Business Innovators Radio - Madelyn Blair – Author – Mark Stephen Pooler

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Madelyn Blair is a business owner, speaker, author, television host, and resilience mentor specializing in resilience at every level. She is a former faculty member at Columbia University and former Division Chief at the World Bank. Her webpage can be viewed at madelynblair.com. Her education began in mathematics and now includes a PhD in sociology with emphasis in organizational psychology. She has written five books including her latest book, "Unlocked: Discover how to embrace the unexpected" and contributed to numerous others such as "Smarter Innovation" and "Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over." She also writes a blog, entitled "Resilient Leadership," for Psychology Today.Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/madelyn-blair-author-mark-stephen-pooler

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. This TV, conversations with leading experts in business. I am your host, Mark Stephen Pula. We have a wonderful guest coming on the show today, Madeline Blair, and resilience. We all have to have some resilience in life. life. So I'm looking forward to an interesting conversation. We are streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're also on the E360 TV network under fresh tape going out to Apple TV, Fire TV, Android, Roku and many more. We're also on business innovators radio network and we're also on MSPNewsglobal.com. I want to make an official showtaker to our show's sponsors, Dreamweaver, Artist, Ranch. Let's bring in our incredible guest, Madeline Blair.

Madeline, welcome to Brilliant Business TV. Mark, I am delighted to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm really looking forward to a conversation with you, Madeline. Now, you host your own show unlocked. What made you decide to become a TV host? Well, you know, when you look at your life, life, they're really unusual and unexpected things that lead you and direct you as you go through.

So let me just tell you some of those, because the TV is really, has turned out to be, in a way, a destination. It started when I was growing up on a farm. My job was to gather eggs. And I went out and I gathered the eggs and I would hand them to my mother. She would take care of them, sell them, whatever she did. And at the end of the week, she would bring up a bowl of the cracked eggs. Now, you know, you can't sell a cracked egg, no economic value. But she would say, Madeline, bake a cake.

And I would bake a cake with those eggs. And they must have been good because by Monday morning, the cake was gone. Well, I learned an really important lesson early on in life. That's something that has apparently no value, in fact, has high value. because cracked eggs aren't worth anything in the marketplace, but they make great cakes. That was the interesting point number one. The second one was that years later, I was giving talks at the Smithsonian Institute here in Washington, D.C. And at that particular time, I was doing some interviews on stage.

And I remember afterwards, a dear friend and colleague came up to me, and she said, Madeline, you asked all the questions I had in my mind. And I thought, wow, I must know how to ask the right questions. That's event number two. Event number three, I was doing the research for a book called Writing the Current, which I published that was a couple of books ago. It was all about how adults bring fresh knowledge into their lives. And I remember interviewing Howard Milner. Now, if you don't know Howard Milner, he was a famous tenor in opera. And he decided to leave opera, leave the stage. And I was interviewing him, actually in London. And I said, Howard, why did you decide to leave at the peak of your career? And he said, because I finally figured out how people should be taught. And I wanted to teach people the way they should be taught to find their voice. And I thought, wow, I am always interested in helping people learn. So I, When I thought about this question, Mark, I realized those three events in my life were why I've decided to be on television.

Everybody has value. There's gold in everybody. And I want to give them the opportunity to just say it, you know, and show it. And it's a way to interview people ask questions and to convey. and teach from here. I love it. And I'm looking forward to being on your show as well, Madeline. So that will be an exciting time.

Now, resilience. I've had to have resilience in my life many, many times, Madeline. Why is resilience so important today? Oh, gosh. Today in particular, I say that in particular, and yet we've always needed to be resilient. We are a resilient species. But I think today we have created a world that moves very fast, and our bodies aren't really designed for that.

So we're constantly adjusting to the fact that the unexpected things are hitting us. So that, to me, is very at the heart of resilience. You have to be able to be able to deal with those moments. And, you know, again, I love to look back on why resilience caught my eye. And I think there were two reasons. One was that I had a mother who was unbelievably resilient. She had a very, very hard life. And yet she always bounced back.

