the virtue of resilience

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength – if we have the virtue of resilience. 

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.3

still much that is fair

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but there is still much that is fair, and though in all lands love is mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. 

J. R. R. Tolkien 

The Fellowship of the Ring, b.2 c.6 p. 452 by J.R.R. Tolkien (Haldir speaking to Merry)

what is a personal calling?

What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream.

Why?

There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it's still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn't work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: "Oh, well, I didn't really want it anyway." We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?

Because once we have overcome the defeats - and we always do - we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: "Each man kills the thing he loves." And it's true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people, who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal - when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.

Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist, HarperCollins 1993. p.x-xii

our deepest fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Marianne Williamson

A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3. 

The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."

fear is the mind-killer

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Frank Herbert

Dune (science fiction novel) published August 1, 1965

let's learn to live with crisis

I want to tell you a story that was brought to me by one of my own Random House authors, Mr. James Michener, who wrote Hawaii, the most successful novel in America since Gone With the Wind. Jim Michener tells about a man who, in 1938, was a very successful Wall Street broker, had a beautiful duplex apartment on Park Avenue in New York, a wife and two handsome children. In 1938 this man said, "I smell another war in the offing. I went through World War I; I do not intend to go through anything like that again." Despite the protestations of his wife and family and his business associates, he sold his business, closed up his apartment, packed up all his belongings and his wife and children, and bought himself a plantation on an island nobody had ever heard of way out in the South Pacific; and he said, "They're never going to get me in World War II." The name of this island happened to be Guadalcanal. It is a true story. This was 1938. In 1964 it is even harder to get away from the world, so let's learn to live with it and realize that we are living in a time of perpetual crisis.

Bennett Cerf 

BYU Speeches, April 16, 1964, p. 3

resiliency

Over the past decade, the pace of change and the growing complexity of the business environment has increased dramatically. Leaders often find themselves overworked and overwhelmed in response to these challenges. Building up their resilience is an essential skill set. Resilient leaders are able to manage personal and organizational anxiety effectively and exude calm and confidence.

Irvine Nugent, Sonos Leadership
"13 Leadership Skills You Didn't Need A Decade Ago That Are Now Essential." Forbes. December 13, 2016

humble people

There's an allure about humble people. They exude greater power, influence and persuasion than their overly-talkative brethren because, well, nobody likes hearing the same voice time and again. If you're compelled to speak for fear of not being heard otherwise, then the greater question is “Why does that fear exist?” There needs to be a firm foundation of trust to be heard so everybody knows their best interests are held. Without trust, the tendency is to shy away from we and instead focus on me. Not ideal.

Jeff Boss

"These Leadership Lessons From The SEAL Teams Are Universal For Any Industry" Forbes. Mar. 2, 2017

my job is curation of our culture

Last March, Microsoft unveiled Tay.ai, a Twitter bot that promised to usher in a new era of human-to-artificial-intelligence conversation.

Within hours, hackers turned Tay into a venom-spewing racist, and the project was quickly shuttered with a public apology.

In the old days of Microsoft, heads surely would have rolled.

But Satya Nadella, 49, a one-time company engineer who took the reins of the $500 billion tech giant three years ago this month, instead sent the Tay team a note of encouragement.

“Keep pushing, and know that I am with you,” he wrote in an e-mail, urging staffers to take the criticism in the right spirit while exercising "deep empathy for anyone hurt by Tay. (The) key is to keep learning and improving.”

The group responded with Zo, a new AI chatbot that debuted in December. So far, no issues.

“It’s so critical for leaders not to freak people out, but to give them air cover to solve the real problem,” Nadella says in an interview with USA TODAY. “If people are doing things out of fear, it’s hard or impossible to actually drive any innovation...”

"What I realize more than ever now is that my job is curation of our culture," says Nadella, who will explore this topic and others in a book due out this fall called Hit Refresh. "If you don't focus on creating a culture that allows people to do their best work, then you’ve created nothing.”

Marco della Cava

"Microsoft's Satya Nadella is counting on culture shock to drive growth" USA Today. Feb. 20, 2017

stand out from the crowd

Self-doubt and fear can lead you to want to blend in with those around you. But, trying to fit in with the crowd will cause you to disguise who you really are. Trust that you're mentally strong enough to stand out and dare to be different.

