Club Events Marlburian Monday: Building Resilience in Uncertain Times 7th September 2020
stood out for me was Charlie’s focus on giving the listener something to work with and use. His key underlying philosophy is that resilience can be learnt and developed, it takes practice, but our underlying psychology and behaviours can change.
times, particularly as they begin to look for first job opportunities. Charlie emphasised the importance of the narrative we build around young people – there will be more uncertainty and rejection but that this should be seen as part of the journey, not failure.
He then shared findings from his research with elite athletes and large organisations, as to how our sense of control can be impacted by self-talk and negativity bias. One fact that stayed with me, is that of potentially 60,000 thoughts in a day, 80% are likely to be negative.
Charlie did what he set out to – gave us a lot of relevant information about how to develop personal resilience, or support others including teams or boards, and he got us engaged on Zoom. The standout for me was the energy, enthusiasm and personal insights he brought to the topic. I can’t recommend this talk enough.
In the subsequent Q&A, we talked about how to support young people through these
I was thrilled to be asked to review Charlie Cannon’s (C2 1990-95) talk. First, because I thought it was a great session with huge relevance to our Covid-19 world, but also having spent 30 years with large companies both in the UK and internationally, working with many consultants, it’s refreshing to come across someone as obviously enthusiastic to share his learnings as Charlie. The session was titled Building Resilience in Uncertain Times with the objective of building our awareness of the topic, sharing recent learnings, and giving us some practical tools to deal with today’s world. Charlie was also keen for interaction, potentially a tough ask on Zoom with over 60 participants and covering topics that could veer into areas of personal sensitivity. Charlie set up the session openly and transparently sharing his own journey of building resilience. He particularly shared how, despite significant sporting success, he struggled with feedback and the clearly devasting consequences of a near-fatal car crash involving his sister. This introduction drew me into the session and built a feeling of credibility and authenticity. The first part of the session asked us to think about degrees of resilience and specifically to reflect on what resources are at our disposal to support ourselves through change and Charlie gently pushed us into using the chat function. Most of the answers were things I would have considered, but I found it helpful to know a group of peers were thinking along similar lines. Charlie then used a number of models to draw out practical points – for example, a degrees-of-control model and an in/ out-of-box approach. The tools themselves were not necessarily revolutionary, but what 74
The Marlburian Club Magazine
Charlie Cannon
Pippa Greenslade (LI 1981-83)
