Episode 259 Transcript:

0:00:00 – (Ramona Shaw): This is episode 259, and we’re going to talk about resilience and why that matters so much for your career. Here are the two questions this podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted? Although the competition and the expectations get bigger, this show, The Manager Track podcast, will provide the answers.

0:00:27 – (Ramona Shaw): I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection, and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead, so everyone wins and grows. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate, and act as a confident and competent leader. You know you can be welcome to this episode of The Manager Track podcast.

0:00:53 – (Ramona Shaw): Every so often, I take sort of a step back. I zoom out. I take all my notes from my coaching calls with my executive coaching clients, and sometimes even even conversations I had or notes from our conversations in our leadership programs. And I look at common themes and sort of things that come up and seem to be related or at least topics that I think are worth exploring more. And one of those themes that keeps coming up is resilience.

0:01:21 – (Ramona Shaw): Now, I don’t mean sort of the high level, just mindset of resilience, but really what is the impact or the difference between a leader who has strong emotional resilience versus a leader who has weak emotional resilience? And so in today’s conversation, that’s really what I want to focus on. We’ll explore what it means, where emotional resilience comes from, why it matters for leaders, and how it actually plays out in real life.

0:01:51 – (Ramona Shaw): We’ll also talk about some practical ways for you to strengthen your own emotional resilience. So if all that sounds intriguing, then let’s dive in. First off, I want to start with what emotional resilience really is. A bit of a definition. So in simple terms, it’s the ability to bounce back from adversity, to handle stress, setbacks, or even a crisis, and then come through not only sort of intact, but even stronger on the other side.

0:02:20 – (Ramona Shaw): Emotional resilience also means how to deal with conflict, how to show up in challenging situations. So it goes from sort of these micro moments to the macro things that are going on in life. It’s not a new idea, though, and I really want to emphasize this. In fact, emotional resilience is a virtue celebrated for thousands of years. Ancient philosophies like Stoicism, Buddhism, confucianism all emphasized keeping a steady mind under pressure.

0:02:55 – (Ramona Shaw): Stoic thinkers such as Marcus Aurelius advise that if we’re upset by something external, it’s not the event itself, but our perception of it that causes our suffering. Buddhist teachings on equanimity similarly encourage maintaining this inner calm and non reactivity, no matter what’s going on around us. And then the Chinese sage Confucius famously put it, our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

0:03:31 – (Ramona Shaw): In other words, bouncing back from adversity and dealing with emotional stress has been a timeless hallmark of wisdom in character. In the more modern phase of researching this concept of resilience that has begun in the 1970s when developmental psychologist Amy Werner observed that some children thrived despite severe hardships. And then she coined resilience to describe that ability to adapt and succeed against the odds.

0:04:02 – (Ramona Shaw): Now, over time, what started sort of as focus on kids expanded into the broader idea that applies to all of us. And then researchers like Salvador Motti were bringing resilience into the workplace. They developed the hardiness training to help employees cope with job stress. And the thinking really was that while some kids overcome tough childhoods, adults can learn mindsets and skills as well to handle work pressures.

0:04:30 – (Ramona Shaw): Fast forward to today, and resilience is almost a bit of a buzzword in leadership circles. Companies want leaders who can adapt to change and guide their teams through turbulent times without being overly emotionally involved in the process, but to be able to manage their emotions through difficult change or setbacks. Along this entire time horizon, from thousands of years ago to today, the core idea has been the same.

0:05:01 – (Ramona Shaw): Adversity, setbacks, pushback, conflict, all of that is inevitable. But what does make a difference is how we respond to it. Now, why is emotional resilience especially important in today’s workforce? And I want to say, especially for leaders. Well, first of all, we see this in studies all the time. People have high levels of stress at work. People’s mental health is important, but it is impacted. We are going sort of, and it feels like from one crisis to another or from other one uncertain time to the next uncertain time because of different factors.

0:05:40 – (Ramona Shaw): And, you know, we sometimes hear this, this phrase, perma crisis, which refers to like one difficult time following another. And it may sound a bit dramatic, but for a lot of people, this is really what it feels like. You know, with the pandemic which changed the way that we work, teams went remote. Now they’re supposed to come back introducing new stress, but also some loneliness or isolation for.

