. And only as I get wiser about the content can I condense it down to 5 – 8 slides. Teaching something to others really forces you to learn it so deeply, you can help others make sense of it.
So try hostinghost informal coaching sessions or lunch-and-learns with some colleagues. You don’t need to be an expert—just sharing what you’ve learned can be super helpful – to them and to you.
Being able to take in lots of information on a topic, synthesize it, make sense of it – these are incredible drivers of resilience. Next time a change hits you overnight, if you can quickly take it in, make sense, and find ways to explain it to others? It will be that much less overwhelming.
Part of what makes change hard for us to handle is we get stuck in our ways – our daily rhythms, routines, and even just the people surrounding us.
Scenario swapping is a fun way to kind of step into someone else’s shoes and see things from their perspective. Grab someone you know and trust from another team or part of the company. “Assign” them a task on your to-do list, or go wild and ask them to attend a meeting in your place. Invite them to do the same with you.
By taking on each other’s work in small, digestible bites, you start to build, safely, a comfort with doing new things in new ways.
After the swap, debrief together on what you both learned. Bringing fresh eyes to existing projects or processes can sometimes unlock interesting efficiencies or innovation. You’ll question things they just take for granted, and vice versa.
Another important skillset to have in the face of never-ending change.
Likely you’ve heard me yammer on about my Bullet Journal. It’s my happy place. But I give you permission to use anything that suits you – an app, a tattoo, whatever you prefer in terms of tracking progress.
It’s like with my kids. I see them every day. And they always look the same to me. But when we’re out and about and we bump into someone who hasn’t seen them in years, there is always the gasp and the “oh my gosh you got so big!” dance.
Resilience is like this. When we see it every day we may not note the growth. And so we need to capturecaptures these tiny moments of testing and learning and winning. Of experiments we’ve run, of insights we’ve had, of feedback we’ve received from those appreciating our work.
All of this serves to remind ourselves of the progress we’re making – even slowly – so our confidence grows. And so we have a great story to tell our boss during performance management conversations.
Being able to say – here are the proactive things I’ve done in service of pushing my agility and resilience – and these are the reasons you should have confidence in me in the face of continuous change.
Resilience and agility are more than buzzwords. They’re essential for navigating the chaos plaguing our workplaces today. So don’t be afraid to be creative, to be proactive, and go build them for yourself.
Join me next week for another great episode. Until then, visit my website at leadabovenoise.com if your workplace could use an activation boost – a bootcamp, a keynote, a Pulse check – you choose. You can follow Modern Mentor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Find and follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week.
Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. It's audio-engineered by Dan Feirabend. Our Director of Podcasts is Brannan Goetschius. Our Podcast and Advertising Operations Specialist is Morgan Christianson. Our Digital Operations Specialist is Holly Hutchings. Our Marketing and Publicity Associate is Davina Tomlin.