Magnetic Authenticity Podcast with Jolynne Rydz

21: What Challenge is Really Asking of You

• Jolynne Rydz • Season 1 • Episode 21

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Ever found yourself battling tech failures, communication breakdowns, and unexpected hurdles all at once? That's exactly what happened during the launch of my Rediscover Your Inner Compass program. But rather than spiraling into stress and self-criticism, I stayed surprisingly level-headed and it got me thinking about how we approach challenges (trust me I would have been in full meltdown mode not so long ago...)

Most of us instinctively try to avoid difficulties. We see them as threats or signs we're failing, which triggers that familiar spiral of self-doubt. The trouble is, challenges don't disappear when we dodge them, they often return with greater intensity until we finally face them head-on. For leaders, this avoidance can be particularly costly, keeping us stuck in reactive mode, constantly extinguishing metaphorical bushfires that drain our energy and hold back our potential.

What if we flip this perspective completely? What if each challenge isn't something to fear but an invitation to change? This shift brings us into our locus of control, focusing on what we can influence rather than what we can't. It enhances our adaptability and strategic thinking, transforming limiting questions like "Why can't we do this?" into empowering ones like "What can we do with what we have?" Most importantly, it builds resilience, our capacity to adapt well in the face of adversity, which research shows is crucial for both personal wellbeing and leadership effectiveness.

Ready to transform how you approach challenges? Then let's dive into the episode.

REFERENCES

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Building your resilience. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience/building-your-resilience

McLeod, S. (2023, August 14). What is the Yerkes–Dodson law? Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-the-yerkes-dodson-law.html

Neill, J. T. (2006). What is locus of control? University of Canberra. https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/What%20is%20Locus%20of%20Control%20by%20James%20Neill.pdf


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I am a Confidence and Impact Coach for leaders, Organisational Development Consultant and independent Leadership Circle Profile® Certified Practitioner. Information shared about this tool is courtesy of Leadership Circle®, all rights reserved. www.leadershipcircle.com

Speaker 1:

Just this week, I've had so many tech things go wrong for me. I've had people unable to join teams meetings because they were signed in in one organization and had left another, and then they couldn't get in on a personal account or just on their browser. I've had emails not going through to people that they've received emails before from me. I've had pages that I've had up and running broken, and all of this was happening in. This culmination of things that were happening at the time of this recording is the time that I was building the Rediscover your Inner Compass program and getting it ready for launch. So we just hit launch as of Monday just gone, and it's been incredible so far. So the feedback has been that people were able to feel safe instantly to connect with like-minded people to actually get some stuff done and make some progress in a very, very short amount of time. So I'm so excited on where this can go. But for the meantime, I wanted to highlight this real, real life problem, because I even showed up in the wrong meeting for the launch session and had to think to myself oh, I wonder if everyone else is in a different one. So in the past I would have been freaking out, I would have been stressed to the max. I would have been spiraling myself on why didn't I do this, why didn't I do that? And instead I was actually really, really proud of myself for being quite level-headed. I just simply messaged one of the participants that I knew was there and said hey, can you just make sure I've got the right link? Let's jump on and test this out. And so there's obviously learnings in all of those scenarios, and sometimes we don't learn those things until we're in the thick of it.

Speaker 1:

So who here hates it when things go wrong? Maybe you're on your way to an interview and a train is late and you're stressing you're going. Why is the train late? Oh, this is so annoying. And you're stressing you're going. Why is the train late? Oh, this is so annoying.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you have a staff member in your team and you've told them on countless occasions to do something differently or change the way they approach something, because it's having a ripple effect. It's actually destroying the image that your team has on the kind of work that you do and the way that you interact with people, and yet they keep doing it, even though you've had so many conversations. Or maybe you love to give people advice and then, time and time again, people just disregard your well-thought out advice, so like advice that you've experienced. This is why you're sharing it, and you're sharing it to avoid their pain, and they just don't take it on and you see them get hurt again. Isn't that frustrating?

