Breaking ‘The Setback Cycle’

Speaker 1: [Music] what I really want people to take away is to please know that in your lowest of lows in the worst career or business or even personal setbacks that you are encountering this is where the growth happens and you will come through this again with all the resilience and mental flexibility and confidence to get you through whatever comes next I don't glorify pain but I want you to know that you will get through this I'm Melanie bar welcome back to the podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the city now but I grew up in a town of a thousand people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheil it Community I also love a good workout and dose of self-care magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we go welcome back to the Sheila podcast thank you for joining us Amy you are a USA Today best-selling author journalist and marketing consultant who has worked with some of the world's largest Brands including Proctor and Gamble and Google and you have just published your most recent book The setback cycle tell us about your career background and what inspired you to write your book on overcoming setbacks and providing a framework for leaders I have been studying the habits of successful leaders for the past 20 or so years through my marketing career my formal journalism training and being an observer of the world and through many of my articles mostly for Forbes Harvard Business Review Fast Company I noticed that as I was profiling some really fascinating folks every single career Journey story they would share with me always revealed a common theme when they climbed out of their biggest setback that's what led them to their most brilliant ideas and their most successful Ventures and I was like why do I keep seeing this same sort of cycle happening over and over again it's not always a mistake it's not always an obstacle it's not always a trauma but it's something else and I started to explore what this might be and when I came upon the definition of a setback which is a reversal or check in progress I was like that's it every story showed that they were working towards some original goal and they were unexpectedly bumped off that path and when they had to reroute and get creative they found somewhere newer and usually better than the original path they were on and I found this really fascinating and once I saw it once I understood it I kept seeing it everywhere once I started talking to people about it everyone kept seeing this everywhere they looked in their own lives in the lives of others so I started trying to see if there was a book written about it or a research paper or any literature about this phenomenon and the only thing I found about like setbacks were in sports books there was really nothing in the business World some books had touched on it used the word here and there but nobody had really explored this concept fully and that's really what gave me the idea to start writing the book and putting together the research and figuring out which stories needed to illustrate the framework that I was in the midst of creating that's so interesting and you're right because when things are clicking along we don't really question things and when we go through a setback we think oh this is the worst like how am I going to come out of this and you're right that's when you question you take the downtime a lot of times because you have no choice and then the creative ideas come to life exactly and there's actually Neuroscience to support this because I thought that too is this something that's universally understood is this just us loving drama no it is when you experience a set back your brain undergoes a dopamine dip and we think of dopamine as a negative thing but dopamine is really a plasticity inducer which means it contributes to your brain's resilience and mental flexibility so it's actually in those dips that lead to the transformation and the change and like you said it's the moment where when things aren't going well you really have to pause and think about how you could improve how you could change how you could do better the neuroscientist I interviewed was able to prove in her lab that people who have endured more setbacks are better at problem solving reasoning and maybe most importantly they were good at recognizing when they were on the wrong track they were able to course correct more easily they didn't just keep trying to push something forward if it wasn't working that might be the key to working through setbacks knowing when to adapt knowing when to Pivot in your experience what are some common setbacks that leaders face in their professional Journeys there are so many different types of setback some of the most common are frankly the most obvious so a leader at an organization generally a big setback for them would be a restructuring a round of layoffs that impacts the morale and the burnout potential of their team there are so many factors right now economically that are contributing to manager burnout and leaders are really having to navigate new skills so that they can lead through these very tumultuous times understanding and then working through the setback cycle not only as an individual but as a team can be incredibly impactful a lot of people make the mistake of thinking okay the team has been reshuffled we have some new people we have to get rid of some people let's just barge forward as we always have but a setback is a moment to re-evaluate and come up with new ways of working it's a moment to get creative and rethink and decide how can I take the really high performing members of my team and pair them with those who need a little extra support and find out how we can merge people's passions with their strength to keep performance up to keep morale up and to start to get into a new groove because the old Dynamic of a team that looks totally different today than it did yesterday is going to require a whole different path forward what got you here won't get you there that's not only true as you work up the ladder in management it's true in terms of a shape-shifting and evolving team it's so true and for some leaders it's access to Capital some are downsizing some are going through constant I know for myself Tech evaluations they're amazing platforms but the larger your organization gets the harder it is to implement those at times exactly and that's when you really need to draw on again that agility the mental flexibility the resilience that you've built up through all kinds of other setbacks because if that's leading to your creativity and Innovation this is the time to apply that walk us through the framework you've developed for working through the defining moments so there's four phases of the

