Integer Leadership Consulting

As a professor of organizational leadership and resource management, I sometimes teach students in the areas of leadership development and human effectiveness in organizations. While other courses are offered in the OLRM discipline at Olympic College, the two mentioned above explore in detail the character of the leader and the personal and professional competencies required to succeed within the organization. It has surprised me that most published curriculum tends to virtually ignore the important factor of human resilience in discussions of these concepts. For example, of the texts required for these courses (Daft, 2008; Reece & Brandt, 2008), only 1 page (out of a total of 913 pages) addresses the topic of “welcoming failure” (Daft, pp. 185-186) and “resilience” (Reece & Brandt, pp. 343-344). These exceedingly brief treatments are cursory at best and offer little help in understanding what resilience is or how one becomes resilient. Nowhere in these explanations does the reader discover how to acquire resilience over time, how to learn critical coping skills that empower forward movement in the face of adversity, or why cultivating well-being is a critical component for success in the work environment, as well as life itself. The more I teach and interact with students, the more I realize that finding a way to communicate how an adult learns to be resilient is absolutely crucial to self-esteem and vocational drive.

The paucity of printed information about resilience and well-being is quite ironic, given the fact that we are attempting to facilitate learning for students who aspire to succeed in the complex and often grinding milieu of business organizations. In all of the courses I teach, students seldom understand much about the markers or characteristics of resilience. They may be marginally familiar with the definition of the word resilience but have no grasp of why it is vitally important to survival and success. To my query about the meaning of resilience, classes usually respond that it’s about “bouncing back” from difficult circumstances. Few students understand much more than that. They have no deep awareness that resilience is an experienced or lived phenomenon, that it is the challenging self-movement into and through failure despite overwhelming feelings of desperation, disappointment, and helplessness. Most definitely do not recognize how resilience could significantly impact their current and future lives.

Perhaps due to the condition of our economy and the rising tide of unemployment, coupled with the demographics of Kitsap County, many of the students I encounter seem too fixated on what they have going against them to be able to envision possibilities and opportunities. Perhaps this is true of the students you instruct as well. I often find myself inwardly blanching at the stories of hardship, despondency and indifference and self-engineered failure that have virtually locked-down students from believing in themselves or that they can achieve a better quality of life. I see the struggle in their eyes. I sense hopelessness in their voices. Despite their best efforts and loftiest aspirations, they see themselves making little to no progress in their lives. The headwinds seem too stiff and growing stiffer. The barriers appear insurmountable. And the odds feel increasingly stacked against them. They have come to believe that they lack the talent, the money, the pedigree and the connections that open the right doors for others but not for them.
I want to share with you the approach I have taken to provide a type of “immunization” against the soul-eating disease of negativity that too often derails students. In every course I teach, I build into the curriculum a minimum of one full lecture and discussion on three critical areas that directly address personal and professional growth in the face of adversity. These three related areas are resilience, thriving and posttraumatic growth: resilience addresses how to create an environment that promotes emotional health and a focus on opportunity despite adverse circumstances; thriving addresses how to foster change as a direct result of personal setbacks; posttraumatic growth addresses the positive gains that can emerge from traumatic and devastating events. Significant scholarly research supports the efficacy of all three areas, and my experience confirms the usefulness of these concepts. Thus, I would invite you to discuss with others in your discipline or academic department how students might significantly benefit from exposure to these three concepts. Even a basic foundation in these precepts would give students a compass to better navigate the unexpected vicissitudes of everyday life and professional advancement.

Best,

Jeffrey

Why do leaders need resilience in order to lead effectively? Because the work of leadership is difficult and often challenging to the point where a leader’s personal resources are exhausted. When exhaustion sets in so often does frustration and despair. If this sense of emptiness becomes a chronic state it can create a sense of defeat and impact-insignificance which then further erodes a leader’s ability to influence organizational vision, people and processes.