0:06:06 – (Ramona Shaw): And then now, in a post pandemic world, we have economic uncertainty, we might have political uncertainty, we have rapid technological change, including the introduction of AI, we have frequent organizational shakeups. A lot of things are happening. And change fatigue is another one of those buzzwords that has become an actual real concern. In fact, a study found that 76% of employees and 63% of managers felt burned out or apathetic in their jobs. And they cited constant change as a top cause.

0:06:43 – (Ramona Shaw): So if you think about this, it’s not just the amount of work, but also the non stop shifting of work that wears people down. It could be every few months there’s a new strategy, a reorg, a new tool to learn, a new boss, a new team member, a new location, a new plan, you name it. People feel exhausted with all this. And for leaders, this is actually doubly challenging because they’re not just coping with the change themselves, but they’re also expected to keep their teams motivated through it all.

0:07:16 – (Ramona Shaw): And this is what we call the emotional load. That’s the emotional load that leaders like you have to carry in addition to your own load. And for those leaders who are leading, a team that’s either remote or spread across different locations can add even further stress to the plate because communication is harder, trust can be difficult to build, and people may feel a bit more alone. To emphasize this, surveys have found that one in four fully remote employees report feeling lonely at work, which is much higher than those who are working on site.

0:07:51 – (Ramona Shaw): And loneliness can chip away at engagement and emotional well being, which then again is something that leaders will have to address. So leaders, likely, including you, have to find ways to bridge the gap among people creating through the screen. And that can all be difficult and really a recipe for stress. So emotional resilience is a huge part of the foundation that helps you and leaders stay grounded and steady in the midst of all of it.

0:08:19 – (Ramona Shaw): It’s like a shock absorber, soothing out the bumps so that you don’t crash. This is really important. It’s not that you don’t just bounce back. No, you’re less impacted. Not that you feel less, but you’re less impacted by all the things that are going on. And so you are not using your battery up as quickly as you would if you had low emotional resilience. So I want to be really clear on this. Resilient leaders are able to maintain clarity and optimism even when things get tough. They’re able to maintain pragmatism or stay analytical and logically critically thinking, even when their ego could be Bruised or when they get some headwind or pushback.

0:09:04 – (Ramona Shaw): And that is what most teams need. They need a leader who is stable, strong, calm, composed, and not emotional. Because when emotions run high, intelligence runs low and vice versa. Because the way our brains work, whether we like it or not, but when emotions take over, our rational brain starts to slowly shut down. And when we see this in a leader and we recognize that emotionally triggered or they’re giving into the emotions, now I observe that now I think they’re not rationally thinking, so I don’t have as much trust in them in the moment to lead, to be the one that sets the direction for me, for me to be a follower to them. Now I want to be a follower to someone who’s really calm, clearly thinking, especially when I’m the one who’s anxious or I’m the one who’s emotional. I want to make sure that if I do follow, I follow someone who seems a lot more in charge and able to strategize, plan, and seek out the best path forward.

0:10:09 – (Ramona Shaw): So this is high level, but I want to get a lot more into the detail. So what does emotional versus resilience, or the lack of it, actually look like in everyday leadership situations? So let’s paint the picture with a few common scenarios. We’ll consider how a leader with high emotional resilience might respond versus a leader with low resilience. This is not about judgment here. We’re all human beings and nobody’s perfect, and we’re not responding with the same level of emotional resilience every day or in every area of our lives.

0:10:45 – (Ramona Shaw): What I do want to call out is that the differences can be pretty striking and really illustrate why resilience matters. Okay, our first scenario is going to be team conflict. Imagine a team meeting where a disagreement erupts. So two of your team members are clashing over how to approach a project. Voices are getting a bit louder. The tension is rising, and you start to sense, okay, they’re starting to get emotionally attached here.

0:11:15 – (Ramona Shaw): As a leader with strong emotional resilience, you will likely stay calm and collected, and you will recognize what is happening and that this conflict and this friction isn’t the end of the world. The world. You take a deep breath, you listen, you try to understand where they’re all coming from, what they might need in this conversation. And then you might say, okay, I can see both of you care a lot about this.

