The
Path to Resilience
“This above all: to thane
own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day;
Thou canst not then be false to any man.” – William
Shakespeare
Resilience can be
achieved in at least two different ways.
One way to achieve
resilience is to respond to each event that occurs in a
successful manner in order to resolve tensions in that
event-space. This I call event-based resilience.
Event-based resilience is
the reason why some of us achieve resilience during portions
of our lives or during particular events. This also explains
why someone who has been and appears to be resilient
encounters periods where the person demonstrates little or
no resilience—being downsized, outsourced, or even struck
square-on by midlife crisis that never seems to end. Each of
us has particular gifts that when aligned with particular
conditions match up well. It is that moment, event, or
series of events not directly in alignment with
our natural or nurtured capability that gives us
trouble.
Event-based resilience is
an important form of resilience, but is less effective than
what I call path-driven resilience. In contrast to
event-based resilience, which in large part depends on
successfully reducing the tensions of each event or set of
conditions using our inductive bias, natural gifts or
disposition, path-driven resilience uses success AND
failure to create resolution of tensions over time.
Path-Driven
Resilience
What I mean by
path-driven resilience is encompassed in nurtured—natural
capabilities that allow us to learn from the current
situation regardless of success or failure. Remember in
event-based resilience, which is an important form of
resilience; we rely on our capability to overcome the
demands on the conditions placed upon us in the moment.
Here as some examples:
Ø
A
salesperson overcomes the negative attitudes of the client
to get the sale.
Ø
An athlete
overcomes a stumble to win a race.
Ø
A leader
transcends negative stock market news to merge with a large
company.
Ø
A person
fights back feelings of self-doubt and moves in spite of
fear.
Ø
A parent
picks up a fallen child and nudges them back in the game.
Ø
A partner,
after losing a significant other, resolves to find another
relationship.
Each of these examples
shows some degree of resilience in responding to an event
which produced conditions where success was achieved. Each
is valued for the response made in the moment. Often, we
call this resilience. And it is resilience. Yet, in most of
these cases, if you really look into the attributes and the
tensions resulting in those event-spaces, you will find that
the actor was more than likely matched in terms of natural
capability and the requirements of the situation.
For every example above,
we know hundreds of examples where the person was unable to
meet the conditions of the demand environment…
Ø
The
salesperson turns away from the sale because they think the
person does not approve of them and that is why they have a
negative attitude.
Ø
The athlete
stumbles and…falls…failing to finish the race.
Ø
The leader
fails to transcend negative stock news pulling back from the
merger
Ø
The
person’s feelings of self-doubt prevent them from reaching
out to others.
Ø
The parent
picks up the fallen child and soothes them, removing them
from the game.
Ø
A partner,
after losing a significant other, blames himself or herself
for the failure, avoiding another relationship of
significance.
In each of these
examples, we find that people are not matched through their
natural gifts to the event, or conditions. In some cases,
people find the capability to meet these events over time.
In many cases, the failures become reinforcement as to why
they cannot succeed. Event-based resilience is often the
result of a narrow, yet sufficient match between our innate
capability and the conditions. In those cases where the
match is sufficiently wide enough to bolster the person
during the event, we get resilience. EVERYONE has some
resilience. EVERYONE can be resilient at times. Yet
what produces the resilient person, profession, business or
network over and over? A Path of Resilience.
In my view, there is a
way to design and produce resilience across a wide-bandwidth
of conditions. It is through path-driven resilience.
Path-driven resilience is natural to a limited few, but
possible for most who understand how to use design. There is
not any question in my mind that some people naturally have
what are called hardy personalities and through success and
failure, they remain resilient, most usually because they
refuse to give up or in—you might say that outright
stubbornness has an indirect way of helping some people to
be resilient. Although in their wake lies failure and
distress they create among others through their “hardiness.”
One reason I point this
out is that if it is not in your nature to be hardy, you
have a much different path and need a different design than
those whose nature it is to remain hardy through thick and
thin. The other reason I point this out is for you hardy
people to see the damage that is done as you move through
life with your unconscious hardiness!
I see people (trainers,
developers and coaches) making the mistake of trying to
model outwardly the hardy personality to others, as if
anybody can learn hardiness, overcome acceptance motivation.
In large part I think this is due to people still believing
in the humanist philosophy of what is called blank slate—where
someone can be nurtured to be anything he or she wants to
be; or in some cases needs to be, when we consider
resilience or more broadly, material success.
In my opinion, this
ability to learn the hardy personality is not probable.
There are a very small number of lucky people who have this
natural gift of “being anything they want to be”, yet we try
to generalize this “nature” to all those nurtured.
This results in inefficient approaches to motivation,
training, development, success and resilience. Be advised
that the blank slate moniker, “be anything you want to be”,
in most cases does not apply to you; much to the chagrin of
those selling success-snake oil, who wish everyone were
actually created equal.
If you are or are NOT one
of those truly lucky ones with nature’s gifts of resilience,
you too can utilize the CPR System to enhance your success
rate over time. It seems that while some of us may have the
gift of hardiness, we also have the gift of learning by
failing. Even Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM may have
exampled this language when he stated to IBMers, “if you
want to double your success rate, double your failure rate.”