Amy Morin

"9 Ways to Avoid Giving Away Your Personal Power" Inc.com. Dec. 21, 2015

leaving gracefully

There comes a time in jobs, life phases, or relationships where you know an arc has reached its end. Knowing when it is time to end — and ending well — will become an increasingly valuable skill as lives lengthen and transitions become multiple across both personal and professional lives. Ends can come from within, the result of burn out or boredom, depression or exhaustion. Or they can come from without, the land of restructurings and layoffs, divorce or other major life shifts. They are the prequel to re-creation. It is not always an easy time — for anyone involved, at work or at home. We can spend quite a lot of it loitering unproductively, wondering whether we should stay or go. But good endings are the best building blocks to good beginnings.

Choosing to choose gives you agency. The choice itself, sometimes made years before you actually move, is the first, and often the biggest, step.

• Ask yourself if you are staying where you are out of love, or out of fear. Do you love where you are, or do you fear leaving it for a murky unknown? The latter is a lousy place from which to live, but many of us stay stuck here. Who would I be without this title, this salary, or this position? It can be an exciting question, not a scary one.
• Embrace confusion, ambiguity, and questions. There re-definition lies. And remember, you don’t have to face them alone.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

"Learn to Get Better at Transitions" Harvard Bsiness Review. July 5, 2018

keep fear at bay

It’s awfully hard for managers and staff to get motivated when they believe that the latest project from on high is going to die just like the last one - no matter what they do. Fear makes change intensely personal. People fear for their income. They worry about their families. They wonder what will happen to their careers. When people are afraid, they literally can’t hear or think as well. It’s much harder for them to take in important information when their minds are reeling. This can be a big distraction that undermines your team’s ability to focus and stay productive… just when you need to them most...

So how do the best leaders and managers mitigate change... fatigue, keep fear at bay and keep the team engaged and energized?

By doing two things: identifying and celebrating early successes and creating cultural experiences that support the vision and keep the change train on track.

Brent Gleeson

"1 Reason Why Most Change Management Efforts Fail" Forbes. Jul. 25, 2017

rely on your team

Important advice to any leader is to be humble enough to admit that you don't know something. Too many people come in to a leadership position saying: Well, these people gotta respect me so I better know what I'm talking about. They miss an opportunity to learn the essence of the work they're being called upon to do because they didn't ask.

As a CEO (New York Region American Red Cross), the people who report to me are like Ken Turner, who runs disasters for 26 counties. He knows his stuff. I'm not going to pretend I know more about disaster response than he does. He taught me disaster response. He's counting on me for other skills, and I'm relying on him to get the job done. (While Taravella is interim CEO in New York, Turner will fill her position, and his regional disaster oversight will be filled by Susan Pope, a disaster program manager for the Central New York chapter.)

I learn from Ken. One of the best things I ever did is say: OK, teach me this business guys. It's counter intuitive. You think you going to lose credibility by admitting you don't know something. You gain credibility. So that's a tip for anyone aspiring to leadership responsibility: Don't be afraid to ask questions.

If you want it as a bullet point: Rely on your team. If you're being asked to lead a team, then you have to believe in that team. Part of believing in that team is to trust them and to have them teach you what you don't know.

Rosie Taravella interviewed by Stan Linhorst

"Rosie Taravella on leadership: Be humble enough to admit that you don't know something". syracuse.com. November 21, 2017. 

the collective voice

[I]magine you’ve got a problem that feels too risky or futile for anyone on your team to speak up about individually. Perhaps it’s about a business policy or process that your boss is wedded to or can’t change himself anyway, or perhaps it’s a problem with your manager’s own behavior or performance. This is often where silence prevails. We found in our interviews, though, that sometimes people did well when they banded together to speak up collectively. In some cases, it involved talking as a group to their direct boss (for instance, at a weekly meeting) or finding an opportunity to approach a skip-level boss together; in others, it involved scheduling a series of one-on-one meetings (because it was hard to get everyone free at the same time) and being sure to use “we” language in those meetings.