And so she never let us, in other words, feel her disappointment or her anger or whatever it was. She just kept going. And I had the opportunity to face it myself when my daughter had a brain tumor. And I called on all of my, all of my, all of my. everything in my mind as to how can I be, how can I harness what I saw in my mother to be resilient. That's why I think it's important today and why I am particular in terms of seeing it. I love it and that's a beautiful story as well. Why did you choose to write on resilience, Madeline? Well, I have to admit, I only write about things that are really interested in.

And I think most authors, if they're smart, do. It's very rare that you can gin up the necessary energy to write on something that you're not interested in. But I was very interested in this. And I've told you two examples for my life that really said to me, resilience is important. And so I just began researching it and it just got more and more interesting. And then, of course, I began to realize that it's not something. that yes, yes, we're born with it, but it's not something that, what's the right word, that can't be improved, can't be built upon, can't be nurtured, it can be. And my book

really touches that aspect. Can you share a few tips for all of us listening that want to build up our resilience? I think the first part is that you need to ground yourself you need to ground yourself in who am I? Because the first thing that you have to call upon when you have to be resilient is who you are and the better you know who you are, your purpose, your strengths, your weaknesses, all those aspects of yourself, the more effective you are in terms of saying, okay, this is a hard nut to crack. This is a tough wind to stand against, but I can stand. firm because I know who I am. So that's number one. I think another is that you need to create a backstop for yourself. When I interviewed highly resilient people, they always had a group of

social people, people who supported them. I know in my life, I have a wonderful circle of friends. And it doesn't matter what I ask them, they're always on my side and they always have my back. So you need to make sure that you have a good circle. I think those are two really important things. I can go on, but I'll stop there and let you pursue it if you want to. Nice. Can a team or even an organization built their resilience, Madeline? Absolutely they can. Remember I said for an individual, you have to begin with who you are. Teams have to understand that as well. And when I work with and I have in the past a great deal. The first thing I have to agree upon is what is their mission?

What's their mandate? What are they trying to accomplish? And they have to get to where they all see it similarly. They won't see it exactly the same, but they have to see it close enough that as they're working in their different directions, they're moving it toward the goal. The second thing is they have to discover who is around the table. And I often ask the members of a team, tell a story to the group about a time that you're really proud. Well, everybody can tell a story about something they did that they're proud of.

And I would say to them, I don't care if it's something you did yesterday or you did it when you were three years old. It doesn't matter if you felt that sense of pride. And suddenly they discovered that they're just amazing people around that table. They see the gold. Yeah, so that's another thing that you can do. Clear mission and real appreciation for who is in that team. Those are two easy ways, easy ways to do that. There's a third.

And I think this is also really important. And this depends a great deal on the leadership. The leadership has to say, I want a resilient team. because what you need to do then is to say to the members, you know what, I want you to be able to ask any question, make any comment, and know that it is not going to be perceived as, what's the right word, something untoward that you're questioning what people are doing in a negative way. It's just that you want more information. I'll give you an example. I used to teach at Columbia University. And when I taught students, I would always say to them, you can ask any question of me because I'm going to ask you questions. And I'm not going to ask you questions because I'm questioning your abilities. I'm going to ask you questions because Dr. Blair needs more information. I used to take him about two weeks. And then they finally figured out, oh my God, that's really what she means. She just wants more information. It transforms the student. They suddenly realized they'd can ask any question. And they're not going to look stupid. They just want more information. So same thing in a team. They have to feel comfortable that they can ask any question,

that it's not going to be a detrimental to them. So three things. Know your mission. Get to know each other and value each other and create an environment where anyone can ask a question. That's nice that everyone feels comfortable. And having a mission is really, really important as well, Madeline, and knowing where you're going, having that end goal. How can a person help someone else, even a child, build their resilience? You know, every parent thinks about that in terms of their child. And I'll never forget one time when my daughter, she was about, I don't know, seven or eight, maybe, maybe nine, I don't know exactly when.

but she had never gone into a store to buy anything for herself, all by herself. So I pulled up to the local little grocer store, and I said, I want you to go in and get a loaf of bread, and I gave her the money. And she said, but mom, I never did that before. And I said, don't worry, they'll help you. Well, you could tell she was so frightened because she had never done it before, but she dutifully went in the store. Now, she was in there for a little while, and she came out with her sack, and she came out with her sack,

and a huge smile on her face. She jumped in the car and she said, Mommy, I bought a loaf of bread. Well, that's the kind of thing you have to give children, for example. You have to give them a safe task that challenges them. Maybe they've never done it. Maybe it's a little bit more than what they've ever done. Something where they're still safe.

