Senior Account Executive
Are you cultivating resilience?
Kanye West would tell you “that that that that don’t kill you, will only make you stronger”
Employers typically work hard to create an engaged workforce, with focus on creating cultures that reward hard work and mining enthusiasm for the work that needs to be done. But it’s important not to overlook resilience.
“Resilience – an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”
Change is going to come to your company at some point. As communicators, we often help our clients navigate the field of change, whether it’s good news or bad. The best companies keep their employees informed of these changes before anyone else, and the cream of the crop help employees to practice how to adapt to change and bounce back from it before it even happens.
Years ago, a boss required my team to read Who Moved My Cheese, a bestselling business fable book about mice who struggle to find their cheese after it’s been moved from its usual spot. It’s simplistic, but it boils down the common themes of adapting to change succinctly and on a relatable level. It’s only a minority of us humans who embrace change of any sort. Change can mean a loss of control, routine and predictability, factors most of us find comforting. At its worst, change can mean anything from aching loss to depression. At its best, change can mean everyone was there when the IPO happened and now they’re worth billions.
It could happen, right?
I once had the fortune of being part of a company that required its leadership team to attend monthly seminars on a host of subjects, including several that focused on resilience. Those sessions forced me to do some soul-searching in anticipation of upcoming sweeping changes at the company. I found that when I did some introspection, I’d lived through some staggering changes in my career and had come out the other side unscathed and a little wiser. If you’d described to me what was going to happen to me prior to it happening, I would’ve sat myself down and declared it impossible to get through it. I’m an optimist, but some of these changes were pretty rough.
Those of us at Rasor Marketing Communications have proven ourselves stunningly resilient in our careers, and it makes us better counselors to our clients. A few of the stories of what we’ve encountered in our career paths before making it to where we are now are head-spinningly awful.
So give some thought to how you’re preparing your employees for change, which will most certainly come at some point, even if there’s nothing on the horizon. Read the cheese book, talk about experiences which have shaped them on their career path and find out if they’re change-embracing or not.
And if you get stumped as you go, try listening to this resilience-inspired playlist:
1. “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac
3. “This Isn’t Everything You Are” by Snow Patrol
5. “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John
6. “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey
7. “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor
