5 Strategies for Shifting from a Blaming to an 'Owning' Culture

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to promote curiosity, experimentation, and learning – without the blame

Blaming is a natural human reflex. When things go wrong, we feel the impulse to defend ourselves from repercussions. However, playing the blame game – the urge to find a scapegoat – overshadows the need to address systemic issues.

Blaming has become pervasive in the corporate world. Finger-pointing is an easy way to deflect responsibility, even for minor mistakes. Organizations need to replace blame with inquiry to promote learning, accountability, and innovation. They need to build a blame-less culture.

Organizations can’t get rid of a blame culture without understanding the root cause. Blaming is a knee-jerk defense mechanism. Instead of admitting our faults, blaming someone else for our mistakes is always easier. 

We're hardwired to use blame to release negative feelings, especially guilt. Author Brené Brown describes this human tendency to blame others as "a way to discharge pain and discomfort." It’s a quick escape route to resolve tensions and protect our self-esteem.

Our propensity to blame can be influenced by personality traits and context. 

The Fundamental Attribution Error suggests that we often blame others due to their intrinsic characteristics while attributing our own actions to external circumstances.

Blamers tend to have difficulties with emotion regulation. Studies have found that employees who are satisfied with their jobs are more likely to be good "corporate citizens," while receiving blame for something they didn't do can lead to withdrawal from work.

A culture of blame can lead to reduced collaboration, impaired emotional well-being, and increased turnover rates. Instead of learning from mistakes, blame encourages employees to hide their errors.

Scapegoating often gains momentum when leaders evade personal accountability. By using blame to hide their inadequacies or errors, a culture of blame quickly spreads toxic behaviors across the organization.

 

 

 

 

 

What Is a Blame-Less Culture?

Blame-less doesn’t mean the absence of blame but replacing blame with inquiry. It’s about stopping finger-pointing to avoid systemic accountability.

In a blame-less or "just" culture, the spotlight shifts from individual fallibility to systemic improvement. Blame might never go away completely, but it shouldn’t be the default reaction.

The underlying belief of a blame-less culture is that mistakes are typically the result of faulty organizational cultures rather than the fault of one or more individuals. Addressing systemic issues requires tackling the root of the problem rather than finding a culprit.

A blameless culture doesn't mean a lack of accountability. On the contrary, when teams own their mistakes, they learn from them, increasing ownership and responsibility.

Receiving criticism after a poor performance may not be pleasant, but it's better than receiving no feedback at all. If someone makes a significant mistake and no one says anything, they may think something’s wrong – or even feel paranoid.

How can your team or organization transition from a blaming to an ownership culture?

Five Strategies for Building an Owning Culture

 1. Focus on the System, Not the Individual

Organizations often react to a mistake with a judgmental mindset, looking to find a culprit. However, individual errors are often just the tip of the iceberg. Shift from 'Who messed up?' to 'What in our system allowed this mistake to happen?’

Toyota's 5 Why's practice encourages digging deep to uncover the systemic issues that give rise to mistakes. Repeating “why” five times means the nature of the problem, as well as its solution, becomes clear.

The technique was initially developed by Sakichi Toyoda, who stated, "By repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.

"This idea underscores that a punitive environment sees errors as symptoms, while blameless cultures consider systemic issues as opportunities for improvement.

Check out a related post:  The "5 Whys"-- Getting to the Root of a Problem Quickly

2. Make it Safe to Raise Issues

Creating an environment where employees are comfortable speaking out about issues is pivotal for robust problem-solving and innovation. Feeling secure about bringing up concerns, errors, or uncertainties will help prevent larger problems.

Volkswagen’s Diselgate resulted from an authoritarian management style that fostered a climate of fear. Many executives believe that the culture of silence resulted from pressure to solve problems quickly rather than doing a thorough analysis.

In the aftermath of the scandal, Bernd Osterloh, a VW supervisory board member, reflected: "We need a culture in which it’s possible and permissible to argue with your superior about the best way to go."

