Dan Erwin

The Surprising Secret of Success is Failure

The blueprint for successful failure has no straight lines. Nor is it guaranteed.

At 77, I’ve long-since quit stewing and being embarrassed over the fact that I was expelled from college for both social and academic reasons when I was a freshman. Unlike Bob Sternberg, who blew it in the fourth grade, I blew it my first year of college. Fact of the matter, aside from the woman I married and our three daughters, that freshman failure was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

That failure made “I’ll show ‘em” one of the central motivations of my life. I took a mandatory year off, worked in a Detroit factory, and resolved never to find myself in that situation again. So in due time, I knocked off a baccalaureate degree, a masters of divinity from a theological seminary, most of a master’s in theology, an M.A. from the University of Colorado and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. And my careers, most anyone would say, have been marked by success—and great fun. Freud wrote that the “normal healthy life” includes work, love and play. That was a swell blueprint for me.

I tell this story with obvious relish, recognizing that I’m not the only one who wrested success out of profound failure. But I’m also aware that research has shown that failure can have devastating consequences for psychological well-being. There’s a lot of evidence suggesting that rejection can precipitate a psychological state resembling physical pain, often followed by long-term isolation. You expect psychologists to look for the grim human experience and the abnormal, and that’s what the early research revealed.

However, a fascinating series of studies from 2007 issued a strong caveat to that early research, and also explained my motivation in spades. Jon Maner of Florida State and a number of his colleagues asked whether social exclusion motivates interpersonal reconnection. Six different studies found that the experience of social exclusion increases the motivation to forge social bonds, but . . . with new sources of affiliation. Although it was possible for me to return to the college that expelled me, I chose to go elsewhere.

In retrospect, much of my life has been pure luck. Most probably don’t have the opportunities I was given, much less the mentors who walked into my life, gave me clear direction and were not at all shy about delivering “shape up” lessons.

Merely changing schools, however, did not necessarily imply a “successful failure.” Conventional wisdom says that we learn from failure. That’s far from the truth. Most of the time, we don’t. Failure anxiety rules us. We jump to conclusions, rationalize the hell out of failure to make it look good, ignore or distort feedback and, significantly, fail to separate skill from pure luck.

John F. Kennedy once said that “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” We are quick to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure. Don’t think that the failure was anyone’s but mine or that the success was solely about my own ability. Again, much of it was luck. Being born a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male in the 1930’s to a family that became moderately well-off, a family willing to fund experiences in one of the culturally richest cities of the world (Detroit in the thirties, forties and fifties), educated in a school system that provided experiences students would drool over today, attending a prominent church that pointed its kids to rich and fulfilling experiences and meeting people who took an interest in me, often for no discernible reason, played a large part in my successes. Furthermore, my success over that freshman failure certainly failed to inoculate me against more failure. That’s reality.

Still, motivation, ability and just gutting it out play a huge role in anyone’s life of successful failure. So along the way, I developed the learning competencies that support future success. Though invariably curious, I had to build those performance virtues of persistence, self-regulation, responsibility and what Duckworth calls grit. My small wins responded to the multiplier effect and my successes become more obvious. I found, as Paul Tough has put it so eloquently, that cultivating those strengths is a reliable path to “the good life,” a life not just happy, but meaningful and fulfilling.

Successful failure is not easily won. It’s hard work. But lest you be put off by the seeming demands of success, it’s important to say that I count many friends among my list of successful failures. People who rose to take advantage of their failures. I’ve gotten a lot out of my freshman failure. So maybe the failure never will be finally forgotten, and that’s not such a bad thing. Yeah, I seriously doubt that it’s possible to be successful without real failure. And Steve Jobs is the classic example of that truth.

Note: John K. Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, Schall, Does Social Exclusion Motivate Interpersonal Reconnection? Resolving the "Porcupine Problem." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 1, 42 - 55.

