A friend of mine pronounced at an association meeting today while doing her introduction that "the word for today is flexibility". Later she had the opportunity to explain how a long series of little things had seemingly gone wrong for her today and the solutions she found to bring order to chaos. What I heard in her very amusing story was how she had found opportunities for creativity in each situation.
At this same meeting our speaker's topic was "How to Bounce Back From Adversity"... how apt! She talked about the "four lenses" that people tend to view adversity through: control, impact, breadth and duration. She offered some insight into figuring out what our fallback position is in coping with stressful situations and then offered questions to ask ourselves to facilitate moving to a place of strength instead of victimhood. The objective is to find the way that works best for us to move quickly from analysis of the adversity to a plan of action and/or reaction.
She then shared a story about leaving her office to come speak to us without her cell phone, which had the address, her GPS, and the phone number for the member who booked her to speak. She was able to illustrate her ability to think creatively by asking herself good questions that led her to find us in time to do her presentation!
Lesson learned: we're all faced with adversity of some kind every day. We can look at it as a global, inescapable situation and marinate in it or we can get flexible, ask ourselves some good questions and find a way to be creative in turning adversity to progress.
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About Me
- Jill Boullion
- Houston, TX, United States
- I've led a lot and followed plenty of times, too. All these experiences have given me some interesting perspective into what makes someone a leader worth following. And what constitutes ethical leadership? We usually can smell it when's it not, so let's find the examples in the world of people leading in an ethical and authentic way! My passion is community leadership but I think the lessons of leadership transcend place and specifics. I'd love to hear what you think about leadership!
Jill, I love your blog! Thank you for sharing your writing skills on this positive subject, ethical leadership; something we need more of. I wonder how we could get this message to our politicians? Politics and ethics in the same sentence? Hmmmm...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I loved your story today about flexibility and adversity. You have inspired me...maybe I should start a blog on "Plan B - How to be Flexible!" If I've learned anything from being a business owner, practicing patience and choosing flexibility are the top two things. My, how I've grown!