Reward people for raising issues and sharing what they learn after a mistake.

Check out a related post: The Best Leaders Make it Safe to Tell the Truth

3. Build a Culture of Compassionate Caring 

Compassionate caring refers to a sense of warmth, connection, and affection between employees. It can lead to significant increases in team collaboration and job satisfaction. This is not about office friendships but rather a more profound, emotional tethering that includes caring for others' well-being.

This could include starting the day greeting co-workers, asking about their family, or getting coffee before work begins.

Compassionate care is shown when colleagues who are together day in and day out, ask and care about each other’s work and even non-work issues,” Professor Sigal Barsade says. “They are careful of each other’s feelings. They show compassion when things don’t go well.”

Southwest Airlines places a great deal of emphasis on building a culture of 'LUV' among its employees: How staff interact with each other and customers leads to exceptional customer service.

Check out a related post: Empathy: An Essential Leadership Skill

4. Conduct Blameless Postmortems

While postmortems have become more common in many organizations, the concept of a "blame-less" postmortem is relatively revolutionary.

Companies like Etsy, Atlassian, and Google have implemented this method to discuss and learn from failure – without the blame.

In a blame-less postmortem, the emphasis is on identifying what went wrong systemically, not who messed up. Etsy’s CEO, Chad Dickerson, wanted to shift the conversation from “Who’s the CEO going to fire?” to learning from mistakes. This practice has helped Etsy employees take more risks and move faster.

As Dickerson told Business Insider, “One of the things I allowed people to do is make mistakes more freely. The best way to learn to ride a bike is to ride the bike and fall down.”

Check out a related post: Calling a Timeout and Getting Aligned is an Essential Skill for High-Performing Teams 

5. Promote Autonomy and Ownership

Accountability is important, but ownership creates a more profound impact. A culture of ownership replaces blame with questions.

Managers often expect people to become more accountable without giving them the power to make decisions. With freedom comes accountability. By distributing decision-making rights to those closest to the work, teams often benefit from increased speed and better outcomes.

Amazon has adopted the principle of Toyota’s Andon Cord, giving support agents full authority to "pull the cord" when they suspect a problem with the inventory. This has helped prevent issues from escalating – without involving managers.

Check out a related post:  Developing Accountable People By Building a Culture of Ownership

6. Criticize in Private and Praise in Public

 Handling blame privately preserves an individual's dignity and keeps morale high.

Kim Scott, author of the book Radical Candor, explains: “A good rule of thumb for feedback is praise in public, criticize in private. Public criticism tends to trigger a defensive reaction and make it much harder for a person to accept they've made a mistake and to learn from it.”

This rings true for how criticism is best managed: privately. Direct, private conversations preserve individual dignity and avoid poisoning team morale.

Managers are human and sometimes lose control of their emotions, especially when things go wrong. However, smart leaders know how to manage their anger. Instead, they ask powerful questions to turn issues into something constructive rather than blaming.

Check out a related post: 9 Tips for Building a Feedback Culture 

7. Reward Collective Accomplishments

Companies often encourage individualistic, bad behaviors – usually to achieve short-term results. For example, only a few A performers get all the praise, even though the whole team contributed to the results, creating a cutthroat environment.

Organizations get what they reward: Blame is often a defense mechanism for people to protect themselves from inequity. To shift your culture from blame to blameless, the team should be equally accountable for victories and failures.

Research shows that group-based reward systems outperform individual or mixed incentives, producing more collaborative behavior. Rewarding team accomplishments reinforces the idea that collective success is more important than individual glory. This encourages shared accountability and lessens the impulse to blame other teammates when things go wrong.

By following these strategies, organizations can shift from a blame culture to one of learning and ownership. Although this transformation is not immediate, resisting the urge to blame others is always a wise first step.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, facilities services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

"Catch People Doing Something Right" (The Power of Praise)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Because of its power, ridiculously low cost, and rarity, praise is one of the greatest missed opportunities in business today.”