"How to Be Irresistible to Women"

It's not coincidence. With Virginia Rometty as IBM's new CEO and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard, my wife and daughters will be proud. So it's not surprising that the exceptionally knowledgeable Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid have just published a book on why women are the solution to winning the war for talent.

In a blog published in strategy + business, Sally Helgesen set the book's context and printed an excerpt from the new book. Helgesen points out that though the first efforts to increase the number of women in the workforce were spurred by a compliance mind-set and given little support.

By the 1990s, companies realized that the resulting attrition was a waste of valuable resources. Furthermore, the war for talent heated up and companies began to become more strategic in their recruiting and retaining of women in the workforce.

In a very cool excerpt from the new book, the authors relate the strategy created by Infosys, the Bangalore based information technology giant. Here's the situation: Like every other company in the burgeoning field, it [Infosys] was engaged in a fierce war for the best and brightest university graduates. Unlike many of them, Infosys specifically targeted women as a solution — not only to expand the potential pool of top talent but also to tap in to a wider range of intellects.

So Infosys developed a strategy to achieve their objective.

The Infosys Women’s Inclusivity Network (IWIN) was launched in 2003, when 17 percent of the Infosys employees were women. Today, 34.1 percent of the workforce is female — in absolute numbers, more than thirty-six thousand women. Women make up 40.3 percent of entry-level workers, 24.2 percent of midlevel managers, 6.5 percent of senior managers, and 6.2 percent of top-tier leaders, nearly double the number of six years ago.

The key reason for those impressive figures is IWIN. The program has three aims: to persuade more high school girls to study engineering in college; to attract more female engineers to Infosys; and to make it easier for women to maintain their careers at the company after having children.

They were strategically smart.

They identified the stress-points for women and created policy to manage those very stresses. For example, expectant mothers asked for parenting workshops and health programs. Infosys provides daily Pregnacare yoga and fitness classes on the main campus. There’s an online referral service for hospitals, pediatricians, day care centers, nannies, and schools. Nursing stations supported by women lactation experts and a doctor on call are set up in all the offices. Similarly, all the offices have day care centers within four kilometers; most are equipped with Web cameras so that mothers can check in remotely throughout the day. Employees use office shuttle buses to drop their children at day care free of cost.

And the result of all that? Whereas prior to the program only 59% of women returned to work after maternity, over the past five years the figure has gone to 88%, and the total number of working mothers tripled during the same time period.

The company’s ultimate goal is to have women make up at least half of the workforce, if not more. By creating a work environment that both attracts and retains them, IWIN helps make Infosys a magnet for women.

This is a book not merely for men, but for corporate America.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid, Winning the War for Talent: Why Women Are the Solution. (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011)

Think Twice Before You Follow Your Passion

In a critical rejection of the widely accepted notion to follow your passion, Dorie Clark argues in a Harvard Business blog that the strategy can be wrongheaded. As Clark points out, doing what you love can inspire great dedication and a sense of meaning, but it can also blind you to real problems.

She suggests four straight-forward reasons why the strategy can be a serious blunder.

1. You may not have a knack for your objective. Remember, it's always hard to judge yourself, to know what your strengths and weaknesses might be. Indeed, I've learned as an executive coach that though many have a sense of their weaknesses, few have a real sense of their strengths. It's often the case that personal passion may not play to one's strengths.
2. You hate the work surrounding your passion. Though your passion might truly reflect your strengths, it's also true that some really can drop the ball when it comes to the work surrounding their passion, putting them in serious risk. I've known numerous would-be consultants who love the work, but find that the sales processes involved drive them nuts. As a result, their passion goes by the wayside. 
3. You're too emotionally attached. I see this regularly in many well-trained professionals. Writers hate feedback. CPA's despise someone suggesting their financial strategy is limited. Physicians hate being challenged in their diagnoses. And business people have difficulty objectifying their expertise enough to accept criticism. When you care too deeply about a project, it's very difficult to make a rational decision about whether it should live or die.
4. No one will pay for it. You can turn your passion, your hobby into a job--only if someone's willing to pay for it. I've had two careers for which I was passionate, but learned that that both placed serious limitations on my financial future. Neither were financially viable. With three daughters off to college, I needed a more lucrative profession. Thankfully, I was able to leverage my experiences. But if I'd stayed in them, I would have been up the financial creek and our children would have suffered for it. In short, what was once a viable career may go out of existence tomorrow. 

