1st Lead U - Leadership Development

Bouncing Back: The Art of Resilient Leadership - CHART - EP 326

• John Ballinger • Season 3 • Episode 326

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Resilience is a critical component of leadership, defined as the ability to adapt to stressors while maintaining psychological well-being in the face of adversity. John and Douglas discuss practical approaches to developing this essential leadership quality in today's challenging environment.

• Leaders across America are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress and emotional depletion
• 50% of parents now financially support adult children over 18, spending an average of $1,500 monthly
• Ineffective coping with high-pressure situations damages trust and increases organizational instability
• Learning to be comfortable with discomfort is essential for leadership growth
• Five critical steps to becoming a resilient leader: 

  1. cultivate self-awareness, 
  2. manage stress, 
  3. seek support, 
  4. continuously learn, and 
  5. engage in reflection

• These five elements are interconnected, with each component reinforcing the others
• Journaling is an effective tool for both self-reflection and processing leadership challenges
• "The capacity to learn is a gift. The ability to learn is a skill. The willingness to learn is a choice" - Brian Herbert

Homework Challenge:

Take one of the five resilience components you find most challenging, identify three reasons why it's difficult for you, and start intentionally developing that character trait during the final quarter of the year.


Announcer:

Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.

John Ballinger:

Hello America and welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.

Announcer:

Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.

John Ballinger:

Hello leaders, my name is John Ballinger. I am with First Lead U and I'm here with my trusted co-host, mr douglas ford. Hello douglas.

Douglas Ford:

Hello john, how are you today? I'm good, yourself doing good. It's a beautiful day. It was a beautiful weekend, it was a beautiful week very nice well, there was a storm on saturday, but, but yesterday was awesome.

John Ballinger:

You know, there's storms just crop up everywhere. You know, sometimes in our lives, sometimes outside there's just storm um. So we are in our chart acrostic, going through our r's, and today's r is resiliency.

Douglas Ford:

I wonder if we'll be able to bounce back from that.

John Ballinger:

I don't know. I'm going to read a statistic from an article talking about having to be a resilient parent. Oh yeah, for the first time, the share of parents financially supporting a child older than 18 reached 50%, according to a news report, and this is March 2025. According to a news report, and this is march 2025, parents now spend about fifteen hundred dollars a month on average on their adult children.

John Ballinger:

Wow, now you. You could talk about a lot of things that cause that one. You could talk about lazy kids. You could talk about kids that leave college, that are in debt, because a lot, if you read the article, a lot of these kids leave college, get a job but move back home because they can't afford rent plus paying debt, uh playing their loans back, plus bar, plus cell phone, and guess what utilities and they got some college credit card debt while they were there too.

John Ballinger:

So now they've got that hanging over, so they don't just have the debt from loans, they've got credit card debt that they're bringing back with them. And so you've got the parents, and now I've got to $1,500 a month to somebody that has a job, but you're still having to. So what's a month to somebody that's making? You know, having that has a job but you're still having to. So what's that do to the parent? Well, it reduces their capacity, Right Reduces their income, so there could be some debt being created by that.

Douglas Ford:

Oh, absolutely Right, Absolutely.

John Ballinger:

So it's going to take. Resiliency Isn't just for leadership, it is a critical component to leadership. But we've got to become resilient as a society because of what we're faced with right now. And when I saw that article I said I'm going to read that article and to kick off how important it is to learn to be resilient as a leader. So I'm going to read the definition resilient as a leader. So I'm going to read the definition the ability to successfully adapt to stressors, maintaining psychological well-being in the face of adversity. I read that and I went back and read it and what jumped out at me was maintaining. Went back and read it and what jumped out at me was maintaining psychological well-being. Because of all the podcasts that we've done, we've talked about how leaders are mentally and socially and emotionally bankrupt. We've read whether it's the leader that's in a position, the business owner and even executives of large corporations that have raised their hands, say I'm out and I can't handle this anymore right, well, so let me back up for a second.

Douglas Ford:

So maybe, uh, another, perhaps better word is depleted, like they're depleted and all this I mean bankrupt, sometimes can come with different connotations. So they're just they're.