--Gallup Management Journal

 

Many of us are used to looking out for things that are going wrong. After all, if something's wrong, it needs to be fixed before it damages productivity, or affects the bottom line.

But do you actively look out for things that are going right? And how often do you show your appreciation for people who are performing well, even if you're not their manager?

Many people don't give enough praise in the workplace. But, almost everyone – including team members, colleagues, customers, suppliers, and your boss – loves to get sincere recognition for a job well done.

When you’re leading a team, criticism is like your brake and praise it like your accelerator. If you want to go somewhere, you’ve got to use your accelerator more than your brake.

The Power of "Pressing the Accelerator"

Research from the Gallup organization revealed that:

• Employees who do not feel adequately recognized are twice as likely to leave the company.

• Neuroscientists believe the ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens together form a key brain center for processing rewards and that a neurotransmitter (a chemical signal) called dopamine is what tickles them giving them a feeling of reward and satisfaction. The readings from video game players suggests a two-fold increase of dopamine, a level similar to intravenous injection of methamphetamine. 

• The brain craves a surge of dopamine. People alter their behavior to get those delightful bursts. (Like gambling, savoring chocolate, etc.) Positive words have been found to activate regions of the brain associated with reward. As one employee remarked, “For me, receiving praise is like setting little explosions inside. It’s like 'Oh that was good' but you know, I can do better.” The effect of dopamine seems so powerful that people ruin their lives trying to induce an artificial buzz (Such as cocaine, heroin, nicotine, and alcohol).

The chemical not only makes healthy employees feel good when they get praise; it is also crucial to memory and learning. It creates an internal reward system that makes employees want to repeat behavior that the company need—if doing the right thing earns them recognition.

• Some managers say, “If I don’t say anything, you’re doing a good job.” This “no news is good news” is logical enough to work on machines like lawn mowers, where the motor is designed to keep running until the operator hits the kill switch, but it flies in the face of the neurobiology just described. “I’m just not very good at giving praise.” Would the same leaders also dismiss themselves from financial results by saying, “I’m not very good with math”? 

• Managers who fail to deliberately use the power of positive feedback are not only handicapping their own managerial effectiveness, they also diminish the power of salaries are paying. Those who receive praise and recognition on the progress they’re making are two and half more times likely to agree that they are paid appropriately for the work they do.

• There is a personal pay-off to giving praise: If that’s not enough, managers who need one last reason to change their ways might consider a recent experiment in which subjects were given one week to write and deliver “a letter of gratitude in person to someone who has been especially kind to them but had never been properly thanked.” The delivery of the letter was statistically linked to increases in happiness and decreases in depression for up to a month after the communication. (For the giver of the praise)
  

Two Reasons Why a Culture of Praise Is Rare

1. Some of the deepest human emotions are essentially selfish. We are better wired to receive praise than give it. We feel our own hunger more than we empathize with others.

2. While the ventral striatum seems to be programmed to positive events, other parts of brain are even vigilant for negative news. Biologists believe this is a survival instinct. For our distant ancestors in the woods and ourselves on the highway, failing to see something good is disappointing; failing to see something bad could be fatal. So it should not be surprising that the majority of managers and companies are quicker to swat down problems than they are to praise exemplary performance. Without a conscious effort to maintain recognition, the negative events will continually jump in line before positive events.

 An example of this is that sometimes leaders are reluctant to praise others because it’s much easier to look “smart” when criticizing them. Ken Blanchard humorously called this approach “Seagull Management.” Employees don’t hear from a seagull manager until a mistake is made. The manager then swoops in, dumps on their people then flies out until the next mistake is made.  In my experience as a coach, some version of seagull management is still very prevalent in organizations today. Remember, the goal of coaching and feedback is to help others succeed, not prove how smart you are.

