Creating resilient cultures

Music (00:00:01) – She’s dreaming, she’s drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else than she would rather be.

Koren (00:00:19) – Hello and welcome. This is Koren Motekaitis and you’re listening to How She Really Does it, the place where inspiration and possibility meet. One of the things that I appreciate about developing an emotional language, meaning being able to identify what I’m feeling, being able to feel it inside of me and have the capacity and the resilience to feel all the feelings as well as have language to acknowledge what it is that I’m feeling, is it’s given me this ability to be resilient and handle all the shit shows and the emotions and laugh my way through it. Not laughing at myself and mocking, but laughing through it like, of course this is happening. Or instead of arguing with reality. I find so often with so many of my clients or you know as I’m out in the world and talking with people, there’s so much we argue that this shouldn’t be happening and that belief is so costly and it’s insidious.

Koren (00:01:37) – It’s so often buried deep inside of our subconscious and we don’t even realize it. So having this emotional language is really vital to help us get through and be resilient in life, especially in this era that we now live in, in 2023. You know, for a long time I was able to survive without an emotional language and just work really, really hard. And that would be another podcast for another day about working hard as being the only lever to success. Having an emotional language allows us to be resilient to move through. And it’s important because right now emotions are really high. There’s a lot of anxiety in the world. There’s fear, there’s shame, frustration, anger, sadness and grief. Those are feeling states that my clients throughout the week have been sharing about. And these are high performers who on the outside you would think, wow, they’ve got it all together, this is fantastic.

Koren (00:02:41) – Or I’ve shared about their wins and they’ve had great wins and they’ve also had difficult times, right? So those emotions, that anxiety, that fear, shame, frustration, anger, sadness, grief, that’s emotional exposure. So when I’ve talked about the definition of vulnerability of emotional exposure, uncertainty and risk, those are examples of it. And I’ve had clients that had huge wins this week and it was really vulnerable to be really delighted and joyful. Like there was almost looking, let me find a problem because it’s really vulnerable to lean into joy. Brené Brown has said this and I have found this to be true, time and time again, joy is the most vulnerable feeling because we are trained to believe like when’s the other shoe gonna drop, right? Like or don’t get too big for our britches or something bad’s gonna happen. So don’t lean into the joy.

Koren (00:03:44) – So there’s this emotional exposure, right? We’re feeling very vulnerable these days and I know sometimes I kinda laugh with curiosity about am I seeing things darker because I’m, I’ve now hit that middle age that I used to judge my parents on of oh why can’t you be more idealistic? Right? But I see all the different shades and there’s the tension of beautiful things and the tension of difficult things As I’m recording today’s podcast, I’m going into this weekend where my daughter’s graduating from university and we’re going into summer, right? And there’s some delightful things and there have been just in today’s shit shows that had occurred and being able to figure it out and move through it, right? And it had nothing to do with her. And looking at schedules of upcoming and there’s some tension and trying to make some decisions about different factors going on .

Koren (00:04:43) – And I was at a meeting quickly with my assistant today and I was like, well here are the shit shows of today. I mean this is what happens. This is real life, right? And this is why I say let us let go of this promised land that once we do all this we’ll be in the promised land, it’ll be smooth sailing, it’s up and down. There’s constant vulnerability, right? So today I wanna talk about creating a resilient culture. I do a lot of this work with my clients. I’ve created resilient cultures over the last, oh gosh, in my professional career. That’s one of the things as a leadership coach, business coach, executive coach, you know, the work that I do is I help my clients create resilient cultures and this is what I’ve done for decades. And it started as being a swim coach, teaching kids how to be resilient, how to get disqualified and not give up on themselves and to overcome that and to create the success they wanted.

Koren (00:05:43) – And those are the small ways that I did it. And then building teams and having them do that and building staff that go with that. And so today I have some stories I wanna share with you all because it’s been really fun to see these humans and where they are today and I’ve been talking about it a lot and sharing it and why not share it with you all. So one of the things that I have labeled myself as is a story collector. I love people’s stories, I love the stories and the inspiration about it. I love the possibility of it. And it goes back to the show of if that is possible for them, what is possible for me. So it’s not about a protocol like you need to do it this way or there’s one right way. But if it can then foster an idea baby for you or can give you a bit of hope in those dark days.