0:11:41 – (Ramona Shaw): Do you want to validate them in a way? Let’s understand each perspective so you give them enough air time. So that they feel hurt. Right. You’re not going in, defending yourself or getting frustrated. No. You’re able to take a step back and see what is needed here. Not what do I feel like, but what does the team and what do these two people need right now? You’re logically thinking as such a leader. You can keep your cool, you can set a tone of respect.

0:12:10 – (Ramona Shaw): You’re not panicking, you’re not getting angry yourself. You’re not defending anything. Instead, you signal to everyone that this is okay. Difference of opinions is important. Talking it out is important, important. And we can totally work through this. So resilient leaders use their emotional intelligence. They keep their own emotions in check and instead try to diffuse tension rather than fueling it.

0:12:36 – (Ramona Shaw): They may also encourage each person to explain their reasoning, like then trying to find common ground or look for a compromise. But while they’re facilitating this conflict resolution, they remain steady and empathetic. They’re not taking the conflict personally. They’re not getting frustrated by the tone that they took on or the fact that this is happening in their meeting. This approach can transform a heated argument into an actually productive discussion.

0:13:07 – (Ramona Shaw): And it’s demonstrating to the entire team that speaking up and sharing their own opinions is something that is tolerated or even welcomed, that there is a safe space. So the team sees a model of handling disagreements constructively, which over time builds trust and a sense of psychological safety. And likely they will replicate similar behaviors in scenarios where they’re going to be the ones in the meeting and you might not be there. Now, let’s flip the page and look at a leader with low emotional resilience in the same situation.

0:13:40 – (Ramona Shaw): So the tension starts to rise, conflict starts to kick off. Now, as a leader with low emotional resilience, they may either overreact or freeze. Maybe they take the disagreement as a personal affront, their authority, and they snap, enough. This is not where we’re going to have the discussion, or that’s not how we’re going to talk about this, or end of discussion, I’m going to be the one who’s making a decision here.

0:14:03 – (Ramona Shaw): Their stress hormones in those cases are then on overdrive and it totally shows. Their tone can be angry. They start blaming one of the team members. And this kind of reaction, while natural under stress, usually pours gasoline on the fire. Right. It makes everything worse. The team conflict may escalate, or at least alternatively, everyone goes silent in fear. Either way, nothing gets truly resolved and resentment just starts to grow.

0:14:39 – (Ramona Shaw): Alternatively, a less resilient leader might also, instead of pushing the conflict and losing it. They may freeze or they may withdraw and void the conflict entirely. So they may change the subject or they end the meeting abruptly because they just can’t cope with attention. So that may diffuse the immediate heat. But the underlying conflict festers. And in fact, the message is sent that this, we, we’re not doing this here. So don’t bring up alternative viewpoints. We can’t talk it out. That’s not part of what we do.

0:15:13 – (Ramona Shaw): So the team learns they won’t bring up issues anymore, problems get swept under the rug, and they may even do the same again. They’re role modeling, you’re role modeling, and they’re going to pick up similar behaviors in both cases. So whether you’re overreacting or withdrawing, the outcome is worse than it could have been. There’s either lingering bitterness or confusion because the conflict wasn’t properly addressed.

0:15:37 – (Ramona Shaw): And now, over time, as said, the team may become less open and honest. And that gets in the way of collaboration and trust. By the way, too, all that is because the leader has low emotional resilience. In essence, a leader who stays cool under pressure inspires their team to do the same. And unfortunately, the reverse is also true. If the leader loses their cool, the team picks up on that energy as well.

0:16:06 – (Ramona Shaw): So emotional resilience or its absence in the leader cascades totally down through the team or the organization almost immediately. So that was scenario one, where emotional resilience can make a big difference in the outcome and the overall like even work environment and culture in an organization or in a team or department. Now, the second scenario is receiving critical feedback. This one is personal.

0:16:33 – (Ramona Shaw): It’s about how a leader handles feedback or criticism that’s directed at them. So let’s say you’re a manager and your own boss. Or maybe a few of your team members give you some tough feedback. Maybe they say, hey, listen, your communication needs work. We often feel like we’re out of the loop, we’re not sure what’s going on. Or you communicate late with us when it’s too late for us to make adjustment, and it’s bothering me.