Speaker 1:

So if you're like me, so many of us spend our lives trying to avoid challenge. We see it as a threat, as something to get past or a sign that we're maybe failing and that can send us on this spiraling loop of self-doubt, self-criticism and just wondering why does this happen to us? And the problem is, when we avoid challenge, it doesn't actually go away. It can circle back, coming back time and time again until we face it. Has that happened to you, Like some people? Have you heard that saying? Where people say you know, I'm an S magnet, you know why does this stuff always happen to me?

Speaker 1:

And for leaders, avoiding these challenges can be really, really costly. It keeps us in that reactive space where we're constantly having to put out the bushfires, which drains our energy. It keeps us up at night and leaves us stuck in patterns that hold back our potential. So here's the thing that I've discovered time and time again. Is that challenge is an invitation to change? I've seen it time and time again. Is that challenge is an invitation to change? I've seen it time and time again in the leaders that I coach and develop that are stuck, frustrated, wondering why they can't get the results that they're looking for or why they can't shift the behavior that they're looking for.

Speaker 1:

So often, when we look at trying to fix everything outside of us, we forget the most important part, the most critical place that we can make the most impact, which is ourselves. And I get it, it's daunting to look at ourselves. But what if the challenge that everyone is facing isn't something to fear, but it's actually an invitation to change? Everyone is facing isn't something to fear, but it's actually an invitation to change. Every challenge we encounter is a chance to learn, to grow and to build our resilience. So if we stop looking at it as a punishment or something to dread and instead look at it from a perspective of learning, we can create leaders in the world who are going to thrive, lean into challenge and almost become challenge hunters. And why this is so important is, firstly, when it flips on its head, it brings you into your locus of control. So the concept, psychology concept of locus of control dates back to 1966 from research done by Julian B Rotter, and it's all about this ability to focus on what you can change rather than worrying about everything outside of you, Because everything outside of you will continue to happen and show up, but what matters is how we react and respond to that. So when we focus on what we can do, we're much more empowered to actually do something with it. So when we see challenge as an invitation to change, we also become more adaptable.

Speaker 1:

Have you seen the show Amazing Race? So it's on currently at the time of recording in Australia and it's this race where pairs, teams of pairs, race around the world doing all sorts of crazy challenges. There you go. There's the word challenges, right, but one of the challenges that I often I'm not doing that on purpose, it's just stuck in my head. Now One of the challenges I often people see in this show is people driving. So they'll be driving. There's one image in my head of this couple getting into a car and going I can't drive, stick shift and sorry, that was a really bad American accent, but it wasn't the American version. I was watching at the time and they were freaking out because they couldn't drive a manual vehicle with the gear stick on the steering wheel and I thought, geez, I can't do that. But if I'm going to go on this show, I'm going to make sure I can Make sure I can drive a manual car, an auto car, one with the gears on the steering wheel, so that this is not a problem for me.

Speaker 1:

Now the second thing that we can look at when we see challenge as an invitation to change is it helps us to be more strategic in our thinking. We avoid getting stuck in dealing with all the bushfires and we can zoom out and step on the balcony and look at the whole system and think differently. So, for an example, one of the organizations I've worked with in the past has had a culture of we can't do it because there's not enough money, and I'm sure that's not isolated to them. I'm sure, especially in this day and age, even in people's personal lives, people are saying I can't do it because there's not enough money. Now what if you flip this and said instead well, what can we do with what we have? So suddenly you go from limiting your thought process to this scarcity mindset and flipping it to a growth mindset of what is actually possible, and it's a fundamental thing that we do as coaches is to help people to see where they're stuck and see where they're looking at the walls around them, going I can't get out of here and actually say, hey, have you looked over there? There's actually a door. It just doesn't have a very obvious door handle, but it is there. There is a way forward, so it's going. It's this flip from going from problem to solution or from autopilot to awareness. And if you haven't listened to the episode on going from autopilot to awareness, go back and listen to episode 20 20, because all of this is building on each other. All of these tools that I'm sharing you can use on top of one another to really maximize the impact you're trying to have Now.

