chapter 5 · failure (right image). resilience positiveleadership.com when people experience...

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Chapter 5

 Resilience  Bouncing Back

chapter blueprint positiveleadership.com

1 Purpose & Outcomes

2 Self Assessment

3 Resilience Defined

4 Resilience and Leadership

5 Resilience Principles

6 Resilience Inhibitors

7 Expanding Resilience

8 Connecting Points

1 Purpose & Outcomes

 Purpose: Prepare leaders for the

difficulties of leadership and provide

insights and tools for bolstering Resilience.

 

Intended Outcome: Gain a greater

appreciation of Resilience to contend with

the challenges of leadership and increase

your capacity for Resilience in both your

personal and professional life.

 

“More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.” Dean Becker, (President/CEO of Adaptive Learning Systems). “How Resilience Works” by Diane L. Coutu, Harvard Business Review, July 10, 2003

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 1. I have experienced a time when things were too much for me to handle and learned from it.

 2. I have a very clear idea of how much my plate can hold and actively manage how full it gets.

 3. I am skilled at anticipating challenges and taking action to prevent or minimize them.

 4. I have a very clear process for dealing with setbacks and disappointment.

 5. I have identified the ways I sabotage my success and have taken steps to prevent them.

 6. I know effective ways for me to recharge my batteries.

 7. I am sensitive to the level of stress among those closest to me and assist them.

resilience positiveleadership.com

2 Self Assessment Please rate yourself for each of the following items on the 1-7scale (1=no, 7=yes) before reading the chapter.

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All things have a measure of Resilience Resilience comes from the root word “resile” which means “to return to previous position." By definition, Resilience is “the ability of a strained body to recover its size, shape, and quality after deformation caused by stress." In a non-physical sense, Resilience can apply to a person’s ability to recover from, or adjust to, misfortune or change. It’s important to take into account that not all bodies respond to specific stresses in the same way. If we conducted a stress test on a piece of glass and a piece of metal by dropping them on concrete we would see that metal is more resilient than glass. However, if we left glass and metal out in the rain, glass would prove more resilient in terms of resisting corrosion.

Every individual has a measure of Resilience. It is not a matter of whether one is resilient, but to what degree. Resilience can be developed and managed, but first it must be understood. We are not stuck with our current level of Resilience when we learn skills that increase it. Despite the many challenges leaders face, resilient ones are able to return to their Authenticity, Purpose, and Advocacy. The resilient leader not only endures personally, but can lead a community through hardships as well. We use the term “Resilience” to describe a person’s capability to weather challenge and stress without suffering too much damage and quite possibly emerge stronger, wiser, and more capable.

 Through research, I’ve come across many definitions of Resilience. In my opinion, Al Siebert, PhD. provides the clearest definition in his book, The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Thrive Under Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks. Resilience refers to the ability to:

•  Cope well with high levels of ongoing disruptive change;

•  Sustain good health and energy when under constant pressure;

•  Overcome adversities;

•  Change to a new way of working and living when an old way is no longer possible; and

•  Do all this without acting in dysfunctional or harmful ways.”

This set of criteria is both concise and useful. It provides a strong base from which to enhance our capacity for Resilience. At the same time, there is more to understand about Resilience, such as the relationship between capacity and demand and how that relates to the above abilities.

 3 Resilience Defined


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The capacity to demand ratio

We only have so much capacity in terms of time, energy, mental focus, etc. to meet the demands placed on us by the world around us or by ourselves. If our capacity exceeds demand, we experience success (left image). If demand exceeds our capacity, we experience some degree of failure (right image).


When people experience trauma, the demand taxes their emotional, mental, and physical capacity to cope. When too many responsibilities pile up, the demands exceed our capacity (i.e. time and attention) we can dedicate to them. We may not be consciously aware of this dynamic between capacity and demand, but we experience it every day. When our capacity is greater than the demand, we think of that as the way it should be and keep on going. When demand exceeds our capacity, we are so focused on coping that we fail to see the problem objectively. Instead, we form judgments about ourselves (“What’s wrong with me?”) or about others (“They aren’t being fair!”). These reactions rarely prove helpful. As we understand this dynamic as a solvable problem, this enables us to take positive actions to evoke positive reactions.