 

Other times leaders use praise as a weapon.: “So-and-so is great. What’s wrong with the rest of you?” Managers who do that basically throw the person who succeeded under a busload of peers who now feel resentful. They will not get a repetition of the success. Good praise is specific and sincere and inspires others rather than making odious comparisons. 

 

Cultivate a Positive Relationship with Your Team

• Regularly express appreciation. John Gottman’s research shows, the ration of positive to negative interactions in a successful relationship is 5:1, even during periods of conflict. This ratio doesn’t apply to a single conversation, and it doesn’t mean that we’re obligated to pay someone five compliments before we can offer critical feedback. But it does highlight the importance of providing positive feedback and expressing other forms of appreciation over time in order to strengthen the relationship.

• Make the other person feel “known.” Making people aware that you see them as individuals—and not merely as employees—is a critical step in the process, but it need not be overly time-consuming. A few years ago a coaching client of mine who was a senior manager in a midsize company felt that he was too distant from his employees but didn’t have the time to take someone to lunch every day. His efficient compromise was to view every interaction, no matter how fleeting, as an opportunity to get to know that person a little better. He made a habit of asking employees one question about their work or their personal lives each time he encountered them. “Whenever I can, I connect,” he told me. Although at times this slowed his progress through the office, the result was worth it.

• Focus on people's  strengths. Sometimes, you have to make sure a person gets to a level of proficiency that a flaw doesn’t become a big problem. But you get more bang for the buck out of focusing on strengths than weaknesses, out of maximizing the upside rather than minimizing the downside. Praise reveals what works and makes it usable, repeatable.  Giving praise shows how a strength can lead to success, how people can build on one success to achieve more success. Praise shows that you care personally, and it also challenges directly as is encourages people to keep doing more of what’s great.

• Apply the same discipline to praise that you do to criticism. I've posed this question to hundreds of managers: “How much time do you spend making sure you have the facts straights before giving a team member praise?” The answer, typically was little to none at all. 

When you’re vague with praise, it is just as likely to leave a person feeling patronized. And either way, vague positivity has very little impact. An empty “great job!” can sound condescending and be demoralizing, exactly the opposite effect than you may have intended. Specific praise helps the person and team understand what success looks like. It give ambitious team members a model to follow.

 Praise Pointers

• Be specific and share the impact. State the specific behavior (That you can see or hear) that you want the person to continue or change (Be crystal clear on the “replacement behavior”). If it is constructive feedback separate the person from the behavior. (Good person, poor behavior)

Describe the positive or negative IMPACT of the behavior as it relates to job performance, values, a department standard or goal. Be specific WHEN and WHERE did you notice the behavior and WHO did it impact. Use sensory-rich (See and hear) examples.

• Mix public and private expressions of praise. Most employees enjoy being recognized for good work in front of their peers; others grow self-conscious and shy. Pay attention to how people respond so you can praise them accordingly. Even if an employee likes public praise, make a point of delivering it one on one sometimes to show you really mean it.

• Measure your praise appropriately. If you say “Excellent!” every time an employee performs a relatively minor task successfully, what will you say when he or she accomplishes something really important? Don’t go overboard; thank employees for doing a good job, but save lavish praise for significant achievements.

• Don’t be too predictable. Though you don’t want to hoard your praise, delivering it the same way all the time will lead employees to expect it, and it’ll lose much of its power. Send a handwritten note, not just an email, or make an announcement in the middle of the day instead of always waiting for the next staff meeting. Praise works best when it’s a pleasant surprise

• Change your patterns. As employees grow and change, their needs will shift. You may praise a new hire often, but a veteran might perceive frequent expressions of appreciation as patronizing or intrusive. Be sensitive to what employees need at different points in their careers.

• Make praise personal. If you use the same words and rewards to praise everyone, some people will feel that you’re just repeating phrases you read in a management book. Get to know your people so you can honestly deliver the kind of praise they’ll respond to.

In the book, "How Full is Your Bucket," the authors present research that shows how a 30-second praise can positively affect your relationships, productivity, and health. Click here to download the 6-page book summary.

