In Search of Resilient Leaders
Adversity happens. It happened to me and some form of adversity will happen to you. Do you have the strength and will to bounce back?
On May 26, 2001, I suffered an unprovoked disc rupture that pressed against my spinal cord, leaving the lower half of my body permanently paralyzed. At the prime of my life as a successful business executive and father, it was the last thing that I ever would have expected. Since then, I’ve come to realize that we will each experience some form of adversity. It will likely be a career crisis, financial disaster, devastating relationship breakup or frightening diagnosis
Life-altering experiences like these are not something we can anticipate. In business, we are trained to examine various scenarios and prepare responses in advance. For example, who has a contingency plan for living life from a wheelchair? Instead, these episodes tend to come out of the blue, when it’s too late to prepare.
For me, becoming paralyzed is, without question, the worst thing that has ever happened. At the same time, the experience has allowed me to come back not just changed but stronger. I’ve learned that our innate ability to survive and adapt is greater than what we might think.
Resilience is one of the key qualities desired in business leaders today, but many people confuse it with toughness. Toughness is an aspect of resilience, but it is not the same thing. Toughness enables people to separate emotion from the negative consequences of difficult choices. In most situations we expect leaders to be tough. It can be an advantage in business, but only to a point. Toughness is like an armor that deflects emotion. I’ve discovered some of the toughest people are the most vulnerable without their armor. Resilience, by contrast, is not about deflecting challenges but about absorbing them and rebounding stronger than before.
If toughness is not enough, what are the other characteristics of resilient leaders?
I have discovered five character traits that help define resilient leaders.
l Courage to venture where you have never been and to admit that you don’t know it all
l Ingenuity to find a way to succeed in spite of overwhelming obstacles
l Compassion for the frailties of others
l Authenticity to build lasting relationships
l Faith in the human spirit to prevail against the odds
These are not skills we acquire by taking a course, but rather elements of our character that get developed through perseverance over a lifetime.
After my injury, I spent two months in the hospital learning how to live my “new normal” life. I had many hours to reflect on my past life and envision a new and different future. I had questions about my identity. I came to realize that I was no longer the person I had been and not yet the one I was becoming. I am a work in process. Being self aware is an important part of bouncing back from adversity. We are defined by the choices we make, not by the adversity or the failures we experience.
Somehow I found the will to accept that my old life was gone and decided that I would create a new and equally meaningful one, drawing on all my experiences and a caring community of family and friends. Adversity has a way of cutting through the clutter and fog of everyday life. Although many things are important, few things really matter. Resilient leaders know how to distinguish what really matters.
Some people emerge from adversity with a larger view of what is possible. I asked, “If I can survive this, what else can I do?” I’ve learned to challenge many of the assumptions I have held about what I was able to do or achieve. While these assumptions may have been appropriate at one point in my life, they had been unexamined for years. A personal crisis forces you to confront many past assumptions about yourself and your life. In doing so, many past constraints will fall away as no longer appropriate.
Resilient leaders know how to reset their ambitions to new levels after adversity. Oftentimes, it takes an ambition beyond reach to surface and challenge your constraining assumptions. There is an old adage: Surviving a steep fall gives confidence to climb a taller mountain. People won’t remember how far you fall, but rather how high you bounce back. How high will you bounce?