Koren (00:06:36) – Because let’s face it, we all have those dark days but it gives us a bit of hope. That’s where stories are so beneficial. I love having stories, I love being a part of so many people’s journeys. It’s a huge privilege and an honor and it’s also a huge responsibility. So as I shared today’s stories, my invitation is for you to look through it at the lens of like if this is possible for these people, what can be possible for me in my life, in my different arenas. And in leading it could be in parenting because as a parent we are leaders. It can be in leading a team at work, it can be managing, it can be teaching, it can be leading a company. And we have the ability to create a resilient culture. And sometimes that culture is within us. Maybe you don’t have the title of the leader and so you can’t get other people to see, or that may not be your job to do, but about creating a resilient culture within you that can be your contribution to the culture.

Koren (00:07:44) – So one of the things that when we lead this is the vulnerability of it, is that we’re often planting seeds and not knowing what the hell will actually grow, right? What we do is we have this transactional mindset. If I do this, if I work really hard at this, then I want the guarantee that this outcome will happen. that is arguing with reality and we will lose. It’s really vulnerable. Well I wouldn’t know cause I don’t ever garden but to plant a seed and not know what will actually grow from it. And we do this like if you’re a parent, you do this, we hold onto the myths and the beliefs that if we just do it this way, we’re gonna be safe. Parenting is the most vulnerable thing that I do. It is the hardest thing that I do. And I’ve raised four kids, two bonus, two that I birthed.

Koren (00:08:35) – It’s the hardest thing and I’ve been doing it for like 29 years. I think it is really challenging. It is really vulnerable and there’s lots of emotions. There’s risk and there’s uncertainty. We lead and we’re building cultures within our own families, within our friend groups, within our communities and in our professional areas. And often one of the things that gets in the way of my clients is when they’re looking for the right way or the one way, you know, we want to be productive. I get that. I like to be productive and efficient, which can also be a word to do it, say do it perfectly because we don’t wanna waste time and we’re all overwhelmed and we’re doing too much. But what I know for sure is there’s not one right way or one way to do it. And we’re gonna make mistakes along the way and there’s gonna be miscommunication that happens but we can actually achieve the results that we would like to achieve or even something better.

Koren (00:09:38) – Here’s an example, there’s a lot of fear and scarcity in the air about like if you live in the United States about it’s getting harder for kids to get into college, right? That fear has really been dialed up for parents over the last decade. I’ve watched it happen. It’s harder to get into public universities, especially in-state, right? So parents get more and more dialed up with fear and then there’s more pressure. Same thing is happening in youth sports. It’s a major industry and there’s all this fear and scarcity if their kid gets cut from a team, there’s also fear and scarcity in the air because of the talk about this recession and what does that mean without really questioning how that recession is impacting me, right? And I had this conversation with somebody the other day and asked, I said, well you know, is this recession impacting you?

Koren (00:10:36) – And it wasn’t to not go into details like there’s the potential of some of her work being dried up, but the work that she does is such a huge problem for the state of California that they need to still work on solving that problem, right? Because she’s dealing with water and water in California. I mean we have too much of it, which is the irony this year. But often we don’t have enough and water rights have always been and probably will always be a contentious issue in the state of California. There’s a lot of politics, there’s a lot of work that goes on into water rights in our state. So really checking in with, okay, how is this recession affecting you? How is it impacting you? There are job cuts that have been going on. How does that impact you? How does that affect you?

Koren (00:11:28) – So this dials up the fear and scarcity because we start to take that on this is what’s gonna happen to me, but how does it really impact you? And then there’s this other thing that dials up fear and scarcity in the air because it’s like oh there’s something better over there, right? When we need to really look at it, would it be better? Like I was coaching a client this week about that there was kind of this magical thinking of oh if I’m over here doing this job I’ll have security. But actually realizing like oh I can always get laid off or let go because that’s really the reality. I remember, you know, one of the things that was so important to me was to have job security. I was really fortunate at the age of 25, I landed a full-time tenure track position, you know, teaching at a community college and that was like my 11 year old self dream for myself of a job I could never lose, right?