 

Pro Tip:  It's easier to see what's wrong than what's right. Try out this simple, effective technique to unleash the power of praise and honest appreciation:

 

1) Start each day with three coins in your left pocket.

 

2) Transfer one coin to your right pocket each time you praise someone or remark about something favorably.

 

3) Make sure that you have all the three coins in your right pocket by the end of the day, but don’t give compliments willy-nilly.

Don't miss the opportunity to, in the words of Ken Blanchard, "Catch people doing something right," then watch your team's growth and results accelerate.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, facilities services and maintenance, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Keys to *Empowering Instead of Micromanaging Your Team

 

 

 

 

 

*Empowerment is autonomy within boundaries.

What kind of people leader are you? Do you empower your team to take risks, make mistakes, and tackle tough challenges on their own? Or are you someone who wants to stay involved with every step of a project or initiative your team members are assigned to? Perhaps you’ve noticed your team lacks confidence in making decisions or they’re waiting on you to move projects forward. If the last two sentences resemble your management style; you might be a micromanager.

This was a powerful lesson I was forced to learn in my work life. I advanced in my career by producing high-quality deliverables and outcomes. When I became a people leader, my high control needs (I'm a "D" in the DiSC profile.😃) limited the professional growth and team atmosphere I wanted to provide for my team members. I wanted to dissect everything they produced. It was becoming impossible to meet timelines because of my need for all work products to pass through my hands. I also started to recognize that my need to do things my way was limiting our team’s creativity and engagement. Rather than producing innovative ideas and solving problems before they came to me, they intentionally came with a blank slate to our meetings.

In my experience, most of us micromanage because we think that’s the best way to get results. We have the skill, knowledge, and positive feedback from our past experiences to validate this approach. The challenge with this thinking is that it will get results, but not necessarily the desired results we were hoping for.

We might see high-potential employees get stale or move on to other teams where they have more autonomy. We also instill in our team a sense that we don’t trust them. Given these outcomes, what can we do to balance our need to be involved while building a high-performing, engaged team?

Interrogate Reality

Start by interrogating your reality. Ask yourself, why are you micromanaging? What stories are you telling yourself about your employees, their decision-making capabilities, and their limitations? What data have you gathered to form those opinions? Is it accurate or is there more to the story? Can you identify times when they took full ownership without you looking over their shoulder and got remarkable results?

It’s helpful to have a trusted colleague or friend ask you these questions so you can hear your thoughts out loud. If not, writing down and reflecting on your answers will also give you some insights into your biases that could limit the results you’re getting.

Delegate

A powerful concept for new and seasoned leaders is a variant of the Decision Tree Model. The Decision Tree as applied to delegation adapts the model of Situational Leadership to help the leader decide the different levels of autonomy to give their direct reports that factor in:

• The complexity and visibility of the responsibility/project

• The competency, capacity, and interest of the person receiving the responsibility/project 
• The leader’s desire to stay close to the major decision points in the responsibility/project

The more you see your employees making effective decisions and getting impressive results, the less you will feel the need to micromanage.

Intentionally working through these factors allows you to design your delegation strategy around the goals and priorities of your team, department, and organization while considering the professional development of each team member you are delegating to.

Visualize a tree and divide it into four parts: the leaves, branches, the trunk, and the roots. At the leaf level of this decision tree, you are delegating a new responsibility and providing complete ownership and decision-making rights to the person you are delegating to. You are ready to part with this responsibility and trust the new project owner to make decisions in line with the organization’s goals.

At the leaf level, you are empowering the “delegatee” with the freedom to run with the new responsibility and project without needing to report back to you. For micromanagers who like control, this level of delegation is one of the most difficult.

One step down is the branch level of decision-making. At this level, you still give autonomy to the “delegatee” to take the project and run with it, but you want to stay informed of key milestones or decisions being made. This allows you to report to our stakeholders and stay in the loop.

