Are You a Rubber Band or a Pencil?

The sight was startling.  It was one of those windy days in Chicago.  I entered the second story office, and my friend’s desk, which sat next to a window, had the large fixture of a street light awkwardly “resting” on her desk.  Scattered all over the desk and floor were shards of glass, while the street light pole extended out the window and down to the ground.

What happened?   Apparently the wind was strong enough to loosen the streetlight from its moorings, blowing it over and sending it crashing  violently through my friend’s window.  Scary.  Fortunately she was away from her desk at a meeting.

This gets me thinking about the importance of flexibility.  Flexible things are able to expand or contract according to the demands put on them—they are able to bend but not break.

Inflexible things, on the other hand, are rigid and brittle.  Under pressure, they snap.

A rubber band is flexible.  A pencil is inflexible.  With moderate stress, a rubber band will stretch to an increased capacity while a pencil will snap in two.

Objects aren’t the only things that have these qualities.  People also can be either rigid or flexible.  We can be like rubber bands or like pencils--in how we think, how we act, and how we make choices.

Have you ever worked for someone who was too rigid?  Maybe it was how they processed information or made decisions, or perhaps it showed up in how they behaved as leaders.

Of course, we’re complex as people, and not simply “flexible” or “rigid”.  It often depends on what area of life we’re talking about.  It’s not uncommon for us to have some areas where we’re more-or-less flexible and others where we may be more-or-less rigid.

That being said, some people are, in general, too rigid.  They have a limited capacity, for whatever reason,  to adjust and flex to the changing ideas and circumstances in the world around them.

Now, I understand that there are times when being rigid actually is best.

An Army drill sergeant is rigid, and needs to be.  “My way or the highway”.  There’s no room for negotiating with your drill sergeant in basic training.   “Sir, I’d prefer to stay in bed this morning instead of going on our 5-mile run up the mountain”.  That’s not really an option.

This kind of “rigidity” serves a good purpose, though.  It quickly shapes and forms a young recruit into a lean, mean, fighting machine, which may one day save his life, and maybe even the lives of those in his platoon.

But this is not the kind of rigidity I’m talking about today.  What I’m talking about is the kind of rigidity that causes us to be less effective, personally or professionally, in some way.

This is where being flexible is premier.  I talk about this in the section on resilience in my eBook “7 Killer Mistakes”.

The world offers us many examples of the importance of flexibility:

  • bodies that are inflexible pull muscles—ever pull a hamstring?
  • businesses that aren’t flexible don’t adjust to the demands of the market and end up “eating the dust” of their competitors, getting left behind, and eventually becoming irrelevant
  • musicians that aren’t flexible can’t improvise very well and probably won’t play jazz or perform any hot guitar solos in a jam session
  • trees that aren’t flexible snap in high velocity winds (as opposed to that big weeping willow)
  • thinking that isn’t flexible is closed to some of the facts which results in making short-sighted interpretations and conclusions.
  • also, thinking that isn’t flexible fails to see possibilities, which results in not seeing opportunities
  • armies that aren’t flexible are defeated, because they can’t adjust to unexpected scenarios on the battlefield
  • motorists here in Chicago that aren’t flexible, in the middle of busy traffic, may either slow traffic down or even create unsafe driving conditions, because they aren’t adjusting to the ever-shifting patterns of traffic
  • quarterbacks that aren’t flexible have difficulty calling audibles and switching plays at the line of scrimmage because they aren’t adjusting to unexpected changes in the defense.
  • politicians that aren’t flexible have difficulty going beyond their carefully orchestrated “script” of meaningless sound bytes, because they can’t think on their feet, adjust to their opponents in–the-moment rhetoric, and have a free-flowing debate.
  • Skyscrapers that are built with out the ability to flex in the higher velocity winds will experience structural damage
  • Same with bridges—they need to be built with the ability to flex a bit.

So, flexibility, or resilience, is a crucial life skill!

Resilience makes us better, at work and at home, by empowering us to make optimal adjustments to changing conditions in the world around us.  And hey, the world is always changing, which is why this is pretty important.

What do you think?  What are some other examples of flexibility/rigidity?  And how is your “flexibility factor”?

--Sean Cox, Chicago

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