Koren (00:12:23) – I know tenured college professors who have lost their job because departments have been shut down. So the tenure actually doesn’t protect out of context. That younger 11 year old or 25 year old thought, oh I was always safe and I could actually have that safety of that job but not be in a safe environment, which was the case for me. So knowing that there’s fear and scarcity in the air, knowing that you may be dialed up and that is really important to understand. And it goes back to how I introduced the show about understanding your emotions and then really tapping into what is really true for you and what is not. because that is part of developing a resilient culture. So the story I wanna share with you has to do with team cultures and clear is kind and unclear is unkind. So I went to both public school and then I went to private university for grad school and it was so interesting the difference between a public school and a private school.

Koren (00:13:23) – You know, the public school, you don’t pay your tuition, they just kick you outta school. Done. You don’t classes, you’ve gotta run around, you’ve gotta fill petitions and waivers and go through the whole, I would call it the spanking machine process when I was in grad school for private school, they would call up and say, oh Koren, you know your tuition is due today, can you get that in please? So I was always astounded at how nice they were in private school. So getting kicked outta school right can be a really shameful thing and it actually happens quite a bit. And when we don’t have the resilience in us and maybe the support structure to help us through it, it can really become a defining moment. So going to public school, the boundaries were clear, you would get kicked out, then there would be a waiver process to get back through the steps to get readmitted.

Koren (00:14:14) – And when the people that I knew had the support system and for them it was athletics and having a team, they weren’t gonna be defined. It was like okay, this happened. Well you’re not the only one and here you go. So back in the nineties , we had a swimmer who, you know when you’re a student athlete. There’s all types of ideas about student athletes. But one of the things I appreciate about swimmers is I call it a blue collar sport where you need white collar funds because it is a six day a week sport, 20 hours a week, mornings and nights. It’s a hard sport and you train 50 weeks of the year. So it’s pretty intense, you know, high achievers, you work really hard and then swimmers tend to expect to have really good grades because there’s no riches at the end of your collegiate swimming career or for very few, right?

Koren (00:15:04) – But that didn’t even come about until the later in the two thousands more with Michael Phelps. So we had this swimmer and I’m gonna call him Brady, and he is an example of somebody who had shame resilience, right? He got kicked outta school academically and he was a bio sci major and he’d get kicked out because he just wasn’t, you know, passing his classes. And that’s one of the things that can happen is you can have good grades coming out of high school and then you go to that next tier and maybe you’re an A student and then all of a sudden you’re getting C’s and D’s and do you have that growth mindset that Carol Dweck talks about? Or do you have a fixed mindset where you make it mean that you’re not smart, there’s something wrong with you. And then that self-doubt triggers. So he got kicked outta school because of his grades.

Koren (00:15:55) – The other thing that would happen is he would get kicked off the team because he was held to be accountable when he missed practice. So a bit of a mess, right? As an undergrad and you guys, this is what happens, this is part of learning and growing. When you make mistakes and you learn and you grow and you fall down and you get back up, we have to have the opportunities to get back up. He got kicked off the team. I remember the guys would say, and this is when my husband was coaching this team, but the guys would say, you know to him, we’ll call him Brady. Brady, all you need to do and remember this is back in the nineties, so we had landlines, all you need to do is call Pete’s office and leave a voicemail when he’s on the deck and you don’t even have to talk to him, you just call him and say Hey this is Brady, I missed morning practice.

Koren (00:16:48) – And then you didn’t get a strike, right? So there was accountability. If you missed practice, you got a strike. If you didn’t call in, you have three strikes, you’re off the team, very clear, clear rules, clear is kind, unclear is unkind, right? It was very clear he got three strikes and he got kicked off the team, right? And then he got kicked outta school because of academics. So there may have been some deep struggle in there, but that’s an example of owning your story, right? And his teammates owned a story and said, Hey here’s what you need to do. They, you know, and they may have laughed or whatever, maybe laughed at him because again this was the nineties, but there was that, you know? And so then he’d have to work to get back on the team and work to get back into school.

Koren (00:17:33) – But he did. And in the end he wound up graduating from the university, he finished his collegiate swimming career. He knew that there were, he had coaches and I was one of them at the time and there were a couple of us other, there was about three of us there and we would talk with him. And then part of it was also him realizing like, hey, I’m not suited for this biosci thing. And then you know, finding out more about what he was suited for. And that’s part of the feeling of being able to understand like here’s this idea I have as a 17 year old when I’m applying to school of what I want to do, what’s really landing with me and what’s not and not having shame about it. So Adam Grant had this great post saying that, you know, refusing to give up on a failing plan is not an act of resilience, it’s a display of rigidity, right?