0:17:01 – (Ramona Shaw): And when you hear the feedback, it hurts. On one hand, you didn’t intend to do that. And you might know that you’re not great at this, but you really want to do a good job and you don’t want to let them down. Now, a highly resilient leader will still feel this sting, right? They will still maybe not like it, but they’ll manage their reaction. So instead of snapping back or getting defensive, they might Pause and really try to hear the feedback. And then internally, they remind themselves not to take it as a personal attack, but as valuable information.

0:17:34 – (Ramona Shaw): If this is you, you might even respond with something like, hey, thank you for telling me. Can you give me an example of where I dropped the ball? I want to really understand so that I can improve. Now, notice they are controlling that knee jerk emotional response in a moment. It’s not that they are grateful because they think you just gave them a gift. Like some people say, feedback is a gift. You might have heard us say this before at our cover. We call feedback more of manure. It stinks.

0:18:04 – (Ramona Shaw): It’s not feeling great. It’s not feeling like a gift in a moment. But as much as a gift brings joy and is supposed to, like, add to our lives, manure does too. Manure is helping us grow. We’re helping plants grow in that case. And similar to us, the feedback is actually valuable to us. It’s fertile ground to develop and evolve. And so it’s natural that our first instinct when being criticized may be to defend ourselves or to deny the problem.

0:18:33 – (Ramona Shaw): And often, in fact, we do have good sort of excuses or reasons like, think back last time someone gave you feedback and you thought, okay, but you, you don’t see the full picture. I get what you’re saying, but what you might not know is that I was waiting on these other teams or the reason why this happened is because I worked 10 hours early that day on this other problem. So I was tired and that’s why I made a mistake.

0:18:57 – (Ramona Shaw): So we have sort of valid reasons often, and we may feel really compelled to explain them and share them when we are being criticized. But an emotionally resilient leader has that inner buffer. They can take a step back mentally and say, okay, this is uncomfortable. And they may not see the full picture, but there’s something useful here. And in fact, I do want them to bring feedback to me and I’m grateful that they spoke up. This is probably not the funnest conversation they’re having all day.

0:19:29 – (Ramona Shaw): So they may have had to build up some courage to say this to me. Or at least they care about me and my growth. And so I do appreciate that and I want to make sure that they know that I appreciate it. I also want to demonstrate that I’m good at receiving feedback. Especially if you want to grow and be a leader, being defensive to feedback is not looking good. So as an emotionally resilient leader, you can take that step back, think through this, and realize the best thing for me to do is to stay calm, to listen, and to make sure I understand.

0:20:02 – (Ramona Shaw): So by staying curious and wanting to understand instead of furious, this leader ends up learning something that will make them better. Maybe they realize they do send information in a confusing way or not often enough. Maybe they thought, you know, giving them an update in the team meeting every two weeks is sufficient. But they’re saying, like, no, stuff happens. I need to know as and when it happens, or at least on a weekly basis so then you can work that out and make changes so that you build stronger trust and better working relationships.

0:20:37 – (Ramona Shaw): And you also teaching them and anyone else who’s observing you that you can handle criticism and you do want to grow. Now, on the other hand, if you look at a leader who has low resilience but is facing the same critique, say their first response is to hear your communication is poor, and that they see as a personal attack. So when we feel personally attacked now, we may get emotional about it. So maybe our tone gets sharp.

0:21:07 – (Ramona Shaw): Well, if you all paid more attention, you wouldn’t miss my messages or I did say that before. It’s just no one reads emails or that’s not true. Nobody told me that you wanted to be kept in the loop. All defensive statements, even if there’s some truth to it, it’s not useful. But the emotionally charged person leader there feels like that’s the right thing to do. So low emotional resilience, it’s the emotions that’s now taking over.

0:21:37 – (Ramona Shaw): And in some cases, a leader might even start to retaliate subtly, maybe by distancing themselves from the person who spoke up and gave the feedback, finding some kind of fault in their work as a payback or criticizing them more publicly. This is somewhat of a natural human impulse when we feel hurt, but it’s obviously counterproductive. And as you hear me say this, you may think like, oh, sure, we know that. That’s common sense and I know better.

0:22:06 – (Ramona Shaw): But the truth is, it happens all the time at work, all the time. Like, think about this. Look around. Look at how often we see people get defensive when they receive feedback or pushback. Now, another version could be that the leader says nothing in the moment when they get the feedback, but internally, they feel crushed and demoralized, go home. And they think, oh my gosh, everyone thinks I’m a failure. People think I’m not ready for this job. They think I’m not capable.

