Lessons in Resilience During a Government Shutdown

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. I want to encourage you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. There you can click on a button on that main screen to be able to access a form. If you got a question. Maybe you want to learn a little bit more about the foundation of the five levels of leadership, which is really what we have bent everything in this podcast towards around leadership. We would love for you to be able to do that. Well, today we’re going to take a little bit of a different angle, and this is something that we’re looking forward to.

Chris Goede:
We will often talk about team development and team leadership. Well, none of that happens until you lead yourself well first. Right. And as Per and I have shared in the past, that’s often the hardest job that we have is to be able to lead self. And so here in the States recently, we have had a government shutdown and we travel a lot. And so Perry is bringing something fresh, not off of a coaching call, but off of an experience out of my own pain, your own pain. And a little bit, A little bit. Mine’s a little bit different.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. No grandchildren involved. No spouse was involved. We’ll talk about that. But we’re going to talk about lessons in resilience during a government shutdown. And I started by saying lead self, because that’s what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to really talk about how Perry led not only himself, but influenced those around him during that process. And the principles are the same.

Chris Goede:
They’re transferable. And every single leader in your life, you’ve had things that have gone awry and have not gone the way that you expected them to. If you’ve ever traveled, that has also happened. And then you put the government shutdown in there and you can just double down on what that is. Now, the disruption for you was minimal compared to some other people. Right. So we are. We are not saying that this is anything tied to how some other people maybe experienced this shutdown in travel.

Chris Goede:
But what we want to do is take this real life example and then Valerie Burton’s Rules of Resilience, which she wrote a book. And by the way, if you’ve listened to this podcast, you know that we’ve also developed a corporate training around that with her. And we’re going in and helping and serving teams become more resilient and helping leaders be aware of their resilience. So I think that’s enough of a setup to let people know we’re going a little bit of a different direction today. But I think they’re going to be very, very interested in the rules of resilience and how you actually live these out.

Perry Holley:
And we have invited Valerie, I think, to join us next month. So looking forward to.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
Deeper on this. But for now, let’s say that we had an opportunity to apply some of our learning. And so just the net of the story was I’ve been planning for weeks and weeks, my wife and I getting away to go see our children, grandchildren in another state. We, it’s unfortunate we live apart, but we, we have the ability to go and see and made these plans. Get to the airport. Everything seems fine. Although I should have been tipped off. I came in on a flight the day before and the pilot actually announced to the, to the plane that this was his first being affected by the shutdown, that our flight was now going to be rerouted and caused some delays and things, but it was minimal.

Perry Holley:
And everybody on the plane started paying attention like, whoa, we’ve been hearing about this could happen, but now it’s happened. Then I go home and then come back the next day to get on another flight. And with almost minutes to go to get on, we’ve been sitting for a couple hours waiting. Your. Your flight is canceled. And because of flight TSA and because of aircraft controllers, all that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
So they announced it. I get an email saying that I’ve been put on the next flight, which is six hours later and happens to be around midnight. And I’m not good after 9:30. I don’t know if you know that, but I thought now I’m instantly concerned and I started thinking about will that flight go? And there’s no promise that flight will go. Then I started making some, some observations around the airport. Just I’m not the only one affected. Matter of fact, a lot of the screens are blinking red. Cancel, cancel, cancel.

Perry Holley:
And then you start watching how people are acting and you see seemingly normal adult human beings screaming at gate agents who, by the way, last I checked, have nothing to do with the government shutdown or whether airlines are going or not going. These poor people. And by the way, they did an outstanding job of keeping their cool. But a lot of the passengers were not.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And to be honest, I felt my tension rising a bit because this is really a big deal for our family. You don’t get to. My schedule doesn’t allow me to take, you know, to move my, my office from here to Texas. But we had it all planned out to do that. And I thought this is a great opportunity to run through these rules of resilience. I didn’t do it right then with my wife because she would. Would probably hit me with the book. But we had to make some decisions, we had to do some things, but that’s what I wanted to run through.

Perry Holley:
And then you also had a situation because you and I, the previous day had left the same place. Yeah, I was on a plane and you were in a. Heading for a plane that, that I didn’t know till later. That’s right. Disappeared.

Chris Goede:
What’s so important about yours real quick is that, yeah, there was a child involved, meaning your son and his wife, but there was grandchildren. So you now can just escalate that, not only for you, but also.