Koren (00:18:25) – So it took the student and the student athlete some time to understand like, okay, if I keep going at this for whatever reason things aren’t landing for me. Oh guess what? I’m at a university with a lot of different majors and he was a little concerned because he goes, if I do that, the only thing I can do is think he became a history major, the only thing I can do is teach history. He happened to blurt it out to us and we’re like, actually history is a critical thinking major. Teaches you how to think and how to move through things and it doesn’t mean you become a history teacher. So now we’ll fast forward, that’s like the mid nineties, it’s 2023 and he’s really risen, he’s had lots of turns in his career, right? And he works with diplomats like he was in I think Southeast Asia at this diplomatic event.

Koren (00:19:13) – I get a picture sent about him like here is the guy who got kicked out of university, got kicked off of his swim team, you know, and both a couple of times and he’s been resilient and he’s had grit and he found a way through and here he is doing diplomatic work. That’s a pretty cool story, right? So remember refusing to give up on a failing plan is not an act of resilience, it’s a display of rigidity. He could have been really dogmatic about the bio sci and kept saying, I, this is what I want to do and keep trying, but without trying to figure out how to solve that, right? And what he did find out is, hey, there’s something else that I’m actually really good at that I really find interesting and it allows me to graduate and then move forward with my life.

Koren (00:19:59) – And he did that and he’s, you know, been, he’s done all kinds of great work over the last 20 years and some really cool stuff now. And his teammates love to see how he’s prospered. So he became one of the backbone stories of this culture of hey you can mess up, you can get kicked outta school, you can get kicked off the team and it doesn’t define you. And yes, you’ll have to be responsible and you’ll need to be accountable. You may need to learn some, you know, skill sets about following through on things or being brave like we didn’t have this language back in the nineties. Be brave and make the call right and own your accountability. But he learned those things because he fell down and then he was surrounded by people who had a growth mindset and who were willing to say this isn’t defining of you.

Koren (00:20:47) – So his ups and downs became part of the culture of the team being resilient, earning second chances, getting back into school and it not defining you or one’s worth. This is an example of Brené’s, one of my favorite quotes of hers. Owning your story and loving yourself. It’s the bravest thing we can do. And it’s not that you don’t have shame, like kind of like, oh you know, I’m such an idiot, right? That’s often what we’ll say. It’s not that we don’t, he didn’t maybe have shame, I don’t think he knew what it was. I definitely didn’t know what it was. I was trying to outrun it back in the nineties. He was like, yeah I got kicked outta school or yeah I didn’t make those phone calls. I got kicked off the team. And then he kept showing back up. We kept his eye on the goal of graduating.

Koren (00:21:38) – So I didn’t have that Brené quote back in the mid nineties and honestly I don’t think it would’ve landed with a bunch of college men loving yourself because it doesn’t really land with my male clients on the first go around. And often and really actually many times like we have to kind of get in there about like, you know, really working on that language because often loving ourselves, it’s about developing, you know, being okay with being into emotions. It’s not bad to have an emotion, right? But we’ve been so taught to armor up. So when one has a culture of shit happens and let’s focus on getting out of this so that you can be here with the team as well as obtain the goal of graduating and becoming a contributor to society that allows for resilience. What we so often do and what doesn’t create resilient cultures is when we judge and be like, man he’s an idiot.

Koren (00:22:33) – Why can’t he get his shit together? What’s wrong with him? And have that judgment or yeah, it’s not possible for you. These mistakes now define who you’ll be in your life that is not developing a resilient culture that’s adding to the shame that’s already in there and it’s creating a shame culture. Often when things fall apart, we get into these shame spirals, leaders get into them, you know, parents get into them, we get into them ourselves. And when we get into those shame spirals, what often happens is there’s coddling, right? There’s like, and this is what Carol Dweck will talk about with the fixed mindset. The kids who got a really bad grade on the test, the parents went to them and it was like they started blaming the test instead of saying, hey, what can be learned from this so that you can understand so that when you retake the test you can do better.