This capacity to demand ratio is always in flux in the day-to-day and even the moment-to-moment. By understanding it, we can develop a host of tactics to become more resilient. Effective tactics fall into two main categories: increasing our capacity and managing the demands. For example, we can become more efficient through time management practices to increase our capacity or we can re-evaluate our commitments to decrease the demand.

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Resilience and limits

Of course, we realize we each have limits, but in the day-to-day flurry of activities, we often ignore this reality. It is not until we exceed those limits that we are forced to take a step back to re-evaluate the demands placed on us. We may experience physical overload and become fatigued, injured, or more susceptible to illness. Overwhelm can be cognitive— too much information, too many choices. Exceeding our physical and cognitive limits is accompanied by an emotional component as well— stress, fear, disappointment, frustration, guilt— all serving to complicate matters.

Cybernetics is an interdisciplinary field that studies feedback— in mechanical systems, environment, human behavior, etc. Feedback is information that tells us how things are going. Positive feedback keeps us doing what we’ve been doing. Negative feedback, if heeded, tells us we should do something different. When negative feedback comes from mechanical objects (such as our car breaking down), we don’t take it personally, however, when we receive negative feedback about our limits (from other people or our environment), it feels like a statement about our worth.

We must understand that feedback is information. We can accept it or disregard it, but feedback does alert us to our limits. Life experience tells us that exceeding our limits is a risk. This is precisely the reason driver insurance rates are much higher for teens. Based on actuarial data, those who pay attention to risk avoid high-cost (and life-threatening) dangers and, in general, those with more life experience act with an understanding of limits and risk. Those who don’t, as a mentor of mine once put it, are not our ancestors because they have exceeded their limits to the point of risking their survival.


Inner Resilience Physical limits are much easier to gauge than non-physical limits. A broken bone is clear evidence that the force-bearing capacity has been exceeded. Much more elusive is knowing our non-physical limits. How many projects can we manage? At what point are we overloaded with information? How much negativity and drama can we handle before having a melt-down? Initially, we can only answer such questions after we’ve exceeded our limits. With practice, we can go forward with the insights we gained from exceeding our limits. Rather than repeating the overload patterns, we can pay attention to the feedback and make necessary changes. This is what “the experts” refer to as adaptive capacity.

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Two recent books identify the strong connection between physical limits and non-physical limits in the context of willpower (Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Teirney and The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal). McGonigal describes willpower this way: “The willpower response is a reaction to an internal conflict. You want to do one thing, such as smoke a cigarette or supersize your lunch, but you know you shouldn’t. Or you know you should do something, like file your taxes or go to the gym, but you’d rather do nothing.” Willpower (self-control, or self-regulating) happens in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Instead of some mystical quality that some people have and some people do not, these authors describe willpower as a “muscle." Like a muscle, it gets fatigued with use. The more decisions we face or temptations we resist, the greater the fatigue, or depletion, on our willpower. After a good night’s sleep, we face the morning with full energy. Then, we run life’s gauntlet: getting the kids ready, navigating rush hour traffic, arriving at the office only to be confronted with a crisis that throws us into triage mode and derails our schedule. We skip lunch to catch up, depriving us of needed fuel and respite, and so on. Our willpower “muscle” weakens.


Battery metaphor Think of willpower as a smartphone battery. By the end of some days, the battery is almost depleted or may require a charge midway through the day. At the end of other days, it still has 90% life. It depends on the usage. Some days we don’t use the “smart” portion of the phone very much, but there are days we use it extensively. And it doesn’t just depend on frequency and duration of use. Some apps cause minimal drain while others cause a very high drain.

There are certain activities that will be a high drain on your battery and others that are quite efficient. Changing a habit (i.e. quit smoking, dieting) are very high drains. So is conflict. Making a decision could be low drain if it’s a simple one, but it could be a high drain if the stakes are high, requires processing lots of information, or there are many choices with no clear “best option." Too many decisions can lead to “decision fatigue." The nature of an activity is important as well. If it’s something you enjoy and you are good at it, then it may be a low drain. When you have to do things you dislike or the activity is difficult for you, then the drain will be high.