Perry Holley:
The wife started crying because we’re not going to see the grand. Then the grandchildren started crying when they found out we weren’t coming. And apparently I was the only one not crying, but I was thinking about crying, but it was, it was, it was disruptive, to say the least, for our family.

Chris Goede:
For your family? Yeah. For me, a lot simpler. But I had moved to a later flight because we were running a little bit behind. And then they actually canceled that flight, which was the night before everything was supposed to start. And fortunately we were within driving distance about five hours of Atlanta. And I had to, you know, had to kind of navigate all that. It was already 8 o’ clock at night. I also don’t stay up past 10 o’.

Chris Goede:
Clock. And so here I was stopping at every gas station and food place, shoving my face of food to get through to be able to travel. Now we say this and we give these examples and we’re going to really lean on Perry’s example because we want to flush these principles out. They. They absolutely work. And, and what I want to really talk about is as you lead self through that, as we talk about the experience and the rules of resilience, you are always influencing people. People are always watching you. Whether it was Perry watching the people that were losing their mind, you know, at the airport, or whether Perry.

Chris Goede:
People watching Perry and how he handled it, the same thing happens inside your organization. And then as you work through situations like that, your influence will grow if you handle it the right way. So we’re going to walk through these rules of resilience from. From Valerie, because they’re powerful. And it’s not, again, not just for this travel story, but for your own leadership journey. So rule number one, rule one, rule one. Expect the unexpected. Listen, we plan as leaders, we want it to go smooth, but we know that the plans are probably not going to go the way that we intended.

Chris Goede:
And the same thing for Perry. As we travel, we know when we go to Hartsfield here in Atlanta, it’s more than likely not going to go exactly like we wanted to. And so you think about, what are those unexpected things? What’s the disruption? Is there a failure in the business? What was the. All of that has got to be a normal part of your leadership as you are growing, developing teams, and going after certain organizational KPIs. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And it is truly, the government shutdown had been going on for, like, 39 days up to this point. It wasn’t like it was without possibility.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And so you think, if I’m expecting the unexpected, what does that mean in resilience terms? Is that while I’m expecting the flight to go as normal, the unexpected would be there’s a disruption, and what would I do? Am I prepared for that? Which then leads into rule number two, which says, can I choose thoughts that strengthen me? So choose thoughts that strengthen you. And so something happens. So this flight is canceled, and I’m watching people lose their mind around me. But it all depends on how you label what happened.

Chris Goede:
Right?

Perry Holley:
And so I could label it as the greatest disaster of my day and my everybody’s gonna be mad and the grandkids in this, and we’re gonna miss that. Or I could label it as, you know, I expected the unexpected. This was on the radar. It could happen. And I can label it as an opportunity. I could. You know, Valerie actually writes in the book, she says your thoughts can fuel your resilience or drain it. And so how you.

Perry Holley:
And it’s all Marcus Aurelius saying, it’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you handle what happens to you that matters, how you think about it. And so the thoughts I had were, you know, immediately were the tension rising. Why are you doing this to me? Why? No, no. A positive thought would be, what’s okay? This is this. We knew this could happen. Nobody’s doing this on purpose to me. It’s not. Definitely not this gate agent’s fault.

Chris Goede:
Right.

Perry Holley:
Not label it as a negative, label it glass half full, and start to make a plan to Move forward with it.

Chris Goede:
I love what you’re just saying there. Almost made me think about the power of gratitude in the moment. Now we know it’s a disruption, so we don’t want to want it to be fake. When you have that gratitude, but you think about you’re grateful you were still in Atlanta. How many people were stuck in different cities that weren’t their home and you could go through that. And you know, for me, thinking about the commute that I had to make that night, I was thinking, okay, well, so now I know for sure because I had to be back in Atlanta for a 8:30am meeting. I know that I’m going to be there. I’m taking the control of that and I’m driving.

Chris Goede:
So I’m grateful that, that I can do that. I was grateful for five hours in the car. Yeah, we could miss Salt Lake 100% and I wouldn’t be going. I was grateful to be able to go and, and, and sleep in my own bed that night, even though it was going to be several hours later. So it’s that I love what you’re saying. It’s about those thoughts that, that strengthen you. So the third one that we want to share with you is focus on the vision, not the obstacle, right? So the, the vision was simple, right? You’re trying to get to Texas safely and spend time with the family. Now the obstacle was the flight getting canceled, right? Like that’s not the main mission part of it.

