We Will Get Through This

In difficult times, it's easy to despair. But all around us are experts who have proven tactics and strategies to stay strong: for ourselves, for our teams and for our organizations. This is a podcast asking the very best in the world how to stay resilient. This is a podcast that shows us We Will Get Through This

Lots of people have one piece of the resilience puzzle. Their experience and expertise has given them insight on, say, nutrition or money or self-care or community building. These people are awesome, and they’ll be coming on the show. Few people have an established model about resilience, based on empirical evidence and tested in both the business and academic worlds. Dr Taryn Marie Stejskal is the unicorn. Her pre- and post-doctoral studies focused on the assessment and treatment of neurological injury, and she went on to be the Head of Executive Leadership Development at Nike, and of Global Leadership Development at Cigna. She then founded her own company, Resilience Leadership, where she serves as the Chief Resilience Officer (CRO), and champions the The Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People. In this episode we get into what’s wrong with bouncing back; those five practices of resilient people; the distinction between choice and control; how Kevin Bacon may have shot himself in the foot; why the mindset “everything happens for a reason” drives us both crazy … and just what it means to over-egg a pudding. You can meet Dr Taryn Marie at www.resilience-leadership.com and on Instagram at @drtarynmarie. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Confession: I’m not that great at conflict. For WAY too long my motto has been: Why have conflict when you can passively aggressively avoid it in some way? But the truth is, if we’re going to get through this, we need to manage conflict as best we can. Avoid the unnecessary fights; and fight well in the conflicts we have to have to move forward. That’s why it’s so important to listen to Liane Davey. She is an organizational psychologist who advises leaders on both strategy and team effectiveness. She's distilled her 25 years of experience into her most recent book, The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Your Organization Back on Track. In our conversation we talk about why we’re biologically wired to avoid conflict (see, it isn’t just me!); the price we pay for accumulating “conflict debt”; the delusion of “picking your battles”; when sweating palms can be helpful; and how to best harness the power of validation and reciprocity. You can meet Liane at www.LianeDavey.com and follow her on LinkedIn. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

The first time I saw Chester, he was wearing one of his trademark orange shirts and was surrounded by adoring fans at a learning and development conference. It was clear that people loved him. To be honest, I was irritated. I wanted some of that mojo for myself! When I got to know him years later, I discovered that, well, I loved him too … the man combines a big heart and a big brain in a way that’s irresistible. He is the author of a number of books that combined have sold north of 1.5 million copies. On the back of that thought leadership, he has worked for more than two decades helping organizations engage their employees in organizational strategy, vision, and values. In our conversation we dig into the wisdom of his latest book, Leading with Gratitude. We crush the misunderstanding that gratitude is somehow self-indulgence; talk about what it takes to build up the gratitude muscle; wrestle with the “Hand of God” from an atheist’s (mine) point of view; and share the ritual Chester instituted to help his kids embrace the power of gratitude. You can meet Chester at www.LeadingWithGratitudeBook.com and www.TheCultureWorks.com, and follow him on LinkedIn. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Jen Louden is one of my most important friends. We met fifteen years ago (it might even be more), when a mutual friend suggested we be part of a mastermind group together. Honestly, I wasn’t sure it would last. She was the best-selling author of The Women’s Comfort Book, the first mega-selling book on self-care … and what I assumed was likely a whole bunch of touchy-feely, self-indulgent stuff that was not really my thing at all. And yet, here we are. I love her and I admire her work, in particular her new book Why Bother? When times are hard, one reaction is often apathy. There are things to do … but why bother? Jen’s struggled with that, and has written a book that shares in a practical, compassionate and non-trite way how to find your way back to purpose, engagement and, ultimately, yourself.  In our conversation we talk about the myths of self-comfort, and how it’s often hard, not soft; how it’s possible to have self-compassionate grit; why you have to be alert for key moments of transition; the power of Conditions of Enoughness; and how (to everyone’s surprise) Jen ended up being a committed trail runner. You can meet Jen at her website www.Jenniferlouden.com and follow her on Instagram at @JenLouden.  This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Money is so often a source of anxiety … and that’s during the good times. When times are hard, money can prove to be an even more significant source of concern and stress. That’s why I invited Bruce Sellery to be a guest on the podcast. I met him many years ago when he was a business journalist, and he’s gone on to be the host of the Million Dollar Neighborhood for the Oprah Winfrey Network and a money columnist for CBC Radio. He’s the author of Moolala: Why Smart People do Dumb Things with Their Money, and he also hosts Moolala: Money Made Simple, a weekly radio show on personal finance for SiriusXM. You get a sense of Bruce in the name of his business: it’s pronounced M-oo-la-LA!. He’s about adding some flair and lightness to understanding money, while not diminishing its importance. In our conversation we dig deep into the four reasons why people do dumb things with money (“the C Factors); and then the five steps it takes to build out a robust money plan, in difficult times and in good times. You can meet Bruce at his website www.Moolala.ca and follow him on Twitter at @brucesellery. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Dorie Clark has been described by no less than the New York Times as an expert in self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives. That’s probably all you need to know. But in case you’re asking yourself, “yes, but what else?” know that she's a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and is author of a number of books including Stand Out, which was named the number one leadership book of the year by Inc magazine. I’ve known Dorie for quite a while, and part of her quiet genius is the disciplined rigour of her approach to anything she does. When she builds a brand, she does it methodically. When she creates a network, she does it methodically. When she builds her business … you get the idea. If you’re known for something, you’re more likely to be valued; and if you’re valued, you’re more likely to get through whatever’s ahead. In our conversation we talk about why we shouldn’t get tripped up on the whole idea of “a personal brand”; why, if you build it, they won’t come; the necessity of creating content, and how to start even if you don’t know where to start; the power of social proof; and why networking really isn’t as bad as you probably think it is. You can meet Dorie on her website and discover how far along the path you are to becoming a recognized expert at www.DorieClark.com/toolkit.  This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

