Coach Millennials to Capitalize on the Energy of Adversity – Part 1

Over the past 2 months we have looked at excerpts from 2 books I wrote, Leadership Shift: Paradoxical Wisdom and my upcoming book Millennials Matter (to be released this fall), to see how they correlate.

H​ere’s the last blog in this series, (it comes in two parts) and we’ll look at how we can use adversity in our business to reach a positive outcome when dealing with adversity. At the same time how can we instill this wisdom in the Next-Gen Leaders we mentor and coach?

Excerpt from Millennials Matter

Millennials and Sisu

In our recent Millennial Matters survey, 17 percent of business leaders responded that one of the top concerns is Millennials’ lack of accountability, 13 percent are concerned with their lack of determination, and 9 percent are concerned with their lack of resiliency and ability to bounce back.

In our coaching and development of sales professionals, we use a validated assessment tool that’s based on research done on over a million sales people. The accountability findings are spot on. Overall, we see about 60 percent of sales people of all ages, including Millennials prefer to blame others rather than taking personal responsibility for their results. By contrast, in helping company leaders hire and retain top talent, we find that 100 percent of top-tier new business development and rainmakers take personal accountability for their actions and behaviors. They recognize that they have the capacity to be creative innovators who can solve problems. They have a strong sisu spirit!

Excerpt from Leadership Shift: Paradoxical Wisdom 

Finns might not finish first, but they always outlast the competition. 

If anxiety is the prevailing emotion in business, Finland could be the poster child for small to mid-sized companies. Like some of those businesses, it’s something of a minor miracle that Finland exists as an independent entity at all. Of course, the Finns themselves wouldn’t call it a miracle; they’d put their unlikely existence down to something they call sisu.

Being of Finnish ancestry, I know about sisu (their word for guts and determination). I grew up in Little-House-on-the-Prairie-style-conditions. The lack of running water, the football field-long trek to haul it back for cooking, and snow blowing in under the door in the freezing winter might have gotten me down. However, sisu challenged me to use these circumstances to strengthen me.

In retrospect, I realize sisu is more than just guts and determination; it is unbending will coupled with pragmatic flexibility. It is unwavering determination paired with knowing when to quit one course of action and pick up another. Sisu is unapologetic perseverance to reach the end goal combined with a drive to turn paralyzing anxiety into forward motion no matter how petrified you are.

Talk about paradoxical thinking! If you had to live next to a giant (the former Soviet Union) who, at various and unpredictable times, took it into its head to squash you, you’d be rightly nervous. Oh, wait a minute, that’s pretty much the situation your business is in right now, or may have been in the past, isn’t it? But rather than use that fear as an excuse to fail, the leaders of Finland use it as energy to strengthen them.
By making a focus shift, you can capitalize on the energy that is created by adversity and resolve to improve your business despite the challenges you are facing.

Next week we will look at our role as seasoned business leaders who are in, either formal or informal, mentoring relationships with young leaders and how we can help them to capitalize on the energy of adversity.

Leadership Lesson:
To spark creativity and tap brilliance, resolve to live every day with a sisu spirit.