Chris Goede:
So for me, the vision was I need to get home because I know that I need this meeting. And the obstacle was that flight was no longer available. What am I, what am I going to do? And so many leaders. And this is me too. Especially depending on where my energy level is. I get stuck focused on the obstacle versus how to work around the obstacle to figure out how do I keep moving towards the vision. What are the backup plans? Right. What are, what are different alternate routes and what are creative opportunities? So for me, it was in that moment, as soon as I got off the phone with Delta, while I’m driving to the airport, I immediately got on the phone with the rental car company and started saying, well, what about this? They said, no, what about this? What about this one? Finally got to a point where, okay, great, return it in Atlanta.

Chris Goede:
And so just knowing that I. And the obstacle was, oh well, there’s no longer a flight. What if tomorrow morning doesn’t go? No, it’s like I need to be in Atlanta by 8:30. What are all my options?

Perry Holley:
So if you focus on the obstacle, you’d have driven to the airport and argued with the flight people. When’s the next flight? When I got to no, no. And same for me, I started, people were focusing on the obstacle, yelling at gate agents and how are you going to solve this obstacle? No, what are the, what are my next options to solve it? Which leads to the next rule, which is rule four, control the controllables, except the rest. And you know, in that moment for both of us, thinking, I can’t control the faa, I cannot control Congress, I cannot control any, any of this that’s going on with the airline. What, what do I have control over? I have control over my thoughts, my emotions, my attitude. And I, I, I now because I say I, I, I let go of that now I accept that that’s, it’s a given. I, the rules are the rules. Whatever’s happening and the government’s happening, what do I have control?

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
How I’m going to go forward. Same with you. You could have gotten mad. I think you said you even had the, you thought you had the flight scheduled and then you didn’t get a notice. You call them back, said there’s no flight. The flight just evaporated right now. You could have really gone off with that. But what, what good is that? So you said, what can I control my thoughts and my actions, my attitude? So now what does that make possible? And so I love the idea of, you know, a lot of people were yelling at Delta when I thought now I’m, I’m able to.

Perry Holley:
That’s, that is what it is. I’m going to now focus on what’s next. What, what does this make possible? What are the options? Oh, stay till midnight and maybe take a flight that goes get a hotel nearby and maybe catch one in the morning if, if that one goes. Now this is all brand new territory. These are the first, the big day of cancellations happening. We had a little sprinkling of it on that Friday when you and I are both trying to get home.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
But Saturday now it’s all rules are different story. And what it’s going to go on so really opens up if you, if you’re trying to control things you can’t control, your resilience is going out the door because you’re really wasting energy.

Chris Goede:
When I was on the, when I was on the phone to say that I was confused several times by what I was hearing. And to your point, you can dig in in that but what was that going to do? Like somebody I’m talking to In a call center somewhere is not going to magically put me on another flight that’s going to get me like, how do I solve that problem? So, yeah, don’t get caught up in that. Right. And control what you can. All right, so that takes us to rule number five, rally your resources. So if you have expect the unexpected expected, which is one. Number two, that you’re. You choose the thoughts that.

Chris Goede:
That will strengthen you. Number three was focus on the vision, not the obstacle. Number four, control what you can control. So if you have that now, you have the ability to think clearly and rally your resources. Problem solve. I think leaders solve problems really, really well. How are we going to go after that? And so we mentioned, I think it’s about navigating the how. So it was, okay, this is now what.

Chris Goede:
How am I going to. How am I going to. By using the word how, knowing that you are. You can’t change what’s in the past. And how do I get and stay focused on the vision of where I’m going? For you, it was, you know, working through flights. And what’s that look like? Do we go home, sleep in our own bed? Do we try to go to the next day? For you that are going, hey, in business, what does that mean? It could be that you taking your resources, which could be your people, could be the purpose of what you’re doing, the perspective, you’re rallying them and always trying to find the answer. I love it because John has just taught me for so many years that there’s always more than one answer. Always.

Chris Goede:
And there’s always an answer if you just dig in hard enough and get the right people around you and your ally, your resources on your team, and.

Perry Holley:
Go back to thinking, why I put that you did those first four so well. The rules is that now you have a clear mind to think, what are my resources? Who, what, what can we start working on? I started those and people going and getting in line and I thought, I need to go get in line. I go, no, wait a minute. Rally my resources. I happen to have status with this airline. I happen to have a phone number I can use. I happen to know how things work. I know people that can, you know.

