eZine

A business friend I’ll call Sam is now a very wealthy man, and he seems to be very happy as well. Sam has had several careers and pursued many entrepreneurial projects. Our paths have crossed for close to 30 years, but most often when Sam’s career has been in a tough patch.

I have seen Sam when his business has been crashing, his industry has been cratering and his personal life has been in stress. I have watched him fight off the specter of bankruptcy at least twice, and have seen prospective clients and investors tell him “no” time after time.

Although I’ve had a close view of several of Sam’s crises, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him complain or cast blame. When a partner left him in the lurch in the 1980s, I learned from the way he faced the situation. He said, “Bev, these things are just gonna happen. It’s important not to waste energy on gettin’ angry. We gotta look to the future. We’ll just keep trying things until something hits, and it’ll all work out.” Sam kept focused on his next goals, and in fact things did work out, despite fall after fall.

Sam may have been born with an indomitable spirit, but we all can learn from the way he handles career failures. A key is how Sam talks to himself and others. When things go wrong he doesn’t obsess about it, and he doesn’t indulge in self-pity. Instead, he faces the facts and quickly starts searching for next steps.

Research suggests that we can indeed become more resilient. My coaching colleague Mary Jane Reed often addresses the issue in workshops and client work, so I asked her to share some thoughts. She said, “We can build resiliency not only for ourselves but also for our work teams and families. Although some individuals are wired with resiliency from birth, we are all capable of growing our ‘reservoirs of resiliency.’” Here are her tips:

• Face facts and move on. Reed says, “resilient people are able to ‘face down’ reality and not see the world through rose-colored glasses … Resilient people reflect on the situation and ‘create bridges’ to the future. They ask ‘how can I use this experience to build a stronger foundation, business, career path?’ Also, they continually improvise: ‘What have I not thought about? What else could I do?’”
• Plan for the worst. Reed suggests you think strategically about potential challenges. It can be useful to address questions like, “What if I lose my job? What if I lose my partner? What if our company servers go down?” She says, “If we think through these issues before they happen, we can adapt more quickly to changes and take steps to recover from their impact. We avoid the ‘dazed period’ when we are immobilized, and we can act quickly. Also, worse case scenario discussions can help your teams perform well when a crisis does occur.”
• Get and stay connected. “Develop a strong network of positive relationships,” Reed says. “These relationships need to be established and nurtured long before times of crisis. Friends and family provide support and acceptance during hard times. And encourage teamwork and networking within your organization so others can benefit as well.”
• Meet the crisis. Know that hard times are part of life. If you are facing a challenge now, Reed suggests that you:
  • Encourage humor because it can help you and your organization keep valuable perspective, and laughter helps reduce stress.
  • Take care of yourself and encourage others to do the same. This includes getting enough ZZZs because sleep deprivation reduces our cognitive functioning and our ability to handle stress.
  • Set short-term goals and routines even if the “big picture” is hazy. Reed often encourages people who are out of work to get dressed every morning and set simple goals for each day.
  • Reflect on what is working and what is not working, and adjust accordingly. Take time with friends, family or colleagues to discuss the situation and brainstorm additional options.
  • Take action. It is important to make some kind of plan and put it in motion, even if you’ll probably change it later.

Ted Leonsis believes “that happiness can be achieved by approaching it with the same degree of discipline and rigor that’s needed to build a successful business.” And some of the same rules for individuals also apply to institutions. His very readable book “The Business of Happiness,” relies on three concepts:

• Pursue goals. You increase your chances of becoming happy if you treat happiness like an entrepreneur would approach building a business, with a vision and the systematic pursuit of a plan and goals.
• Take care of business. Leonsis argues that enterprises will do better if they consider themselves in “the happiness business.”
• Start with happiness. “Happiness is a driver of success, not the other way around,” Leonsis says.

Leonsis believes that the happiest and most successful people live by several basic tenets, including:

• Set life goals. People are more likely to be happy if they pay attention to whether they are on track to reach their goals. Leonsis said that writing and pursuing his “Life List” – the goals he wanted to accomplish in his life – did not by themselves make him happy. Yet he credits the writing of that list and his “dogged, faithful effort to accomplish” those goals as a necessary aspect of his quest for happiness. He advises the rest of us to, “Just write the list. Start now.”
• Connect with communities. Leonsis says that the more communities in which you are an active participant, the more likely it is that you’ll be happy and successful. In his own life, he has encountered opportunities and fostered innovation because of the broad variety of circles within which he circulates. “I work it,” he says of his “ever-expanding universe of interests and friends and communities.” Leonsis is a conspicuous extrovert, but he says that the same rule applies to introverts.
• Say thanks. Like many of the experts, Leonsis says that a critical ingredient in finding happiness is being able to express gratitude. Feeling thankful helps us to stay grounded and is a way to arrest the harmful domino effect of a bad day becoming a bad week. And, he says, “empathy, gratitude, giving back to society, and having a higher calling are all part of a continuum.”