John Ballinger:

They don't have emotional well-being, they don't have mental well-being, they don't have, um, sometimes even physical well-being, because some of the other things are involved in yeah, depleted their, their tanks empty yeah, yeah, I just didn't want people misunderstood the bankrupt part yeah, that's, that's a good thought, uh, but regardless of we know right now the leaders in america are challenged in a lot of emotional ways.

Douglas Ford:

Absolutely right and so that everybody, everybody's actually challenged in a lot of emotional ways. It's like society is very much on edge right now.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, so psychological, psychological wellbeing is important.

Douglas Ford:

Absolutely.

John Ballinger:

And it was. It's a critical piece of the definition of this. So I actually did some research, psychological research, on what it takes to foster and maintain psychological well-being. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. In order for a leader to do that, to foster their own mental and emotional health, they have to be more effective in their leadership roles, so they've got to be more capable, more able. They have to be resilient, empathetic, while also creating a work culture that supports the well-being and psychological safety of the entire team. So they're having to we've said this in the past they're having to fix their self, work on their self in order to work on their team, in order to work on their team Right, In order to lead their team.

Douglas Ford:

Can we go back and kind of break each one of those down in turn?

John Ballinger:

real quickly, so you got to be more effective as a leader.

Douglas Ford:

So there needs to be some self-improvement there.

John Ballinger:

Self-awareness. Right that you need self-awareness.

Douglas Ford:

And then probably some mentoring, some that you need so um, and then, uh, probably some some mentoring, some guidance, uh, okay.

John Ballinger:

So you've got to learn to be more resilient. Remember this is physical wellbeing. So you which means you've got to learn to bounce back, remember to, you've got to learn how to uh take criticism Like I mean criticism like I mean criticism to douglas if you're in a leadership position, you know you're being hit constantly with critiques and some of those critiques aren't positive critiques right they're not people sitting down saying I just want you to know exactly.

John Ballinger:

You're doing a great job yeah, yeah, it's not a lot of that. There's not a lot of that.

Douglas Ford:

There's not a lot of that and again, I mean, I think, everybody, I think, from a societal standpoint, we have reduced our capacity to be able to take criticism, like you know, and I think there's a certainly a time and a place for a lot of positivity and supporting everyone, and you know, to use a term from a couple weeks ago, employee cheerleadership. But and I think part of that comes because people also don't know how to deliver criticism, like we'll talk about a little bit later. But being able to separate the effort or the outcome from the person, and so many times, I think, the leader or the outcome from the person, and so many times I think the leader or the person providing the criticism doesn't know how to do that either. It's like if you fail, it's you, not you. Your result wasn't what we needed. We need something different. So how do you you separate those two, the individual from the effort, right, empathetic, which is what I was just talking about.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, yeah, while also so you've got to. So think about learning to be an effective leader who's resilient, empathetic, while at the same time creating a workplace culture that supports the well-being and psychological safety of their team too right, and if you don't know how to kind of safeguard your own psychological wellbeing, how are you going to create an environment that allows other people Well create?

Douglas Ford:

how do you go and create an environment that does that for other people and or help them create that for themselves?

John Ballinger:

Right. So this is the. This is the challenging part of resiliency, and we're going to get further into the challenges and then we're going to come up with five critical items to help you learn to become resilient. But one of the most important things that someone has to learn to do from a leadership standpoint is learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Now we've talked about that I know there's if we went back and listened to our podcast. That's been said many times, but it's very challenging as a leader to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable so what do we mean by that?

John Ballinger:

it means that in your challenges that you have as a leader, so you're you're becoming self-aware and you know I'm challenged with this. I'm uncomfortable with doing these things, but I've got to learn how to be comfortable doing these things, even though they're uncomfortable to me. I don't like them, it's what I'm not naturally wired to do. You've actually got to put work in in order to learn how to do the things that you need to do as a leader.

