Building Resilience: The Key to Adapting to Change with Jeff Struecker
Is your organization going through a period of change? Change is difficult, regardless of whether it's corporate restructuring, a change of leadership, or a downsizing. In this episode, we’re discussing how to build resilience so that you and your team can overcome any obstacle. Without resilience, we crumble under the smallest of challenges. But with resilience, we can overcome anything. Leaders can provide a beacon of light in times of change, offering hope when guided with sincerity and integrity.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
How to build resilience in tough times
The benefits of change
The key to leading your team through change
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About our guest:
Jeff Struecker is a member of the US Army Ranger Hall of Fame. In almost 23 years in the Army, Jeff served 17 combat deployments in 5 different wars, including Black Hawk Down. In 2011, he retired as a Major. Jeff holds a Ph.D. in Christian leadership. He has taught leadership at every level, from undergraduate to Ph.D., and is an award-winning author with six books in print.
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Building Resiliency
I joined the Army at 18. I spent almost 23 years in the US Army. I was an enlisted guy for most of that. But I had this moment where I felt very strongly that I should become an Army Chaplain. And I rounded out my career in the US Army as a chaplain. Ended up as a Major. And then after that I started really pursuing, one of my passions in the world is leadership. I got a chance to do a PhD studying leadership. And I pastor a church now outside of Columbus, Georgia, or a church in Columbus, Georgia, right outside of Fort Benning, Georgia. I have a chance to teach several classes a year and I teach leadership to students at the graduate and postgraduate level.
Well, you also have had a unique background where through all of your deployments you have led through an immense amount of change as well as you've been in some very sticky situations. And I wanted to dive in a little bit about resiliency because as we're going into this new year and there's kind of some talks possibly about a recession, I hope that's not the case. And there's also a lot of changes going on in organizations. So let's dive into a little bit about resiliency and leadership and what we can do to build resilience.
I think most of my views on leadership and almost all of my experience in resiliency, comes from serving in the US military. I spent almost my whole career in special operations with the Army Rangers. I went on five different combat tours. I'm not gonna give you, you know, a boring history lesson here, but I started off going to combat in 1989 just Cause went to Kuwait in 91. I was in Black Hawk down in Somalia in 93, and then I went more than a dozen times to Afghanistan and Iraq. And there's no real way to over exaggerate how much those tours of duty in combat influenced me as a leader. When I was an enlisted guy, leading men on the battlefield, but also as a chaplain and trying to influence the warriors that I served with and helped them resiliency, bounce back after some pretty traumatic events in combat.
I don't know that the military has a lock on this, like they don't have all of the answers on this. But the military has a lot of experience going through hardships, helping people learn how to cope with hardships, and I'm convinced some of the greatest leaders on the planet serve in the military all around the US and around the world because of what leading in a time of war asks of a person, of a guy or a gal. So most of my leadership views are influenced by the people that I had the privilege of serving under in the military. And what I learned about resiliency, I learned by watching it firsthand and then teaching it to warriors when they were in the battle. That's a high level. We can get into the details or into the weeds if you want, but that's kind of the high level of leadership and resiliency.
Sometimes the biggest challenges that we go through end up helping us become the person that we are tomorrow, building stronger and building that resilience. I can't relate to being in war, but I can relate to working for a Fortune 500 company and through my first year as a manager, we were going through a hostile takeover by a competitor. We went through restructuring, changing in leadership. We went through downsizing of 20% of our sales force. And all of those challenges, while difficult to go through, I really believe sometimes our challenges, they help us become better leaders in the long run because those situations helped prepare us for leading through the pandemic and those particular challenges.
I think there's something sick and twisted about a guy or a gal who goes out looking for hardships and looking for difficulties. But if the listener thinks for just a second, my guess is the most powerful lessons that you ever learned in life came from the bad days, the hard days. It's not the days that you were on the platform getting the blue ribbon, it's the days where it didn't work out the way you thought it was gonna go or things were a lot more challenging than you expected, and those lessons tend to stick with us longer. I don't think they stick with us longer just because they hurt more, and we remember that. I think they stick with us longer because the lessons that you're forced to learn during hardships and difficulties prepare you for even greater challenges in the future.
