Listen to the HCI Podcast with Executive Coach Thomas Gelmi

Podcast interview transscript:

Jonathan Westover

Thomas Gelmi, welcome to the conversation today.

Thomas Gelmi

Thank you very much for having me, John.

Jonathan Westover

It's a pleasure to be with you. You were a guest a couple of years ago, and it's great to have you back. You're joining us from Munich, and I'm South of Salt Lake City in Utah. Today, we will be talking about Fostering a Resilient Environment Within the Workplace.

As we get started, I wanted to share Thomas' bio with everybody. For more than two decades, Thomas Gelmi has been an executive coach facilitator, member of the Forbes Coaches Council, and sparring partner, supporting leaders and teams in their development at various levels and in numerous industries. He focuses on developing personal and interpersonal competence in leadership, teamwork, and customer relations.

For his practice, he draws on an extraordinary biography with exciting milestones. Besides his many years of professional experience in various management positions, he spent 7 years with Swissair, the former Swiss National Airline. In the worldwide leadership and training of cabin crew and in contact with international customers at 30,000 feet, he experienced first-hand how important a high level of personal and interpersonal competence is for effective human interactions.

Now, Thomas, I could keep going. You have so much in your background, but I want to pause there. Anything else you would like to highlight by way of your background or personal context before we dive on it?

Thomas Gelmi

Maybe just one thing that I became aware of much later in my biography. For a long time, I had the impression that I was a bit zigzagging through my professional path. I earned my first money cutting people's hair. Then I joined a circus for two years, toured around this and that, and done some job hopping. Then I joined Swissair and finally found something where I could contribute with who I am.

Looking back, the red thread is very clear. It was always about people, and I was already having deep conversations and listening to stories while I was cutting people's hair.

Jonathan Westover

Very good.

Thomas Gelmi

The red thread is there.

Jonathan Westover

Excellent. As we dive on in today to the broader topic, maybe you can share a little bit about your philosophy, generally speaking, around resilience, and then we can start to explore strategies on how we can create and foster and sustain a more resilient environment in the workplace.

Thomas Gelmi

Yes, I'd love to. Well, I mostly focus on leadership development in my work. I help people in leading positions to further develop their leadership personality, much more than skills or competencies or methods and techniques. It's really about becoming a leader.

This has two main components. One is a well-developed personal competence, which basically means being in touch with yourself, having a good relationship with yourself, and a well-established interpersonal competence because it's about interacting with other people. Leadership is influence, right? «Personal» is the prerequisite, it's the basis for «interpersonal». If we want to create and foster an environment or a culture of resilience, it all begins with ourselves and our own resilience.

Jonathan Westover

Let's explore that a little bit. I agree. I think anytime we're trying to do anything within a team, within an organizational setting, the leader sets the tone and leads by example as much as anything. If you're trying to influence others in creating a resilient workplace, resilient team members, resilient bench, strength, people can step in to future roles and challenging responsibilities, it starts with you. You have to be able to be resilient yourself, demonstrate that resilience to your people.

How do we start that process, especially in this day and age, where I think it's probably never been harder to be a leader? The world is almost, it seems, infinitely complex. Constant disruptions. We're being expected to constantly pivot and be agile all while also looking out for the well-being of our people. There's a lot on the plate of leaders right now. I think a lot of leaders feel overwhelmed. Oftentimes, they just feel like it's the best thing I can do to just put out the fires every day, let alone try to do anything more long term strategic or culture building in orientation.

Thomas Gelmi

Absolutely right. The environment in which organizations operate today and in which leaders lead and in which employees have to do their job has changed and keeps changing. Everybody knows the term VUCA. It's been used for decades to characterize the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of our environment.

We are at a point today where VUCA is becoming a thing of the past. There's already a new acronym coming up on the horizon, and that's BANI. BANI stands for the four main characteristics of today's environment, post-pandemic. Brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible. When you think of VUCA and BANI, BANI hits the much better than VUCA.