Douglas Ford:

Right now we're not talking about I don't know, a good example doesn't come to mind but, as you said, that one of the things that comes to mind. So working genius. We use working genius as one of our assessments when we start working with somebody or an individual or company, and they break it down. You have geniuses, you have competencies and they have frustrations frustrations. So most of the time, our frustrations may be areas we can be highly competent in those areas as well in terms of our capabilities of doing something, but they could be areas where we we find them to be uncomfortable for whatever reason.

Douglas Ford:

Um, I mean, public speaking, for example, is something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Uh, how do you overcome that? And there's, there's ways to do that, but, uh, but it is. Are you talking about professionally uncomfortable, personally uncomfortable, like they need to be things that are positive for you, right? I mean, we're not talking about doing dangerous things or things that are counterproductive, but but things that, if you look at it and like it would be good if I could, but I don't, because of this.

John Ballinger:

One of the number one things leaders struggle with is having difficult conversations with people. What do you do to do that you get somebody that you trust and practice? I mean, tomorrow, I've got you going to bullet me because I'm going to be deposed on a matter that I'm working on, right, and the attorney I'm the expert witness for it said man, this guy's going to hit you hard, right, right. So I'm going to have you work with me to hit me hard to see how I react to some of the questions I know he's going to ask, right. So that's what I'm talking about. If, if it's uncomfortable for you to have difficult conversations with your leadership team, use somebody to practice on it so you get better at it, and have them do counterpoint. So, when you say something, have them push back on you, because you'll start learning to be nimble mentally as you do that.

Douglas Ford:

And a lot of that has to do with with preparation.

Douglas Ford:

I mean, you do that and a lot of that has to do with with preparation.

Douglas Ford:

I mean, um, I mean you're being prepared to go in that conversation versus just knowing, oh, I've got to have this difficult conversation, so I'm just gonna run here and have this conversation. Well, it's probably not going to go the way you want it to go, and as soon as you get pushed back, your mind's going to be, so you know, keyed up about, uh, having the conversation or doing whatever it is, that you're not going to be able to, like I said, respond appropriately, whereas if you've walked through that same scenario mentally several times prior to in practice or however you do, that, you're much more able to handle when problems come at you. I mean, it's kind of like you know a quarterback, you know the reason they have scout teams on football teams is so, so a quarterback can see different defenses that could be thrown at them and they know how to adjust. And, as opposed to just showing up on Saturday, you know it's like, all right, here we go. Whatever y'all want to do, I'm just going to adjust to to be more successful, right.

John Ballinger:

Second, do something of effort, something that takes effort on something that you didn't, that you don't really do all the time. So this could be and I know this is a crazy but I have a lot of people tell me I've never worked on a car before, I don't even know how to work on a car. I don't even know how to lift the hood on a car. And I'll tell them you know what? Go change a battery or go take an alternator off and put it back on. There could be absolutely nothing wrong with it. But just go do it to prove to yourself that you can do it. It'll gain confidence because you just don't know. So pick some things that you just normally wouldn't do because you don't know how to do them, and then try and go do them. Build a box. I mean, just pick something, because you're going to find out when you get to the end of it oh, I can do that.

John Ballinger:

And it helps with resiliency, the ability to bounce back by difficult situation. Part of being resilient is a. This just happened. It sucked the life out of me. It's stuck with the business, but I've got to bounce back. I can't just let it fall, because your people, your people are looking at you.

John Ballinger:

So the ability to bounce back as a leader is critical to resiliency. And then, as you're bouncing back, you may be faced with something that caused you to really be stressed, and that's the scrutiny. You got the information, made the decision, you put the plan in place and you failed as a leader. So not only did you fail, which is going to create a bounce back, you're probably going to be scrutinized because of that, and so now you've got a double kind of a double whammy, if you will. You get your people looking at you like what was that about? Because you're actually impacting the company. Every decision you make that doesn't go the way that you felt like it should go or that needs to go is causing scrutiny and put self-doubt in you as a leader. Like I thought I had the information, I thought this was a good thing and I failed at it, and so it creates self-doubt. And what happens with that self-doubt the next time something tough comes up? How do you react to that?

Douglas Ford:

yeah, you probably pull back pull back.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, one of the um books I've read recently that kind of addresses a lot of this.

Douglas Ford:

Um is um, the hard thing about hard things.