Although Dorie Clark's recommendations are very practical and make a lot of immediate sense, there are two more profound reason's why following your passion can be a clear dead-end.

First, you may not be aware either of your future interests or strengths. It usually takes a significant amount of experience and feedback to draw relevant conclusions about one's own career. What's interesting and inspiring today may be exceedingly dull and boring tomorrow. So rather than being concerned about your dreams and your passion, I'd work on the skills of adaptability and take the opportunities that come across your path. Indeed, the combination of globalized competition and technological development have made rapid change and adaptation an absolute necessity for career survival and success.

But the most important reason not to follow your passion is to understand that the entire midset of "following your passion," the theory, is built upon false premises about us as humans. It's built upon the notion that you and I have one true self and that our task in life is to identify that true self. But you and I do not have one true self or one single identity. Instead we are a lot of selves with a lot of identities. In a previous blog I wrote about the disbelief and suprise of a high school classmate when she finally figured out who I was at a fifty year reunion. For a good laugh, check out my blog, How to change your personality. My career passion never entered into the matter. It was ultimately about family need and the demand for financial survival and success.

The notion of a true self, though exceedingly popular, has been thoroughly dispelled by research. To appreciate this dynamic—that each of us is not one true self but many selves, a whole cast of characters that we might become, think we should become or even fear becoming in the future—consider a study by Stanford’s Hazel Markus. In this study 210 college students were asked to “tell us about what is possible for you.”  With that information, Markus and Paula Nurius created a questionnaire of 150 possibilities.  Broken out into six categories, the questionnaire included general descriptors such as creative and intelligent; life-style possibilities such as being health conscious or alcohol dependent; and occupational alternatives such as business executive, supreme court justice, taxi-driver or police officer.  The categories were then broken down into how they thought about themselves currently and whether they considered an alternative for themselves in the future.  

The study showed that when the context is changed, the possibilities a person faces spur them to find role models they’d like to become.  So think twice before you follow your passion. You're liable to find a lot more out there than you suspect.

 Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius.  Possible Selves. American Psychologist 41(9) (1986), 954-969. 

Why Are Some Skills So Damned Hard to Learn?

Recently I've been musing over a number of blogs focused on two very important issues: collaboration and a customer-centric approach to business.

In one the authors rightly emphasize the necessity of a strategic orientation that’s focused primarily upon the customer, not the organization’s product line. The recommendation is spot on. That's been a widespread emphasis of strategy ever since Tom Peters got hold of the business world, shook it, and made it see the light. But a customer-centric approach is not nearly as easy to implement as some would think.

Just this past week Herminia Ibarra and Morten Hansen wrote a blog on getting collaboration right. They underscored the challenges that companies face and discussed the organizational traps of under-collaboration and over-collaboration. It was a very useful and pertinent discussion of an issue facing many organizations today. But in their focus on organizational collaboration, they, too, ignored the immense interpersonal difficulties underlying collaboration.  

I've worked with senior clients and their teams on these subjects for years. My own experience with executives reveals a huge amount of difficulty with both of them. They talk about them and use the appropriate buzz-words.  But when it comes to the needed implementation of collaboration or customer-centered relationships, the stuff really hits the fan.

It’s very difficult to develop a customer-centric approach when you spend 95% of your time on the firm’s product, rather than the customer. General Motors was a classic example of the problem. The firm’s focus on its auto resulted in a failure to understand the customer—so the Germans, Japanese and Koreans ate their lunch. But it’s a problem a clear majority of firms must deal with.

