Friday Faves - What We're Reading This Week - Ripple Effect Group

Friday Faves is our weekly blog series highlighting a few select pieces from the REG team’s reading lists. You can catch up on past Friday Faves on the archive.

The Sources of Resilience

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Anne says: We need to be resilient!

Please don’t groan, I know this statement and many similar ones are filling so many articles at the moment. From personal resilience, organisational resilience, leadership resilience, resilience training, in fact, I think I saw one about dogs being resilient! Then why am I highlighting yet another article? Because I think this one is different – I think this ones provides some useful strategies and is grounded in research.

Based on the research that covered a number of rounds of validation before being tested globally, a set of 10 resilient statements were developed – these are statements that had the strongest relationship to resilience-like outcomes (in the workplace).

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Where the article deviates is how these statements reveal 3 levels which the authors refer to as sources of resilience. Statements 1 – 4 relate to yourself, the actions and mindsets in your control; statements 5 – 7 identify your team leader or manager as your source of resilience; and finally, statements 8 – 10 are your organisation’s senior leadership. Together, they form your resilience ecosystem. Expanding on these concepts, the study has provided specific guidance at each source of resilience; that is, what you can do to manage and increase your resilience ecosystem.

Of course, all of the concepts would need to be embedded within a contextual framework, and make allowances for ebbs and flows of resilience. Nonetheless, even if these statements are used to facilitate discussions about how teams and individuals are structuring their working contexts, and leaders were made aware of how to support resilience, there can be many positive outcomes from using a framework such as this to lead and guide those discussions.

Read: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-sources-of-resilience/

The art of the pandemic meltdown

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Jakkii says: This was a pretty good read on the art of the meltdown, and how to make it more ‘productive’ for us (i.e. to actually help you release the tension that meltdowns are trying to get out, rather than continuing to bottle things up until it all goes too far). It’s behind a paywall, so if you’re not a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, you might not be able to read the full piece, but if you do have access, I thought it was worth a read.

What is a pandemic meltdown?

It’s what happens after you’ve held it together for all these turbulent months—through a pandemic and quarantine, working from home and home schooling, civil unrest and the most divisive public discourse in several lifetimes. And then something seemingly small happens and suddenly you’re screaming alone in your car or sobbing to your dog about, well, everything.

As the article points out, people lost control of their emotions before 2020 came along, but the author suggests we’re doing it a lot more now because we’re living through a sustained period of heightened, generally negative emotions – stress, fear, and anger – while being bombarded with bad news and living with the need to be constantly vigilant. It’s no wonder people are having pandemic fatigue, let alone the occasional pandemic meltdown! It’s also probably not that hard to imagine why so many people have or are becoming complacent, particularly in parts of the world fortunate enough to be seeing no or very few cases, with a rush to free ourselves mentally and emotionally of the burden of all that stress, fear, anxiety and vigilance.

But back to the meltdowns – it turns out they can actually have an upside:

Yet meltdowns have an upside. They allow us to release tension. And once we do that, we can think more clearly, because we’re no longer spending all our energy trying to hold it together. “A meltdown is the body’s natural mechanism to let go, to cleanse itself of painful emotions,” says Tal Ben-Shahar, a psychologist who specializes in the science of happiness. “It lets us reset.”

The trick, apparently, is to try to have a productive meltdown, so you get the benefit of letting go, of cleansing, and of being able to reset. The key steps in having a productive meltdown according to this piece are:

Accept it
Plan ahead (if possible)
Know what you need, and tell others
Model a good meltdown (particularly if you have kids)
Try an “alternate rebellion” (for example, turn your phone off and go do something fun just for you, instead of rebelling by sending your boss that angry email – or quitting your job in the heat of the moment)
Calm yourself
Explore the meaning of your meltdown
Move on (apologise if you need to, and forgive yourself)

There you have it – next time you’re headed for a pandemic meltdown, hopefully you’ll remember at least some of this and you can turn it into something with a useful outcome that helps get rid of that tension.

Read: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-the-meltdown-11602015018

Around the house

My mother has truly produced the pumpkin of our era. pic.twitter.com/P6V4ixMRw7

— Alex Barnard (@avb_soc) October 19, 2020

Jakkii says: Happy Halloween! Perhaps as a holdover from my years as a resident of North America, I love Halloween and the spooky season. It’s set to be a very different one this year, though, with plenty of jurisdictions banning trick or treating, while others are just asking people to be covid-safe and be responsible. Whether you’re in lockdown, under curfew, or just getting back out into the world again, here’s to another week of staying safe and staying healthy! And, of course, here’s a few more things this week to help keep you entertained at home:

Friday Funnies

This house in my neighborhood every year nails Halloween decorations. pic.twitter.com/eX19mACqUv

— Gelly Bean (@funangela) October 18, 2020

My 20 year old cousin got his own apartment and it’s going pretty well pic.twitter.com/SaPSogpo0r

— Henpecked Hal (@HenpeckedHal) October 8, 2020

This eagle looks like he just found out he’s the symbol of the United States LMAO https://t.co/QxdbY7Xg39

— Blacks RULE (@zuri_too) October 5, 2020

My kids: Halloween isn’t gonna be any fun this year☹️

Me: *scaring my kids in the house for all of October*pic.twitter.com/6ti3Z1lyx1

— Reagan Gomez (@ReaganGomez) September 10, 2020

Wholesome Friday

Sometimes love is chicken cutlet from r/MadeMeSmile

please everyone look at this duck pic.twitter.com/1rJlxT9oWl

— sarah (@heavenbrat) October 6, 2020

US Election Friday Five

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Bonus: Trump still wants to be President, but he never wanted the job

Misinformation Friday Five

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COVID-19 Friday Five

My professor teaching to class on zoom:

🧑🏻‍🏫

Me, trying to prevent my professor from teaching into the void:

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◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️

— Adrianna (@adri_holmes00) October 8, 2020

Work Friday Five

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Tech Friday Five

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Social Media Friday Five

Sydney Business Insights – The Future This Week Podcast

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This week: after a flurry of contradicting announcements, we discuss if self-driving cars have finally arrived, or what it would take to get them here.

Sandra Peter (Sydney Business Insights) and Kai Riemer (Digital Disruption Research Group) meet once a week to put their own spin on news that is impacting the future of business in The Future, This Week.

The stories this week

09:11 – You may not have heard, but the autonomous vehicle has now arrived (not quite)

Other stories we bring up

The Google lawsuit is getting under way

China’s third-quarter GDP set to show broadening recovery as consumers resurface

Our China special: – a businessman, an academic, a diplomat and an economist – walk us through China’s post pandemic story

Streaming service Quibi is shutting down six months after launch

Short video platform Quibi shuts down

Alibaba takes over China’s top hypermart chain for $3.6 Billion

Our discussion of Xiaohongshu on The Future, This Week

The Televend service on Telegram, automates buying drugs

Our previous discussion of re-organised crime on Corona Business Insights