I like to tell people I wouldn't wish going through Black Hawk down on my worst enemy, but that prepared me for Afghanistan and Iraq in ways that I would've never been ready for, if it wasn't for that big firefight that becomes a national bestseller in a blockbuster movie. And I'm a very different guy today, and I'm a very different leader today because of events like Black Hawk Down. I wouldn't trade those. I wouldn't want to go through it again. Wouldn't wish you on my worst enemy, but I also wouldn't trade events like that for anything because it had a major impact on my future. And that's true of others too. They've gone through some hard things and those hard things prepare you for the even bigger challenges in the future.
I made the mistake of watching, and I say mistake because I made the mistake of watching that movie when my husband started Aviation School to become a Blackhawk pilot. I don't know why that was a movie that I chose to watch. It is a very, very difficult movie to watch, but it really does show the resiliency that you all took to ensure that our soldiers were coming home. It's a very inspiring movie in that sense.
I'm not gonna get political with you, um, but I went to Afghanistan about nine times. And when the US was packing up our equipment and pulling out of Afghanistan, a lot of my buddies who went to war with me, but Afghanistan or Iraq, those were kind of their only combat experiences, man they really, really struggled with the way that the events kind of. Wrapped up in Afghanistan. In fact, I think the whole world watched it and was appalled by how quickly the Taliban took back over the country of Afghanistan. I'm going somewhere with this story.
So my friends really, really wrestled with it, and some of them. Let's just be honest, we're struggling with PTSD from some of the things that they saw and they experienced in Afghanistan, and now they're watching the country just descend right back into the hands of the Taliban and they reach out to me and they say, “Jeff, you appear to be handling Afghanistan very different than I am. And we were there a whole lot together,” and I tried to tell them, “You don't understand how much of the influence the way that I left Somalia prepared me for what I saw when we left Afghanistan. The very brutal geopolitics that led to us being pulled out of Somalia prepared me in ways that I would never even understand 20 years later when the US is leaving Afghanistan.”
And I use that as an example because maybe you went through a health scare a couple of years ago and that's preparing you for an even greater challenge tomorrow. Maybe you went through something at business like Danielle's gone through and now you're a little bit more ready for a bigger business challenge tomorrow. It's how you react to what you went through that has a major impact on how ready you are for what you're going to go through tomorrow.
That speaks to some of the challenges of what you are talking about when a soldier comes home and they've seen something like the pullout. My husband was there when we pulled out of Syria and just some of the stories without people go into a lot of detail was just heartwrenching. It was absolutely heart wrenching to see kids and, and you know, moms being pulled away doing everything just to get their kids right in an environment knowing they may not see their kids ever again. It's very tragic.
Leading through Change
So what would you say to maybe a leader where there's changes going on within an organization, maybe they're going through restructuring, maybe they're going through downsizing. There's a lot of downsizing within organizations happening right now. What would you say to the leaders on how they can lead their team through change?
A lot of what I do in the classroom with students is help leaders handle change. And I tell them that there's really no such thing as a stagnant organization. It's always changing. It's always adapting. Sometimes the changes are really minor. You don't even notice them. You're just adapting to the environment. You're adapting to the industry, you're adapting to the customers. All of those factors that are always in flux. Sometimes the changes are pretty major and like you just described, hostile takeover, massive layoffs. Industry is entirely collapsing around you. Let's be honest, if you were in the movie business, if you owned a bunch of movie studios or movie theater companies, movie theater enterprises, you're struggling right now to figure out what does two months from now look like? Let alone two years from now, and I own a string of movie theaters, and I don't even know if anybody's gonna ever stop coming back to movie theaters. And now the entire industry is changing right underneath your feet. You didn't do anything wrong. It's just the world is shifting underneath your feet and you're going through this earthquake of change.