We heard about “collective voice” episodes in about one-third of our interviews and, to our initial surprise, learned that the participants considered the outcomes positive in every case. Upon reflection, we understand that this success stemmed from their ability to both reduce the risks and increase their efficacy in speaking up. People noted explicitly that there is “strength in numbers” and that it “felt a lot safer to approach the manager together.” And they pointed out that they were less likely to “be written off as one disgruntled person” once the boss saw they were raising a systemic issue. They recognized the potency of solidarity and benefited from what scholars call “social proof,” the influence that comes from seeing others committed to a course of action. Collective voice was also more likely than individual voice to lead to action because the necessary coordination and buy-in needed from colleagues to solve certain problems had already been obtained by the time the boss was approached.

James R. Detert and Ethan R. Burris

"When It’s Tough to Speak Up, Get Help from Your Coworkers" Harvard Business Review. 3/4/2016

our doubts are traitors

Our doubts are traitors

And makes us loose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt.

William Shakespeare

Lucio to Isabella in Measure for Measure. Act 1, Sc. 4. 1604.

psychologically unsafe to speak up

Despite saying things like, “I have an open door policy,” where employees can express even controversial issues, some leadership actions may dissuade the courage needed to raise ethical concerns . Creating a culture in which people freely speak up is vital to ensuring people don’t collude with, or incite misconduct. Elizabeth Morrison, Professor in Creative Management at New York University, says in Encouraging a Speak Up Culture, “You have to confront the two fundamental challenges preventing employees from speaking up. The first is the natural feeling of futility – feeling like speaking up isn’t worth the effort or that on one wants to hear it. The second is the natural fear that speaking up will lead to retribution or harsh reactions.” A manager’s reactions to an employee’s concerns sets the tone for whether or not people will raise future issues. If a leader reacts with even the slightest bit of annoyance, they are signaling they don’t really want to hear concerns. Says Morrison, “Leaders that are open and genuinely approachable and seen as wanting input, who demonstrate regard for the opinions of others, and model ethical behavior, are far likelier to have employees speak up when circumstances require it.”

Ron Carucci

"Four Ways Your Leadership May Be Encouraging Unethical Behavior" Forbes. 6/14/2016

there is always a way forward

Navigating severe challenges requires strong, courageous, and authentic leaders. That’s what Alan Mulally offered at Ford Motor....

Mullaly... set up mandatory weekly management meetings he called the business process review (BPR) for his top executives to get to the root cause of Ford’s long-standing problems. He quickly discovered that Ford’s challenges went way beyond financial losses: the culture at Ford was broken and in need of massive transformation. He observed, “Ford had been going out of business for 40 years, and no one would face that reality.”

In response, Mulally developed One Ford, an initiative based on “focus, teamwork and a single global approach, aligning employee efforts toward a common definition of success.” He started by redesigning internal meetings. As described in Bryce Hoffman’s American Icon, meetings had become “arenas for mortal combat” in which employees practiced self-preservation, trying to identify flaws in each other’s plans instead of recommending solutions to their problems.

Mulally reframed these meetings from negative to positive, fostering a safe environment where people had open and honest discussions without fear of blame. Instead of attacking executives for the issues they brought to the table, Mulally encouraged collaborative approaches to problem solving. He noted, “If you have a common purpose and an environment in which people want to help others succeed, the problems will be fixed quickly.”

Mulally introduced a “traffic light” system to weekly BPRs in which executives indicated progress on key initiatives as green, yellow, or red. After four meetings in which all programs were labelled green, Mulally confronted his team, “We are going to lose $18 billion this year, so is there anything that’s not going well?” His question was met with stony silence.

The following week, Ford’s North American President, Mark Fields, showed a red indicator that a new vehicle launch would be delayed. Other executives assumed Fields would be fired over the bad news. Instead, Mulally began clapping and said, “Mark, that is great visibility.” He asked the group, “What can we do to help Mark out?” As he frequently told his leaders, “You have a problem; you are not the problem.”