Today, things seem to be falling apart and become brittle. People are, in one way or another, in various shapes and colours, anxious, tense, stressed. There's a lot of fear if we look into society and into workplaces. Things have become nonlinear in the sense of no more clear cause and effect. If I do this, this will happen, or what happened is the consequence of what happened before. It has become much less predictable and therefore incomprehensible.

In this environment, we as leaders should be giving confidence, orientation, clarity, guidance, while at the same time being affected by the very same aspects of the environment ourselves. This is highly challenging, as you already mentioned.

One of the first things to do when we want to increase our own resilience is to understand what we can change and influence and what we cannot, and to come to this distinction very clearly and as quick as possible in any given situation. Because it's a pillar of resilience, this what I call radical acceptance of the unchangeable.

Because in any situation that we encounter, any conditions under which we operate or live, there are always aspects that are what they are, and we cannot change anything about them. We cannot do anything about them. Then there's a circle of influence, some aspects where we have choices, where we can change something, where we at least have some influence. The thing is that often we are stuck in resistance against how things are.

We hear this often from employees, from people in organizations: "It shouldn't be the way they are running it now. The decision shouldn't have been made like that. It's wrong. I would have done it differently." Well, yes, okay, you can vent for a moment. But ideally, if you're very resilient, you come to a point very quickly where you understand: "This has been decided, this is going to happen, this is the change that is going to be executed and there's nothing we can change."

What is the only healthy and logical way of dealing with something we cannot change? Accept it. Accept it and let it go. Acceptance and letting go are two sides of the same coin. Only when I have fully accepted something, I can let it go. Letting go means I do not bother any longer. I don't keep thinking about it all the time. I let it go, and I focus on something else, on the things that I can change and control.

This radical acceptance does not mean I agree. It doesn't mean I'm okay with it. I support it. No, I can be against it, but still accept it because it already happens, and it is what it is. That's one core element of resilience.

Jonathan Westover

I think that's a really important point. It's one I struggle with, I'll admit, because I always use the mantra "be soft on people, hard on systems". If something is problematic, if it's hurting people, whether intentional or not, I want to push for change of that thing. A lot of times within organizations, there's policies, practices, procedures that for one reason or another damage or hurt people or exploit people or in some way do harm.

On the one hand, I'm like, it's outside of my sphere of influence. I can't cause change in this area. I just need to do what I can and move on and save my energy for things I can influence. On the other hand, I hate that because I want to be able to push and influence those things and bring about change that I think will make the organization more healthy. I know a lot of people feel that way. That's a hard tension to deal with.

I think what you're highlighting here is an important distinction. In no way am I acknowledging pleasure or satisfaction with something that may be harming people from my perspective, just because I've come to a level of acceptance that this is what it is. I can continue to strategize. I can continue to try to see how I can influence things in a positive way. But it's not sustainable for me to run around beating my head against a brick wall endlessly. All I'm going to do is deplete myself and deplete those around me, and I'm not going to be able to drive any change anyways.

I think what you're suggesting, what I'm hearing is if we have that radical acceptance, it's not like burying our head in the sand. It's not pretending like everything's fine. It's not just deciding, I guess if everyone else is doing it, I'm going to do it, too, and now I'm complicit. But it's just recognizing spheres of influence, what I can and cannot control, and then leaning into what I can control, the influence that I do have, and being strategic about how I utilize my limited time, energy, mental bandwidth, et cetera.

Thomas Gelmi

Absolutely. Because with this attitude and mindset, you free up capacity and energy that's important in those areas where you can actually do something. You can still try to address the topic and set impulses and highlight that you think is wrong. But while you're doing that, you are in a state of acceptance of how it currently is until something may eventually change. That's a completely different energy, and it's more energy, more energy for what is relevant.

As a leader, yes, especially when you're somewhere in a middle management position where you always tone or in a loyalty conflict between, am I loyal towards my management and the policy and the strategy of the organization, or am I loyal to my team and my people? That can be a lot of tension. Especially there, a way can be to accept the things that have been decided or the strategy, even if I may only agree to a certain extent, maybe to 70%-80%, and 20%, I disagree, I still fully commit to it and then support my people in handling it and dealing with it.

