Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

Some weeks remind you that leadership would be a lot easier if people weren’t involved.

This was not one of those weeks.

Anne and I took a close friends to one of their favorite restaurants in the city to celebrate a memorable birthday. We were upstairs, enjoying great food and even better company, sitting fairly close to a couple at another table.

For most of their meal, they whispered, leaned toward each other and, more than once, boldly stared at me.

At first, I thought maybe I had something in my teeth. Then I realized they were trying to put a face to a voice.

Apparently, someone thought they recognized me from somewhere, and the mystery was worth considerable investigation.

It was funny.

The rest of the week was less so.

•An authority figure vacillated between praise and admonition.

•An employee pushed hard, colored well outside the lines, hid behind a local, enabling and advocating authority when it suited him and then threw a few grenades on his way out.

•I got a call from a bewildered external recruiter who shared with me that a high-caliber HR leader, who accepted an opportunity, resigned from their current role and then reconsidered well into the transition.

People are complicated.

Leadership is complicated.

And then, in the middle of all of it, a really good team did what really good teams do.

They came together.

They picked up pieces, filled gaps, communicated … and kept moving.

That may be the best definition of sustainable leadership I know:

You don’t build organizations that never get knocked off balance. You build organizations capable of finding their balance again.

That’s culture.

That’s trust.

That’s leadership.

The human condition isn’t going away.

Neither are the unexpected disruptions, difficult conversations or moments when people make things harder than they need to be.

The question is whether your team can absorb the disruption without losing its center.

Because resilience isn’t the absence of disorder.

It’s the ability to recover, reconnect and keep moving forward.

Have a blessed weekend!

Eric