And what I tell leaders is the people that you're responsible for, they’re looking to the leader. Like when the ground starts to shake underneath your feet, everyone needs something stable to hold onto. And generally when the industry is changing, when your business is changing, the thing that the people that work for you want to hold onto most, the handrail that they need the most is you being stable and dependable. You may not be able to change your industry. You may not be able to change your company. You may not be able to change what's happening around you right now, but you can at least be strong and solid and consistent for the people around you and that will help them get through change. Because what I found is that when things start to get change is, and when things start to get scary, all of us look for somebody who can help us. When the lights go out and stuff goes bang in the dark, so if you're a leader, you need to be the person that somebody can look to and say, I don't know how it's gonna turn out, but I know that guy or that gal is gonna be consistent. They're not gonna let me down. I don't know what's gonna happen in the industry, but I know this person won't let me.
And I wanna add to that in transparency, because you're right, they do look to the leaders in saying, well, how is this person reacting? It's so important as leaders that we are stable and that we're grounded, and that we create a space where our team can come to us to talk about what their challenges are, what they're thinking about. And we may not always know the answers. Sometimes we know the answers and sometimes we don't. But even being transparent and saying, “You know what, that's a great question. I don't know the answer right now, but can I get back to you?” Knowing that you're there to support them every step of the way, or even if it is, that's a great question. I can't share the information at that time, but when I can, you'll be the first to know.
In fact, if you look at the research right now, it says, not only is that helpful, but that's very, very beneficial for you, the leader and for your company. 50 years ago in leadership, there was this common catchphrase that went, never let them see you sweat. And generally that catchphrase was, don't ever let your competitors know that you're struggling. But unfortunately, that catchphrase caught on among leaders and they approached the way that they led their teams this way. Basically they tried to present the, “nothing ever gets to me, nothing gets me down. I always have everything under control.”
And what research has learned, sociologists have learned is that kind of leadership creates this division between the leader and the people on the team. And then all of a sudden the people on the team realize like either this guy doesn't know what's going on and they're clueless or gal, or this gal doesn't care what's going on. In either case, I'm not sure I trust them to really, really lead me through these difficult waters. So what the research is starting to show now is it's very effective and even very profitable for a leader to say to their team, “I don't know the answer to that question. Or even for a leader to say, listen, I'm scared too. I know this is scary. I'm scared too, but we're gonna get through it together.” And being vulnerable, being human, not trying to approach it like you have all of the answers and you've got it all under your control is much more effective. It's a much more effective way to lead people, especially leading them through change when it's really scary.
The key word that you said there that resonates is vulnerable. Because one of the mistakes I made early on as a leader is I was scared to be vulnerable. I didn't wanna be viewed as weak as a leader. And so often I would almost, I rarely got to the point of being vulnerable and saying, “Hey, I'm scared at this point, I don't know what's going on, but we're in this together. I'll be here to support you. I'll be here to share the answers when I can. I'll take the time to find out, you know, any of your questions.” And I was really scared to be vulnerable, but when I found from becoming more, learning throughout the years of becoming a leader through my seven years, I found that the times that I was vulnerable, I connected with my team on a deeper level. They started to see me as more of a human than just, as they would say, sometimes wearing the corporate hat and saying the rhetoric, they want the transparency. And I saw the same thing when I was looking at some of the most influential leaders that I reported to and how they were vulnerable and transparent, and how much more I respected them than the leaders that just, you know, walked and talked the corporate language and didn't feel relatable.
You just hit the nail on the head. I mean, the goal of a leader leading people through change is to get them to come along with you. And if you take my premise that change is scary and people get really, really, they can, let's just be honest, they'll do some stupid stuff, but they'll really, really hesitate when it gets scary. So what a leader has to do is convince them I'm going through this change with you. It's scary for me too, but if you'll hang on to me and if we will go through this together, we'll get through it on the other side.
The mistake that leaders can make is to approach it like, I've got it all figured out. It's not affecting me at all. I don't really even know or don't care about what's happening to my team. And what somebody who's scared needs is to know, “Okay, maybe Danielle is scared too, but she's my leader. And she's going through this right with me. And if she'll go through this with me, and if she's scared and if she's willing to get herself up and to keep going through this change when she's scared, then I'm gonna get myself up and I'm gonna follow her, and I'm gonna go through this change when I'm scared.”
