When resilience is the only practical option

When you find yourself balancing on the tipping point between resentment and resilience – and if you don’t know what I mean, read this – you don’t have to be brilliant. You don’t have to be the bigger person. You don’t have to take everyone’s feelings and perspectives into account. Just ask yourself one question:

What’s best for Tomorrow Me?

I just hung up from a call with a potential client who is very much fighting off resentment (his own and his team’s) because the powers that be have decided that everyone needs to come back to the office four days a week. For no clearly articulated reason, and with a profound unwillingness to be questioned, they’ve told each department head to make this announcement themselves and not to put it in writing! So he’s tasked with announcing and navigating this change that makes no sense to him and will be a financial and emotional burden to the majority of his team – and to him – while “representing” the decision makers. He’s frustrated and knows his people will be too.

You all told me – in droves – that the strategy you use most often when you’re at the inflection point of a change that could make you feel resentment or move you towards resilience is… time. You breathe, “take two,” “count to ten” (and a great article that one of you wrote and sent me about that, hit reply if you’d like the link). And I agree – lengthening the space between stimulus and response makes us MUCH more likely to act in a way that we intend and not simply react. But I got to thinking – what should I do with that time? If I give myself a pause, how do I best use that to positively influence whatever comes next?

Well, my Dad would say “Consider the consequences…” Which I put this way:

Think about Tomorrow You. What can you do at the end of this short pause that will set you up tomorrow for a better (or at least not worse) relationship, reputation, experience? For the Head of Talent I spoke with today, Tomorrow Him wants a team that trusts him and shows up in the office four days a week. So that pause gives him time to decide which response will make that outcome most likely, or at least not ruin his chances.

What is a resentment/resilience tipping point you’re facing and what does Tomorrow You hope you’ll do?

All my best,

Dr. G