They're not going to kill themselves. Nobody's going to hurt them. And they can see and feel that. sense of accomplishment. Now, you think about it in terms of a teenager. The same thing applies. They have to feel a sense of accomplishment of what they've done so that they can call upon that when they get hit with something. And I'm sorry, but even adults need to remember times when they succeeded. That's what builds their confidence that they can do it again. I love that. And we have to look after our children and keep them safe. What does it mean that you mentor people?

and teams on resilience, Madeleine? I do at different ways. It so much depends on the individual or the team. But I always begin with having them tell me what is it that they would like to accomplish. And we really talk about that. And then I probe a bit, and we really flesh out the context. I'll give you an example. I mentor a young woman.

She's 15. No, she's 16 now. And she's getting ready to think about applying to college. Because here in the U.S., you have to apply very early in order to be able to get in. But she had never done it before, what teenager has before the first time. And so she wanted help that way. And I kept asking her questions, well, where would you like to go? What is it that you want to study?

what are the things you'd be looking for in a college? And then we began to write those down. And I will tell you, I was so proud of her because in the course of maybe six months, she had laid out all the reasons why she would accept a college that she would want to go there. She laid out all the colleges she was thinking about. And we began to fill in what was basically a decision

matrix. Now, can you imagine a 16-year-old building a big decision matrix, but she did it. And she's so proud of it because she knows now when she goes to interview at a college, if they ask her, why do you want to come here? She can say, well, you met this criteria, this criteria, whatever it is, she can defend herself. So that's one way in which I've done it. I've worked it with teams as well. There it's different. You have a chance to meet with them initially, and then you have to step away and let them do their work for a while, and you come back in and assess. But it's similar. What do you want me to accomplish? What do you want me to help you with? What are you trying to accomplish? Get a sense of the context, and then you go in and

deal with the specifics, one at a time. I've worked with people for as long as, gosh, over several months. Well, obviously that teenager has been actually over six months now, and we're going to continue because she has some other things that she wants to do. But I've also done it in very short periods of time. One client wanted me to help their speakers, but he only gave me an hour to work with each person. I'll never forget that assignment. So I started, I said, well, why are you giving this talk? And they would tell me why. And I would say, now why are you giving this talk? And they would expand a little bit.

And I'd say, now, why are you giving this talk? And they would finally say, oh, this is what I want. And I'll never forget. One man said to me, I don't want anyone to leave the room when I'm talking. I said, all right. And I would work on the one thing that they wanted to accomplish. So I gave them a strategy. By the way, I was working with global experts, big economists who I don't even understand all the things that they do.

But I knew that that's where their minds needed to be. And so I would give them just one strategy. It ended up that they exceeded their expectations with one intervention, one small thing, one hour. So those are some ideas. And that's from asking the right questions, Maddo. to get the right answers. I know, Madeline, I know people can connect with you. Who is really the people that you would love to get in touch with you, Madeline?

That's a great question. I love to work with people who are in their career or they're preparing for their career because I really love working with teenagers. But they're in their career and they want to be sure that they're moving in the right direction. or perhaps they know it's time for them to do a transition. That's the kind of person I really want to work with because they're very motivated to change and do what needs to be done. Perfect.

I would encourage everyone to go to www.madelineblair.com. That's www.madelineblair.com. Madelineblair.com. I have thoroughly enjoyed having a conversation with you. Thank you so, so much for being my guest today on Brilliant Business TV. It has been a total pleasure. Thank you so much, Mark. The pleasure.

Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters, visit us online at businessinnovatorsradio.com today.