According to Daniel H. Pink, Wikipedia has been extraordinarily successful because “it represents the most powerful new business model of the twenty-first century: open source.” In explaining the strength of open source projects where volunteers are welcome to participate, Pink sites research showing that contributors are motivated by the enjoyment they feel when they master a challenge in a creative way.

There is a role in the workplace for bonuses and other “carrot and stick” motivators, particularly for routine tasks. In his intriguing book “Drive”, Pink writes that “Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus…They help us stare ahead and race faster.”

But, Pink says, “For more right-brain undertakings – those that demand flexible problem-solving, inventiveness or conceptual understanding – contingent rewards can be dangerous.”

In other words, if a task is tedious the promise of a bonus upon completion may keep us hustling. But research suggests that an external “carrot” might actually chill our interest in a creative challenge, like participating in an open source project. What is more likely to get our juices flowing is the fun of working with others to create something new.

Pink describes decades of research, including in the field of “positive psychology,” that helps explain why intrinsic motivation is a key to stimulating high performance. Scholars have demonstrated that our activities are shaped by three powerful drives, he says. Human beings want to be:

• Autonomous. We are more likely to enjoy our work if we can do it in our own way and according to our own schedule. And we are more likely to perform well if we can choose our own team.
• Competent. We like to do things well. We are more likely to be creative if we find a project to be satisfying and challenging. And if we can find a profession where we want to improve at even the most mundane tasks – where we are willing to work toward mastery -- we are likely to be happy.
• Connected. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Pink says, “Autonomous people working toward mastery perform at very high levels. But those who do so in the service of some greater objective achieve even more.” The “purpose motive” is a powerful source of energy

Number 118

After years as a well-staffed senior federal official, Sherry Little was nervous when she contemplated becoming one of the first partners in a new company. Not only did she have to quickly learn to behave like an entrepreneur, but also she had to perform effectively without the expertise and structure she had come to take for granted.

The first year is now behind her, however, and Sherry has played a key role in founding a promising company. Here are some of the points that Sherry kept in mind as she navigated her transition year:

• Try an M&M&M. When she was feeling stress, Sherry reminded herself to stay focused on “the 3 M’s”:
  • Mentors. Sherry sometimes found it difficult to address administrative and organizational issues now that she no longer had professional staff support, but what made it easier was her wide circle of friends and mentors. She regularly borrowed expertise from others. For example, when she had to make early choices about office technology, she sought help from her tech-savvy best friend, Andrea Wilkinson.
  • Mistakes. As she took off in new directions, Sherry gave herself permission to make mistakes. Instead of freezing at the thought of a false step, Sherry told herself that missteps are a natural part of moving forward. She says that she made plenty of mistakes in 2009, but interestingly they sometimes provided her most important learning opportunities.
  • Moxie. Even though she was sometimes frightened, Sherry tried to consistently act like a woman with “moxie,” which she defines as including enthusiasm, energy and vision. When she was uncertain, she tried to imagine how she would behave if she actually felt a surge of moxie, and then she acted accordingly.
• Help others. Sherry has been around Washington long enough to be turned off by the climbers who engage in tunnel-visioned self-promotion. In her government jobs she frequently tried to give others a boost, and she promised herself that she would keep up that practice, even when feeling the pressure to launch a new business. As she looked back on the year, Sherry realized that several great opportunities actually developed from steps that she took simply to assist other people in their careers.
• Exercise. Recognizing that she would miss the structure provided by her government job, and knowing that she needed to be fit in order to work at a grueling pace, Sherry decided to build exercise into her daily calendar. She selected a series of yoga classes, hired a trainer, and committed to work out every weekday.
• Make lists. Sherry built her success one list at a time. She started every day by reviewing and refining her “to do” list, and she used lists to keep track of projects, to coordinate with colleagues and clients, and to keep moving even when she didn’t feel like it.