I was introduced to the concept of projects and project management through a productivity guy: David Allen. In David’s book Getting Things Done, he says (and I paraphrase), "We get overwhelmed by all the stuff on our plates. Start thinking about almost everything you do as a project, and then you can start managing it as a project." David’s introducing a system, and in tough times, good systems are one of the things that help you live a better life, feel more in control, and get through this. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is the world expert on projects and project management. He’s written books, Harvard Business Review articles and is named as one of the Thinkers 50, the so-called “Oscars of management”. He really has been a champion forever in the argument that projects are the lingua franca of the business and personal worlds.  In our conversation we talk about the power of focus; the necessity of courage; why saying No is perhaps the ultimate project management hack; and how to avoid the swamps of project management where so many of us can get bogged down. You can meet Antonio at his website www.antonionietorodriguez.com and on Twitter at @AnietoRodriguez. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

The poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” I think, actually, it’s likely made of both … and while I can’t really claim any deep expertise in physics, I do know a little bit about the power of story-telling. A little bit. But not as much as Bernadette Jiwa who amongst other things has teamed up with Seth Godin to create a fantastic workshop on storytelling as part of his Akimbo series. Storytelling is the fabric that creates relationship and community and history. In creating history, it allows you to navigate where you are in the present, and also lay a path out to where you might be going in the future. But it’s plenty easy to tell a story poorly. A boring start, a soggy middle, an end that trails off … we’ve all been on the receiving end of that non-epic. To get beyond that, to save your story, you need a Story Scaffold, which is just what Bernadette shares in this episode. Bernadette helps people, organizations, and communities practice everyday storytelling to build resilience, trust, and connection … all critical skills to help us get through this.  You can meet Bernadette at her website www.thestoryoftelling.com This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