If you’re not sure what resilience means, take a moment to ponder this. Ryff and Singer (2003) defined resilience as “the capacity to either maintain or regain multiple aspects of positive psychological functioning in the face of difficult life circumstances or demanding transitions” (p. 185). Ryff and Singer tracked individuals confronting behaviors within the context of “naturally occurring life challenges, such as normative life transitions, critical and unexpected events and chronically occurring difficulties” (p.185). The dominant resilience question that guided the work of Ryff and Singer as they explored behaviors across these contexts was, “who stays well in the face of challenging events” (p. 185). In a similar approach, Carver (1998) defines resilience as denoting “the capacity to recover from a downturn to a former state of relative well being” (p. 247). This “bounce-back” capacity can improve over time as repeated instances of challenging events produce less severe downturns and increasing quicker recoveries (Carver, p. 248). Experience with disruption over time, as Carver views it, actually leaves individuals more capable of repairing the disruption than they were when they first encountered the disrupting event (p. 249). Masten, Best, and Garmezy (1990) define resilience as “the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances.”

These definitions of resilience suggest that, for leaders, you get stronger or more “immunized” against steep downturns the more you actually experience them. Resilience means that you regain your footing and regain your professional balance and equilibrium as you confront the challenges that knock your knees out from under you. Resilience does not mean you are impervious to setbacks. Rather it means you experience the full emotional impact of setbacks and the discouragement that comes along with those setbacks, yet, you work to recover and regain your perspective. Furthermore, the more you slog through the experience of working out of the difficult seasons the more capable you are of dealing with them when they confront you down the road. May this be good news for those leaders who are seeking to catch a glimpse of how to rightly perceive (or cognitivley understand) and recover from the setbacks that come with the territory of responsible leadership.

Best,

Jeff

Were you aware that resilience is a capacity that one possesses rather than a choice that one makes? Resilience as a choice implies that you can choose to be resilient in the face of difficult circumstances or situations…like putting on clothing or choosing an item on a menu. Resilience, so it would seem, is like throwing a light switch from off to on. Well, unfortunately, resilience does not seem to work in this manner. Resilience is a learned behavior, absorbed over time, the result of navigating tough life circumstances and emerging from them as a survivor. Much of the resilience research has focused on children. Children who have survived early childhood traumas, for example, the divorce of parents and subsequent disruption of everyday life, and emerge into adulthood as people who can survive and “find their way through the pain and setbacks of life.”

Yet, I also believe that resilience can be learned as adults but this learning process must be accompanied by very specific events and actions. What I mean is that if you, as an adult, are to learn to be resilient when confronted by intimidating and potentially overwhelming circumstances, you are well-served to take the following actions:

1. Acknowledge the dilemma. Don’t pretend or lie to yourself. See your reality for what it is. This “truth-telling” is the first step in learning to become resilient.

2. Study and understand what exactly is going on. Learn the details, the issues, the facts, and the people that are involved. Don’t magnify how bad things are by overstating what you “think” is happening to you. Find out exactly what the issues are.

3. Surround yourself with people who can see your situation from different perspectives. Here the key is getting other eyes on your situation in addition to your own. When you are “in the soup” you are massively subjective and biased and therefore easily and quickly lose the ability to see unemotionally and objectively. So, choose a small circle of friends whom you trust, whose wisdom you respect, and ask them to coach you and to speak wisdom into your situation. You often find, and research shows that when it comes to resilience, that you can’t make it through the most difficult of life’s circumstances alone.

4. Get the professional help you need in addition to # 3 above. Abrupt and difficult life-events can cause emotional trauma and this emotional impact “can” cause longer-term damage if it is not specifically addressed. Ask around and get the names of community professionals who are respected. Most will have sliding scales that will work with your budget.

5. Be patient….very patient. This process of recovering takes time…not days or weeks but months and perhaps years. Don’t short-circuit this process by succumbing to short-term or quick fixes.

6. Journal, read and write. Cultivate your spirituality. Each of the major spiritual traditions speak powerfully to the value and positive impact that personal setbacks can bring. Each often speak to keeping hold of faith and hope.