Douglas Ford:

It's a great read not for everybody, but I thought it was a great book that really and it'll go into some very practical ways in which you can do things like have difficult conversations with your team how do you let somebody go, you know, I mean it's very much business focused, but it also approaches it from the standpoint of when you have to do hard things. You want it to have some benefit for both parties. Even if it's a difficult thing and it's going to be a difficult outcome for somebody else, like letting them go or something like that do it in such a way that honors them and leaves them with dignity and is clear cut and is clear cut. So if you, if, if you're emerging as a leader or you've had difficulty with some of these things that John's talked about today with the difficult conversations, I recommend that book, Kylie. It gives you some very practical steps, not just that about making other business decisions that are, you know, purely just business decisions, Like how do you accomplish some of these things.

John Ballinger:

It's a great book to help with start you on a road to resiliency yeah, I'm going to read the definition of what it takes to withstand scrutiny, and then we're going to take a break and come back and we're going to talk about how. Now, how do you become a resilient leader? What are the steps it takes? But, uh, this it says to in order to be able to withstand scrutiny means you're is something that remains valid, effective or true when subject to close critical examination or intense study, so you can remain. Listen that one more time. You can remain valid, effective or true when subjected to close critical examination or intense study. How many people, when they start getting scrutinized, can maintain valid, effective or true to themselves under decision?

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, it's pretty difficult, especially if you have any confidence issues at all. You immediately start internalizing that, and I think we'll talk more about that after the break.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, so when we get back from break, we're going to be talking about the things that a leader needs to do in order to learn to be resilient. We'll be back.

Douglas Ford:

Hello First League Youth listeners, douglas Ford here. I want to take just a few seconds during this break to say thank you for spending a few moments with us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a leader, for spending a few moments with us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a leader. We hope that in every episode you find some bit of information that will help you on your own personal leadership journey. In order to reach more people and to improve our positioning on all the podcasting and social media platforms, it's important that you subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, like Apple, spotify or any other platform where you listen to First Lead you. We would really appreciate you clicking on the subscribe button to help us reach more people and expand the message of First Lead you, and please take time to visit the First Lead you website. That's the number one S-T, the word lead and the letter ucom. First lead ucom. Number one st the word lead and the letter ucom.

Douglas Ford:

I hope you have a great day as you continue to learn to first lead. Hello and welcome back to First League U. Today we are talking about the next R in our chart acrostic, so we are on resiliency. Previously we've done respect and relationships, and today we're talking about resiliency and what it means to be a resilient leader, and we will walk through several things that you need to be able to utilize to be a resilient leader five critical things that John's going to talk about and walk us through and share what it means to actually implement some strategies to become a resilient leader. So John.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, so a precursor to me talking about those five things, mr Ford is. I asked myself this question as someone that's in a leadership position in multiple organizations, someone that's in a leadership position in multiple organizations. Have I ever been shocked or surprised as a leader in any of those organizations, like, has anything ever happened? Day-to-day operations going through the year? That's actually stopped me. I'm like, oh, that's a shock or that's a surprise. Obviously it happens all the time. So we know, as in leadership, you're going to be shocked and you're going to be surprised. Here's what happens. If you can't handle it well, it can create severe consequences for both the leader, the organization and the people. Ineffective coping with sudden high pressure situations can damage trust, increase employee turnover and increase organizational instability. Think about how so is that pressure. So how you handle that shock or surprise from your leadership position can either make things go well, go forward through that or not.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, absolutely, and even as you were thinking that or talking about that, I was thinking through a scenario that we did. Which is kind of really part of a good risk management as a leader is try to come up with those things in advance. You know, we talked about practicing earlier, practicing hard conversations, things like that. But if you can identify the things that are keeping you awake at night as a leader, as a business owner, and you have a team that hopefully you trust, going to them and go, what would we do if, what would we do if? And help them think, let them help you think through that scenario, because then you start creating plans right, you know, resiliency plans, risk mitigation plans, uh, related to that, and so it. It prepares you mentally for oh, that's a great idea.

