You and your team regularly navigate relentless volatility and crises. You are not immune from tunnel vision, stress, and burnout. You might even mentally flinch when your phone pings because you know it’s another challenge or crisis that requires your immediate attention.
By utilizing my ResiliencePlus Leadership Framework, you can unlock your growth and resilience, lead more effectively during a crisis, strategize for the future, and build a thriving team without simply scrambling from one crisis to the next.
Identifying Leadership Challenges
Tough experiences can shape you, provide insight and teach empathy. But jumping from one hotspot to the next isn’t a sustainable or effective long term strategy, and it could negatively impact your overall wellbeing.
Leaders Surviving on Their Own
When executive leaders triage all of the relentless demands on their time and attention, they put their own growth, development, and wellbeing on the back burner. They also periodically neglect their responsibility to increase the leadership capacity of their team. Without effective leadership at all levels, an organization will misuse and lose strong performers.
Surviving Setbacks & Failure
If you or your team are unable to focus on long-term priorities due to recent challenges, you may become stuck in a vicious cycle of under-performance and anxiety. Left unattended, a team or an organization can spiral into a culture of failure.
Stress & Emotional Burnout
If you are under continuous pressure to address today’s challenges, deliver results, and ensure the success of your mission – all while facing intense public and stakeholder scrutiny – you will feel immense pressure to perform at a high level and eventually experience sustained stress and burnout.
Having Tunnel Vision
Focusing on the short-term means you don’t see the macro view of your organization – or what’s happening around you – and how it could impact operations. Long-term vision and strategic focus are often sacrificed for immediate action, leading to a lack of direction and clarity within your organization.
The ResiliencePlus Leadership Framework
You can equip yourself and your team to successfully navigate highly unstable environments while also strategizing for the future. We accomplish this together by utilizing my ResiliencePlus Leadership Framework, which is customized to meet your specific challenges.
This approach is not a checklist or a short-term fix; it is foundational work that will enhance your resiliency and vision as a leader. It is built on the foundation of my executive experience and proven track record of developing effective and resilient leaders while leading in mission-critical and crisis-driven environments. If you are willing to invest in yourself and your team, you can go from reacting in the moment to responding with intention.
Throughout the process, I will lead you and your team through:
- 1:1 coaching
- Professional assessments
- Tools and techniques specific to high-pressure environments
- How to effectively handle short-term crises, while…
- Creating a strategic focus for the future
These three interlocking components of the ResiliencePlus Leadership Framework are mutually reinforcing. Each component is necessary to strengthen the overall leadership structure in the organization.
01.
Variable Focus
Leaders need to know when to zoom in and when to zoom out - effortlessly switching from a swift, decisive tactical focus, to the essential wide-angle view required to see strategically over the horizon for success into the future. The ability to have variable focus is a key to effectiveness.
02.
Look In The Mirror
Looking into the mirror requires a leader to recognize they are not a finished product. They must develop greater self awareness, emotional agility, and resilience. Leaders must also summon a willingness to step back and orchestrate rather than play the instruments.
03.
No Heroes
A leader has an obligation to the organization to proactively lead its leaders. A robust leadership pipeline isn’t just for the future. High-stakes, high-stress organizations count on significant leadership from a wide range of leaders today. In this context, leadership development is about shaping the way you lead and manage every day.
Ready to expand your leadership skills?
The Results
Lead With Intention And Focus
While there will always be an emergency to handle, you can leave behind the days of simply coping or surviving. Instead of moving from crisis to crisis, learn how to zoom in on today’s problems and then zoom out to focus on the future of your team and organization.
Increase Leadership Capacity
Developing leadership capacity in others is the highest calling for all leaders. Executives, responsible for entire enterprises, neglect the responsibility more often than other leaders. The demands of today overpower good intentions for development and growth, but you must have specific strategies designed to build your leadership pipeline. Developing leaders is not an extra responsibility. To be successful and leave a legacy of service, you must incorporate it into the way you lead and manage.
Bouncing Back From Setbacks & Failure
All leaders and teams experience setbacks and failure. Resilience and hardiness play a big role in this context. Additionally, teams can succumb to a malaise which morphs into a culture of failure and under performance. Changing the narrative regarding such a culture requires strong leadership, mental toughness, and specific strategies to turn the tide.
Resilience & Hardiness
Resilience is the ability to bounce back and recover from stressful and unexpected challenges without negatively impacting your performance, health, and well-being. Bouncing back after being under constant strain and stress due to relentless work pressures is critical. Then, hardiness goes beyond offsetting the impacts of stress and allows you to turn stressful situations to your advantage. It’s the ability to recognize stress, perform with the intensity it brings, and learn and grow after it is resolved.