7. Keep moving ahead…one step at a time. Don’t quit or give up. Some days the progress is significant while other days it is extremely incremental and perhaps more of a slight retreat. You will have hard days and days of small victories…this is to be expected.

8. Remember…the way forward is the way through.

Which is better for leaders who have experienced a significant failure in leadership: Resilience or posttraumatic growth? The reason this question is central is due in large part to the end result of either option. Resilience is often the right choice when a leadership failure or challenge is not catastrophic meaning it does not result in the loss of employment (even though the event does result in emotional bruising and professional embarrassment). Here resilience is about the decision to “make your way back” to a level of efficiency and leadership influence which existed prior to the event. This decision is about determination, perseverance, overcoming the odds, proving your metal and proving other’s wrong. Resilience, when viewed from only a utilitarian perspective, is about self-vindication. It can be characterized by an impatient and irrepressible urge to scratch and claw one’s way back to a position of leadership status and power.

The danger that lies with this understanding and experience of resilience is that little internally changes. By this I mean that while you can regain your footing professionally little in your cognitive and emotional infrastructure changes when, in fact, it may need to change. Why is this significant? Because the rare opportunity that failure provides the leader is to examine the reasons or rationale that gave rise to the action which led to the failure in the first place. This is the where the richness and value of resilience coupled with reflection lay. The reality, however, is that many leaders bypass this critical evaluative opportunity and move right through to the re-establishment and re-stabilization of their positional power. While one’s position and hegemony may be recovered, the risk is high that at some point in the future the failure will be repeated.

Next installment…why leaders can so easily bypass (ignore) the opportunity to reflect and learn from their organizational failures and why this increases the risk of additional leadership failure.

I am beginning a series on Resilience and Posttraumatic growth as it relates to those in positions of organizational leadership, in particular, those who are key decision-makers from senior executives, to mid-level management to those who are just emerging as talented and gifted leaders in their organizations.

This discussion will focus on the meaning of resilience as it applies to leadership under pressure and with high expectations and secondly, the meaning of posttraumatic growth for leaders who have experienced catastrophic job loss leading to a major crises. The question I am raising is this: what does it mean for leaders to “rebound” or “make their way forward into new forms of leadership” after dealing with a major career derailment and setback?

Any review of the literature available today in major book retailers will tell you that, with very few exceptions, business leaders face daunting expectations. Not only are decision-makers under a great deal of pressure, not only are they dealing with significant and often unrealistic expectations both internally and externally, they also have a poverty of resources to turn to when they fail. Failure is a common theme within the ranks of non-profit and for-profit organizational leadership. With very little recourse and no road map to chart their way through exceptionally difficult terrain, these leaders can find it hard to regain their footing and move through the most difficult personal and professional season they will most likely ever face.

In the next post: Understanding the meaning of Resilience and the Nexus with Organizational Leaders.

The Three Disciplines of Self-Leadership are….

1. Cultivating Inner Personal Meaning

Deepening Self-Awareness

The capacity to be vigilant about and grounded in your own strengths, limitations, uniqueness, history and emerging identity regardless of external pressures to detach from what you know about your deepest truth(s).

Maintaining spiritual moorings

Sustaining a dynamic connection with a spiritual foundation that provides an interpretation or story of your purpose and journey.

Depth Perception of others

The ability to identify and celebrate the deeper value, worth, dignity and longings of others and to contribute toward their growth and personal discovery through service and empowerment.

Commitment to growing forward regardless

The relentless and indomitable pursuit of forward movement into and out of the vicissitudes and vagaries of life .

3. Constructing an engaging Personal Vision

An engaging vision for yourself

A vision that encompasses your passions and dreams, is aligned with your uniqueness and your present realities and invites you to reach, stretch, and extend but not grasp or claim. A great resource to read for an indepth reflection on personal vision and passion is Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak

A courageous vision for your leadership in the organization

Since leadership is fundamentally about relationships of influence, keep clarity about how your exercise of leadership will advance, strengthen and transform the organizations in which you serve. This includes an ongoing professional development plan driven by a strong internal locus of control.