These are the facts. This is the strategy. This is the decision that was made. Now, how are we going to deal with it? What are we going to do? What can we influence? How can we shape it and form it in such a way that it's okay for us, and we can perform at our best within the given circumstances?

Jonathan Westover

Excellent. We can come to that radical acceptance. We start to have internal resilience. We start to model that for our team, for our people. Now, what else can we do from a strategic point of view to start to foster that environment of resilience, not just within ourselves, but within our team.

Thomas Gelmi

Yes. Two more, actually three more pillars of resilience besides the radical acceptance. Another one is optimism. Choosing a mindset of optimism, an optimistic mindset. Optimism is not to be mixed up with naive positivity or even toxic positivity. Running around the organization saying, everything is fine, ignore the issues, focus on the positive, think positive. That's not optimism, that's denial. This can be toxic, actually. You can undermine your own credibility and trust if you do that.

Optimism means believing in a positive outcome despite the conditions or amidst adversity. When you feel like everything's brutal and things seem to be falling apart, you still strongly believe in a positive outcome and that we are, as a team or as an organization, going to come out of this the other end, and we'll be fine and radiating this confidence. That's leadership.

Optimism goes hand in hand with solution focus. What does that mean? Solution focus is the question, what do I focus on for myself? Where do I put my focus of attention, mainly? What do I think about, mostly, and what do my conversations focus on? To give you a simple example, let's say something happened, somebody made a mistake, customer complaints, internal customer, external customer, it doesn't matter. Now, of course, we have to have a meeting.

Now, a problem-focused meeting will be based on questions like, why did this happen, and who's responsible? Whose fault is it? You can almost sense what an emotional climate these questions will generate in that meeting and what this will do to people and how they will come out of that meeting.

A solution-focused meeting, same event would be based on questions like, How did this happen? What needs to be done now? How can we support you? What can we learn from this? Totally different energy, totally different vibe. People are going to come out that meeting in a totally different emotional state, which will be much more productive, and they will go and do what was agreed. This depends, of course, on our own perception and what we focus on as leaders.

Now, here comes the challenge. The challenge is called negative bias. I'm sure you know what I mean. Negative bias is one of many, many biases we have in our thinking and in our perception. What it means is we tend to perceive anything negative that's potentially threatening to us much stronger and much bigger, and it has more weight, and we react more strongly to it than anything positive, anything that's going well.

That's very human. It's not wrong. It's human. It's natural because it has to do with survival. It's very old. However, if you are in this negative bias problem-solving mode as a leader all the time, what do you see when you walk around the organization? Problems, issues, everything that's not the way it should be. Then what will you talk about with people? What will you give feedback about everything that's not working well? That creates a certain atmosphere and climate.

I hear a lot from people, well, I only hear from my boss when something's wrong, something happened. When everything's going fine and well, I don't hear anything. I usually tell them, Well, look, that's no bad intention. That's just problem-solving mode. Now, the good news is we can shift and expand our focus of attention so that we also see and perceive what's going well and what people do well and the little successes here and there and what we can be proud of.

The thing is, we have to intentionally pay attention to it and make a decision to also notice and try to see when someone does something well. It takes a conscious decision. If we do that, the magic happens. If you start telling people the good things that you see in what they do and how they do things, first they will look at you and think, "What happened?" Did you take a course or something? Until they understand what you're doing and why this is so important and help everybody else to also expand their focus of attention and not ignore all the good things that are happening.

The culture changes over time by one experience after the other, one conversation after the other. When I come out of a conversation that I was nervous about with my boss and I come out, we have discussed a difficult topic and an issue, and I feel good about how it went. Wow, that's a completely different story. This builds resilience among other things. Again, it starts with ourselves.