Speaker 1: yourself I'm going to hear no but who cares because then you're also hearing yes and that part is also really fun it reminds me of a time when I was going through a career change and someone told me I think you should run a marathon and I thought yeah don't know if I can do that but putting in the training didn't feel great but the end felt amazing and it takes time just like thinking through a setback I had to Think Through the training I had to persevere through those moments and at the end when you cross the finish line is the emerging realize how much you're capable of that's what you should remind yourself of the next time you're in a setback hey I got through that I can get through this and in those low moments it's really hard to see the silver lining or know that this will end up being a good thing and you don't want to glorify the pain or any suffering or anything like that when you're in the low moments of a setback but know that again you've done it before and you will once again emerge how can leaders effectively navigate challenges while maintaining a sense of purpose and Direction purpose is such an important part of not only leadership but motivation perseverance and collaboration when you are leading a team through anything a project a launch just getting by daytoday and dividing up the workload if everyone on the team understands the larger mission of an organization and that larger purpose they are much more likely to feel loyal to feel engaged to feel like they are part of something bigger than whatever work they have to do that day when entrepreneurs are working towards whatever company they're building they are always focused on that North Star that mission and that's what gets them through this let's go back to the discomfort that comes naturally with running a company with overcoming obstacles if you think back to grit Theory Angela Duckworth is a psychologist who came up with grit Theory and she talks about it's like purpose and motivation like that is going to get you through anything so if you're delegating that's fine and if you're giving some of the more Junior members of your team smaller tasks make sure they really understand the bigger picture and the impact that their work is having on pushing your company or your team or your client forward my husband and I manage assisted living facilities and I always say they're not my grandparents or my parents or my children but they are someone's it's getting the team around that bigger mission of helping people have a better life exactly I know people who have a picture of their kids up by their desk not so they can be reminded of their family in general but so they can be reminded of what they're working for what they're working towards you want to build generational wealth you want to make sure they can have the best life possible and the best resources possible and again that's what's going to get you through the 80% of work that's a little bit of a slog you're not motivated to wake up one day and do invoicing and do accounting but you have to do the invoicing and the accounting if you want to run a successful business and that's when you have to draw onto that larger purpose that North Star and I have a couple exercises in the book that can help you identify what that North Star is what do you hope readers and listeners will take away from your book and apply in their own leadership Journey everyone experiences setbacks they are not fun in the moment you're experiencing them and everyone experiences them differently right your setback might look different than mine but the cycle is the same this is a universal Human Experience and once you see setbacks through this lens or see your own life experience through this perspective you will emerge from your next setback with a sense of all you can achieve all you are capable of what I really want people to take away is to please know that in your lowest of lows in the worst career or business or even personal setbacks that you are encountering this is where the growth happens and you will come through this again again with all the resilience and mental flexibility and confidence to get you through whatever comes next I don't want to glorify pain but I want you to know that you will get through this you're reminding me of a time in my life where I felt like I was at my lowest my personal life and I had just taken a new role in a company and I thought my life at the time is pretty low I might as well go for this right I might as well try everything I can and that turned out to be one of my best career moments because I put all I had into it because I thought and I don't want to say it can't get any worse cuz it probably could have gotten worse it turned into one of the best opportunities so I love that you've created a book to help us think through this cuz you're right in the moment we don't always do it so thank you for sharing setback cycle with the world please share how and where we can find you the setback cycle.com is a website that goes right to my personal site and gives you a little more information about the book I'm on Instagram amow Y and I'm on LinkedIn I'm on threads and Twitter Instagram LinkedIn and my website the setback cycle.com thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our Sheil it website or at Sheil it on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you you crave