And I think what researchers are learning now is that vulnerability actually creates power because people are deep, as you just said, they're connected to each other much deeper than just at a professional level. And man, that's when some beautiful things can happen with leadership when you're connected very deeply with other people.
Handling Big Changes in Life
Well, let's talk a little bit about, if we're not in a leadership role, I wanna define that a little bit more when we're not managing people, but we're still showing up as a leader from peer to peer interactions, what advice would you give for those individuals when they're going through big changes within their life?
Well first let me define terms, and I don't want this to sound academic, but my first day when I teach leadership and I teach it constantly is explaining what do I mean by this word leadership? And I think in the West, but especially in the United States, we associate the word leader with a formal position. Meaning you gotta have a corner office, you have to have a business card, you have to have your name on the door. That's the leader. And if I don't have those things, then I guess I'm not the leader. And what I've tried to do is to say, I think we've made leadership too lofty. I think we've made it inaccessible.
My view of leadership is if you are influencing another human being, and let's be honest, you can influence them for good or you can influence them for bad. If you're influencing another human being, you are leading. I try to convince high level leaders in the classroom. The most powerful leader I have ever seen on the planet is a mother, typically a mother that spends a lot of time with her children. And I say there is not another human being on the planet that will have more of an impact on a person than a mother will on her children. And when I use the word leader, I'm thinking of a mother with their children, not just the guy or the gal with the corner office and the private parking space. And if that's what we mean by leadership. And that's really what I mean when I use the word leadership. Now, leadership is for everybody. It's not just the manager of people at the business, but the person that's on the factory floor. The hourly worker, you, I promise you are influencing just by your character and your attitude. You're influencing others around you.
And I've seen this firsthand. I've seen it in the military, I've seen it in church, I've seen it in corporate settings. There is sometimes a person in the room, they don't have the title, they don't have the paycheck, they don't have the position, but everybody in the room recognizes whatever they do next. I'm gonna do that too. And that is really the leader in the room. I argue every middle school locker room in America, there's a leader in that room. And it may not be the captain of the team, but everybody in the room knows who that leader is, and you can tell who the leader is by just watching the way that others watch them.
You can tell the leader too, when, when change happens, when things go on in an organization, it's often. The individual that the other team members go to for advice. And sometimes that's not always the manager per se, but it's the person on the team that everybody looks to as that leader.
I'll make it really easy, if you've ever gone through some scary change at work and you went to somebody who is a friend and said, what are you gonna do next? That person is your leader. And they probably didn't even have the title and the position. But because you asked them that question, you are looking to them as a leader, and I think that's the way human nature is. It's been that way for thousands of years and it's perfectly natural.
Adapting to Change
Well, you've shared so much valuable advice. I could talk to you forever. What else would you like to leave to people? We've talked about resilience, we've talked about leadership, we've talked about leading through change. What else do you wanna leave our audience with?
If we could, if I can go back, and I'm trying to be really brief with this one. So let's say you don't have the position and you don't have the corner office, but you are going through as part of this team, some really scary changes right now. People will take a look at you, they'll watch how you handle yourself and they'll watch how you handle your circumstances.
And if you really wanna learn to lead, then lean in when times get tough. And I say lean in on purpose because even if you don't know, even if they don't tell you they're watching you, the people around you are watching how you react and sometimes, whether you know it or not, they're gonna react the same way you react by just simply watching you from a distance. They never told you they were watching you, but they watched you, you handled yourself well. They start to handle themselves well, and then you start to get this beautiful thing where a team comes together instead of falls apart in the middle of change and chaos and crisis, and a team that comes together, man, they can handle anything and you may be the catalyst for causing that team to come together instead of falling apart in the middle of a challenge.
That is excellent advice because I also think that it is an opportunity too. If you're looking at, for those career defining moments, that is one of those career defining moments where you're showing the potential to do more. So if you wanna step into a different position within the organization, that is the time to showcase your skills.
And as a supervisor, as a boss, as a C E O and the chairman of the board, which I've done all of those roles, I look for somebody who steps up in the middle of a challenge and who handles themself well. And I think to myself, we need to give this person more responsibility. We need to give them more pay. We need to, we need to promote this person. If they handle that challenge that well, we need to give them more responsibility.