Mulally describes his leadership style as “positive leadership—conveying the idea that there is always a way forward.” He says a critical part of positive leadership is “reinforcing the idea that everyone is included. When people feel accountable and included, it is more fun. It is just more rewarding to do things in a supportive environment.”

With determination and positive leadership, Mulally created a culture of effective problem solving and teamwork. As a result, his team kept Ford out of bankruptcy, reversed market share losses with improved auto designs and quality, brought jobs back to the U.S. from overseas plants, and restored the company’s profitability by becoming cost competitive with foreign producers.

Bill George

"The Massive Difference between Negative and Positive Leadership" Forbes. 3/21/2016

tears

Psychic tears aren’t specific to any single emotion but are rather the uniquely visible testament that one has experienced something overwhelming – anger, awe, love, fear, pride, embarrassment, or sadness. From the tears of joy at a wedding or the birth of a child to the tears of anger or outrage – often catalyzed by feelings of powerlessness – at a slight, to the tears of grief at the death of a loved one, each emotion elicits a different intensity and duration of crying. Psychic or emotional tears, because they are exceptional, force us and those around us to acknowledge that something important has just happened – my boyfriend proposed to me, my boss yelled at me, I was deeply moved by a sense of the divine, my dog died – and that we should pause and take a moment for reflection.

Anne Kreamer

It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace. 2011. Random House.

speak the truth

My father would say to me, ‘Any organization which works for peace, I will join. If you want to resolve a dispute or come out from conflict, the very first thing is to speak the truth. If you have a headache and tell the doctor you have a stomachache, how can the doctor help? You must speak the truth. The truth will abolish fear.'

Malala Yousafzai
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. Little, Brown. 2013

an accessory to fraud

The classic error that outsiders make in Afghanistan is to single out a proxy in whom to repose trust and through whom to interact with most other locals. Over the years of intrusions by outside powers, some Afghans have grown adept at capturing this privileged position and exploiting it to advance and enrich themselves, while dis-empowering (and thus incensing) their neighbors….

In my case I Kandahar, the self-interested intermediary was a balding, dour-faced Karzai retainer named Abdullah, who called himself an engineer, and who President Karzai’s younger half-brother, the late Ahmed Wali, recommended to me in the following terms: “If I put a million dollars in a storeroom and have Abdullah the key, and I came back in ten years, I’d find every penny of that money still locked inside.” I hired the man.

In late 2002 I departed Kandahar for an extended flurry of talks and meetings in the United States. Before leaving Abdullah in charge of the NGO, I walked him through my system for keeping track of petty cash expenditures: marking each outlay on the back of the envelope in which I carried the money, along with the date and the purpose. For an engineer, he seemed to have trouble catching on.

I returned, after several weeks, to find not a single new mark on the back of that now-empty envelope. Not one receipt, not a record of a single purchase, did Abdullah turn over. We were building schoolrooms. He had made deliveries of bricks and sand and gypsum, had paid weekly cash wages, bought the food our cook prepared for our employees…

Swallowing my panic, I demanded receipts. Abdullah went scurrying around to gather some. Sweating, I pieced together forensics that could tell a semi-coherent tale.

Years later another employee recounted Abdullah’s derisive comments about “Western accounting” and “Afghan accounting” – in which I was obviously unversed. I heard painful stories of suppliers who had never been paid. I reconsidered the probable reasons we’d been forced to leave a school building unfinished for lack of funds.

I had, in other words, been an accessory to fraud….

One way Abdullah kept me in thrall was by cultivating fear: by convincing me that Kandaharis were unabashed murderers and thieves. Himself a transplant from near Kabul, he professed a pious horror of the people among whom he was living. They would, he insisted, dismember me in a second were it not for his watchful protection.

A further technique was to keep me from interacting with anyone else face to face, without his presence in the room. Abdullah could get temperamental. Once when I decided to eat lunch with the rest of the staff, instead of separately with him, he threw a violent tantrum, refusing to speak to me for three days. I put it down to jealousy or made excuses for his psychological fragility. How rational would I be after more than two decades of war? Besides, I needed Abdullah. He got things done. What if he were to quit? What would I do?

Sarah Chayes

Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security. W.W.Norton. 2015.