Canadian HR Reporter

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER September 21, 2015 EXECUTIVE SERIES 9 www.scnetwork.ca Join our professional community of Canadian HR & Organizational Leaders: • Connecting @ monthly events • Collaborating with peers • Challenging conventional thinking The Power of Human Capital CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP FOR 35 YEARS Great Leaders GROW www.scnetwork.ca OE, 1 employee at a time Organizational effectiveness initiatives tend to be big solutions to big problems: A modernist legacy of imposing our will on systems instead of individuals. However, as we become firmly enveloped in a post- modern world, where the increas- ing complexity of organizations in- creasingly resists "big change," the return on these initiatives — spotty to begin with — wanes. What if we reversed the tele- scope? If organizations are the sum of their individuals, could we drive organizational effectiveness through individual effectiveness? Could many small solutions to many individual problems over- come the inertia of complexity? Could these accumulate to create a sustainable, critical mass of posi- tive change that would result in organizational effectiveness from the other direction? To be clear, I'm not referring to just-in-case skill building, the go-to solution of yore — rather, I'm suggesting we individually look inward toward our destructive and ultimately self-destructive thinking and re- sulting behaviours. Andrew Soren's resilience pre- sentation to SCN revealed exactly that. Soren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's re- nowned positive psychology pro- gram, home base for the resilience movement. He demonstrated that resilience research has shown that many small improvements in characteristics such as emotional regulation, impulse control, opti- mism, flexible thinking, empathy and self-efficacy resulted in indi- viduals and their organizations being much better at handling adversity, and change in general. Soren positioned "resilience" not as the modernist myth of the superhero — resolute, solo and stoic — but, rather, as everyday individuals in a complex and in- terconnected world that acknowl- edge and confront adversity, do so together, and move forward by muddling through. e science of resilience has shown it's not about "invincible and invulnerable," it's about the "ordinary magic" of learning to use intrinsic coping tools that we, as individuals, have at hand. Soren showed that "bottom up" resilience is teachable and it results in sustainable improve- ments in attitudes and behaviours (including engagement), greater performance and increases in well-being. Taken as a whole, that's organizational effectiveness "by any other name." Michael Clark is director of business development at Forrest & Company Limited in Toronto. Forrest is an orga- nizational transformation firm, with over 25 years experience developing organizational and leadership capa- bility in organizations. Michael Clark Organizational Effectiveness Trish Maguire Leadership In Action Fail wisely to be resilient ere are several qualities found in most successful people. Tenacity, drive, will- power, integrity and passion, to name a few. ey all are valuable and all produce positive results. But the one "must-have" quality is resilience. What is resilience? It's the ability to successfully bounce back from, or adapt to, serious external risks, threats and adversities, and to achieve emotional and intellectual growth from these experiences. It also means to not get too euphoric when all the stars align. Remem- ber the old Persian adage: "is too shall pass." Resilience is special because it's most useful when things go bad. For instance, when key employ- ees inform you they are quitting to start a competitive company or when a main supplier decides to eliminate all distributors and sell direct only — how well would you bounce back? It's moments like these that test our mettle. Sure, it's great to have the other qualities and they are all very important, as long as our road is clear and free of any surprises. To paraphrase an old African proverb, "Smooth roads do not make skilful travellers." Businesses are facing greater challenges as they try to survive, let alone catch up to this ever- ac- celerating market pace. Competi- tors are re-inventing themselves overnight. Most companies' best- before dates have come and gone. Technology is creating new routes to market by leaps and bounds. And the millennials are here. How does one cope? Many ex- ecutives can't. Why not? Because they haven't experienced many misfortunes or severe hazards, nor have they been run over or beaten up in their careers. Even recent cohorts of overly protected graduates have never experienced academic failure — one of the most important lessons any training facility could provide. Neither group has been ex- posed to situations from which they could acquire firsthand knowledge of what it really takes to recover quickly and prosper from failures. It's not easy. So what can they do about it? How do we become more resilient? Some think we are born with varying degrees of resilience, while others think we acquire most of our resilience from life's everyday experiences. It's true we learn more from our failures than from our successes. Failures really grab our attention while we usu- ally take success for granted. But if this is the case, the ob- vious solution is to fail as many times as we can. But a more ef- fective solution is "Fail wisely." Be mindful of when and how we fail, understand why we fail, and examine how we react to these failures. Be honest and objec- tive in our analysis — strip out all emotional content. Perform a "lessons learned" diagnosis to de- termine what went wrong, what went right, why they did, and how we can avoid any mistakes in the future. By doing so, we will hone our resilience and build our confi- dence. We will also improve our attitude — viewing problems more as welcomed challenges and growing opportunities, rather than as threats. As is nicely captured in Rud- yard Kipling's poem "If " and in the Buddhist teachings within the Noble Eightfold Path, mindfulness is a powerful tool with which to gain insight into the motives of our behaviours. So too is aware- ness of the alignment between our apparent resilience and our emo- tional intelligence (EI), namely in the areas of self-awareness, self- regulation, self-motivation, social awareness and social skills. How will we survive and thrive when any of these external chal- lenges are thrown at us? One way is to always keep a cool head, be mindful of our actions and reac- tions, and keep a positive attitude throughout. Morgan Smyth is an SCNetwork thought leader and a change manage- ment consultant who launched his own IT services company which soared to Profit Magazine's 50 Fastest Grow- ing Companies. He is based in Toron- to and can be reached at msmyth@ braegen.com. Morgan Smyth Leadership in Action Keep a cool head, be mindful of your actions and reactions, and be positive. Leaders need to be onboard What do we mean by "resilience"? I would describe resilient people as having an optimistic and positive outlook on life. ey typically show an ability to navigate life's crises by developing ef- fective coping mechanisms, and they keep a balanced perspective between negative and positive emotions. Is it really resilience that needs to be mastered to survive in today's corporations or is the root of the problem within a corporation's environment and culture? anks to the early research and developed theories of great humanist thinkers such as Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm and Abra- ham Maslow, we all have the op- portunity of choosing to learn how most of our barriers to per- sonal growth and development are self-imposed. Rogers' "self- actualization" concept revealed we have unlimited potential for growth and creativity. He proved we can absolutely learn how to increase our self-efficacy and our ability to make things happen both personally and profession- ally. Decades ago, he champi- oned that everybody is capable of achieving the highest level of "human-beingness." Soren asked, "Why hasn't this taken off in corporations already?" I too am mystified as to what it is that stops business leaders from choosing to fully leverage this human capacity of creativity and growth. Saul McLeod, in a 2014 article in Simply Psychology, of- fers a plausible answer where he cites Rogers' own words — "For a person to 'grow,' they need an environment that provides them with genuineness (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (be- ing seen with unconditional posi- tive regard) and empathy (being listened to and understood)." So how do things improve if more leaders don't stop to under- stand what's going wrong with their culture and how to do bet- ter? What has to happen before more leaders understand that our very humanness means we act, work, produce and behave with our perception of the truth, and not in accordance with the truth? We live and work on partial be- liefs, partial truths and sometimes function on false and invalid be- liefs. Could it be possible the LEVERAGING > pg. 10

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