Koren (00:23:28) – But it’s about oftentimes what happens is blaming the test or telling the child that no you’re still, I’ll say you’re still a superstar because that’s kind of what’s happening right now with a lot of kids is they’re told they’re superstars right? When they fail because the parents want their self-esteem to be protected, right? Versus allowing it to be where it’s not about their self-esteem, it’s about oh here’s this problem, we’ve now got information of what you may not understand. So let’s look at how you can learn that so that when you go back to this you’ll be able to get the results that you’re looking for. So we don’t want coddling because that’s part of what happens in shame spirals. The other is arguing with reality. You know, when the test was really stupid or I shouldn’t get kicked out of the university that was just stupid, arguing with reality.

Koren (00:24:21) – Like I’m often saying to my clients, are you arguing with reality? Because we lose a hundred percent of the time when we think this shouldn’t be happening. I’ve reframed that to of course this is happening like oh and I take a deep breath and I exhale and then I figure out like, okay, where do I go from here? But arguing with reality we lose a hundred percent of the time. The other thing that happens when things fall apart, we go into a shame spiral, is we can shut down as we believe we’re the only ones. And that’s why I love to share these stories because it starts to give us resilience of like, hey, if that happened to them and they can get kicked outta school, get kicked off a team, their teammates can still appreciate them. They find the way back and they’ve made it through their career and then now they’re doing this high diplomat work level of stuff internationally, right?

Koren (00:25:10) – There’s a lot of security clearances one must go through, he’s doing pretty well, right? We’re not the only ones. And here’s the thing is that I’ve had more than my shares of these moments and times in my life where I really believed I was the only one. Brené’s first book, it was originally titled Women and Shame and then it’s been retitled since then too. I thought it was just me. Alright, how often have you thought you were the only one? The thing is, is that the common humanity is we’ve all been through different struggles. It may look a little bit different on the outside, but we have more common humanity of going through this, of having these experiences. We’re not the only ones. And the other thing that happens when we’re in this shame spiral is that we define our failures as who we are instead of something that has occurred and how we can overcome and along with what is the support that we need.

Koren (00:26:07) – So a few weeks ago I had the pleasure and privilege of, we had a reunion of a bunch of athletes and they were from 95 to like the mid two thousands that, you know, so they swam during that period of time and it was fun because you know they’re grown adults now. They have families, they’re engineers, fathers, surgeons, entrepreneurs, you know professionals, right? They’re just doing, they’re doctors. And it was so fun because I knew them when they were 18. I mean one of the guys, he’s an engineer and does water rights as well. And I remember I was pregnant with my daughter who’s graduating this weekend and I went with my husband on the home visit and went to their house, which, here’s a little backstory, this goes back to inspiration and possibility. We were talking about remodeling our house and I had a lot of resistance because I couldn’t see it.

Koren (00:27:03) – I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to have something that was kind of piecemealed together and I didn’t think it was possible to not have that because I had my own limitations based on what I had seen growing up and friends’ homes and I didn’t want that. So I remember going to their house and walking in and going, oh look at what is possible. This is an amazing remodel. It’s all put together. And I was like, if that is possible for them, what could be possible for me? It inspired me, which then allowed us to, and we did this remodel that I’d love to this day and it came from this home visit. So that’s where again, I say you never know where life is a classroom and where those teachable moments were. I thought I was going to support my husband and here I came out of something that helped me break through an obstacle I couldn’t see.

Koren (00:27:55) – Anyways, he’s an engineer, he’s at the house and just watching these people and you know I’ve known all their falling down moments and their shit shows and to see them and who they’ve become and it’s so rewarding. It’s so cool. And then there was another swimmer who came and he has a great story that I wanna share because he came at a time when the department was going through a massive transition. They were transitioning from being division two in NCAA to division one. And so, the level of athleticism was getting faster and faster and you know, my husband’s really competitive, he likes to be good and you know, he was also like, hey if we’re good this will be good for our program. And when you work in athletic departments, wins are really important, right? It’s athletics. And so that was an important thing.

Koren (00:28:47) – So he was really clear about the team’s goals and so one of the things he would say to the guys was, every year our team is getting faster and my goal is to help you be faster and you may still get cut next year because the team is continuing to rise and get faster. Where every year we’re getting, my goal is to have this team get better. You may think about this and be able to see this in your own professional culture of there may be huge goals that your company or you have for your department or your division. And what may happen is some people may not be able to grow at the rate, it doesn’t mean they’re bad people. There may be certain constraints, right? Whether they’re put upon by you as the leader or maybe you have shareholders that you have to answer to.