One of the few people in my life who was a great boss to me was Kate Lye. One of the reasons I truly love Kate, and this will sound a bit odd, is her intolerance. Intolerance not of people so much, but of shonky, flabby thinking. She has an ability to stick a finger at the kind of weak thinking that often shows up in the world of leadership and resilience and whatever else and saying, "Well that's not really good enough is it? Somebody's just made that up." That quest for rigor in thinking is something that I try and hold onto myself and I see all the time in Kate.  Kate is a leadership specialist based in London and who works with clients worldwide. For over 20 years, ever since I’ve known her, she has been fascinated by how deep change happens for both individuals and organizations. And her work with CEOs and executive teams is focused on equipping them to hardwire tough changes and be clear-sighted about what or who gets in the way. She is a confidant and a coach to many leaders as they transform their businesses.  In our conversation, we sweep aside the platitudes and empty generalities that plague any discussion about resilience, and uncover the process by which we need to construct our own, personalized, RMO: Resilience Modus Operandi.  You can meet Kate at www.KLIconsult.com or on LinkedIn to say hello. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Now I'm not going to name names but, oh, you need to know I have them in my head right now. I can see them, I can hear them, I can feel my breath getting a little faster, my shoulders going up around my ears, my spine stiffening, my jaw clenching a bit. Equally, and I hope this is true for you as well, there are some people who calm me down. People who make me smile, help me breathe, let my shoulders drop, let my heart open. Eric Klein is one of those people. He is a great calming influence in my life and a deep and precious friend. He is one of the few people on the planet to be both a best-selling leadership author and a lineage holder and teacher in a 3,000 year yoga tradition. He leads Wisdom Heart, a global online meditation community, and serves organizations at the Mindfulteam.com In our conversation we dig into the neuroscience of calmness, the power of making a prenuptial contract with your own brain, where is the most useful place to start to settle yourself down, and (as strange as this might sound) just what it takes to breathe. You can meet Eric at www.Wisdomheart.com. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Ric Leahy, my guest in this episode, was almost responsible for a career choice of mine that would have been disastrous, both for me and my country. Ric and I went to high school together. When we hit our final year, Ric had a plan: “I'm going to win a scholarship and join the navy." And I thought … well, why not. I'm going to join the air force. Ric wins his scholarship and begins a career in the navy. I failed every test they had, didn't begin a career in the air force, and eventually found my own path. During his naval career, Ric served on the staff of the Chief of the Australian Navy, on multiple ships, and was deployed on the ground on operations to Cambodia, Timor-Leste, and Iraq. He was awarded a Queen's Gold Medal, and later in his career the Conspicuous Service Cross. He now leads a number of leadership programs for Australia’s top business schools, has become a “neuro nerd” with an Executive Masters degree on neuroscience and leadership, and is an endurance athlete. In our conversation we talk about where we do our best thinking--and why--and three powerful mindsets: the Sensei, the Scientist and the Socializer. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

This is the first season of We Will Get Through This, and of course I’m curious … should I keep doing it? Personally, I’m really enjoying the conversations, but I want to make sure that they’re useful for you too.  Will you email and let me know? Tell me what you like and don’t like about the show. Suggest some awesome guests, if someone comes to mind. Inquiries@MBS.works. I’d love to know what’s on your mind. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

"If music be the food of love, play on." That William Shakespeare was onto something. I think he’s going to go places. So too is my guest, Nathan Leigh Jones, a musician and an academic. Let’s start with the facts he's an avid singer-songwriter: he's taken his piano all over the world, including performances at Joe's Pub in New York City, the Sydney Opera House, and even Google's headquarters in Mountain View. But he’s also doing a PhD that exposes the impact of music and lyrics on emotional wellbeing, and that expertise has meant he was the official music curator at the World Happiness Summit, and he shared his insights at the World Congress of Positive Psychology and the Australian Leadership Coaching Conference. In our conversation we talk about the dance between words and music, how you test to discover if lyrics really matter, and how to build the playlist you’re going to need. You can meet Nathan at nlj.co and connect with him on Twitter @nlj_co.  This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Can you tell the difference between a good PowerPoint deck and one that’s lousy? Do you have a commitment to slides that are useful, elegant and that tell a story? Do you feel some part of your soul die when you’re subjected to some poorly planned and poorly designed presentation? If so, knowingly or not, you’re likely a disciple of Nancy Duarte. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Duarte, an agency based in Silicon Valley that has been at the forefront of the revolution to improve communication. Along the way they’ve created more than a quarter of a million presentations, and trained thousands of people in their approach. Nancy’s the author of multiple books, all of which sit on my shelves. Her first was Slide:ology, her latest is Data Story. In our conversation we explore the power of the three-act structure, different types of stories and the problems they solve, and how to start and finish any story with grace and aplomb. You can meet Nancy at Duarte.com and follow her on Twitter @NancyDuarte.  This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