4. Assessing Personal Impact

Living with Humility and abandoning hubris

Remaining open, teachable, malleable, rather than hardened, closed, rigid, and protected.

Learning from rather than resisting seasons of failure

Becoming resilient by allowing life’s failures to dismantle false constructs and illusions and to deepen understanding and wisdom and enlarge the capacity for love and courage.

Part II: Exploring A Philosophy of Self-Leadership

Self-Leadership is neither a “utilitarian tool” to promote one’s advancement through the organization nor is it a “soft” practice that is an “optional” approach to personal and professional development

Rather…..

Self-Leadership is an Essential Personal Discipline that sets the stage for continuous personal change and organizational impact

Why Must Leaders Lead Themselves?

The Stewardship of Your Personal Life

The spiritual foundation of my purpose, destiny and timing.
Endowed with gifts, talents and abilities.
Cultivating the raw material of my life to maximize impact.
Protecting that which is fragile in order to safeguard the delivery of that which I possess.

Your Obligation to the Organization

Seeing vocation as a “calling” (from the Latin, vocare, voice).
I am under contract to bring my best to the organization.
Yet the contract is insufficient by itself to compel me to bring excellence. Delivering excellence is about clarity of purpose.

Your Critical Contribution to the World

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”…Gandhi
Your impact is unique, necessary and unrepeatable.
You will impact others, communities, organizations and the global network in ways that others will not.
The absence of your contribution will weaken any system in which you would otherwise be involved.

Those who are Benefited by leaders who practice Self-Leadership

Oneself
Family
Colleagues
Organizations
Customers/Clients
Local, national and international Communities
The contribution toward the global good

Reflection

How would focusing on each of these areas change the way you think about, approach, execute your work and your leadership Influence?

Below are a few thoughts on building a sound rationale for Self-Leadership. While we might “vote for” Self-Leadership, few have thought about what a sound argument for Self-Leadership might look like. I offer a few thoughts below in brief:

The Principles and Practices of Self-Leadership

Part A: A Definition of Self-Leadership

The ongoing discipline of cultivating inner personal meaning, constructing an engaging personal vision and assessing personal impact through assimilation of solicited feedback

Cultivating an Inner Personal Meaning
Constructing an Engaging Personal Vision
Assessing Personal Impact through assimilation of solicited feedback

Self-Leadership is nothing less than an ongoing personal discipline that has direct and profound professional consequences

Spend some thoughful and reflective time exploring the Self-Leadership Reflection Questions below:

Based on the definition above, in what way have you purposefully and intentionally invested in self-leadership?

Who are the people who inspire you to craft a life of self-leadership? Why?

I was in no way surprised.

Once again, we have an example of an organizational/political leader, gifted, talented, articulate, and prominent, who makes a choice that brings “this stage” of his storied career to an abrupt and brutal end. Clearly, his wife and his three teenage daughters will pay an incalculable price for his flawed choice. They, along with him, will pay a price that, at this early point in the downfall, is unfathomable. Most likely, Spitzer will feel the pain, shame, and guilt of his choice every moment of every day for the rest of his life. As the massive loss and suffering invades his deepest sense of self…as he comes back to reality…he will often and always rue the day that he decided to compromise his promises to his wife, his daughters and to the public he served.

Yet we should not be surprised or in any way amazed that Spitzer would place himself in such a precarious position with so much to lose. This is the issue and temptation with every leader: separating, truncating or compartmentalizing a self-constructed or self-fabricated reality from the true reality. Leaders make this mistake repeatedly regardless of their power, position, and success. And we, the observing public, act in amazement every time it unfolds before our eyes. From my perspective, this deleterious fall and commensurate carnage from Spitzer’s failure acts as a bizarre side show of sorts which the public “enjoys” observing. There exists in either our culture or our own individual hubris a dysfunctional and voyeuristic mentality that takes pleasure in watching others destroy themselves especially when those others are public figures who stand for principles, standards, ethics, and values…like Spitzer. I digress. What I personally observe is the rapidity of his demise, the lightening quick rejection and ostracizing of this human being. I see an incredible but predictable display of human failure coupled with the predictable destructive antagonism of those around Spitzer who, “of course,” would never engage in such base, self-serving behavior.