Collaboration has shown itself to be a very specific kind of talk. Numerous clients have revealed that it also takes a great deal of courage. The fears underneath collaboration, especially in client relationships, make it especially problematic. Furthermore, the language is quite new to most people, not something they have either experienced or observed.

Why then are some skills so difficult--almost impossible to learn? That's a question demanding an essay, not a one sentence answer. But here is some research that answers that question. Ummmm. Be aware that the research is not especially intuitive. It’s not common sense. So you may have difficulty accepting it. But it's well done and quite systematic.

The underlying assumption in my coaching and training business has been that if a needed behavior is not showing up on the radar screen, whether collaboration or a customer-centered approach, there are three possible reasons. And I've even got some statistics, compliments of Virginia Satir, that long-gone genius at changing behavior. In one-percent (1%) of issues, the person is malicious. In two-three percent (2-3%) of situations the person is thoughtless or careless. And in ninety-six percent (96%) of situations there simply are no relevant tools in the person’s toolkit. Those statistics seem to stop people in their tracks. Why of course, they suggest, people understand customer-centered or collaborative relationships. I remind them that understanding a subject has little to no relationship to being able to practice the competency. I understand how to play a clarinet, but you wouldn't want to hear the noise coming out of it with me on the mouthpiece. Getting people to apply this research to themselves or their colleagues is like pulling teeth. However, since my clients ask to work with me, they'll accept it at face value . . . and then eventually do an "oh, shit," when they experience its truthfulness. But this is research that takes a while to stick. It takes a long time to become a fundamental rationale for explaining failure, and then setting out to do something about it.

Given that no tools in the toolkit is often an issue, why are some skills so hard to learn? There's a great deal of research that shows that one of our primary--and fastest means--of learning is through analogy. In other words, we understand and learn to handle a new situation by transferring knowledge from well-understood situations in the past. But what happens when the structure and skill demands of effective collaboration cannot be compared to any of our past experiences? Nearly all of our education and our experience of problem solving, for example, is done alone. We're individualists and many of us have practically no experience of effective problem solving--of collaborating--with others. The research indicates that people who have experience at only one extreme of an experience distribution (such as individual, rather than collaborative problem solving) do not have the smarts to operate under other conditions--and especially conditions at the opposite extreme. 

Furthermore, research that builds upon the previous studies finds that even if a person perceives something new, without comparable memories it's difficult to understand and learn.  If something is not on a person's radar screen, it's often because there is no memory material (neuro-receptors) to attach the information being dished out. In short, when we try on something new, without a comparable experience we're very liable to be resistant and defensive about the learning--but largely out of ignorance. And as often as not—more often than not—collaboration and customer-centric strategy languish in the deep, dark ocean of the Doldrums.

Implementing some skills, like collaboration or a customer-centric strategy, is just very difficult stuff. It’s not going to happen overnight or on a three-day training session. The bad news is that it will require frustration over the way things have been going, extensive practice, mentoring and coaching, adaptation to feedback and an eventual integration of the new behaviors. The good news is that any set of skills can be learned.

Failure is Pure Gold--If You Know How to Mine It.

Eight keys for mining pure gold.

Harvard Business Review's April issue was devoted to the subject of failure. I was both intrigued and delighted by that, but what crossed my mind immediately was whether the writers would admit to the profound difficulties of learning from failure. A glance at the authors answered my question. Yep. Bazerman was writing. So also Edmonson and Kanter. They know the difficulties of learning from failure. 

Individual failure, like organizational failure, can be very difficult to identify. Russo and Schoemaker's excellent study of decisionmaking gets at that difficulty with a quote from Churchill, emphasizing our blindness to feedback. 

People sometimes stumble over the truth, but usually they pick themselves up and hurry about their business.  --Winston Churchill

Studies show that more than 90% of the time we fail to learn from failure. An alcoholic goes into treatment for month intending to put an end to his habit. But a few months later he's back at it again. Prison recidivism rates are terrifying. A 2006 US study found that within three years of their release,67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated. Horrible stats, but dealing with failure is tough for all of us.