Koren (00:29:34) – A board of directors, a CEO, we all have the constraints of how we need to answer to this. In my husband’s case, he had an athletic director, right, that he had an answer to and then he had some given constraints as well because he was coaching a men’s team at the time and he had a cap on the number of guys he could have. My husband would’ve taken a team of 50 guys. That coaching that many people was not a constraint for him, right? He loved coaching and he loved turning pods into studs. But the athletic department, because of what they’ll say is Title IX gender equity was that he was only allowed to have so many spots. And it’s interesting because this is a whole other subject, but you know, oftentimes departments will say Title IX and then the women get blamed really when the problem is the lack of boundaries and constraints around football and the massive teams there and the distribution of things, right?

Koren (00:30:28) – So that’s a whole other show I’m not gonna go into. But basically Pete had a cap on the number of spots that he had and he’s trying to make this team better and swimming is a very factual thing, right? Because it goes off of times it’s very objective in that sense. I knew about this kid and I remember Pete had come home from an awards banquet one day and he’s like, oh man, he goes, the guys voted him captain so I can’t cut him. He goes because he was like, I was kinda looking at who I have coming in for next year. What does the team have? Who’s gonna score points at conference and you know, who’s gonna be our top performers? And this kid wasn’t gonna make it but the guys voted him Captain because he’s such a good leader and they really liked him.

Koren (00:31:17) – And so Pete had to figure out like, okay, I’m gonna honor that and how do we still work on the team goals? This is the messiness of life, what we think in these, you know, magical thinking is like, oh slower people I can get rid of. We’ll just move on, we’ll move forward. It’s not, life isn’t that clean cut. So I knew that story. What I did not know is when he told me about when he got cut his sophomore year in college, he had been at home moving some hay for his dad hurt his back. And like most 18, 19 year olds do, oh that’s okay, I’ll just sit on the couch and recover and it’ll heal and get better. So he comes into preseason totally outta shape, right? Totally outta shape. And they go through preseason training and I think it’s about like a six week process before Pete has to cut anyone.

Koren (00:32:07) – And eventually Pete cuts him and he’s pretty bummed and devastated. You know, he loves being a part of the team and swimming and that’s been his identity and that’s a huge loss. So kudos to him because you know, after the season he comes back to Pete and he’s, and he’s brave, right? He really desires, wants to be a part of this team. He’s not one of the fast guys obviously and he messed up. But again, this is this ability to own our story, right? And stand with ourselves. So maybe, maybe like loving yourself is problematic for you but like he was able to stand with himself and say go to the coach and say hey, if I train really, really hard and I come back the best shape I’ve ever been in my life, what are my chances of making the team that my friend is an excellent quality question, right?

Koren (00:32:59) – So often we don’t ask that question because it’s tremendously vulnerable and it takes a lot of courage. And instead what our brain does to try to protect us is blame pe blame the university or want something that’s a hundred percent guaranteed, right? Or we ask a really crappy question. But instead he asked a great question, what are my chances? And Pete said 70 to 75% if you came back in the best shape of your life and this kid went done, he trained really hard and he’s also a genetics major and being a science major at UC Davis, no joke, it is hard and gruesome and you’re going up against students who aren’t taking 20 hours a week to go and train and then recover from athletics who are, you know, in there grinding away, working really hard in school. So he did it and he made it back on the team and then eventually the next year he was voted captain, right?

Koren (00:34:00) – So this resilient story, I’m sure he’d heard the Brady story that I told you about. He’d heard all these different stories about guys getting kicked outta school, getting kicked off the team. You know, there was the Wayne’s world, Pete would talk about to the guys about you know, what are my chances if I were the last guy on the planet? What are my chances that I’d have a date with you to Tia Carrere? And she said, he goes, well if I’m the last person on the planet and everybody else is dead, she’s like oh one at a million, he’s like done, right? Like it’s cultivating that mindset of like what are my chances? And being okay with small percentages. What we want is we want guarantees. That’s not vulnerable. Guarantees are not vulnerable. Vulnerability is the pathway to what we want. And there’s constraints just like I read with that Adam Grant thing, but willing to go do that and be on himself and stand on himself.