Jonathan Westover

I really like that. Again, it's not about putting your head in the sand. It's not about ignoring the challenges and trying to be proactive about addressing those issues that you see. I think any good leader will spend a good amount of their time trying to address and resolve those sorts of issues. But you have to have a level of optimism. Just to be able to stay sustainable and not burn out, you have to have optimism because there are always problems.

Give me any organization. I don't care how excellent the leader is. I don't care how good the people are. I don't care about how many awards it's won. Every organization with people have issues, have lots of issues. It's because we're human, and we're messy, and there's always issues that you have to work through.

Just acknowledging that, acknowledging, yes, there are challenges. Yes, we are working at it. We're building the plane while we're flying it. We're not going to ignore the issues. We're going to address them head-on, but we're going to do it with a positive mindset. We're going to do it from a mindset that we're going to learn from these setbacks.

That level of ingenuity and innovation and just the overall energy and the positivity around that a mindset and approach is so dramatically different than what we've all experienced when we're around somebody who's just always negative, always just complaining, always whining. It's not that they see things other people don't see. Maybe they do. But most of the time, it's just they're only focusing on the negative, and they're ignoring the positive, or they're ignoring the growth opportunities that are coming from this.

It is a tension, and it is something you have to balance because I'm not all about being polyamish and just ignoring the hard things and pretending like everything is okay. But I think having a realistic understanding of the challenges we face while having an internal optimism that we can do better, that we can learn together, and that we will figure this out, that is what people need on your team.

I need to be able to model that for my people. I need them to see that I have that positivity and that I have that overall optimism around what we're trying to accomplish, regardless of the challenges we might be facing, and then encourage them to do the same.

Like you mentioned, point out the good things. Model that by expressing gratitude and pointing out the wins and, yes, acknowledging the challenges, but also where have we come? Where did we start, and where have we come, and where are we going? That's what leadership is, right?

Thomas Gelmi

Exactly. It's often small things that are improving, that are getting better. There's this beautiful quote that really summarizes negative bias in one sentence. It says, "One falling tree makes more noise than a whole forest growing at the same time." We tend to focus on those falling trees when there's so much growing, we just have to look at it and pay attention.

I liked how you just said a more realistic view because that's what it is when we're optimistic, and we're also including all the good stuff in our awareness. That's realistic. It's much less biased. Yes, we have problems and issues because we're humans, and it can get messy, you just said, and I go even one step further that problems and issues are in the nature of work and businesses. We're here for that.

It's about solving one problem after the other. It will never end, believing that we will one day reach a point where finally we have resolved all the issues and problems, and we can finally relax and do our work. That's a myth. It will never happen, ever. Just accepting this and understanding that life is difficult and work is difficult, and there's one problem after the other. Accepting this radically can already relax in a way because you're not expecting something else to happen.

Jonathan Westover

Absolutely. Well, Thomas, this has just been a real pleasure. I note the time, I need to let you go here in just a minute. But before we wrap things up for today, I wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team, and then give us a final word on the topic for today.

Thomas Gelmi

Wonderful. You can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. If you're interested in talking or discussing, just reach out to me, connect with me, visit my website, or send me a message. The final word for today would be to just make the next step into more resilience, for example, optimism, or radical acceptance.

You're not supposed to make a big leap and tomorrow morning, "Yeah, I got it," and now I'm like, "Resilience level from 60% to 100%". No, that's not how it works. What is the next best thing I can do to start moving in the right direction? One little thing could be to sit down at the end of the day, take a pen and a sheet of paper or tablet, whatever it may be, and write down what went well today and what did I do well today.

Just write down what comes to mind so that you set your self-perception straight. Then ask yourself, "Even though I may not have achieved everything on my list today, did I give my best? Did I do what was possible under the given circumstances? Yes, I did." That's a reason to pat yourself on the shoulder and say, "Well done. That was a good day." Now you deserve a good rest and disconnect. That would be my middle word. Small steps. Baby steps.

Jonathan Westover

Baby steps. Well said. Thomas, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Thomas could do for you. As always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe. I hope you find meaning and purpose at work each and every day, and I hope you all have a great.