So frame it this way: Experience is inevitable, but learning from it is not. Our mental biases make learning from experience more difficult than most recognize. Our personal defense systems--the need to feel competent, in control, and comfortable--put boundaries around our ability and willingness to change. 

I've found this list of issues that keep us from learning from failure especially useful:

1. Limited or ambiguous information about decision results.
2. Not enough time to make sense of the information available.
3. No opportunity to test conclusions in new decisions.
4. Anxiety about appearing a poor performer.
5. Inability to see how observed outcomes might be interpreted differently.
6. A tendency to jump to conclusions.
7. Ignored or distorted feedback.
8. Difficulty separating skill from luck.

These warnings have been a lifesaver to me and my clients. However, I've focused a lot on number 7 by using coaches to provide needed feedback.

I studied piano under three teachers (coaches), each a bit better than than the previous. Indeed, my last coach held a grad degree from Michigan and had studied under the great Artur Schnabel. She was a great artist, but not a great at feedback and coaching. I also studied voice under three teachers, each a bit better than the previous. I found voice studies more gratifying than piano, largely, I now believe, because of the expert coaching. One of my best college buddies was a bass-baritone with a huge, seemingly unmanageable voice. But he went on to Indiana University, one of our great music schools, where, as he related to me, the coaching was fabulous. Oh sure, talent plays a role, but in the final analysis, the studies of deliberate practice tell us that success is about discipline, chunking, feedback and coaching.

For the past ten years I've been working on my writing, seeking help from a number of colleagues. That experience has reinforced the conclusions of deliberate practice. A number of friends have gaven me some useful input. I hired an editorial director from one of the top publishing houses, learning about the publishing business, and gaining further writing expertise. Still, it was clear that I needed further coaching. Four years ago I literally stumbled on a Gen-Yer who had no difficulty being ruthless with his feedback, and was quite capable of answering my endless questions about writing. I can see the improvement. (FYI: he didn't edit this blog.)

My point is this: Learning from failure requires superb, often ruthless, feedback and coaching. If we keep at the search for coaches, upgrading regularly, eventually we'll find the master who can help us mine our failures. That's true whether you're working on piano, voice, skiing, golf, decisionmaking, teamwork, managing, leadership, etc., etc., etc.

Russo & Schoemaker, Winning Decisions, (eight preventive issues) p. 200. 

Telling It Like It Is: The Bennett Test

I've been waiting for an opportunity to blog on a few political verities.  Here are three from people of differing political stripes.  What unites all three is that they are accurate, needed, and exceedingly applicable to the current domestic political scene.

On occasion, Joe Klein of Time magazine dredges up some interesting quotes that you have to be more than Gen-Y or Gen-X to be familiar with.  His latest Time article, a discussion about the difficulties of real deficit cutting, included a very astute statement by William Bennett about how to assess presidential candidates. 

Yeah, I know.  Bennett is a right wing politician of the sort I distrust (if it matters to you, there are left wing politicians I also distrust).  But I learned many centuries ago to take truth wherever you can get it.  And this is TRUTH, so I recommend the Bennett Test for your voting toolkit. 

If a candidate tells you only things you want to hear, if he asks nothing of you, then give him nothing in return, certainly not your vote, because he is not telling you the truth.

This was Bennett's recommendation as he introduced a parade of his party's presidential candidates in the mid 1990s. 

Mentioning right wing and left wing politicians also reminds me of another truth, exceedingly significant in today's tough financial and social context.  Arianna Huffington has been pushing this button on a number of occasions, including the interview at the announcement of the merger between Yahoo and the Huffington Post.  She complained, accurately, that,

the use of the political terms “left,” “right” or “left-wing” is preventing policymakers from solving “problems” because of the connotation tied to each of them.