In other words, we have a certain level of energy and we spend it to meet demands. Like the battery, we have a fixed capacity and if we exceed it then we are literally drained. We have to borrow energy from other sources (if available) or we have to dig into our reserves (if available) or we begin to break down. Understanding willpower in this way gives us an objective way to understand our capacity and exercise greater control over the demands placed on us. There are two main strategies to becoming more resilient: increase our capacity or manage our demands. Before we take a closer look at both, let’s explore the connection between Resilience and leadership.

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Resilience and social force

 Let’s take a quick look at the flow of Positive Leadership for a moment to show how Resilience fits. One essential concept in Positive Leadership is that social force is available to anyone, but some are more skillful at channeling it than others. We’ve established that leadership is not so much a role, title, or position as it is a potential in any moment to take positive actions that evoke positive reactions in others. Each of the seven capacities are ways to increase the potency of social force that we direct into social action. Think about it for a moment. Are we more available to the influence of someone who we gauge as authentic? More purposeful? Skillful at advocating? The same is true for Resilience.

 Every community experiences strife from internal factors (i.e. politics, competing interests, and different views on future direction) and external (i.e. competition, legislation, and changes in the economy). In such times, communities rely on leadership to navigate challenges. They may first look to those in authority for solutions, but our view of leadership holds that social force and social actions can come from anyone, not just those in authority. Indeed, those in authority may be a factor in creating the challenges. Leaders, whether they have authority or not, feel the burden to ensure the well-being of the community and must weigh competing needs, agendas, and tradeoffs. Certainly, leaders cannot please all parties and, in the turmoil, will face disturbances and threats to their leadership. Not only must leaders help communities address their issues, but they must also contend with their own personal challenges. How do leaders preserve themselves, their Authenticity, Purpose, and Advocacy, in the face of inevitable challenges?

 Imagine how you would react to someone who is stressed, anxious, always in a rush, irritable, scattered, burned out—all signs of someone struggling with Resilience because they exceeded their limits. Compare that with someone who is composed, calm, clear, and in control of their commitments. Are you more likely to follow people who seem like they are on the brink of collapsing or people who exude composure? People who give up in the face of inconvenience or people who easily handle setbacks? People who can’t handle the slightest criticism or those who welcome risks and learn from failure?

4 Resilience and Leadership


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 Authenticity helps you know your limits. A foundation of authenticity allows a sense of Purpose to emerge and gives focus to your efforts. Purpose is essential to finding your way when things get chaotic. Advocacy advances your Purpose through the act of taking a position and promoting it to the rest of the community. At this point, the leader makes decisions that affect the community. Some members of the community will support your Advocacy and others will resist. Resistance can test your Resilience because of the stress it creates. Resilience follows on the heels of Advocacy because leaders may chart a direction or take an action that is not received well by the community or may not prove successful. Resistance doesn’t always come from other people. Often, we create our own resistance by taking on too many things and spreading ourselves too thin. There’s only so much we can do.

 Resilient people avoid wasting their efforts on things that don’t matter so that they have reserves to dedicate to things that do. They can also stay in unavoidably tough situations longer and sometimes that’s the only difference necessary to separate success from failure. All other things being equal, people who know their limits can manage their capacity-demand ratio and demonstrate adaptive capacity to channel social force (aka lead) more effectively.


Operators vs. technicians of Resilience  Operators do not realize that there are methods to increase our capacity and manage the demands. Instead, they plow ahead… until they can’t. It’s like the person who still thinks they have money in their bank account because they still have checks in their checkbook and hope they aren’t overdrawn. They determine their capacity-demand ratio based on how they feel in moment. Operators of Resilience get swept into life’s frenzy without knowing how they got there. Once there, they find themselves fighting fires and struggling to stay afloat.

 Technicians think differently. To them, Resilience is not accidental or random. They know they have limits and what those limits are. Their priorities are clear and they allocate their resources accordingly. They know what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to. They leave slack in their schedule, reduce clutter, and prune their commitments to manageable levels.

 Technicians of Resilience understand how to manage complexity, know how much demand they can handle, and are skilled at anticipating overload. They contemplate the risks and prepare for potential troubles ahead of time to minimize their exposure to them. Resilience is not about wondering if overload will happen or if things do not go according to the plan— it is about how we respond when they do.

