21st-Century Dynamics: A Fast-Paced, Ever Changing World
In our high-tech, fast-paced, rapidly changing world, adversity is hitting us at speeds significantly faster than ever – leaving us little time to respond and arming us with far too few tools for controlling that response in a productive manner. A Google search of “how to deal with adversity” returns over 21 million results! It’s easy for a person to become averse to risk and frustrated and afraid when he or she lacks the tools to handle adversity.
Modern technologies drive new changes every day. Continuous change in job security via downsizing, mergers, acquisitions and instability is becoming the norm, and with that change come both opportunities and difficulties that are hitting us faster than ever. Therefore, the need to learn to overcome these challenges takes on a new importance. If we cannot adapt to this ever-changing, fast-paced environment in a productive, proactive manner, it will eat us up.
The question becomes, “How are we doing as an organization?” Are your people prepared? Are you setting the stage for success and taking advantage of the opportunities in adversity? Are your employees resilient and successful? Obviously, many people are still achieving great things every day. Facing and overcoming challenges remains in fashion. However, today’s dynamics call for innovative approaches.
Understanding Brain Functionality
To understand how people respond to adversity, we must first understand how the brain functions. Let’s examine two parts of the brain that are important when dealing with adversity: the limbic system and the cortex.
The limbic system is our emotional brain. When adversity strikes and we’re in the limbic state, adrenaline starts rushing, and our response to adversity will be freeze, flight, fight or some combination of the three. Essentially, we do not want to be in that emotional part of the brain when adversity strikes.
The cortex is the rational brain, where response to difficulties is reasoned, rational and logical. Typically, what causes this type of response is the realization that we have options to respond to an adverse situation in a productive manner. These options come in the form of past experiences when we’ve dealt with a similar situation and succeeded or at least learned a lesson.
The realization that we have options also occurs when we can fall back on training we’ve received – hence the importance of training your employee on skills relevant for job success. These skills allow your employees to handle work-related adversity in a productive, rational manner, rather than an emotional one.
To frame this information in a real-world example, think about training salespeople on how to effectively handle objections. When a customer objects or rejects a pitch, a salesperson may panic and fall into that emotional state of freeze, flight or fight. If they are trained in handling objections, however, they can remain calm and fall back on that training. Effective training provides the proper mindset for employees to succeed in the face of adversity.
Practicing Skills in Real-World Environments
For workplace difficulties, our experiences and our skills create a foundation that allows us to strengthen ourselves for future scenarios. If we avoid adversity and don’t learn from it, we won’t build the needed foundation to successfully maneuver through life when troubles come our way.
After employees create that foundation, they need to practice those skills in real-world, relevant environments. A four-step selling process may be the same across various industries, but its real-world applications may differ. For example, leveraging sales skills with a pharmaceutical client may be different than doing so with a financial client. The skills are the same, but they must be practiced in a world that’s relevant to the employee to provide confidence and long-term retention. These practical skills allow your employees to thrive in the face of adversity. They respond based on the skills they’ve learned, not an emotional, panicky response.
Preparing Your Company for Success
The bottom line is that any company that invests in its employees will provide a point of differentiation. The benefits more than outweigh the costs associated with the training. In today’s ever-evolving world, with multiple generations in the workplace, creating a foundation to deal with adversity is key to the future success of any organization.