The trunk level is used when you are just starting to let go of responsibility. You can take your time to train and coach the delegatee. At this level, you make the final decision, but the delegatee is bringing ideas and solutions to the table as well as a recommendation of what direction they would head towards. This gives you a chance to assess their approach to decision-making before any action is taken. Most micromanagers delegate at the trunk level. They’re ready to share responsibility with someone but have a need to keep an eye on all decision points before they’re implemented.

The final level of the decision tree is the root level.

This is where you either can’t delegate the responsibility because there are other decision-makers involved, or you simply don’t want to, but you still desire some input from your employees to gain different perspectives. If most of your employees gets delegated responsibilities at the root level you end up limiting productivity, creativity, and engagement in others.

What is most powerful about utilizing the distinct levels of the decision tree is that it creates clarity on how much ownership you want to share when you choose to delegate. When you check in regularly with your team, you’re also able to adjust the level of autonomy you share as people develop. This strategically expands the competencies of your team as their roles evolve and become more independent of your coaching in specific areas.

The more you see your employees making effective decisions and getting impressive results, the less you will feel the need to micromanage.

Check out a related post:  Why We Micromanage

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, facilities management, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

 

 

 

 

15 Quotes About Bouncing Back From Setbacks

 

 

 

 

 

Resiliency is a skill that resides within each of us, though it often requires setbacks in order to fully activate. It’s the ability to withstand adversity — to recover emotionally when life deals its blows. The old adage “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” comes to mind; resilience largely depends on our attitude and mental stamina when confronted with challenging times.

The good news is that resilience is a skill that can be developed over time — in fact, that has been scientifically proven to be the case. Studies at the Yale School of Medicine found that the brain is a muscle that can be trained to be more resilient over time. The difference between tending to buckle under pressure and being able to bounce back is related to community, mindfulness, and exercise, among other factors. According to the research, people who are resilient tend to have vast social networks to fall back on, engage in regular physical activity (exercise has been known to decrease stress), and practice keeping their minds trained on the present moment.

It can be strengthening to remember that when we experience setbacks and challenges, our ability to bounce back can act as an inspiration to other folks who might be going through tough times. Below, I've rounded up 15 quotes that speak to the benefits of resilience, and the importance of finding our way back up after getting knocked down.

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.”

 Confucius

 

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

Nelson Mandela

 

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”

Maya Angelou

 

“Someone said adversity builds character, but someone else said adversity reveals character. I'm pleasantly surprised with my resilience. I persevere, and not just blindly. I take the best, get rid of the rest, and move on, realizing that you can make a choice to take the good.”

Brooke Shields

 

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Samuel Beckett

 

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” 

Elizabeth Edwards, attorney

 

“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” 

Angela Lee Duckworth, author

 

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

Helen Keller

 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”  

Winston Churchill

 

“If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.”

Shane Koyczan, poet

 

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo — far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.”

 Jodi Picoult

 

“You're going to spend your life getting up one more time than when you get knocked down. So start getting used to it.”                                      

John Wayne

 

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”                                      

Oprah Winfrey

 

When life knocks you down, try to land on your back. Because if you can look up, you can get up. Let your reason get you back up.”

 Les Brown, motivational speaker

 

“Grief and resilience live together.”                                      

Michelle Goldwyn

 

A difficulty that almost breaks a person's spirit can be turned into one of the best things that ever happened to them. It is all up to you and your attitude and your willingness to expand the repertoire of available reactions will determine how well you thrive in this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.

 

Click here to learn tips for building resilience. 

Click here to discover how to transform your life during challenging times. 

I invite you to initiate an attitude boosting exercise with your work group using the quotes by:

1)  Emailing this post to your team.

2) Asking team members to select a quote that resonates the most. (Alternative: team members find a quote they like related to overcoming adversity that's not listed in this post.)

3) Sharing what the quote means to them during a team meeting.

Building resiliency doesn't happen automatically. It requires deliberate practice and reinforcement.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, facilities services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.