Resilience and Adaptability in the New Normal

We’re entering a second disruption of re-emergence into the “new normal.” This endemic requires reorientation, adjustment, and a different kind of learning. People in organizations, businesses, and social systems feel this need. Women, perhaps, feel it most strongly. Data and anecdotal evidence show that women especially are devoting more time responding to childcare, eldercare, and homecare, often at the expense of careers and a sense of well-being.

As a woman, a coach, and a group facilitator, I’m interested in strategies of resilience and adaptability that support reframing disruption as a potential opportunity for positive change. Resilience refers to the capacity to work through and to overcome setbacks. Adaptability refers to the ability to make necessary adjustments that let us move forward. Resilience and adaptability need to be embedded in the narratives we use when confronting adversities.

My late mother serves me as an example of such a narrative. After surviving the loss of her family in WWII, she immigrated to Montreal, Canada. Despite few resources and formidable social and language challenges, within 10 years, she began a fifty-year career as a successful realtor. A compelling story of resilience and adaptability can be empowering; a catalyst to keep trying. We all carry the stories we tell ourselves about what is and is not possible. Among the first steps in managing disruption is to review those stories. Do the stories you tell yourself reinforce your fears, or do they inspire your sense of possibility? Choose what is inspiring, and take actions to exercise and build your resilience and adaptability. Here are some ways to do so:

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” Challenge and disruption can serve to teach us how to navigate with resilience and adaptability. We can learn these skills guided by Awareness Intelligence™, my conception of the inner capacities that are the most powerful strategies and techniques for achieving self-awareness, presence, and influence. This intelligence is the result of learning how to identify, experiment with, adapt, and use what we become aware of to stimulate innovative change that furthers ourselves and others. Adversity can contribute to positive change for those who are able and willing to adapt; success doesn’t always go to the strongest, as even Darwin admitted. And women appear, to me, remarkably adept at adapting. I celebrate our resilience and adaptability. It’s time now to capitalize on our strengths.