Perry Holley:
So all of a sudden, the problem solving starts happening. When everybody around me was kind of panicking and attacking. My wife and I are now formulating a plan and saying, where are we going? Which leads to another one. This is a little tougher. But rule number seven of the. Of the 10, so we skipped a couple there, but this one I really thought applied here was don’t pretend, don’t defend, or don’t. Yeah, don’t pretend, don’t defend. And this one’s a little humbling because I have to admit, I was very frustrate.

Perry Holley:
Super frustrating.

Chris Goede:
And you had the right to be.

Perry Holley:
Cleared my schedule and made this possible and all the things that we think that we’re doing. But pretending everything was fine would have really been dishonest. And defending my frustration would have just made it worse, that I have the right to be mad. I have the right to be upset. No, no. Valerie says when you can admit the problem, even if the problem’s you, you can fix the problem. And so don’t pretend that it’s. This is not bad.

Perry Holley:
Don’t pretend that this is not a situation that could actually get a lot worse. And did a coup over the next couple days. And I really found that for leaders, for. For me, that building trust, when you’re transparent about your emotions about the situation, instead of pretending like everything’s okay, pretending like, oh, this will get through, just be honest about things, be authentic. And it is a bit about. And we talk a lot on this podcast about vulnerability and leadership, but it really is a bit about you being vulnerable to the moment. Me telling my wife, this is ugly and this is not going to resolve itself probably tonight or at that point, we have no clue if Congress is ever coming back.

Chris Goede:
Right.

Perry Holley:
And so. And these people that are working out of their own good heart right now, I’m even worried about if the situation even safe. And so stop pretending that everything’s wonderful in the sky. Stop pretending that everything’s going to be okay, that it’s perfectly safe. It’s probably not. And stop defending any. Any of your political beliefs, or don’t just let it go and say, where am I? Just be authentic, be vulnerable, be real. And that vulnerability builds trust with others and gives you, I think, the humility to.

Perry Holley:
To start to really solve the problem. Yeah.

Chris Goede:
You’re not sugarcoating it. Right. Like, it is it. It is what it is. We’re going to communicate that one question for you around that is going through that, allowing your emotions to. To show frustration, but staying calm through it while you’re working through these rules of resilience and the impact that that then had on your wife. Right. The influence you had on her in that moment and through that moment was probably because leadership’s contagious.

Chris Goede:
It was probably very similar to your body language, your tone, whatnot, because of the way you were handling it would you say that was true. Like that. Like she feeds off of that and your team will as well.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And she’s a great leader as well. And she. She was keeping her emotions under control, although her emotions were coming to the surface a bit. Just the. The sadness of what we were going to lose in the moment.

Chris Goede:
Sure.

Perry Holley:
But I noticed because I am as you are in your family. We’re. We’re the ultimate travelers. We go every week almost. We know how things work. We know how to navigate the system. We know we have phone numbers. We can do things.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And so she did look to me, and I think the calmest contagious thing was she’s looking at me. If I’m panicked, it’s going to cause panic. If I’m calm, we can remain calm.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
Even though both. It was. It was disturbing both of us and upsetting a bit doing these, these rules of resilience. Say, hey, what we gotta. Don’t pretend. Let’s. Let’s make a plan. Don’t.

Perry Holley:
Don’t try to, you know, think that this was unexpected. Don’t. Don’t pick a thought prop that’s going to make a weakness.

Chris Goede:
Right.

Perry Holley:
We’re the victim. They’re. They’re. Delta hates it. No, they don’t. It’s out of everybody’s hands. So.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
I love the application of that. To say, if I can stay calm and keep my resilience high, it’s going to flow through the family.

Chris Goede:
Good. Yeah, it’s good.

Perry Holley:
All right.

Chris Goede:
Rule number eight that Valerie has for us is find the opportunity in the challenge. Right. Stop. We’ve talked a lot about this through these others and the examples we’ve. We’ve given you. Stop fighting the situation. See the, See the. The gift in.

Chris Goede:
Is tough to do that. I’m not a guy that sits down every night and does a gratitude journal no matter how good or bad the day was. So that’s. It’s not easy. And again, I don’t want it to be fake. We’re not saying that it is reality. That’s why Perry talking about it. But I was able to get home safely.