“More than 50 years of scientific research have powerfully demonstrated that resilience is the key to success at work and satisfaction in life.” Karen Reivich & Andrew Shatté, authors, The Resilience Factor

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Life cycle of organizations (and individuals)

A model that clients consistently say is helpful in relation to Resilience deals with the life cycle of an organization. It applies equally well to individuals. This model sets the stage for being a technician of Resilience because understanding what stage we are in helps us choose the appropriate tools to apply to a given situation– a crucial skill for those wishing to channel social force. The model describes three stages that organizations go through, but it applies equally to individuals, relationships, projects-- in short, to almost any endeavor. The model provides further insight into managing the capacity-demand ratio. Think of it as a little like climbing a mountain. The model represents one mountain, but we climb many mountains over the course of our life. We move through the entrepreneurial stage, reach a plateau to stabilize, then we are confronted with a challenge that requires adaptation. If we adapt successfully, we move into a reinvention stage— which is really the entrepreneurial phase. However, if we don’t adapt, we descend into chaos. We may then stabilize (aka plateau) until we regain our footing. Let’s breakdown each of the phases.


 Phase 1: Entrepreneurial. The initial entrepreneurial phase is the inspiration to undertake a given endeavor (for example, climb a mountain). It requires gearing up with the right equipment and putting everything else on hold to make your climb possible. You must overcome inertia to begin the endeavor— the energy to get started, the effort to learn new information and skills, and the ability to navigate the roadblocks that challenge your knowledge, self-efficacy, and motivation.

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 For an organization, an individual, or a community, this phase begins with an idea. You have a new product or service, or want to create something new— a business, a non-profit, or a club. This phase is marked by intense effort to lift the given endeavor off the ground (often a struggle due to a lack of resources). Other people have to be won over by the new idea. Resources and energy can be wasted due to trial and error. With luck and hard work, the venture may survive. When we start something new, we often have a high capacity— and this is a good thing because this phase is often where the most challenges exist. Depending on the nature of the task, it can become a grind. The word “entrepreneur” is often associated with business, but in recent years it has been used to describe efforts to build communities, as in “social entrepreneur." Even a new marriage possesses many, if not all, of the elements of this entrepreneurial phase. The duration of the entrepreneurial phase can vary greatly.

 Phase 2: Plateau. Eventually, however, the climber reaches a plateau after exerting tremendous energy. This point marks clear progress. It can provide a welcome break— a chance to step back and recuperate. Plateaus represent stability— a place to set up camp, rest up and eat. Organizations experience plateaus when they reach a certain level of development in order to stabilize. Instead of responding to urgency, they can build systems and processes. Compared to the entrepreneurial phase, plateaus are welcome periods of respite. You can enjoy the fruits of your labor. Often, when you reach a plateau, you look back at everything it took to get there, all the sweat and flurry of the entrepreneurial phase, and conclude, “If I knew what it would take to get here before I started, I might not have even began.” You aren’t necessarily saying it wasn’t worth it, just that it was much more work than you expected. Results require great effort, which can strain us and exhaust our capacity. Once at a plateau, there is a lure to become complacent and enjoy success and relaxation. We like plateaus because they are characterized by having more capacity than demand. Many choose to stay there. There’s just one problem: the world doesn’t allow it.

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 Phase 3: Adaptive Challenge. This phase goes by a few different names: inflection point, crucible, crisis, etc. Warren Bennis uses my favorite term for it: “adaptive capacity." He defines it as an “almost magical ability to transcend adversity.” It is an ability to improvise in the moment and use whatever resources are at one’s disposal to overcome a threat. But it is not magical. At any moment, external circumstances can change and continued survival (or thriving) requires a response. You must resume your mountain climb. Regardless of how pleasant the plateau is, a storm may be coming or resources may be running low. For organizations, the crucible could be in the form of economic change, new technology, or new competitors. Discord may arise from within. Plateaus are comfortable and we are very good at rationalizing stagnancy— the risky allure of plateaus. Failing to recognize the critical change, or simply neglecting to act appropriately can be dangerous to your goal or community. Many organizations experience the potential fallout from this phase.

 Blockbuster video, for example, was approached by the founder of Netflix with an idea for mail order DVD rental and was laughed out of the office. Faced with the option of going to their mailbox and not paying late fees versus going to a box store, customers chose the former, thus creating a shift in market demands. Blockbuster faced an adaptive challenge, responded inadequately, and suffered. In an individual context, a manager might fail to hear the concerns of an employee until it is too late. By neglecting a crucible, thriving is no longer possible and the community or relationship’s survival might be in danger. Adaptive challenges can lead to decline— a descent into chaos. They can also lead to a new phase of entrepreneurialism or re-invention.