0:22:39 – (Ramona Shaw): They want me to set more information because they’re all doubting me. Now they’re doubting me even more. And as a Result, they might withdraw confidence from their own decisions moving forward, they start to second guess themselves moving into analysis paralysis. Or they’re just starting to really doubt whether or not they’re capable to be successful in their role and whether or not people around them trust them.

0:23:03 – (Ramona Shaw): And when you start to feel like people around you either don’t like you, or don’t trust you, or don’t think you’re capable, then that definitely starts to impact your ability to show up as your best self. Now, in both of these cases, the opportunity for growth from the feedback is totally missed and the team learns a lesson which is don’t give honest feedback upward. My boss not going to be able to do well with it.

0:23:27 – (Ramona Shaw): They see their leader can either not handle it or won’t respond well, so they’ll keep quiet next time around and problems will go unaddressed. You will not be informed, you will not know, and it’s going to make you being successful in your role a whole lot harder. Meanwhile, in addition, your behavior might even validate the initial criticism. If you blow up at feedback about your communication style, you kind of prove the point that there’s a communication issue, right?

0:23:58 – (Ramona Shaw): An executive coach once described a CEO who got very harsh 360 degree feedback from his team. And the CEO basically had two one, to react emotionally and get defensive, deny the feedback, maybe feel angry or misunderstood. Or option two, take a more practical approach, ask questions to clarify, figure out what changes might actually help, and then act on the feedback. The CEO initially felt that punch in the gut reaction that we all do, but he consciously chose the second path.

0:24:35 – (Ramona Shaw): So it was not easy for him and it took humility and self control. But it transformed his leadership over the next year and it even transformed the culture where people start to see, oh, our CEO is open to feedback, he’s willing to grow and learn. So of course, well, I guess I should be doing that too. Now, what this story also highlights is that resilient leaders aren’t immune to hurt feelings. They just manage them differently.

0:25:03 – (Ramona Shaw): They acknowledge the emotion, well, that hurt, I’m upset. But don’t let it drive their responses. Instead, they zero in on the useful part of the message and use it to improve. So leaders lacking resilience often get stuck in that initial emotional reaction, which can then prevent us from taking meaningful action. The resilient leader, by contrast, keeps their eyes on the goal getting better for the sake of the team and mission.

0:25:31 – (Ramona Shaw): And the ego is pushed aside. Okay, last scenario. Managing a crisis or a sudden change. So here we’re not Talking about these oh no, everything’s going wrong moments. Perhaps your company’s service just went down. Halting operations or a key client suddenly pulls out of a deal, throwing planes out the door. In such a crisis, a resilient leader is the one who steps up with a clear head. They may not have all the answers immediately, not a whole lot of people do, but they remain composed.

0:26:04 – (Ramona Shaw): They’ll likely communicate to their team right away, acknowledging the problem without freaking people out. For example, alright everyone, the servers are down. Yes, it’s a big problem, but here’s what we’re going to do. First, it is on it. They’re trying to figure out the root cause. Meanwhile, let’s inform our clients about the outage so they know it’s being addressed. This leader is doing a few crucial things. They’re staying calm, they’re providing direction with clear priorities, and they’re maintaining an open communication.

0:26:36 – (Ramona Shaw): They don’t sugarcoat the situation, but they also don’t catastrophize it. Their steadiness therefore has a calming effect on others. Now in emergencies, people naturally look to the leader for cues on how to react. And if the leader is steady, it reassures them, we can get through this. And as a resilient leader, you also are flexible. So if your plan A isn’t working, then you are already thinking of plan B or C instead of just freezing and not doing anything.

0:27:07 – (Ramona Shaw): So they may say, okay, hey, let’s come together and brainstorm solutions. Showing also confidence that collectively they can solve whatever the issue is. Now, what’s also important there is that they don’t play the blame game in the middle of a fire. There’s time to debrief and learn lessons later and look at who was supposed to be responsible for what. But in the moment, in the crisis, all about solution and keeping everyone safe and informed and being that gravity pull, being that rock, the calm and composed leader.

