Integer Leadership Consulting

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.