A Leadership Failure Post Mortem…

For a moment, separate the ethics of Spitzer’s actions long enough to notice this. What created the schism within his internal world which allowed him to proceed with the assumption that he could act inappropriately and then successfully camouflage his actions? This extremely brilliant man, possessing more education and experience than most, constructed an internal view of the world that was externally highly inaccurate. How does this happen? My sense is that, for leaders in particular, another reality can or must be created that, though false and potentially destructive, allows the man or woman to “live into their flawed constructions of reality” but which nonetheless meets a deep need perhaps even unknown or unrecognized by the leader. Again, not surprising.

In my next blog I will address the work that Spitzer will most likely face regarding the task of reuniting his deeply held schemas or perceptions with reality…what actually “is.” At some point in the not-too-distant future, his suffering and pain MAY be sufficient to confront and begin to dismantle these schemas, these false internal constructions of reality. What he does not know or understand is that this failure will be his “greatest gift”….it may be the one and only conduit that finally takes or more accurately forces him to the deep places which will reveal how he got to this point. It may show him the incredible chasm that exists between his internal construction of reality and the external realities of his life. What he has left “if and when” he comes to this place is unknown, and that is really not the issue here. What is the issue is this opportunity Spitzer has to reunite his deepest perceptions with external givens. Herein lays the real work and pain. This work will cost him most everything he is and has if he chooses this course of action. Then again, he may do nothing and resist the opportunity. He may blame his actions on an unfulfilling marriage, work pressures or the stress caused by unrealistic public expectations. Again, this should not be surprising.

Rhetoric, style, skill and charisma (from the Greek meaning “gift”) for leaders will only go so far and that, ultimately, is not very far at all. Problem is, most fail to understand this unpopular and therefore mostly inarticulate truth about organizational leadership. The more I see, the more I read, the more I am convinced that one’s teleological reflections (“what” greater end, good or greater purpose will be served by my leadership?) and existentialist ponderings (“why” must or why am I compelled to lead?) must be shaped intrinsically rather than defined by and driven by external forces and pressures.

Take for example the writings or Robert Greenleaf (Servant Leadership) and Parker Palmer (Let your Life Speak), both Quakers, who address clearly and forthrightly the “place” where authentic leadership is born: in the depths of one’s being and in the foundations of one’s understanding of ultimate purpose and service to others. If the questions of purpose and intention are not answered early on….if this inner clarity is missing in the life of the leader, the chances are strong that other extrinsic priorities will define the inner world of the leader. Furthermore, to be blunt about it, when what lies at the heart of the leader’s intent and purpose is to serve only oneself, a trail of broken and bloodied bodies and scared organizations can often result. Why play the dangerous game of believing otherwise? It is my contention that when leaders allow their professional technique, prowess or knowledge-base to define the “sacred” inner world of purpose and intention, the leader at some point becomes compromised and others suffer in their wake. Furthermore, like throwing pearls before swine, the world of leadership technique and knowledge have absolutly no business meddling in the the hearts of its leaders. Yet, when leaders “allow” this meddling to take place because they have failed to do the hard work themselves, they and not the organizations they lead, are culpable.

What does this mean? Simply put…the hardest work of the leader is NOT to be found in the execution of the leadership craft but rather in laying the foundation of purpose and intention. I believe this is what Greenleaf and Palmer address: leadership that changes people and processes is leadership rooted and grounded in serving a much greater and deeper “good” namely communicating value, affirmation, integrity and excellence to those who are led. The only leaders capable of this type of “speak” are the leaders who have plumbed their own depths and taken full responsibility for securing and protecting this hallowed inner space where purpose and intent are crystal clear. Let us not make the tragic mistake of believing that the hard work involved in getting these priorities defined compromises the execution of the “harder” and more complex skills involved in sound organizational leadership.