Chris Goede:
You were able to. To be safe in Atlanta. And I think you guys had a nice candlelight dinner at the Delta Sky Club there at Hartsfield. Hanging out without the candle, probably. That’s right. That’s right. But the point is, when the challenge happens, you know, look for what’s now possible.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
With the next situation, to Perry’s point, you’re not going to change the. What’s happened in the Moment. So, so to be resilient as a leader, as you’re leading your team through certain situations, what is the now thing? And you guys have probably heard this phrase before. John says every setback is a setup for a comeback. You’ve heard that with people that get injured and different things that happen. And so don’t live, you know, don’t live in the, in the past. Learn from it, but figure out going forward what’s now possible in the future.

Perry Holley:
Don’t focus on the obstacle, focus on the opportunity. Now you think it’s so much in business that you think something, the customer rejects your product for something. Well, that’s unfortunate. But what is, what’s the opportunity in that? And oh, we, we. Now we know we have a problem. Now we know we can fix it. What is the opportunity and the challenge? And it’s really a great rule of resilience. The last one we’ll talk about here, number nine was rule nine was know when to grit, know when to quit.

Perry Holley:
And sometimes resilience is pushing through, and sometimes it’s knowing when to let go. And we had a choice in our hand. We started doing the analysis, look through the opportunities. What was the. In the challenge? Looking past the obstacles, what’s. Our vision was to get to Texas, but there were a lot of unknowns and the, the shutdown was looming and safety was looming. And, you know, I can grit through this. We could stay till midnight and catch that plane, which, by the way, got to Texas.

Perry Holley:
We didn’t go on that one. We made a decision not to, but we checked on it the next day to say, did it go? It got to Texas at 3am which would have caused all kind of disruption for my family and other things. So I’m glad I didn’t do that. But we also decided that there’s no guarantees tomorrow and things are just going to continue to get worse. Safety is going to continue to lessen. So it’s just now time to grit through this, or is this now time to quit? And I think Valerie said you grit with wisdom, not stubbornness. Yeah, I’m not going to stay here because I can stay here.

Chris Goede:
Right.

Perry Holley:
I’m going to make an informed decision because we did all the other rules of resilience. We had our minds clear and we were able to make a calculated decision and we went home.

Chris Goede:
I love that. Well, as I mentioned, as we started, right. A little bit different perspective today, but got to lead yourself to be able to lead your team well. So let’s, let’s land this plane Harry made me say that. Okay, everybody’s listening right now. He made me say that. He put that in here. Let’s do it.

Chris Goede:
Let’s do it. So with a couple of leadership takeaways as we wrap up. First, resilience isn’t about staying strong. It’s actually staying very adaptive.

Perry Holley:
How.

Chris Goede:
How do we. How do we. How do we dodge and, and, and move and, and, and move around things that we’re dealing with in that certain situation?

Perry Holley:
And just in Valerie, in the book are the first of the areas of resilience is adaptive skills.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
So that word is very good. Yeah. How. What are my. How am I having my adaptive skills?

Chris Goede:
Love that. Second, your team, as we’ve talked about this, being calm and it’s contagious. They’re going to take their emotional cues from you as the leader and how you handle that uncertainty of what’s in front of you and what you’re dealing with. They’re gonna, they’re gonna mirror that. They’re gonna. They’re gonna be right there with you. And so trying to keep that team calm as possible. And then finally, just know.

Chris Goede:
Every disruption is a learning opportunity. What are we going to learn from this? You mentioned about maybe you do a pitch with a product and the customer doesn’t like it. Okay, well, what didn’t they like about it? And can you make the changes that would then support other. Other customers? So there’s always an opportunity to learn. Just make sure you’re paying attention and, and staying grounded through it. I like the. I like the phrase of a scavenger hunt. While most times you think about a scavenger hunt, it’s like, oh, man, I’m on this adventure.

Chris Goede:
It’s going to be fun. I think if you look through different obstacles and challenges as a scavenger hunt and keeping these rules, you know, close to the chest. And what is it that you’re supposed to learn through that process? What is it your team’s supposed to learn so it can prepare you for something different? I think it’ll make a huge difference in your influence with your team.

Perry Holley:
Well, I highly recommend. The book has been very helpful to me as I’ve studied it and we’re working on the course for that. And just the. What are these rules and how do you apply them? I think it just makes you a better opportunity for success. And as Chris said, people are watching you all the time, and they’re going to see, are you calm and facing the. Through the obstacles and the stressors, or are you letting them affect you. As Chris has said at the top, if you’d like to know more about this topic, you want to know more about the five levels of leadership, you can learn all about that and get the Learner guide for this issue, which will have these rules outlined for you. You can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast.

Perry Holley:
You can also leave us a comment or a question there. We love hearing from you. We’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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