 Adaptive challenges can provide opportunities— a time for renewed entrepreneurialism or re-invention that can lead to the next ascent. In other words, this phase represents new demands that challenge our capacity. Doing the same thing is no longer an option. You need a new response. When we look back over our lives, we can see a dynamic journey across many mountains of entrepreneurism, plateau, adaptive challenge, descent into chaos, plateau, entrepreneurism, and so on. The capacity for Resilience is to realize that no matter how good things are, or how bad things get, we can return to the big picture. Each phase (entrepreneurial, plateau, and adaptive challenge) all require unique qualities of our Resilience. Realizing which phase we are in so that we can prepare and respond appropriately will determine how resilient we (or our communities) remain.


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Traction, distraction, and action

 The life stages model in the previous section reveals insights into Resilience that can be leveraged to increase your social force. It reveals the three main stages where your Resilience will be called upon. Traction, distraction, and action gives you principles to apply to each stage in order to increase your capacity and manage your demands. First, you recognize the stage you are currently in, then you can apply the appropriate approach to enhance your Resilience.

 During the entrepreneurial phase, imagine climbing the mountain by digging in with spiked attachments on your boots and pick axes to get a foothold. To ascend the terrain and overcome gravity, you need traction. Traction is the application of effort and force to generate motion. The greater the ascent or more slippery the surface, the greater the demand on your capacity. Think of any effort you’ve undertaken— the pursuit of a goal like earning a degree or completing a project, for example. How steep was the climb or slippery the surface? What were your sources of traction? Here is where your Resilience might take the form of seeking out specific knowledge, forming a new team, or learning new strategies to gain traction toward your goal.

 Plateaus require much less effort. Imagine reaching the plateau, removing your gear, setting up tents, and sitting down by a warm fire. We describe this as distraction. Life offers many opportunities to relax our efforts and disengage. Our attention is drawn away from our pursuit. We know the experience of distraction. We live in the most distracting age in the history of humans. In the face of resistance, we seek distraction— something to occupy us that is much more pleasant than dealing with a challenge we don’t yet know how, or have the capacity, to solve.

 When distracted, we take our eyes off what matters. We can lose focus and put ourselves, and others, at risk. When a distraction is deliberate and strategic, it can be highly appropriate. Sometimes, we need to simply step back. What gets us into trouble is when we seek out distraction at the expense of what matters. Personally, I’ve benefitted greatly from a book that addresses the source of distraction: Resistance—The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It is important to determine if you are deliberately applying distraction, or using distraction to avoid taking on the adaptive challenge.

Can you imagine a time in your life when you were on a plateau and then an adaptive challenge came your way but you failed to recognize it or didn’t respond appropriately? I can think of many in my own life. In distraction, your Resilience might take the form of deliberately stepping back, or heightening your sensitivity to recognize potential adaptive challenges.

 5 Resilience Principles


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 Adaptive challenges are moments of change that require action. Action is not the same as motion as you will recall from the Purpose chapter. Action is a purposeful, deliberate response to get the desired reaction. Motion looks like action because they are both some form of movement, but motion lacks purpose, clarity, and conviction. Motion often takes the form of applying things that have worked in the past to a new or different challenge, which often prove insufficient.

 If the challenge is something we faced before, then we know how to fix it; but adaptive challenges are ones that require us to figure out new ways to do things. Operators of Resilience tend to continue doing familiar behaviors because it is easier than learning something new. The defeatist way to describe this is “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” The philosopher Eric Hoffer said it more eloquently: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

 We need to understand the new demand and innovate a purposeful new response. That’s why action is better than motion. Action requires thinking through what the change means, coming up with several options, and choosing the best course. The etymology of the word intelligence means “to choose from among." Action is intelligent. Motion is reflexive. In a reflexive motion a considered choice has not been made, therefore it is an unintelligent approach to an adaptive challenge. In the action stage, your Resilience might take the form of learning new coping mechanisms, seeking out advice from those you trust, or adopting fresh perspectives in response to the new demand.


Building Resilience

 In addition to traction, distraction, and action, there are several other principles to increase your Resilience.

