How resilient are you?

A typical work day for all of us involves working various issues - business, personnel, technical, financial and so on. We work those issues to the best of our ability and move on. We feel good about those resolved issues at the end of the day.

However, sometimes we hit a bump. One of the issue does not get resolved, gets into a legal mess, the press is involved and life becomes a nightmare.

This is where a true leader stands out and shows the true leadership qualities. How quickly a leader recovers from this mess and goes back to "another work day" mode shows strength in character and spirit. The leader's recover means the recovery of the team he / she is leading.

So how do you as a executive leader reach that point where you hit a huge-huge-huge issue and recover very quickly? I see that leaders usually are in a pattern of "Tell me what to do" or "Tell me what are my options" which basically puts them into a analysis-paralysis mode. Leaders, in my opinion, have two major knowledge streams - experience and on-the-job-education. They need to rely on both of these, solicit inputs and then go with their gut feel. As Jack Welch said - "Straight from the gut"

Leaders need to show and articulate their recovery plan and start working towards that very very quickly. Of course, there might need to be modifications to the plans as we move on however the plan needs to be published for all to see and comment. Leaders need to show how quickly they can lead their teams and companies to recover. Sometimes, the recover plan calls for hard and painful decisions. Remember what Lou Gerstner did to IBM? Made some hard and tough decisions, published his recover plan and executed to the plan. The result - a new and improved IBM cam out to play in the IT arena.

So, the next time a major issue hits you, are you going to ponder and ponder and think "Why Me?" or are you going to learn something from that and put a recover plan and recover and show how resilient are you. Think about it.