Resilience: The Power to Bounce Back
As many of you know, in May 2001 I suffered an unprovoked disc rupture that pressed against my spinal cord, leaving the lower half of my body permanently paralyzed. 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. Instead, these episodes tend to come out of the blue, when it's too late to prepare.
Resilience versus toughness
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. Resilience is not about deflecting challenges but about absorbing them and rebounding stronger than before.
Character traits
I have discovered five character traits that help define resilient leaders.
- Courage to venture where you have never been and to admit that you don't know it all
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Ingenuity to find a way to succeed despite overwhelming obstacles
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Compassion for the frailties of others
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Authenticity to build lasting relationships
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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. They help form our world view. Martin Seligman, an authority on "positive psychology", has written about learned optimism -- reacting to setbacks from a presumption of personal power. The absence of personal power forms helpless and despair. The presence of person power allows us to achieve extraordinary results.
Adversity has a way of cutting through the clutter and fog of everyday life. Some people emerge from adversity with a larger view of what is possible. A personal crisis forces us to confront many past assumptions about ourselves and our lives. In doing so, many past constraints fall away as no longer appropriate.
Raising ambitions
Resilient leaders know how to reset their ambitions to new levels after adversity. I often ask, "If I can survive this, what else can I do?"
People won't remember how far you fall, but rather how high you bounce back. How high will you bounce?
To learn more about my personal story of resilience, click on this link to view a short video.
View Glenn's Video
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February 2009