I'll tie this up with another accurate statement--that of David Brooks. 

Society is too transparent. Since Watergate, we have tried to make government as open as possible. But as William Galston of the Brookings Institution jokes, government should sometimes be shrouded for the same reason that middle-aged people should be clothed. This isn’t Galston’s point, but I’d observe that the more government has become transparent, the less people are inclined to trust it.

Closed door political, off-the-record meetings have their place.

What ties all of these together is their political honesty.  Take truth where ever you can get it.

Quotation of the Day: Egyptian Youth Leader

In an absolutely fascinating article, the well-known Times investigative journalist, David Kirkpatrick, reported on the 15 or so young leaders of the Egyptian revolt.  To a high degree, Kirkpatrick found that the leaders tend to be well-educated, wired and shrewd professionals, 30 years of age or younger, mostly lawyers and physicians. 

The Egyptians have been especially smart at planning and marketing the protests, as well as avoiding the police.  For example, before each protest they leaked a false lead to throw off the police.  According to Kirkpatrick, all the leaders aspire to a Western-style constitutional democracy, where civic institutions are stronger than individuals. 

Inevitably, the group has to deal with deep divides, especially over the role of Islam.  Amusingly, when one of the leaders was asked whether he could imagine an Egyptian president who was a Christian woman, he paused:

If it is a government of institutions, I don't care if the president is a monkey.

Quotation of the Day: Paul Gewirtz, Yale Law School

Joe Klein had an insightful article in the January 24, Time, on the subject of arms and the unbalanced. Klein inveighed against the excesses of gun control.  I could only cynically muse, doesn't he know that the arms business (the umbrella industry for guns) is highly profitable?  And what right-minded capitalist would inveigh against a highly profitable business?  FYI: Statistics from 2006 indicate that the arms business of the top 100 arms producing companies amounted to $316 billion.  It is part of what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Looking at that issue and a number of others from a more intelligent perspective, here's one law prof's take on the matter.

    Our various legal rules, taken together, may be producing a society in which liberty is bordering on disorder.

As Klein points out, the libertarian tendency (a focus on the individual's rights) goes back all the way to the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s--that excise tax forced on farmers by East Coast elites.  It's also obvious that our liberties must be balanced against any civilized society's need fro behavioral constraints, all agreed upon by the consent of the government.  I think there's little doubt that not only the shootings, but also the verbal violence of the media point in the same direction. Sounds to me like it's time to reassess the excessive liberties we've granted ourselves in the past 25 years.

7 Steps for Making Your New Year's Resolutions Stick

Two weeks into 2011 is a good time to think through those resolutions you made for this year.  Maybe it was to create a regular exercise program, speak up in team meetings, learn to manage your boss more effectively, develop a quality network, take a couple courses to enhance your career, or lose twenty pounds.  

So how can you ensure that your determination to achieve your objectives in 2011 sticks around past Valentine's Day?  By creating new habits.

Achieving those objectives takes time and energy.  But keep nudging yourself in the direction of your achievements.  A new skill won't become automatic overnight, but you may enjoy some its benefits fairly quickly if you follow these steps.