0:27:42 – (Ramona Shaw): Now imagine a less resilient leader in the same crisis perhaps. The moment they learn the surfers are down, they panic, they start yelling, how could this happen? This is a disaster. Venting their frustration, but not actually solving anything. So their team now feels not only the crisis in itself, but also the leaders anxiety on top of that, which makes them feel even more stressed. And of course that’s a total recipe for chaos, disaster, stress and then people being exhausted.

0:28:13 – (Ramona Shaw): Yeah, because people are scrambling, going different directions, unsure what to do. They may be afraid to speak up because the leader seems on edge and so forth. So when leaders ask who messed this up? I need to know which of you is responsible. That creates a culture of fear and anxiety. Because that’s not the question that matters in the moment. What matters in the moment is who is impacted and what are we going to do about it.

0:28:41 – (Ramona Shaw): Anything else is totally emotional and people will pick up on it. Now of course. And then we also always have the other side where some leader may be freezing. They may. They may seem like a deer staring at the headlights, unable to make a decision because they’re overwhelmed. And in a worst case scenario, a low resilience leader might even go missing. Not literally, but they withdraw and leave the team in a lurch. Hey, I need to step out for a bit. Or they just shut it down because they can’t cope with it if they feel like their emotions are flooding them and they can’t think clearly.

0:29:13 – (Ramona Shaw): So they need to find a way to step away and compose themselves again. Now the contrast here of the impact is pretty stark. The resilient leaders team rallies and works the problem. They feel supported and clear headed because their leader is modeling that. Now the less resilient leaders teams will feel more stressed. The damage of the crisis or situation often ends up larger because of the delay or poor decision making and people not paying as close attention to what they’re doing because they’re so stressed. So attention to detail, clear thinking is all impacted.

0:29:51 – (Ramona Shaw): There’s a saying that goes great leaders act quickly without acting harshly. Transitioning from being an individual contributor, an IC into your first leadership role is one of the biggest transitions that you’ll make in your career. Because the things that made you successful as an IC will not be the same things that will make you successful as a leader and especially in a new role. When all eyes are on you, when you know your boss wants you to succeed and is watching closely, you’re peers are having an eye on you. Your team members are keen to figure out how to work with you and whether or not they can trust you during this time. By the way, whether or not you’re a first time manager or you’ve led teams in the past, but you’re in a new role as a new manager to the team or even to the business, this is a time in which you don’t want to wing it.

0:30:41 – (Ramona Shaw): Go into such a situation with a plan and with specific tools that will help you build trust and gain the respect of your co workers. In our new Manager toolkit, we’ll give you guides, tools, checklists and lots of things that are important for any new manager to keep in mind. Head on over to arcova.org free toolkits to grab your copy. You can also find that link in the show notes or the captions. I’ll see you over there.

0:31:09 – (Ramona Shaw): So by now we’ve seen from these scenarios that emotional resilience isn’t some touchy feely concept. It has very real concrete effects on how situations turn out and how people feel under a leader’s guidance, under your guidance. And so as a leader who, as a leader who can maintain composure, optimism, pragmatism and clarity, even when it gets tough, even when you’re challenged, even when you internally feel like being defensive, or even you feel these high stake, high pressure situations, then that allows you to build an environment of trust and stability.

0:31:48 – (Ramona Shaw): When you’re a leader who can’t do that, even if you’re very skilled in your profession and very intelligent, you may actually inadvertently create more chaos and inspires an atmosphere of fear despite your best efforts. Now, the good news in all of this is that emotional resilience is not a fixed trait. It’s something that you can learn and strengthen over time. It is a bit like a muscle. Anyone can grow it with the right exercises and habits.

0:32:17 – (Ramona Shaw): So to wrap up our episode today, let’s talk about a few practical, research backed strategies for boosting your own emotional resilience. They aren’t generic, just think positive tips. They’re grounded in psychology and neuroscience and they truly work. So strategy number one is to reframe the narrative and to challenge your own thinking. When something stressful happens, notice the stories that you’re telling yourself and be ready to rewrite it.

0:32:46 – (Ramona Shaw): Psychologist Martin Seligman calls this the three P’s to describe how people often distort setbacks. We take them personally, think they’re pervasive, and assume they’re permanent. Personal, pervasive and permanent. For example, if a presentation goes poorly, you might think, I am terrible at public speaking. That’s personal. This ruins the whole project. Pervasive. And I’ll never recover from this. People will never trust me again.

