How to be a resilient person, leader and a company
Karmen Aasanurm
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“Resilience is the art of surviving” is something I think Eyrun said during my stay in Iceland. I agree with that and this blog post will be a small overview of what I see to be the key factors of being resilient. It is based on four TED talks (linked below).
In one of the videos it’s said that only a resilient person can be a resilient leader and build a resilient company and that's why I will briefly stop on each of those topics.
How to be a more resilient person?
One big factor of being resilient as a person is accepting life as it is with good and bad. Meaning not suppressing the bad things, just accepting them. Often I find myself frustrated with the things I don’t know and are hard, but then I remind myself that it is part of the process. Everything is not always good and struggle is an important part of life. We can only control our attitude to things. Even if we accept the challenge it may still be stressful and for that I really loved the idea of not trying to find things to relieve stress but finding things that bring meaning and joy. Sometimes we can get stuck in our judgment of ourselves and that’s why I also liked the idea of being connected with your inner child who did not know right and wrong who was just carefree, curious and courageous. In conclusion, to be resilient we need to accept ourselves and life as it is and try to find what brings us joy and meaning.
How to be a resilient leader?
I have found that many leaders are often really hard workers and lose themselves in their work. Therefore we need to start to be more compassionate with ourselves. We can’t forget that we are people and to be a resilient leader means to be a resilient person. I think it is also important to make mistakes and not avoid them. As leaders we often have to think about the future and growth of the company, but I liked the idea that rather than looking for success and happiness we should be focusing on the purpose and meaning. All in all based on the videos, to be resilient as a leader we need to work on ourselves and on the mindset we have towards ourselves and challenges we face.
“I liked the idea that rather than looking for success and happiness we should be concentrating on the purpose and meaning”
How to have a resilient company?
To have a resilient company we need to be able to adapt to change and this may not always mean to be most efficient. Being very efficient means that one small change can break the system and make it harder to adapt to change. In the economical part it is good not only to concentrate on the current project and the finances for that (which is something I see and do a lot myself), but to keep in mind the bigger picture and long term goals. For that it is good to think about how to have some savings as a backup for whatever may happen or investment opportunities may occur.
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How organizational resilience has been seen throughout the years
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At the beginning resilience was seen as stopping bad things from happening, from that grew into being more mindful of what is being done, from that to optimizing performance meaning making the process better, from that trying to do something different and innovative and now is seen as a holistic approach of adapting to the specific business and the concept. To get to know more about that see the video A (listed below).
Videos:
Video A: Organizational resilience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRfQvGdjNpE&ab_channel=BSIGroup
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Video B: Efficiency and resilience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj1dJl60C9Q&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
Video C: Resilience as a superpower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4qKqvB8pc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
Video D: From stress to resilience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7vYuKvpneM&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
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Published on 18.07.2021
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