Douglas Ford:

Or taking that idea and being able to advance it even more as as a leader, that might have a little more um, a broader perspective about what was going on, and and. Or it also prepares your team when something like that oh, we've already thought through this, you know, we've already prepared for this, we, we can get through this because we know what we, we know the steps that we're going to take versus, you know we we did a scenario a couple of weeks ago that you challenged some people with, and people were trying to come up with plans on the fly and, most of the time, given another 20 minutes of thinking through that, there would have been better plans that we would have been able to come up with, and so, using that as an example, the shock of what could happen in your company is a great way to build resiliency within your organization and your team.

John Ballinger:

So what is a resilient leader? Remember, there's five steps that we're going to talk about, but a resilient leader, according to definition, is one that navigates challenges, adapts to change and rebounds from setbacks.

Douglas Ford:

Yes, so that's just kind of a definition of a resilient.

John Ballinger:

What a resilient leader looks like yeah. Now what does it take to be able to do that? First, cultivate self-awareness. Understand your emotional triggers and thought patterns under pressure to improve decision making, how many people know what their triggers are?

Douglas Ford:

most most of us well, but are we aware of them?

John Ballinger:

well, no, but most of us know what triggers us, right. We may not always know what triggers that trigger in us, you know, right, but we know, like I don't like having difficult conversation, you know that you don't like doing that, so you're going to do everything you can to not have to do that, right, right, as a leader in an organization, I've got someone I'm dealing with right now who doesn't know accounting at all a leadership standpoint at all. So what's one thing they're always concerned about?

Douglas Ford:

Accounting, the finances.

John Ballinger:

Because if they're asked a question from their leadership about finances and accounting, they're going to have to defer to somebody else because they don't know it, and so that makes them feel very uncomfortable. What have I said? I said you know what, go to some after after work classes at a local college that deals with accounting p&l statement and just get spun up on it right, there's all kinds of stuff online about accounting, p&ls, all that kind of stuff so also and this is another one, I've said this put yourself in difficult situations with your team members that you trust yeah, that's what we're kind of talking about earlier.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah yeah.

John Ballinger:

Second second category manage stress. Learn how to manage stress. Learn your body's stress responses and find ways to manage them. Manage them such as such as through stress management options and talking out scenarios with others. Again going back to your team, the the theme here continues to be don't try to do it yourself. Find people you trust to help you learn how to become resilient.

John Ballinger:

Third seek support. Don't hesitate to get help from coaches, therapists, to gain new perspective and shift helpful patterns. That's a tough one, because most people in leadership positions don't like to admit they need help, especially someone that started a small business, and I've dealt with these people for years. One, because most people in leadership positions don't like to admit they need help, especially someone that started a small business, and I've dealt with these people for years. They tend to not think that they need help from anybody. I can do this. I've been doing this for 30 years. I don't need anybody's help until they do, and usually it's pretty far gone by the time they reach out.

John Ballinger:

So, uh, seek support continuously learn, embrace challenges and opportunities to learn, to grow and strive, and strive for continuous improvement. How many, how many times have we told business owners just take 90 minutes out of your work week, or take one hour out of your work week and develop yourself. I mean, we're just like to the point of like begging them please do this, because it's going to be easier on you and your team if you do that and they will not take the time out to develop themselves personally and professionally so that it makes their lives better and their teams better. So they'll just live in that, what I call that spin cycle, that washing machine Just going around and around, faster and faster and faster, and they're looking up like I don't know what's going on. I don't know why this is happening.

Douglas Ford:

Right? Well, that goes back to the number three, which is seek support. And you know people aren't like I said, people just aren't used to doing that. But you used a good word in the definition of seeking support, which was therapist, and so you know, sometimes that's a great outlet, you know, to go and seek support from working with somebody that you can just go in and kind of unload your, your thought process on and they can give you good general feedback and you know to for you personally but kind of in your situation. Maybe it's a little more general, but it it gives you that release to to get that out of your system, out of your mind. Uh, of course, journaling, course, journaling is a good way of kind of self-support as well yeah, I got an email the other weekend from a leader who had journaled.