When I moved to Toronto and first dipped my toes in the murky waters of professional coaching, the name that got whispered with awe in the coffee shops and the ICF chapter gatherings was Karen Wright. Karen was already doing “coaching 2.0” before we’d really figured out what “coaching 1.0” was. Smart, provocative, rigorous and values-based. She and I have become friends, which I’m grateful for not just because we can share the occasional glass of wine, but because she’s who I turn to when I want to talk about helping leaders be their best and stay the course.  In our conversation we talk about why your own ambition might get in the way of your own ambition (yes, that’s what I meant to say!); the difference between a purpose-driven leader and a values-based one; and how one of the best tests of a value is when you notice how you’re letting yourself down. You can meet Karen at parachuteexecutivecoaching.com and on LinkedIn. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

Some years ago I was wandering up my street, Roncesvalles Avenue, here in Toronto where I live. I wandered into my library and one of the reasons I go into the library is so I can wander the shelves and I can let serendipity happen. A book waves at you and goes, hey, notice me! In this visit, a book leapt off the shelf: The Chairs Are Where the People Go. As a facilitator and somebody who cares about group dynamics, I thought …  well that's interesting, what is this about? So I took it home and I read it, and I came to know its author, Misha Glouberman Misha runs a program “How to Talk to People About Things” and is also a faculty director at the executive education program at the Ivy Business School. He hosts the Trampoline Hall Lectures, which are a quirky Toronto bar room lecture series, which have a fabulous energy and fabulous speakers. It's like TED, if it had a punk spirit. His book, The Chairs Are Where the People Go, was named by The New Yorker magazine as one of its top nonfiction books of that year.  In our conversation we work on how to get out of our own way when we’re having a conversation; the foundational error that derails a good conversation; how curiosity can be a saving grace; why we so often continue to tolerate short-term irritation; and why we’re often not bold enough in owning up to what irritates us most. You can meet Misha at his website www.MishaGlouberman.com. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

When I'm thinking to myself, "All right. Who do I need to talk to about money? Who would be a great source of wisdom and calmness and guidance in this time?" I thought I should introduce you to the person who helps me most. I'm going to introduce you to my financial advisor, Rona Birenbaum, who is brilliant. I love her not just for how she manages our money, but for how she calms us down. Rona is the founder of Caring for Clients--the name says a lot right away--a Canadian fee-for-service financial planning firm. Wealth Professional magazine has named Caring for Clients the top independent firm in Canada in 2017, and Rona has been named one of the top 50 advisors in Canada for five years running, an award well-deserved. Rona was recently named a Women of Influence in financial services. We’re not covering specific investment strategies in this podcast, because they’re irrelevant to most of us all the time, and immediately out of date regardless. But what we do get into is the mind-games of investing our money; what it means to plan positively using three different scenarios; just how a stock differs from a bond (so a tiny bit of financial basics for those of us who need it); and the power of self-care. You can meet Rona at www.CaringforClients.com and on Twitter @Caring4Clients. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

I like hyphenates. People whose journey has meant that they’ve got a bit of this and a bit of that. People who’ve taken expertise from one world into another. People whose journey to now makes no sense and total sense at the same time.  I’m a bit like that (so confirmation bias, I guess). So to is  Dr. Edy Greenblatt. She is a resilience pioneer, a work/life balance expert, and a coach supervisor. She has a Masters degree in psychology, and a joint PhD in organizational behavior from the Harvard Business School, and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she specialized in dance. Her breakthrough work on personal resource management is the award winning book, Restore Yourself: The Antidote for Professional Exhaustion. And that tool, and that book, has been really an effective framework to help people become more resilient under different circumstances for people worldwide.  In our conversation we dig into what, exactly, a dance anthropologist is; how to find those behaviors that nourish and deplete us; and Michael gets some coaching on dealing with a particularly annoying pile of paperwork. You can meet Edy at www.edygreenblatt.com and on social at @askdredy. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

It turns out, somewhat to my surprise, that the body isn’t just a nifty thing that carries around your head. There’s more to it than that. When I want to understand the power of emotions in a way that someone who lives in his head might understand, the person I go to is Dr Robert Biswas-Diener. Robert’s a psychologist, a researcher, and a coach, and he focuses on positive topics, such as happiness, courage, and social support. He’s also the author of a number of wonderful ooks, includes The Upside of your Dark Side and The Courage Quotient.  In our conversation we dig into why the “happy” emotions feel a bit same-ish, and why the “sad” ones feel different; how being disconnected from your feelings makes you less smart; a simple way to settle down when you’re feeling upset; and an essential, timeless insight for managing through difficult times. You can meet Robert at PositiveAcorn.com. This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.