0:33:16 – (Ramona Shaw): Permanent. That kind of thinking erodes resilience. So instead practice challenging those thoughts. Maybe the presentation went badly because you were rushed, but not because you’re bad at it. That’s a specific solvable issue. Or because you didn’t spend enough time preparing for it. Right? Specific and solvable. And one bad meeting doesn’t define your whole performance. Or the future for that matter.

0:33:42 – (Ramona Shaw): Resilience grows when you stop catastrophizing and start reframing setbacks as temporary, specific and manageable. And Then over time, this mindset becomes second nature. Now, I have a specific tip for you here. Try writing this stuff down. When you write down what happened, how you interpreted it, and then you rewrite that narrative, you challenge your thinking, you rewrite it again in the way that isn’t personal, isn’t pervasive, and isn’t permanent, you’ll start to see the difference there.

0:34:17 – (Ramona Shaw): And you start to notice how different perspectives will make you feel and react very differently. You might even be surprised on how impactful this can be. Now, the second strategy is to practice emotional regulation. Specifically, we want to tune into our feelings and really understand what is going on so that then we can regulate it. So in a tough moment, name what you’re feeling can actually help you regain control.

0:34:45 – (Ramona Shaw): Some people also call this effect labeling, or name it to tame it. So saying to yourself, hey, I’m feeling anxious or I’m feeling frustrated right now, creates a small pause between emotion and reaction. I recently had a personal situation where I immediately thought, that’s wrong. And I wanted to get defensive and justified. But I told myself, wait a second. What I’m actually feeling is I feel misunderstood.

0:35:14 – (Ramona Shaw): And me just realizing, like, the thing that’s triggering me here is that I feel I’m misunderstood. And despite all my attempts to be clear, I still feel misunderstood. And I’m feeling frustrated as a result of that. So breaking it down, recognizing I feel misunderstood, I keep feeling misunderstood. Now that makes me feel frustrated. As I was thinking that, I realized, and now you’re emotionally charged. And that’s not when we’re going to take any action, because I gave myself a bit of a break, and that pause allowed me to take a step back and make better choices in my actions.

0:35:50 – (Ramona Shaw): So studies around this also show that the simple act in itself of naming, it reduces the activity in the amygdala, the part of your brain that fires up your stress response. So naming your emotions creates that mental space. You choose a better response. You can also take a breath, slow your pace, and then rephrase what you were about to say or choose a different action. Now, over time, this builds confidence that your emotions won’t hijack your behaviors.

0:36:22 – (Ramona Shaw): You can start to feel like, no, no, no, I know when this stuff happens, I can intervene. You’ll show up more professional at work, and you trust yourself more that you can regulate yourself. You can feel things deeply. Actually, it’s not the issue there, right? So we don’t want to not feel it without letting them run the show. And you can even say it out Loud. Hey, this is frustrating to me without acting out frustrations. So that’s the emotional transparency. And sometimes that in itself is helpful also to communicate what’s going on or to get the attention that you need without you losing control or showing up emotionally where people start to question your abilities to think critically in those moments.

0:37:05 – (Ramona Shaw): So whether it’s in the middle of a meeting or quiet on your drive home, practice the skill builds the core of emotional resilience. Stay present, calm, grounded. Now the third strategy is to cultivate self compassion. And though this is not woo woo, so stay with me there. Resilience isn’t about being hard on yourself, it’s about being fair and seeing things as they truly are, not worse and not better.

0:37:36 – (Ramona Shaw): Self compassion means treating yourself like you would a close friend. After a setback, instead of saying I’m so bad at this, you could say, well, that was tough, but I can learn and do better. Next time. We don’t have to go down to Pitty city and stay there and feel really bad about it all for a long time. Research shows that people who practice compassion self compassion, they bounce back quicker because they don’t waste energy on the self blame that self blame. Being a pity city is kind of draining. That takes a lot of energy out of us and we’re so self absorbed that we actually can’t see the people around us.

0:38:19 – (Ramona Shaw): We can also not really problem solve because we’re so absolved in in our own emotions. And when you let that all go and you focus on your capacity to improve and you reframe your mind and you feel a different energy. So some people talk to themselves in third person as if they were a friend. Or sometimes it just is a good reminder to say like hold on a second, if my friend was in this shoes, what would I say now? Or how would I look at this situation?

