Less Sugar, More Substance
Scooby Snacks - A Tool for Building Resilience
Don’t underestimate the power of Scooby snacks. Leaders need to understand what Scooby snacks are and how to use them effectively to build and sustain resilience in their teams. When adversity, stress, and challenging circumstances inevitably happen, resilience provides the ability to adapt, recover, and thrive. Resilience can also be seen as a form of protracted courage. It is the real-world adaptation to the action initiated by courage.
In a 2024 commencement speech, Roger Federer shared the statistic that over his career, he won nearly 80% of his matches but only just over half the points. One of the greatest tennis players in history lost almost half of every game he ever played. His lesson was about what success actually requires: “When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you”. Effective leaders aren’t people who avoid failure. They’ve built resilience. In themselves and in their teams. Not by winning, but by struggling repeatedly and coming back again and again
I was reminded of the importance of this concept when reading the recently published book: We Lead: Building Connection, Community, and Collaboration - Volume 3: with chapters by SLG Mentors AliceAnne Loftus and Gala McCray, as well as SLG CEO Julie Campbell. There are twenty additional chapters, all written by successful women in business who tell their stories. All of these women’s stories display remarkable resilience.
Reading this book is an important reinforcement that, in my mind, women are more resilient than men. This resilience stems from the fact that our culture requires women to be more resilient. For them, it is therefore a muscle that has been strengthened by frequent trial and tribulation. Identifying this distinction is done for the purpose of encouraging all leaders to observe the reality of the world around them and learn how to build greater resilience for themselves and their team
Most moms understand the motivational value of Scooby snacks for modifying children's and grumpy fathers' behavior. They almost never leave home without them. Snacks (or bacon for you Ron Swanson fans) not only fulfill a physical need in this case, but they also create the momentary courage and motivation to overcome obstacles. Effective Scooby snacks release dopamine, enhancing mood, motivation, and focus. They counter our natural inclination to negativity bias and generate evidence of progress and the ability to overcome obstacles.
Scooby snacks can take many forms. Here is an atypical example–a large corporation consistently fell short of an objective on product availability. A high-potential leader was given the responsibility to fix the problem. At the end of the first month, the performance was 10X better, but still fell short of the company's objective. At lunch that day, the leader anticipated a celebration. The senior executive, rather than celebrating, asked a series of intense questions to better understand why the goal wasn’t achieved, then left the lunch group. Needless to say, the leader was disappointed. Upon returning to the office, there sat two people from the IT department. They said they had been told personally by the senior executive not to do anything except work with the leader until the objective was achieved. The following month, the objective was almost achieved, and in the third month, it was successfully achieved and has been since then.
The Scooby snack in this case was not what one might expect. Rather than a transitory public accolade, the snack was providing dedicated time and talent from two IT resources. It was showing the confidence that, given the right tools, the high-potential leader could fix an intractable problem.
Developing resilience requires leaders to have the emotional intelligence to process and respond to triumphs and setbacks without being emotionally overwhelmed. In an organizational context, leaders need the creativity, resourcefulness, and courage to create Scooby snacks that are far more meaningful and effective than the trite current-day organizational equivalents of sugar, salt, fat, and chocolate. Creating meaningful organizational Scooby snacks requires a strong focus on the organizational “why”. Snacks should align with the trust triangle standards of empathy, authenticity, and logic. Above all, they should reflect the leader's commitment to doing what is right and not just what is easy. The example above meets and exceeds each of these tests.
Scooby snacks are sometimes about resolving challenges in the moment. A successful leader understands and embraces that they are also a vital part of success over time–the true purpose of a leader. What Scooby snacks do you carry in your leadership lunch box?
Sheldon is the Chairman of the Board at the Severn Leadership Group and has been a mentor since 2022. His career was in corporate supply chain leadership and related consulting. Sheldon has a BS from Lehigh University and an MBA from Emory University. He and his wife Janet live in Fort Myers, FL, thriving on service, traveling, and the joy of grandchildren.
