The Art of Surthrival

by Jonathan King

ave you ever seen someone who by all measures would be fully within their rights to melt down under the weight of the pressures they were facing, but instead this person thrived in front of your very eyes? What you just saw was surthrival. Surthrival is the ability to thrive in an environment so challenging that most people would say simply surviving would be a major accomplishment.

As a leadership and organizational coach, I have the great honor of walking beside my clients as they navigate their roles, relationships, careers, and lives. I get to be close enough to them to empathize with their successes and failures but retain enough distance to see them in a broader light. During the COVID-19 pandemic and in its aftermath, I’ve noticed that some of my clients seem to have a particular knack for surthriving. Perhaps their ability to surthrive is natural, but I’ve noted a common set of seven skills and behaviors my surthrivalists shared. If common behaviors associated with a given outcome provide an opportunity, then suthrivalism can be learned. Yes, some may be better at it than others, but anyone willing to invest in these seven behaviors should see their potential for surthrival increase. Intrigued? I hope so, because here they are.

Surthrival leaders are:

Mission-Focused

As leaders, our organization’s mission guides everything we do. A strong mission statement creates opportunity while providing powerful guidance on what should be most important to an organization. The mission of Bean’s Café in Anchorage, Alaska is to “fight hunger for all ages.” Before the pandemic struck, the organization fought hunger primarily through two efforts: a congregant meal facility primarily serving Anchorage’s houseless population and a program that provided pre-made meals to children and families experiencing food insecurity so they wouldn’t be hungry on weekends and during school holidays. As you may remember, the pandemic shut down both schools and congregant facilities. Bean’s immediately pivoted to providing what they call “pantry packs.” Each pack contained enough ingredients for a family of four to have a breakfast, a lunch, or a dinner together. By remembering their mission and leaning into it, Bean’s was able to become even more successful in delivering meals even though their traditional service lines were cut off.

Surthrival is the ability to thrive in an environment so challenging that most people would say simply surviving would be a major accomplishment.

Stubborn on the Vision, Flexible on the Details

Surthrival leaders are stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details. They avoid getting so focused on any one path that they miss opportunities or, even worse, develop blind spots. Sticking with the Bean’s Café example, the elements that mattered in that situation were the mission and the vision of the organization. In that moment, stamping out hunger mattered more than ever, as individuals, families, and children were increasingly vulnerable. The “how” of stamping out hunger mattered less in the moment than the “why.” If the organization had stayed wed to its traditional service lines it would have delivered hundreds of thousands fewer meals and missed an important opportunity to pivot to meet changing needs.

Surthrival leaders are stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details. They avoid getting so focused on any one path that they miss opportunities…

Decisive

In survival situations, being decisive is often the difference between life and death. Making a decision that moves you to action is far more important than making the perfect or best decision. When we can have both, we’ll take both. In absence, we take action over perfection. A surthrivalist knows that in deeply challenging moments, “60 percent and Go!” is the new “80 percent and Go!” and those that wait to act until they have 100 percent of the information will act too late.

Surthrivalists don’t go it alone. They find ways to build their team, get the best from their individual players, and generate buy-in all while passing through the crucible.

Tree growing out of a landfill trash pile

Team-Building

Surthrivalists don’t go it alone. They find ways to build their team, get the best from their individual players, and generate buy-in all while passing through the crucible. Great teams are built on shared purpose, clarity of role, psychological safety, and accountability. It can be hard enough to strengthen these elements while under duress, but it’s nearly impossible to lay the foundation when your team is trying to rapidly pivot during a crisis. Surthrival leaders had already laid the foundations for great teams before the crisis and were able to lean into established behaviors and practices to keep their teams strong.

Empowering

A surthrival leader knows when to get out of the way, when to be out of the room, and when to hand over the reins. In the words of Mother Teresa, “You can do what I cannot do, I can do what you cannot do; together we can do great things.” Recently, a client in the IT field was telling a story about when the large organization they worked for was the victim of a highly successful cyberattack. IT had been decentralized across multiple departments, but the attack brought nearly the whole organization to a standstill. It fell to the leaders of the organization’s administrative department to bring the organization back onto its feet. The surthrival-oriented leader turned to this IT staffer and said “Alex, do what you do best. Get everyone back up and running. Don’t worry about the politics. I’ll clear the decks for you.”

A surthrival leader knows when to get out of the way, when to be out of the room, and when to hand over the reins.

Emotionally Present

Patrick Lencioni writes, “Trust lies at the heart of a great team, and a leader must set the stage for that trust by being genuinely vulnerable with his or her team members.” We can’t be genuinely vulnerable for our teams unless we’re emotionally present. Surthrival leaders I’ve worked with find a way even in challenging times to maintain emotional presence for their teams, an accomplishment which requires significant balance. You must regulate your own emotions while maintaining your empathetic availability to others. That’s a hard thing to do under stressful and changing conditions, but one that’s essential for maintaining trust and psychological safety. For great examples of emotional presence in action, listen to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats from the Great Depression and World War II, Churchill’s speeches during the London Blitz, or Angela Merkel’s New Year’s Eve 2020/2021 speech to the German people during the pandemic.

Recharging

It is impossible to sustain a surthrival state if you fail to recharge your battery. Surthrival leaders are particularly adept at making sure they are regenerating during the high-discharge state normally associated with a survival situation. During the pandemic, many traditional practices for regeneration such as travel or going to a gym became impossible or unpredictable. Instead of focusing on what the pandemic was denying them, surthrival leaders maintained a flexible mindset about the “how” of the recharge but remained certain (or even more convinced) of the importance of the recharge. Every one of us has a “resilience recipe” that includes ingredients such as exercise, favorite hobbies, time alone or time spent with particular people, etc. The time to know your recipe is now, because in a surthrival situation it will be much harder to build a recipe from scratch.

There’s no time like the present to build your surthrival skills, as the next great challenge is just around the corner.

There’s no time like the present to build your surthrival skills, as the next great challenge is just around the corner. I do not believe that you have to be fantastic at all seven skills in order to be a surthrivalist. However, achieving a level of competence and intentionality in a plurality, and surrounding yourself with those who excel where you do not, would be a fantastic start. We never know when we will be called to lead in challenging times, and I for one would rather surthrive than merely subsist.

Jonathan King is passionate about the art and science of coaching and the success and sense of discovery that clients find through coaching. The founder of Halcyon Consulting, Inc, he holds a Master of Science in environmental and natural resource economics and an International Coaching Federation credential. King has helped hundreds of clients gain greater insights, develop clarity of purpose, and find their calls to action. When he’s not coaching, he enjoys cooking, fishing, and traveling, preferably with his family. He resides in Anchorage, Alaska, with his wife and two sons.

jonathankingadvisors.com

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