Speaker 1:

The third reason why going seeing challenge as an invitation to change is really important is because it builds our own resilience. Like who wants to be really frustrated, stressed and angry all the time. The scary thing is, a lot of people are experiencing that, especially at work, but what we often don't realize is we have a significant amount of control over how much those feelings show up for us and how much they take over. So, in 2012, the American Psychological Society of America got together a group of psychologists and talked about the topic of resilience. And talked about the topic of resilience and they defined resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress.

Speaker 1:

Now, all of those things I've seen can appear and do appear in the workplace to differing extents, can appear and do appear in the workplace to differing extents. And now, if we look into childhood research as well and how we build emotional capability in children, we know that allowing them to overcome small adversities helps with bigger ones. So, allowing someone to just today, my toddler having a meltdown about not being able to get in one door of the car instead of the other one, which actually would have been much easier. But having that meltdown and being able to process that disappointment is important because then, when you get the bigger disappointment of I didn't get the job that I it was a dream job for me you already have the tools and the practice of how to do it in a much safer situation. So seeing challenge as an invitation to change is so, so key for resilience.

Speaker 1:

It's also the crux of learning that learning mindset in a leader, and if you're not someone who loves learning, I'm going to challenge you to lean into that, because, now more than ever, if you're not learning as a leader, you're going to be left behind. And I believe it's the same for everyone that learning is becoming more and more important because these machines are learning faster than our humans are capable of learning. So the more that we can learn, the more that we can use all of these changes to our advantage the change in AI, in technology, all of the stuff happening around the globe at the moment. I mean, I stumbled upon what I thought was a shocking quote because I hadn't even thought about it, but in 2021, Forrester did some research and they predicted that Gen Z and millennials will be 74% of the global workforce by the year 2030. So 74% so that's the majority by far, and I don't know why I found this so shocking. But in my mind, I always think there's that predominant bias towards Gen Z, you know, not wanting to work in the traditional ways that other people have been born and raised in the systems that we've created. And so, as a leader, even if I just take that one example if you're not deeply in tune with what that generation predominantly wants, what motivates them at work, what drives their performance, what drives their choice to stay in an organization? Again, you're going to be left behind. So challenge is really an invitation to change.

Speaker 1:

Back in 1908, researchers from Harvard University, Yerkes and Dodson, founded a concept called called optimal level of adversity, and what that means is they realize that when you have a low level of challenge or adversity in your life, things can get boring and you actually can start to slack off. You can lose your edge. So if you think about so, I love to run, as some of you know, and when I haven't run in a while I'm definitely slower. I'm slower. My muscles get more sore easily. That first getting up off the couch is harder because I'm out of practice. But when I'm in my peak state and I'm training regularly, that step out the door is something I look forward to, because I know how great I'll feel. I know that I'm building on my muscle in a really consistent way. So the soreness is not as bad as that first time when you step off the couch and you've had a long break. And so if you go too farther and you train too hard, then we actually activate the stress response in our body and then our brains can start to shut down, our bodies can start to feel the impacts of that Same thing. With running, there was a period when I trained too hard and I got injury after injury after injury. For about 12 months I had some level of injury most of the time. So there's a point where too much adversity or too much challenge is not good for us. So the invitation here is to lean in to the challenges, especially those small ones, and as you do that, your resilience towards challenge grows. Your ability to navigate change grows.

Speaker 1:

Many years ago now, I had a birthday and I wanted to go to Bounce. So if you don't know what Bounce is, it is a company that runs this massive warehouse of basically trampolines and trampoline related activities so think a gladiator bar where you, you know, tackle each other and fall off into a foam pit A whole almost like a football field pitch of different trampolines that go up off the wall, and they often have in these centres, up the back, a rock climbing part. So it was my birthday and I wanted to climb this beautiful pink. It was my birthday and I wanted to climb this beautiful pink activity, which was basically a series of those big conduit pipes that you often see in a car park that's holding probably water and all sorts of other things put vertically and up in a sending spiral. So each one had a cap on the top and it was basically a spiral staircase painted bright pink, and so it just drew my attention right from the front of the whole warehouse. So I was like I want to climb that.

