Mon • Mar 8th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
three questions to help overcome adversity
Adversities hit leaders like earthquakes writes Lisa J. Marshall in “Speak the Truth and Point to Hope: the leaders journey to maturity”. Without warning everything is shaken. The ground shifts. Nothing remains the same.
“Getting fired, the loss of loved ones through death or divorce, a deeply felt spiritual experience, nearly dying oneself, having to fire people, even an organizational collapse of some kind . . . What all such experiences have in common is the sense of a tectonic plate shift, after which life is never quite the same.”
Noted writer and leadership development consultant John Baldoni has a video on “How to Bounce Back from Adversity.” (Baldoni’s book “Lead by Example” – has been chosen as one of the best leadership books in 2009) His video is worth a couple of minutes of your time. Leaders he says should debrief adversity with three questions:
One thing for sure – adversity will come. Bad things happen to good people. Leaders make mistakes.
It’s not what happens to you as much as how you handle what happens to you that makes the difference between success and failure.
After digging out of the death and destruction left by earthquakes in Haiti and now Chile, leaders there are asking the questions – what happened? how could we have done better? and, what have we learned?
In spite of their despair and grief, Haitians and Chileans are hoping for a better day—like a phoenix rising out of the rubble.
So it is with leaders who bounce back, overcome adversity, and never give up.