How to Find the Equal or Greater Benefit in Trying Times

By Perry Holley

There are two types of people in the world when it comes to responding to challenging times or times of crisis. The first type will allow the crisis to define them. When they are squeezed, what comes out is fear, anxiety, and stress. The other will work to define the crisis. They embrace the Napoleon Hill thought that “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seeds of an equal or greater benefit.” 

These Are Defining Times

Leaders are not made in times of crisis; they are revealed. What you do with a bad situation will define who you become. So, what’s a leader to do? How can you turn a bad experience or crisis into a more positive experience for you and your team? One approach is to develop an intentional mindset. When you become intentional, you become proactive. You stop reacting to what’s going on around you, and you do specific, intentional things that will affect everyone you influence.

6 Ways to Model Intentional

1. Be intentional with your personal time. Since we have been asked to shelter in place and all the sports and entertainment, we have always depended on are gone, many of us have more time than we have ever had. An intentional person takes great care in how they invest this gift of time. Are you investing in yourself? Are you intentional about your personal development?
2. Be intentional about your family time. This is about connection, and it pertains to your home and your work environments. While you have more time at home with your family, are you intentionally using that time to invest in those you are with? When it comes to your work team, are you intentionally finding ways to connect with more purpose?
3. Be intentional with your catch-up time. Do you remember all those things you always wanted to do if you just had more time and less distraction? Well, now’s the time. Be intentional about catching up on business plans, process improvement, customer programs, and some of those HR tasks you always meant to do.
4. Be intentional about your adding value time. A crisis is often the bump we need to move from our comfort zone to a creative zone. And trying times are a great time to get creative about how you add value to others. The crisis we are in now had affected different people in different ways. How can you check-in with and add value to your teammates, your customers, your business partners? What needs could they have? How might you help?
5. Be intentional with your faith time. Of course, if you are a person of faith, this could mean investing some time intentionally growing your faith. Difficult times can cause us to question, and faith can help overcome the challenges that crisis presents. However, this can also be a great time to develop faith with your team. Faith in the team. Faith in themselves. You can also help others develop a perspective about these trying times that will strengthen their belief in our ability to overcome whatever we face.
6. Be intentional about your thinking time.  One of the most apparent differences between successful people and unsuccessful people is in the way they think. And one thing this crisis has provided us is some margin in our daily calendar where we can spend some time thinking, reflecting, and meditating on what has happened and what is possible because of what has happened. An intentional person might think about how this crisis can make me and my team better? How will this crisis provide opportunities for me to serve others? And, what are the actions you could take to improve your situation or the situation of those on your team?

Being intentional and proactive leader in times of crisis will put you and your team in a much more favorable position not only to endure the adversity but to come out on the other side in a stronger position than when you went in.

The RightPATH 4/6 Behavioral Assessments is a great tool for you as a leader to intentionally gage how your team is individually responding to the current crisis and their return to the workforce dubbed the “new normal”. If you would like to learn more about this assessment, please connect with us here.

Perry Holley is a coach and facilitator with the John Maxwell Company’s Corporate Solutions Group as well as a published author. He has a passion for developing others and seeing people grow into the leaders they were intended to become.