7 Ways to Improve Your Business Resilience
Enablement leaders and their team within almost every organization must find ways to stay positive no matter what challenge comes their way. This is often easier said than done. Especially since the English language is only comprised 30% of positive words according to research.
During the hardest times in sales enablement, it can feel almost impossible to embrace positivity. Enablement leaders are faced with internal escalations, burned-out staff members, unhappy peers and colleagues, and frustrated creative people. Here are seven top tips to improve your own business resilience and stay optimistic no matter what work throws at you.
1. Practice Optimism
When everything is going wrong in projects, initiatives, or working relationships, it can be easy to start falling into a negative thought pattern. However, when enablement orchestrators start to think that everything is going wrong around them, they are far more likely to attract more issues and challenges. The more negative people are, the more negativity they can attract. Commercial enablement leaders can practice optimism every time they are struggling with bad news or a project that isn’t going quite to plan.
To do that, think about the best-case scenario instead of always catastrophizing what is going on. Enablement leaders can influence their teams to also have more business resilience by finding they too can apply a positive attitude to every situation. It’s important for positivity to become a go-to way of engaging others. Always assume the best. Always find the positive. Don’t vent. And don’t project negativity onto others.
2. Be Clear On What Success Looks Like
Many sales enablement leaders don’t truly know what they are aiming for in their workplace, their function, or their role. This can extend to team members as well. If people are struggling with staying positive and they don’t feel like they are a success, it’s important to reframe what a simple win really means. Enablement leaders must have a good idea of what a simple win looks like in each situation so they can clearly communicate that win to their team. In many instances, an incremental step is what success looks like. Enablement leaders who take on this philosophy will find it is so much easier to overcome roadblocks and challenges to keep moving forward and reach team goals.
3. Lean On Others
One of the most important actions an enablement leader can take is to understand the impact they can have on others. No “one person” can tackle today’s enablement challenges. So, when enablement team members are having a bad day, they must realize they have a choice in how they respond. As an enablement team member or leader, it can be so tempting to show negativity and frustration in a challenging or tense situation. Sometimes negativity comes in the form of body language; so, as an enablement orchestrator, always remember — how you show up is important. It really does matter to others.
Sometimes it’s best to put on a brave face and do what must be done in the group setting in order to keep momentum and keep people focused. However, if necessary, orchestrators may feel they need to vent to a trusted colleague. It’s important to keep it behind the scenes and not in a group setting. The group and team settings are critically important to the success of any initiative. Enablement leaders who have business resilience often talk with a trusted colleague and get everything out of their system before engaging in a group setting. When they do that, they are more likely to navigate a difficult situation without putting initiatives at risk by overly negative behavior.
4. Don’t Personalize Failure
Failure isn’t always about you, but it is human nature to blame yourself when things go wrong at work. This can challenge anyone’s business resilience and cause people to “shoot themselves in the foot” by making poor choices. No matter who plays a part in the escalation or issue, enablement leaders and their teams need to learn not to take things so personally in business.
When orchestrators can separate themselves from their work, they can start to set healthier boundaries and learn how to stay positive during even the most difficult times. To do this, learn to separate an idea, from an identity. Each person has their own identity, and their own human agency to make decisions. The ideas they have, and the work they accomplish, actually don’t define who they are as a person.
5. Serve Others
In times of stress, it’s very easy to start focusing internally. Especially when the human “fight or flight” response kicks in. Enablement leaders must stay outwardly focused and find more positivity in their work that is happening. To do that, concentrate on serving and helping others. Orchestrators have the opportunity to do that every day with the team and colleagues they work with. They can do that by building up business resilience by leaning into why enablement is critical to the success of others, or what help people need to be successful.
When enablement leaders and teams focus on trying to help out each day, their actions speak louder than words. When we put others above ourselves, it’s much easier to remain positive and not get too caught up in our heads about what went wrong.
6. Manage Stress
Enablement can be a fast-paced, never-ending, and (let’s face it) thankless job. Enablement leaders and teams need to find ways to recognize that motivation comes from making things happen, not necessarily from getting kudos from others. This can be stressful for some who may be used to constant feedback or praise for what they do. That’s not frequent in enablement, so find a healthy way to manage stress and keep staying positive.
For some enablement leaders, that’s going for a five-mile run after work, whereas others need to switch off in front of Netflix for the night. Try to work on finding a way to cultivate positivity and manage stress at work. Most of the negative consequences in the enablement leadership role can come from not managing stress well. Instead of sitting up all night worrying about something that someone did or said, find a way to put stress aside and separate personal and professional life, or find ways to take a mental break and reflect on what’s really happening.
7. Get Outside Your Comfort Zone
The best way to improve business resilience is to constantly gain from new or exciting experiences. As an enablement professional, it’s important to find ways to evolve and adapt to the environment that is changing at the speed of business and customers. Enablement leaders need to keep challenging themselves in their roles. While it can feel uncomfortable doing this, the more often they push themselves outside their comfort zone, the more they will embrace positivity as a way to overcome any challenge.
As you can see, there are many ways to work on business resilience as a leader. No matter what type of industry you work in, you’ll find that there will always be days that test your patience and positivity. However, by staying positive in any situation, you’ll find that you lead by example and can create a better working environment for you and your team. Life is all about pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, so the more you try new things and deal with uncertainty, the more likely you’ll be resilient during the next test that comes your way.
