Welcome to a recap of Harmonious Workplaces Podcast Episode 84, where hosts Rich Cruz and Ben Kleinman sat down with special guest Quang Le to discuss the essential topic of disruption and how to cope.
Quang Le, the CEO and founder of Le Transformations, specializes in change strategy and leadership consulting, helping organizations and leaders thrive in volatile environments. Drawing on over two decades of experience across federal agencies, private companies, and mission-driven organizations, Quang’s foundational belief is profound: disruption doesn’t have to be a threat—it can be a doorway to possibility. This episode provided listeners with tangible strategies to minimize the sense of doom and dread, and instead instill hope and resilience.
Reframing Disruption: From Threat to Doorway
The key to dealing with rapid change lies in reframing how we perceive instability. Quang emphasized that “Nothing is permanent—and that’s not bad news, it’s our natural state”. For Quang, disruption is the environment in which resilience is built.
The central idea is empowering: We can’t control disruption, but we can control our capacity to recover, reframe, and respond. Resilience, Quang argues, is not a fixed trait; it is a vital practice. It is about building the muscles necessary to recover, reframe, and return with a better or more appropriate response to what is being experienced.
The Roots of Resistance: Why We Fight, Flight, or Freeze
When facing disruption, humans often default to a primal stress response similar to dealing with physical danger: fight, flight, or freeze. This response is a protective mechanism hardwired into us. In modern, white-collar work settings, these stressors elicit the same protective response.
Leaders and employees often develop mechanisms to avoid confronting the change. For instance, non-resilient individuals might build their own tools (like spreadsheets) to avoid adopting a new system, creating a protective mechanism to regain a feeling of control. Executive leaders sometimes delay action by continuously requesting more data. While collecting data can inform decisions prudently, when it leads to inaction or serves to “nitpick or fine tune all the data” to avoid taking a stand, it simply facilitates avoidance and prolongs the period of stress.
To find resilience, we must first put the disruption into context. Quang noted that resilience, according to social science literature blending psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science, is defined as our ability to adapt well in times of adversity, trauma, or stress.
Resilience is a Practice: Introducing the 3PBA Framework
Quang introduced his 3PBA Framework™ (Three Perspectives, Three Behaviors, Three Attitudes) to help leaders and organizations apply resilience concepts learned from addressing profound psychological stress to organizational challenges. The framework uses three points because neuroscience suggests the brain finds it easier to conceptualize in threes.
It’s crucial to understand that resilience is not linear; it’s a loop. While an individual might naturally enter the loop through their “head” (thinking), “heart” (feeling), or “hands” (doing), they must move through all three perspectives—head/thinking, heart/feeling, hands/doing—to achieve the most productive and resilient response.
1. Three Perspectives (The Head): Gaining Clarity
Perspectives are about how we interpret adversity, which determines how we navigate the stress. Resilient people practice interpreting adversity in three key ways:
- Temporary and Contextual: The event is not permanent. Resilient people realize the situation is very specific to this context. Acknowledging bright moments, even during hardship, contributes to optimism with realism.
- Impersonal: The disruption is not of one’s doing; it is something external happening in the environment, meaning we should not internalize it personally. Putting boundaries around the cause of the stress helps us find ways of dealing with it.
- Narrative Management: The story we tell ourselves about the stressful event shapes how long the stress owns us. Managing this narrative allows us to navigate our way through.
2. Three Behaviors (The Hands): Focusing Energy and Action
Behaviors are where we take action. This component is sparked by challenge, commitment, and control.
- Focusing Control/Energy: This involves focusing energy on what we can shape and influence, rather than wasting energy on things we have no control over.
- Action Creates Resilience: Action provides a fast way to get to resilience. “Doing” makes one feel good, knowing they are affecting change in a positive or affirmative way. Behaviors practiced include: pausing before reacting, naming what is true to reduce fear, and choosing the next best move (not the perfect move).
- Embracing Engagement: Resilience is not about escaping stress but embracing how one is addressing and engaging with the stressor so they can deal with it effectively.
3. Three Attitudes (The Heart): Building a Survival Toolkit
Attitudes relate to the heart component and serve as an emotional “survival toolkit”. Key attitudes include:
- Curiosity: Ask, “What is this disruption trying to teach me?”.
- Grace and Compassion: Extend grace to self and others, recognizing that everyone is doing their best in uncertainty. Extending compassion helps to reset the nervous system. By regulating our own emotional response as we commune with others, we spark hope.
- Hope: Hope is foundational and sustains individuals. Hope broadens perspectives, which can lead to gratitude and fuel the energy needed to deal with stress. Hope is the belief that one will make it through the situation, and often includes the recognition that one is not going through it alone.
Ultimately, resilience is not about being unshakable; it’s about becoming more flexible without breaking.
Ready to Transform Uncertainty into Opportunity?
If you are a leader or organization looking to build sustainable resilience and thrive through disruption, connect with Quang Le and explore the powerful methodologies discussed in this episode.
Visit Le Transformations today: https://letransformations.com/
Keep Your Workplace Harmonious!
For more insightful discussions on organizational development, change management, and creating positive work environments, check out Hermie the HR Hermit Crab’s resources.
Learn more about Hermie the HR Hermit Crab: https://harmoniousworkplaces.com/hermie-the-hr-hermit-crab/
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