1. Dream big.  Really worthwhile goals often look very large.  So you want to learn to make effective presentations or manage that difficult boss?  With perseverance, encouragement and coaching support, you can do it.  You might be amazed how often setting some ambitious goals inspires others and makes them very willing to give you a helping hand.
2. Break those big dreams into small wins.  All the research says that if you try to take on the big dream in one fell swoop, you're liable to fail big time.  Instead, success in personal change and growth usually takes place in baby steps.  So look for surefire bets.  If, for example, you're learning to speak up in team meetings, set a goal for speaking up just once for each of the next three sessions, then add to it.  Oh yeah, pick the easy steps first.  That way you can enjoy the experience of success more often.
3. Figure out what keeps you from making a change.  Until you grasp why you're sticking to old habits and routines, it may be hard to muster enough will and energy to succeed.  At least part of the reason we stick to old habits is that we enjoy them.  Bill Bridges of Managing Transitions fame points out that we need to start by figuring out what we're saying goodbye to.  Then recognize that it's the transitions from goodbye to hello that do us in.  Rosabeth Kanter talks about that change difficulty as the miserable middle.  Inevitably, success implies letting go of the past and muddling through the transition.  Be realistic with yourself.
4. Commit yourself.  Make yourself accountable.  Telling people your goals can result in one very important motivational tool.  Some of my clients regularly push me on my big dream.  Although I get frustrated with them on occasion, I'm aware that they really care or they wouldn't push my buttons so often.
5. Celebrate your successes.  Don't wait until you've achieved the big dream.  Nearly all changes are incremental.  Acknowledge your success as you tick off each small win.  Get a pat on the back from your coach or your spouse.  You may think that "attaboys" are hokey, but they are very useful for all of us.
6. Learn from your failure.  Any time you screw up attempting to make a change, be smart about your interpretation.  Screwing up is one more step toward your ultimate goal.  I once asked my son-in-law, a research physician, how he dealt with research failure.  He had a quick response: "Each research failure gets me closer to my ultimate research goal.  After each one, I know what won't work, and that sets me free to try something else."
7. Give thanks for your achievements.  Forget perfection.  Set your sights on the ultimate goal, not the process.  You'll find that you'll benefit, and often significantly, even if you don't achieve exactly what you planned.

If Surprises Are the New Normal, Then Resilience Is the New Skill

In yesterday's blog, Harvard's Rosabeth Kanter summarizes her five lessons from 2010 worth repeating, beginning with the recognition that surprise and change are the new normal.  That being so, then resilience for individuals is the new skill.  Simply put, resilience is the ability to bounce back successfully when facing stressful or even traumatic experiences. 

Experience suggests that most of us are not very reliable at predicting how we'll behave when facing difficult situations. That may mean the loss of a child, a spouse or a job, or in my case the loss of my wife to Alzheimer's and the subsequent downsizing from a large home to an apartment.  Reflecting on my two recent traumas, I can tell you now that I should have multiplied my expectations by 8 to 10.  My training in stress management didn't improve my predictive ability, although it was a great help in managing much of the stress.

Many of us have faced or will face the question posed by Benedict Carey: Do I have the right stuff?  Or, is this sinkhole simply too deep?

There is a long history of the study of resilience, but two studies are of special value for facing a volatile economy that that continues to affect many of us in very personal ways.  A recent lifetime resilience study by Seery, Holman and Silver finds that our success at resilience is not a matter of personality, genes or even the nature of our stresses and traumas.  Instead, as Dr. Silver finds: Each negative event a person faces leads to an attempt to cope, which forces people to learn about their own capabilities, about their support networks--to learn who their real friends are.  That kind of learning, we think, is extremely valuable for subsequent coping. 

But there's a caveat: Frequency makes a difference.  You can have too much stress, and go under.  Or, you can have too little experience with stress and trauma and then be hit, unprepared, by a knock-out blow.  I've found numerous settings in which highly capable business people have sailed through top schools without the slightest perceived difficulty, and then fumbled badly.  So badly that some never recovered from their first major job or family stress.  Dr. Seery said that the people in the study who recalled zero or one negative event were actually worse off than those with a handful of adverse events.

In short, the people in the middle who had successfully faced two to six major stresses throughout their life showed the greatest resilience.  Because they neither avoided nor were inundated by stress, they were able to learn how to successfully cope with their traumas.

The second study, which I believe is more valuable, found that the source in overcoming hardship and adversity is not a matter of individual toughness.  Rather, it is an individual's relationships.  Through them resilience can be strengthened.  The study reported by Linda Hartling of Wellesley College showed that the focus on resilience development will need to be on growth-fostering relationships.   

In sum, when faced with difficult situations, reframe them as opportunities to learn and grow, and keep building those quality relationships.