•  3 building blocks of Resilience

•  Self monitoring— capacity and demand

•  Knowing the things to which we say “Yes” and “No”

•  Taking preventative measures

“Your capacity for resilience is not a genetically fixed trait like how tall you are, nor are there genetic limits on how resilient you can become… Resilience is under your control. You can teach yourself to be more resilient. You can profoundly change how well you handle setbacks, how enthusiastically you approach challenges.” Karen Reivich & Andrew Shatté, authors, The Resilience Factor

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The 3 building blocks

 Diane Coutu, senior editor at Harvard Business Review, reviewed research on Resilience dating back 40 years. In her article, “How Resilience Works,” she identified three building blocks of Resilience that seemed to be common themes of what she learned. The first is a staunch acceptance of reality. Optimism is great as long as it does not distort the true ramifications of a situation. We will revisit this theme in greater detail under the 6th capacity of the Positive Leadership Model: Reason.

 The second building block is the ability to make meaning out of difficult times. Resilient leaders are able to not only address a demanding situation but also take a step back to understand what it means, what conditions led up to it, what factors are at play, and what lessons can be learned. In other words, they find that failure has a potential return on investment. In their quest for meaning, leaders are able to draw some purpose from the adversity.

 The word “crucible” describes an experience that transforms individuals in significant ways. Through whatever hardships you have faced in the past, some of them have left a defining mark on you. Resilient people derive value from their struggles. One of my closest friends exemplified this trait when his marriage ended after his wife had an affair. Some people might shrink back from future relationships or introspection, but my friend drew something different from that experience. He wondered if he somehow had a role in the infidelity because he was too busy at work. Not excusing his wife’s behavior, he drew a powerful lesson in maintaining relationships as his top priority. Resilient in romance, he is now in a marriage that far surpasses the quality of his previous one. To quote Coutu, “The dynamic of meaning making is, most researchers agree, the way resilient people build bridges from present-day hardships to a fuller, better-constructed future.”

 The third building block of Resilience is the ability to make do with whatever is at hand. In essence, we can respond to adaptive challenges with a growth mindset. Author Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, describes key findings of her research. She makes a distinction between fixed mindset and growth mindset. A fixed mindset assumes that our qualities (i.e. intelligence, creativity) cannot change in meaningful ways. What we have is “fixed.” If we succeed, that is proof of our abilities or if we fail, it is proof of our limitations. It tells us to seek areas where we can succeed and avoid areas where we might fail. Fixed mindsets cause us to: avoid challenges, give up easily, see effort as wasteful, ignore/avoid negative feedback, and/or feel threatened by the success of others.


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 A growth mindset, on the other hand, views both success and failure as feedback to fuel us to continue. Success gives us a platform on which to build even bigger success. Failure is viewed with curiosity instead of judgment— why did this not work? What can I do differently to overcome the challenge? What resources are available from which we can draw? Growth mindsets embrace challenges, persist in the face of resistance, see effort as the price of admission to mastery, view negative feedback as insight, and draw from the positive example of others.

Dweck found that fixed or growth mindsets are forged at a very young age and can have profound implications for how we live. A fixed mindset causes us to continually prove ourselves worthy or capable. To a fixed mindset, everything is a test of those qualities we believe we possess. Living from a growth mindset, however, causes us to improve ourselves. We start with the hand of personal qualities we are dealt and can cultivate them further. We can rise above challenges, indeed challenges help us to grow.

 The following additional principles of resiliency compliment Coutu’s three building blocks.

 Self Monitoring: A growth mindset is not willful ignorance of our limitations, but rather paying attention to them. There is a sweet spot somewhere between “I can do anything and everything” and “I am what I am and that’s all I will ever be." I view it as a healthy relationship with resistance. A fixed relationship would let resistance stop us and tell us we are incapable. A growth mindset realistically identifies areas where we can develop to overcome new challenges. We can stretch ourselves in some ways, but not in all ways all at once— that’s the sweet spot.