Speaker 1:

So I got in the harness, started climbing up and went yeah, this is easy, this is so fun. And I got halfway and started to realize how high I was. So it's probably a couple of stories high the building and this goes almost. It felt like it went almost to the ceiling. But I was starting to slow down and I stopped for a minute and the staff member who by this point I was so high up that she looked a little was standing down the bottom, going, you can do it. I'm like, okay, cool, yeah, I can do it. So I've taken a step up and I've continued and then I've stopped again. I've stopped at the second last step and by this point the pole was so thin and tall that it was shaking and I was holding on to the next step for dear life, even though I had a harness on.

Speaker 1:

But when you look up at the harness on the ceiling, you see the little mechanism that holds you and you think, oh, when's the last time they checked the screws on that? Is this actually going to catch me if I fall? And the reason I couldn't step onto the next one because once I step onto the next one, I basically was stepping onto something the size of a dinner plate and there was nothing else to hold onto at that point, Like I'd just be fre standing and I didn't feel stable enough to be able to stand there without falling. And so the staff member down the bottom good on her, she was cheering me. She's like you can do it. You can do it, Come on, just do it, Just take a step. And I looked down and went that's not working anymore.

Speaker 1:

And what I realized was that I could stay here, stuck, scared, playing it safe, because right now I know I can climb back down and still get to the ground safely, or I can just pause, not let the fear take over and trust that I'll actually be okay. There's a number of reasons why I'll be okay. One I've got a harness on. Two they'll be in some serious trouble if that harness is not going to work. And three, this is like kids come here Like if a kid can do it, I can do it right. So I just had to trust. And the thing that got me across the line was if I go home and don't do this, how am I going to feel? I'm going to feel so ashamed, I'm going to feel like I can't believe.

Speaker 1:

You backed out right at the second last step, and that's something I've done in my life over and over again. I remember at university I got to the last semester in my four-year degree and went I don't want to do this anymore, and I almost backed out. But in this instance, I took the step and then seconds later, I went up this is too high and just closed my eyes and fell off backwards and then, just as the staff member promised it, caught my weight and slowly brought me to the ground. So challenge is an invitation to change. And how do we go about this? So some key steps that you can take to lean into.

Speaker 1:

Challenge is firstly, to notice, like notice, when you do get frustrated. When are you getting angry? When are you getting stressed? They might be little things to start with, or they might be really big ones going on for you right now. But noticing that and going okay, this is a challenge in my life, right, what do I do with it? The second thing you can then do is go.

Speaker 1:

Is there a pattern? Does this same type of challenge happen to me again and again and again? So, for example, I have in the past, seen certain people in my life go to a restaurant and get really frustrated with the waitstaff because there's something wrong with a meal, and this pattern happens again and again and again. They're like why is the service so bad? Everywhere I go, and if you continue to put the blame of that outside of you, you lose your ability to influence in a situation. Now, that's a really basic example, but it's the same in leadership.

Speaker 1:

So what's the pattern? Where you're getting frustrated, angry, stressed or other insert other emotion that you don't really like, what's the pattern? What does it mean? And sometimes you can do that alone, and sometimes you need help, and that's why I love being a coach, because I get to partake in this journey with people, and it's so, so cool when I see them make the shift at the end and they go wow, I didn't even realize how much of a problem that was for me and how much it was holding me back. And two, I didn't realize that we could shift it. So it's something I love doing it. So it's something I love doing.

Speaker 1:

And so the third thing, once you notice that pattern, is that you ask why am I being invited to change right now? Why am I being invited to change right now? And when you can ask yourself that question, it instantly flips you into that learning mindset. So I trust that that was useful, because it is such a powerful thing. When you see challenge is an invitation to change, it completely changes the way you look at all of the events that are occurring in your life beyond leading in the workplace or leading in your business. It's something that you can use everywhere, which is the case with a lot of the things that I do. So here's to you leaning into the challenge. No-transcript.