Koren (00:34:52) – So here’s where the story gets really cool. So after he graduates, right, he’s a great leader, graduates, he’s applying to medical school and he’s getting rejected. And right now, like I have a good family friend, their daughter’s getting rejected from a nursing school, right? And that’s actually a really common thing. Medical school, nursing school, you know graduate school that happens. So you know, he didn’t get in and he worked as a pharmaceutical rep and then he kept applying and then he decided to do an alternate way instead of going to straight medical school, he went to do school, which is osteopathy, became a doctor of osteopathy. Now for some people who go into the status of like, oh is that as good as a medical doctor? And you know there’s some people who can perceive it as less. And I remember he came over and we were talking about it and I said, well you know, one of my PCPs actually went to DIO school and she’s fantastic.

Koren (00:35:49) – Like I really, you know, enjoy her and she’s been a great doctor and she understands, you know, she can manipulate the body. And so anyways, he goes off to do school, then he goes into a residency because he wants to be a surgeon and he goes into residency and he does it in Detroit. He’s telling us a story. He is like, it was really, really the coldest winter in Detroit. He didn’t have much money because he was a resident. So his pipes froze I think only like the bathtub worked, right? But he persevered and he had grit in there. He met his wife while he’s resident there, she was a resident as well and he got his skills and then he continued on and now he is the surgeon in an area that really, really needs him because it’s more, I’m not gonna say the name because I should protect his identity, but it’s in a remote area, right?

Koren (00:36:50) – Like, I mean it’s further away from, in a hospital like you’d have to helicopter into a major city or fly into a major city. So he has gotten a lot of really good skills in being a surgeon and he is this badass surgeon now and he’s a go-to and he will perform surgeries because he’s been able to practice and continue to practice and he has this growth mindset and he has this ability to rise back up. He’s able to help a lot of people and he does it with tremendous empathy. So not only does he have the technical skills, he has the human skills of a leader. And this was a guy whose heart was broken because he was so sad that he didn’t get into medical school right away. It’s so hard when you’re graduating and people are going off to their next thing and maybe it’s not happening for you in that moment, right?

Koren (00:37:40) – But it’s so cool to see who he is now and to see all these things. And I asked him, I said, so how is it to be living your dream? And he looked at me with a big smile and he goes, it’s pretty darn amazing. He has this wife, she’s a doctor, they’ve got, you know, this garden where they’re, you know, growing stuff. They are just living their dream and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t shit shows or that the last few years aren’t a problem or that our medical system in the US is difficult, right? But you have people with a resilient spirit. And so it’s really important that we can create resilient cultures so that it allows people to grow and to become who they can be in their life, right? And it was, it’s been so fun to watch these athletes seeing who they’ve become in their adult life and it coming from a place of a resilient culture.

Koren (00:38:43) – So as I share this story with you, I’m talking about 2023 and I think he graduated like 2004, 2003, somewhere around there. So it’s been a long time. So my invitation for you is give yourself the space of time to see if what you have done is working. You plant a lot of seeds, oftentimes in the work that we do, we may not know did what I do really make a difference? And that’s where we have to trust ourselves and go back to what are the values, right? Are people like if they get kicked outta school, you’re gonna know it’s a win. If they can work through the steps to come back, if they make a mistake, are they willing to rise again? Are you part of that support structure that helps them without doing it for them or coddling them? That becomes really, really blurry sometimes.

Koren (00:39:37) – And I work with a lot of my clients on getting clear about that and what that looks like. So you can see for those small wins and we recognize those, we don’t know how it’s all gonna flourish in the end until we see time and time take its shape. So as you’re building a resilient culture, remember it’s not a one-time thing. You’re gonna make a lot of mistakes. Times will change and adapt and what was able to be said in the nineties is no longer acceptable in these times, right? Like there’s things that we had to pivot on and especially now the more that I know there were things I’ve had to unlearn, right? As a leader, same with my husband as a leader. And then if you can find stories of resilience in your culture to share and talk about it, not with the mocking but of like, of like, wow, that person was really brave, they went and did X and that’s really intimidating to do.

Koren (00:40:35) – You know, they lost an account and then they went back and owned their part with that account, with that business and were able to at least create a conversation or maybe they were able to regain that account, right? That’s the magical thinking that we want to live happily ever after. But if they can rebuild that relationship, that’s actually the win in the short term as a leader shares what’s possible. I mean in the United States, right? We love that in the United States, that’s, our movies are made of that. We love that. And that’s part of what’s contributed to the US’ innovation and growth and wealth. And I realize not every country has that. There’s some countries that have more of a fixed mindset about it and shame and hierarchy and judgment are such huge obstacles, right? And defining who you are based on where you’re born or based on who your family is can be limiting factors.

