Grow your business through adversity

How do you recover from losing a big client? How do you bounce back when you are rejected by an important prospect that you have invested a lot of time and energy into?

If you’re an agency owner, business coach, consultant, or any service business dealing with high-income clients, these hurdles can be difficult to overcome. This is especially true if others on your team take cues from how you handle setbacks.

“How do you deal with unwanted changes itis a key determinant of your future success,” Julia Nicholson said in an email interview.

Nicholson is the former CEO of Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plans, an $8 billion company serving the entertainment industry, and the former COO of a $6 billion company serving employees in the grocery industry.

Over the years, Nicholson has developed a five-pronged framework that will increase your confidence, productivity and resilience, and make you a more valuable advisor, coach and employee.

“These five areas are not steps or checklists,” Nicholson said. “They don’t have a set schedule or a specific sequence; however, you have to go through all of them to get the most bang for your buck.”

Aspects are:

revisit. “Think and talk it is necessary and productive,” Nicholson said. “It’s our brain’s way of trying to understand what’s going on.However, it takes too much time and effort to revisit it inhibits our ability to move forward. It’s easy to get stuck in Relive if you’ve experienced more than one it In a very short period of time, there has been no chance to deal with them.Ask yourself if you continue to relive it is serving you productive or destructive purposes. “

reflect“We tend to stick to our original negative beliefs and conclusions about unwanted changes,” Nicholson said. “These prevent us from considering other ways of looking at meTon. In Reflect, ask yourself if there are other ways to see it. reflection it With an open mind, there will always be more than one “correct” or “true” way of looking at the exact same thing. The other way is just beyond what you currently believe. “

refactor“We are born with negative bias or worst-case thinking,” Nicholson said. “When something unexpected or unfamiliar occurs, it is necessary to alert us to potential dangers; however, it does not help in a rapidly changing business world. Refactoring a it We need to separate what happened from our original negative beliefs and conclusions it, which is often self-defeating.Instead, ask what you can learn from it it Or something good can come out it. “

reconnect“We are born with a strong desire to connect with others,” Nicholson said. “After unwanted changes or losses, we tend to do the exact opposite of what we naturally want and need. We quit and disconnect. Especially after it We need to lean in and take advantage of our relationships and reconnect. The more isolated and withdrawn we become, the less able we become to understand any meaning and purpose in life. “

release“Humans have an innate need for control,” Nicholson said. “Even if we try our best, many of us are still responsible for bad outcomes. Accepting outcomes determined by others is impossible to control. Let go of the illusion of controlling outcomes and use your regained energy for futures you can control things: how you feel, think, say and do.”

Based on my experience of adversity, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received about coping with inevitable adversity was from Alf Nucifera, the head of an advertising agency, who said that whenever I walked into the agency, I needed to be a “happy person.” ” (for female leaders), let it be “Happy Women”). In fact, once when I was the COO of a large advertising agency I felt we had unfairly lost a large client, the company’s president sent me home until I was willing to be my typical, enthusiastic self return.

Bottom line: Many people are familiar with the adage, “I’m knocked down, but I’ll get back up again.” Success, Nicholson says, isn’t just about how you get up after being knocked down, it’s about how you get back up again.

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