Earlier this month, the Young MCA held an event in London, which two of the Managementors team attended. The event focused on how leaders can develop resilience in tough or uncertain times, and emphasised the importance of resilience in becoming successful. Speaking at the event was Uche Ezichi; a charismatic, ex-investment banker-turned-coach and leadership expert.
Uche provided an insight into how people adapt to certain situations, using an analogy relating to how carrots, eggs, and coffee react when left in boiling water. He explained that carrots become soft and turn to mush, eggs become too hard, but coffee becomes useful. Uche applied this to leadership and consulting by focusing on companies, such as Apple, who are able to successfully adapt to their circumstances, similar to coffee.
Following this, Uche opened up a discussion on the right and wrong ways to adapt. For example, wishing you had done something earlier is the wrong way to adapt, whilst anticipating what is looming is a good way to adapt. Other points covered were around personal confidence and influencing the outcome of uncontrollable events by controlling your response to them.
Uche introduced a couple of simple tools to encourage people to think about the key relationships in their lives and decide whether they want to start, grow, limit or disassociate themselves from these relationships. Finally, Uche concluded that true resilience is a combination of self and social support, and placed significant emphasis on the impact other people have on your own level of resilience.
The event highlighted to the Managementors team the importance of resilience to leadership success and affirmed that members of the team are responsible for determining their own levels of resilience.
Following the event, the team is looking forward to putting some of Uche’s tools and advice into practice.