John Ballinger:

It was rough. It was a rough like I gotta process that. How do you respond to that journaling of what that person's going through and you want to help them? I I mean, now you've got them journaling and they're unpacking and now they need all right, how do I deal with this? You know, but journaling is so important, Uh, fifth engage in reflection. Make time to reflect on experiences, learn from setbacks and understand your strengths and limitation. So important to reflect in leadership, to learn how to be resilient.

Douglas Ford:

Mitch goes back to journaling. It is, I mean, it's amazing how I mean we talk about this all the time, but it's amazing how much these are all very interwoven and entwined with each other and if you do one, it kind of naturally leads to the other, and how they all support each other versus. You know, these are not kind of independent, isolated, siloed activities. It's like, well, if you do this, that kind of naturally leads to this, that kind of naturally leads to this. That creates a better outcome.

John Ballinger:

Right.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah.

John Ballinger:

I saw this. Uh, as I was doing some research, I saw this quote from a writer, brian herbert. He said the capacity to learn is a gift. The ability to learn is a skill, the willingness to learn is a choice that's good.

Douglas Ford:

That's good stuff. Yeah, I mean obviously the. The punch line there at the is a choice. It's like intentional effort, like almost all the things we talk about have to do with intentional effort.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, so go back. Can I read those five again? Absolutely, cultivate self-awareness. Learn to manage stress, seek support continuously learn and engage in reflection. All those take the willingness to learn as a choice, all those take a willingness to learn and doing so, I'm going to go back up to the top, we'll create psychological wellbeing. Absolutely so the the homework for the team, for the leaders out there is.

John Ballinger:

I'd like you to take one of the five. Just take one of those five, because I mean, these are I told you before we started. I said, douglas, these are five tough tasks that we're asking a leader to learn how to do to be resilient. Just pick one of them. Pick the one that you think I'm most challenged with, one that you think I'm most challenged with. Write down the three reasons why you're challenged with that and start working through developing that character trait that you're, that you struggle with.

John Ballinger:

Start working on that in the last quarter of 2025, because these, these uh five, aren't something you can flip switches on. You can go read a book and say all of a sudden oh, I get it. These take work and effort in order to start formulating actually active results and responses when things go bad, when the surprises happen when the letdown takes place. All five of them take, take work. So plan at least to to do one of these in the last quarter, right down to three things that you know are challenging you, in order to embrace that one out of the five and start working toward that goal.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, and as I'm looking at this list and hear you talk about it, it's like again, they're all so interconnected it's amazing. So if your goal is to create greater self-awareness, cultivate self-awareness, well, that's going to help you as you manage stress, because you're going to understand when you're stressed. Well, to help manage stress, you should probably seek the support because that'll help you manage stress. Well, to help manage stress, you should probably seek the support because that'll help you manage stress better, which will help you with your self-awareness. If you're continuously learning, trying to find resources that can help you A manage stress. Have difficult conversations. B make better decisions as a leader, now you've got the support you need so that your stress goes down. Maybe you can focus more on your self-awareness and, finally, seek reflection. Well, if you're doing all these things and you're continuously thinking about how can I become a better leader, you're doing self-reflection. So they all build on each other, they're all connected, they all help each other and any one of those is a great starting point to drive you toward the other four.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, so when we get to the end of the chart, I want the leaders to see that you flow in and out of the chart all day long as a leader and each one of those letters with the sub responsibilities to that letter, the better you get, the easier it is going to be for your leadership, when, in today's society, you've got to be more resilient than you've ever had to be as a leader because of what's coming at you and your team. What's coming at you and your team. Remember you have 50%, most likely 50%, of your workforce that's supporting an adult child. That's a challenge.

Douglas Ford:

It is a challenge, which is one of those personal things that flow over into the workspace, because they may not be talking about that, but it's definitely impacting them on a daily basis. Weekly basis is impacting what they're doing at work, how they're performing at work, what they need work to do for them. So, yeah, it's just one of those things that may be impacting them from the outside.

John Ballinger:

Yeah. So, leaders, remember, in order to lead your teams, well, you must first lead you. Thanks everyone, We'll see you next time, thank you.

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John Ballinger

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Douglas Ford

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