0:38:51 – (Ramona Shaw): Again, I like to write this down. I think writing it down helps as well. And you could write it down in first person and read it, take a step back as if it was written by someone else, or actually write it down in third person. If this sounds too much like therapy or too emotional, I understand. But if emotional resilience is something that you need to build, then this may be exactly the work to do.

0:39:14 – (Ramona Shaw): That’s like when you go to the gym and you realize like triceps is weak as I’m building my biceps, you might need to do an exercise for your triceps, even if that’s not the thing you like the most. But that’s exactly what you probably need. Now, before we close, I want to emphasize one more thing. Resilience doesn’t mean you never feel stressed or overwhelmed. The most resilient leaders have bad days and low moments.

0:39:42 – (Ramona Shaw): The difference is how they respond and how they rebound. Think of emotional resilience as a rubber ball that you can press on it, you can squeeze it. That’s kind of like how life is putting pressure on you, but the rubber ball keeps bouncing back and it goes back to its original form. And that’s what this means. It doesn’t mean there’s never going to be pressure. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be pulled in different directions. But it does mean that you’re very clear now. Like, no, I’m round.

0:40:10 – (Ramona Shaw): I’m, I’m in this shape. I am this person with these capabilities. And that is the thing that you’re going to bounce right back to. And you know that that’s also what you’re going to demonstrate to the outside world. Because you as a leader, you kind of have a megaphone. Your mood is contagious, your attitude is contagious. The rest of the team will pick up on how you show up. Leaders with high emotional EQ and high emotional resilience, they experience all the emotions, but they recover. And if you ever feel like, hey, this is too much, then seek help. That’s also totally okay.

0:40:48 – (Ramona Shaw): A lot of the high performing leaders who are constantly under stress and pressure have a support system. They have coaches, they have advisors to have sounding boards, they have therapists. They know how to surround themselves with the help that they need in order to perform at that caliber and to show up the best possible version for others. So it’s often knowing about when to reach out to a mentor coach, a friend, your support system, rather than just trying to do it yourself and struggling when you realize like, oh no, I can overcome all these things, that all these resources and there’s this entire support system around you to help with these things. It will not only make you more resilient, but also will probably enable you to take more risks and be more courageous as you move up the ladder.

0:41:36 – (Ramona Shaw): So saying yes to increased responsibilities or taking on a bigger role or doing something that feels uncomfortable is likely going to come easier because you think, no matter what a, if I fall, I’m going to be okay. And two, if things get hard, I do know where to seek help and how to navigate through these times. So when you really invest in developing your emotional resilience, it will help you not just in the Day to day scenarios as those that we’ve talked about earlier make a big difference in how you’re being perceived, but also the tone that you set for the team and what your role model but also how you’re going to develop over time in your career. It’s kind of a bit of a superpower for a leader because it touches so many different areas and competencies.

0:42:20 – (Ramona Shaw): So let’s wrap this up. We talked about how resilient leaders handle conflict calmly accept feedback with growth, a growth attitude, how to lead in crisis with compassion, and how you can steer a team that might be tired and requires your empathy and direction. It’s really not just nice to have it’s must haves. If you as a leader want to be successful in difficult times for yourself personally and for the team.

0:42:47 – (Ramona Shaw): If this topic resonated with you and you want more help along the way with this process, then check out the show notes for a link on how to set up a strategy call so we can look at how I personally or we at arcova can support support you in developing stronger emotional resilience. No, you’re not alone. This is something that many of our clients are dealing with and trying to grow over time. And if you’re keen to do the same, we would love to support you through the proven tools, practices and frameworks that will get you there significantly faster than if you tried to figure this out and make this happen on your own again. It’s one of those moments to know when is it that you can do this by yourself and when is it that you’ve tried that. But now you’re looking to build up your support system and get some additional help.

0:43:29 – (Ramona Shaw): So if that is of interest, check out the show notes and set up a strategy call with us. And that’s what we got for this episode of The Manager Track podcast. Thanks so much. We’ll be back next week with another episode. Bye for now. If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager.

0:43:54 – (Ramona Shaw): Check it out @archova/masterclass. The second resource is my bestselling book the Confident and Competent New Manager how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out@archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. You can find all those links in the show notes down below.