Koren (00:41:28) – But the thing is, is it possible and look within the constraints that you have, okay? The other thing that’s really an important element, and I work on this day in and day out, is to provide a culture of support along with clear feedback. There’s too much back channeling that’s happening in the workplace. There’s too much back channeling that’s happening in families, right? Especially as we get older and we’re adults and then the family of origin, right? There’s all this back challenge versus having clear communication. Clear communication doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. That’s not clear communication, that’s unkind, right? Clear communication is, you know, I feel judged when you tell me I should do something. Can you please ask me instead of telling me what I should do, can you ask me about why? Because maybe there’s a reason why we do it this way.

Koren (00:42:23) – So clear communication is really important. The other part is, if you wanna provide a culture of resilience, we need to let go of this idea of firing and going and finding somebody new versus working and cultivating the workplace of what we want. I have a client who’s, you know, a new leader like in the last year and she’s doing really brave and amazing work. It’s been so cool to work with her as she’s learning like she rumbles and gets frustrated, you know, with employees on her team and what they don’t do and the impact to the rest of the team. That’s all fine. That’s verbal vomit that I am her place. It’s confidential, right? And then she’s had to have these difficult conversations with her employees with the intention of it’s not about firing you, it’s about how do we get more clear so you have a better understanding of what the team needs and what are you doing right?

Koren (00:43:15) – And where the gap is so that we can solve this. And it’s really cool because she had an employee on an improvement plan and a PIP who’s really making huge strides to improvement. We have to hold that vision for them as leaders and hold them accountable, right? That takes courage. It’s not the happily ever after, which we all want. We want this problem to be solved. We wanna say it once, right? And move forward. That is not how human behavior works. So provide a culture of support. Clear feedback is important. And here’s the thing, in order for you to do that, you have to be brave. And that means you have to be resourced and you have to have not only capacity, but you have to fill up your capacity, right? So resources, being able to take care of yourself, having good sleep, being able to take care of yourself so that you can go and do this courageous work.

Koren (00:44:07) – As we close today, what key insights do you wanna take away from this show and apply in you creating a resilient culture. Because here’s the thing, these are all learnable skill sets. I’ve learned them. These are decades falling down, you know, figuring things out as we went. There were lots of mistakes made, none of it was perfect. Sometimes things were said that were maybe too abrupt, locking tone, right? And there’s the ability in the human relationship to circle back, right? And rebuild and rebuild trust and to be vulnerable. So what are the insights that you wanna take to help build a culture of resilience in your life? And it always starts with ourselves being resilient and inside of yourself as we are resilient with others. If you or someone you know would benefit in creating a resilient culture in their workplace, I help people do that. So go to howshereallydoesit.com and click with Work with Koren and we’ll also have a link in the podcast page and we can take all this stuff and actually apply it and integrate it in your life. It’s one thing to have the knowledge out here, it’s another to do it with somebody else where you can have that space and accountability yourself and support so that you can be the brave leader you wanna be. All right, I’m smiling big for you.

Koren (00:45:35) – Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you’ll love my weekly emails. I know you’re thinking Koren, really? Do I want another email in my overflowing inbox? Yes you do. Yippy, Skippy, you do. These are short, they’re sweet. On Fridays I send out the Friday podcast. It’s a great reminder that there’s a new show and it comes straight into your inbox of the latest episode. Awesome. You click on it, you go straight because we all need reminders. We have busy full lives. And then on Sundays I have my Sunday love column. And these are emails I write from the heart. They’re filled with love. We need more love. We all do, myself included, these are short emails where you get a quick take away so you can incorporate this into your life because people often wanna know what to do and how to do it, and maybe sometimes it’s a story that you get.

Koren (00:46:33) – Or there’s like one time I wrote about the 10 Ways to Practice Gratitude. And that became such a great tool when one of the readers was struggling in the middle of the night because it can be a scary place in our brains in the middle of the night. And she remembered the email that I sent about 10 Ways to Practice Gratitude. And she was able to practice gratitude and fall back asleep. And that was an awesome lesson for her to incorporate into her life. Go to the show notes and there’s a link in the show notes where you can sign up and get these emails in your box.

Music (00:47:18) – She’s dreaming, she’s drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else than she would rather be.