 It is important to know our capacity-demand ratio so that we can grow without being overrun. Over time and recurring periods of overwhelm, I have become better at assessing how much my plate can hold. I have learned that it is not just the quantity of things on my plate, but also the content. If everything on my plate is a “have to,” then my battery runs down quickly. If everything is a “get to,” then I can handle quite a lot. Self monitoring requires that we take a step back periodically to reflect on the quantity and the quality of what is on our plate and manicure it by setting boundaries, delegating, and/or renegotiating commitments. Practices such as daily planning (even if it’s just 5 minutes), setting weekly and monthly goals, and developing practices for managing our inbox and calendars can all help us to monitor the demands placed on us and our realistic capacity to meet them. Proactively manage demands by identifying what saps your capacity and the areas where demands pile up the most.


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The reality is that our capacity-demand ratio is always shifting. For example, in his book, An Organized Mind, author Daniel Levitin’s research indicates that the “processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second.” Consider that it requires 60 bits per second in order to understand a person speaking to you—that would tie up half of your capacity. Now, imagine trying to read something while someone is talking to you on your phone. That would use up all of your capacity. Then, you put aside what you are reading so that you can listen. That puts you back down to half. Then, someone comes to your desk to ask you a question while still on the phone. You are maxed out again. At that moment, an email shows up in your inbox that you’ve been waiting on because of a time-sensitive urgency. You are now overloaded.

We talk about managing our time, our tasks, our energy, our emotions, our relationships, etc. What we are really managing in all of these cases is our capacity to demand ratio.


Know What to Say “Yes” and “No” to: We exceed our limits by saying “yes” to requests and commitments when we should be saying “no." Perhaps you have heard the expression “If you want to get something done, then give it to a busy person." Well, maybe you are that busy person that people know to give stuff to because you get things done. How do you know when to say “yes” and “no”? Part of the answer lies in the earlier chapters on the capacities of Authenticity and Purpose. You need to set criteria for the things you allow onto your plate because there are limits to how much you can do. Authenticity is about saying “yes” to the things that allow you to be the author of your life. Consider the tasks you put off and avoid. Procrastination is often caused by committing to things that are not important to you. Now contrast that with the things you can’t wait to do. It seems like there is always time for the activities that align with our Authenticity and rarely time for those that do not.

Purpose helps you say “no” to the things that pull you off your desired course. They may be in line with other people’s purposes, but not yours. A recent expression I’ve fondly adopted is “don’t get sidetracked by people who are off track." You can easily be pulled off of your Purpose by people who are not clear on theirs.

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 Take Preventative Measures: Super-resilient leaders constantly look for ways to prevent major threats from occurring. I like the distinction offered by D.J.W. Strumpfer in his Resilience and Burnout: A stitch that could save nine. He introduces three levels of Resilience: coping, anticipatory coping, and proactive coping.

 1. Coping is adjusting once adversity strikes (i.e. taking medicine once you become ill).

 2. Anticipatory coping is preparation for the stress of a known, upcoming event (i.e. getting a flu shot before the season starts).

 3. Proactive coping is taking measures to ward off threats, in general, though you may not know of a specific one at this time (i.e. adopting a healthy lifestyle and achieving general physical fitness).

 Ethical leadership is a great example of proactive coping. There are ill-advised shortcuts that, if taken, can open a leader up to instant ruin. By now, Kenneth Lay (disgraced CEO of Enron) and Bernie Evers (convicted CEO of WorldComm) are the poster children of ethics scandals. They tried coping (shred the paper trail). They tried anticipatory coping (create plausible deniability should they get caught). Ultimately, they failed to apply proactive coping in the form of honest business practices. They failed to protect their well-being and that of their communities from the greatest threat to Resilience— themselves. Perhaps no statement is truer for Resilience than the adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”


 6 Resilience Inhibitors Potential factors affecting your Resilience  Anything that diminishes your well-being is a potential threat. As you read through the items, consider which may be at play in your life. Since the list is by no means complete, you may wish to add items that limit your resiliency.

 You: Enemy number 1 to Resilience, without a doubt, is you. Humans are notorious for bringing about their own destruction. Recall from literature class the three main classes of conflict: Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Man, and Man vs. Himself. In what ways do you tilt your capacity-demand ratio in the wrong direction?

“Preserving adaptive capacity— the ability to adapt to changed circumstances while fulfilling one’s core purpose— and it’s an essential skill in an age of unforeseeable disruption and volatility.” Andrew Zolli, author, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back

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 Other People: Other people can threaten your well-being. Consider an ongoing interpersonal conflict you have had and the amount of mental energy it consumed. Conflict management, boundary management, and emotional intelligence are critical tools in the leader’s survival kit.

