Change is constant and often accompanied by adversity and difficulties.

Globally-renowned HR practitioner Nathan Andres has created a principled methodology – REAL – to help people survive and thrive in times of change. We recently interviewed Nathan on our Creating Futures podcast and have included some of our favourite excerpts below.

Introducing Nate

I am Nate Andres. I’ve got 20-plus years of HR experience, and I am an HR practitioner, well-being leader, coach, author, and global keynote speaker.

Nate on resilience

The one constant thing in life is change, right? From the time we’re born to the time we die; humans are always experiencing change. And this is a source of much of the adversity that people experience in their lifetime.

I define resilience in 2 key parts:

  1. Taking back control of adversity to solve, learn, and grow in your own unique and authentic way. That is based on your own life’s learnings and experiences.
  2. Using that growth to build capacity. And ultimately, using that new capacity to bounce beyond the original adversity to take on the next, it’s a cycle.
A big part of the reason to write the book was to help create a tool for people to deal with adversity and change. When we learn that resilience is ultimately about taking back control from a hardship, obstacle, or difficult event, we can use what we know to then bounce beyond it.

Nate on authenticity

The worst advice I received in my career was to “don’t ask, don’t tell” about who I was (as an LGBTQ+ person). I wish I had been more courageous. It was a different time in age – but not so many years ago, to tell you the truth.

What I discovered in that experience of balancing an “out” personal life and a closeted professional life was how important authenticity as a core value was to me.

My “No Matter the Closet, Open the Door Principle” applies to everyone. Everyone has a closet; it might be a gender closet, it might be a sexual orientation closet, it might be a disability closet, it could be a variety of adversity closets.

I encourage people to do the work; get clear on who you are, your values, and how those values help inform your life, mission, and purpose. We can use those as a North Star to guide us to do what we need to do and help make the decisions we need to make in our life.

Nate on managing people

Listening is the first place for leaders and managers to start. Listen to your people. Holding space and sometimes silence is the best approach to empathy.

We need to bring more empathy to the workplace by helping managers and leaders to be more empathetic by training and teaching them to ask the right probing questions of their employees, not just jumping straight in to solve problems or get to solutions too quickly.

Leaders, particularly at the C-Suite level, must look at how they’re building culture and what cultural elements are tied directly to well-being, mental health and workplace engagement. If we start there and continue to evaluate culture and the organisation’s health, we will see improved engagement. We’ll also see improved productivity, happier employees, and hopefully, more workplaces that move from survive to thrive.

Nate on career advice

I wish I’d been more courageous in living my truth earlier in my career. I also wish I had found my coaches a bit earlier.

I was blessed with some great bosses along the way; however, those bosses who were coaches, or encouraged me to employ a coach, led to the most significant leaps in my own personal and professional growth.

Listen to the full interview with the incredible Nathan Andres, M.A., on the Creating Futures podcast on Spotify.

Nathan’s book Your REAL Life: Get Authentic, Be Resilient & Make it Count provides tools to find opportunity and growth within change, to help build authenticity and resilience. Visit Nathan’s website to order a copy or read about his ideas in more detail.

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