Expanded Vision
One of the most important skills for a leader to have is the ability to shift from a short-term tactical focus to a long-term strategic focus. Crafting and articulating a vision for the future is difficult under the best of circumstances and becomes more challenging when today’s issues occupy significant attention. Having the discipline and foresight to look ahead regularly and consistently will enable you to have the variable focus required for success now and in the future.
Ready to Get Started?
The first time I met Brad he was teaching a leadership class to newly promoted leaders from across the country, including me. I immediately took home and implemented in my organization the things I learned. Brad is nationally recognized as one of the top leaders in the country and has a unique ability to share his knowledge in a way that allows you to put what you learn into action.
Brad Livingston is an exceptional leader. I was privileged to have a front row seat observing and endorsing his leadership approach in action. He established and nurtured a leadership culture in the organization while being equally adept at managing routine and crisis responses without missing a step. He led in a most challenging environment under the scrutiny of many stakeholders, developing a reputation for integrity, fairness, and flawless execution in nearly all situations. Further, he built one of the best internal leadership development pipelines I have ever witnessed. In my view, the agency’s headquarters complex was dedicated and renamed after Brad largely in recognition of his legacy of leadership and developing leaders.
Brad Livingston is the quintessential professional who leads by example, never shying from an opportunity, especially a challenge. He quickly dissects issues during high-stress and crisis situations, ultimately executing a plan that works for all involved. Additionally, Brad cultivates, trains, and develops leaders to expand their skills by sharing his expertise with those facing tough decisions. He is a true asset to any organization, institution, or individual.
I have known Brad since 2011 and respect him for his expertise. He has a gift of active listening, and being able to clearly communicate client’s thoughts back to them. Brad is able to facilitate group engagement and structure training that is impactful.
The Price of Going at It Alone – Burning Out & Burning Up
You’re experienced in leading exceptionally demanding and complex missions, but now it’s time to look in the mirror and acknowledge the negative impact ongoing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity have on you and your team.
A Vicious Cycle
When you face ongoing high levels of volatility and stress, you risk only focusing on today’s problems. But having this type of tunnel vision means you and your team are scrambling toward an uncertain future.
Grit is Not a Strategy
If you’re in a mission-critical and high-stress role, you sometimes default to unhealthy coping strategies just to survive. But that leaves barely enough time to breathe before the next storm crashes in.
Doing The Work
You navigate hard, unrelenting volatility on an almost daily basis. If you don’t build a strong foundation to improve resilience and leadership, you and your team can’t move from just coping to being resilient.
Certificates
Commonly Asked Questions
- What Is Your Experience?
I am a certified executive coach and l lead a range of leadership workshops for leaders at all levels. I previously served as the Executive Director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for 12 years. I faced the challenges of leading in a high-stakes environment. I have extensive experience delivering leadership development training in multiple settings, and served as a guest lecturer and mentor in the Executive Master’s Program at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
- What If I Don't Have The Bandwidth For Coaching?
You are understandably consumed with today’s challenges and find it difficult to contemplate the future. But if you stretch and build the right leadership muscles and the discipline it takes, the benefits will be invaluable to you, your team, and your organization. It will be time well spent.
- Isn't Leadership an Innate Ability?
Leadership isn’t a trait you are born with like brown eyes or black hair. It is an acquired set of skills and behaviors developed with time and attention. Leaders owe it to themselves and their teams to learn, develop, grow, and thrive. Experience and research tell us that leaders can do just that by increasing their emotional agility and intelligence, along with resiliency. The ResiliencePlus Leadership Framework facilitates your leadership journey.
- What Services Do You Provide?
Executive and leadership coaching for individuals in mission-critical roles who deal with high stress, burnout, short-term focus, and self-doubt while navigating relentless volatility and crises. My leadership framework is designed to enhance your long-term strategic focus, assist you in leading and developing your team, and develop and refine yourself. I also coach individuals who are preparing to lead in a high-pressure environment, and work with teams seeking to increase trust, accountability, and results.
- What Type of Clients Do You Serve?
I coach leaders who work in high-stakes, high-stress environments. If you navigate in uncertain territory that leads to new ground, deal with persistent challenges, face ongoing workplace stress, or simply want to increase your resiliency and vision, you can benefit from the ResiliencePlus Leadership Framework. I also coach emerging senior leaders who want to develop and refine their skills before stepping into a more demanding leadership role in their organization.