 Lack of Organization: The ability to maintain order of your time and tasks will prevent much of the overwhelmed feeling that can wear a leader down. Organizational skills and tools are essential to effective leadership. Many people find getting organized to be a pretty simple matter. Staying organized, keeping your systems in top shape, and using those systems is much more challenging.

 Lack of Purpose: Leaders who do not set their own agenda become vulnerable to the agendas of outside influences. Your time can be absorbed by all kinds of causes, but none of them may lead you or your community to the desired destination. In a desire to please others, leaders can find themselves embarking on wild goose chases while the real work is left unattended.

 Too Many (or unclear) Commitments: Leaders that create clear and winnable relationships and agreements up front will spare themselves and others from disappointment, resentment, and failure. If you know the agony of hiring a bad employee or receiving poor service from a vendor, then you can easily see how clear agreements up front can minimize Resilience-sapping frustration. In addition, there is only so much a person can effectively take on. Making too many commitments can put a strain on your resources and diminish your resiliency.

FoMo: The “Fear of Missing out” is becoming increasingly common. We don’t want to miss out on what’s happening in our social networks, the latest meme, or the big events that people are talking about. The result is that some people spend many hours staying in the loop and constantly checking their social media. This is often non-productive time that could be spent in more useful ways. The fear of missing out on something out “there” reduces our capacity for things that are right “here."

Clutter: The junk drawer is a place where we put things we want to hold on to but don’t know where to place. Every once in while we rummage through it to find something, and upon returning, we see the things we thought we needed are no longer of use. In some cases, our homes, cars, and offices become larger versions of the junk drawer. The threat to our Resilience is that keeping track of too many things whittles away at our capacity. Decluttering can provide startling returns on our capacity. If clutter is something that drains your battery, check out a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

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 This is where you develop your personal capacity for Resilience. As with all seven capacities, you have already developed your Resilience to some degree. The activities listed in the Field Guide are resources for expanding your level of Resilience. Take time to go to the Field Guide now and do a couple of the activities.

 Over the next month you can focus on Resilience by completing some of the activities in the Field Guide:

 We suggest completing 3-5 of the Resilience Field Guide exercises.

 Observe your capacity for Resilience by journaling or sharing with at least one other person.

 Developing Resilience in others

 An effective leader not only develops the capacity in himself or herself, but in others as well.

 Consider ways you can do the following:

 Share the concepts you found valuable from this discussion with your staff, co-workers, etc.

Have your team members or family complete one or more of the exercises in the Field Guide and discuss with others.

7 Expanding Resilience


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 Authenticity: If Resilience is the ability of something to return to its original form, then Authenticity is the original, true form of an individual. Because of this, authentic leaders are more resistant (but not immune) to the harmful effects of stressful situations. They already know who they are. This allows them to access their strengths and reduce exposure where they are vulnerable.

 Purpose: Purpose helps us separate what is important from what is mere distraction, and it has a motivating quality that allows leaders to steer through difficult circumstances. Leaders that lack purpose are like a ship without a rudder. Even if they see the rocks, they are unable to navigate around them. Leaders that rally a community around a clear and compelling Purpose increase a community’s Resilience as well.

 Advocacy: Leaders skilled in the capacity of Advocacy minimize threat to their Resilience by planning ahead for potential challenges and taking action. Promoting the right people, direction, ideas, etc. can keep others focused on the things that matter most.

 Community-Building: One of the things a leader advocates is the quality of Resilience in community members. For example, leaders can create a work environment that promotes physical and mental well-being of employees through such things as safety and diversity initiatives or providing employee-assistance programs.

 Reason: Taking an accurate stock of reality allows leaders to make the right moves at the right time. Many things that stress a leader could have been prevented with a clear mind. Reason is also valuable in the midst of stressful situations because taking a step back could reveal productive coping actions.

 Gratitude: No matter how difficult things seem to be, there is always something to appreciate. Under fire, a leader’s attitude can become pessimistic and negative which merely perpetuates a sense of helplessness. Gratitude can renew a weary leader— we fight a little harder for the things we appreciate.

8 Connecting Points


chapter 5 · failure (right image). resilience positiveleadership.com when people experience...

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