While there is no question that iteration is a powerful
teacher, those of us who fail to succeed use up a lot of
resources in the process. So, we, like our antithesis--those
who avoid failure, do not iterate enough or risk enough—are
likely to experience similar unsustainable fortunes, each in
different ways.
Let me quote a few words
about hardiness so you can recognize it when you see it and
realize it is a natural gift.
In the late 1970s,
psychologist Suzanne Kobasa, Ph.D. (Kobasa, 1979a & b), did
a long term research study on the impact of stress on top
AT&T executives when it was breaking up. The employees were
either losing their jobs or being reassigned. Over a period
of eight years, she found that there were two different
patterns in the way these executives responded to the
stress. People in one group became increasingly symptomatic.
They had more medical and psychological problems and
symptoms and more doctors visits. In contrast, the second
group showed no difference in symptoms during this stressful
period as compared to before its onset. Surprisingly, they
seemed healthier and more robust. They essentially rose to
meet the challenge. Dr. Kobasa referred to this second group
as having a stress-hardy personality. (www.hardiness.com)
In some ways, the
constitution or nature of these people is more a gift than a
human design, although inherent in the gift is a design.
Many motivational speakers and pundits tell people—from
their points on high—that all they need to do is get going,
just do it, or use passion to overcome setbacks, barriers
and failure; much the same as the naturally resilient
personality would model. Yet, to our dismay, it is much more
than feel-good, motivational, impact events which produce
resilience over time…and in most cases—in time.
|
“Unfortunately our culture
continually reinforces this belief and maybe even
wants it to be true; it’s just a matter of finding
that right program, redoubling our efforts, or
having an attitude adjustment…. If this thing didn’t
work, maybe the next one will, so keep looking. This
constant scanning and pumping up distracts us away
from a “true path of resilience” – that of really
getting to know ourselves, accepting what is and
what naturally fits. It fuels runaway
consumption…You haven’t tried this one yet,
so how can you know unless you try… I’ve spent
thousands of hours and dollars on just that approach
and it has probably reduced my resilience (in
certain areas) over time through loss of confidence
and it has certainly eaten up a tremendous amount of
energy. What has produced the most resilience for
me is staying engaged in a process of stripping away
the barriers to self awareness.” -CPR System User |
Over the years, I have
realized that I am naturally one of those hardy
personalities. You might say that along with it, I do not
get ulcers but I am a carrier! Just by telling people how I
have done it, or how I do it, is not enough as I have
discovered over my many years of working with people around
the globe.
I have discovered that
what really works to create resilience is to create a unique
path of individual purpose resulting in a resilient design.
This is done through self-knowledge activities, a strong
desire to be self-directed and self-correcting and often
with a coach trained developmentally. This is where I have
arrived in supporting increased resilience with the people I
coach and the systems I work in and around—through design
based on their gifts.
There is a story I
related in my first book called Coach2 The Bottom Line,
where I refer to a story by David Whyte. It is called the
kayak story and it basically discusses how a mountaineer
prepares perfectly for a kayak trip—in mountaineer design,
taking only essentials, weighting and packing carefully;
only to find that the people showing up to go kayaking are
bringing everything including the kitchen sink. The design
of the kayak (system) allows the “water” to carry the
weight. A mountaineer, in contrast perfects a way for the
person to carry the weight. What the analogy shows is
that YOU do not have to carry the weight of resilience. The
design will carry the weight if you understand the
territory.
Side note:
Now I do not intend to become religious here, nor point to
increasing correlations between spirituality and religion in
this entire system or design. Yet I do want to point out
that a resilient design, from whatever source it comes
from—if it is resilient—will carry the weight of
finding the alignment required to produce enhanced levels of
aliveness. Most of us in the world today are caught up with
semantics of naming the design, rather than making sure that
we create the path of design. I would suggest, rather
indirectly, that there are many source paradigms of
resilient design, including religion.
What do I mean by a
path of resilient design?
Let us assume a map of
possibilities. I am going to present the map now used in the
resilience mapping system that is described in the next
chapter called Resilient Design so that you have a visual of
what I am saying, even though you do not have experience
with it yourself at this point.
Map of
Possibilities:
[Advice: Do not get
caught up in the labels, just view the maps as a whole so
you understand what we are referring to when we discuss
design mapping.]
Let us say the boundaries
of this map represent the infinite, spiraling
requirements or conditions of the demand environment
or territory as I have mentioned previously. I am going
to keep this simple for the example. You will see later that
it is not quite this easy in practice. Hopefully, the
oversimplification has merit in your understanding of what I
mean by the path of design analogy through this simple set
of mapping views.
Map of the Demand
Environment:
Now, out of all the
possibilities in the demand environment (shown above without
any mapping coordinates), we identify or map the coordinates
of demand requirements in a particular situation, role or
event and in some cases, the prime design path as we will
show you later.
Map of Capability:
Let us assume we have
mapped our own capability, (nature + nurture in action) and
that it looks like the map below. Also, note that this map
could be our talk (espoused theory); our walk
(theory in use); or it might even be what we call intent
(action theory). Regardless, you will see from the map that
it is a different shape or area than the Map of the Demand
Environment.
At this point, most
people will just say we have created a gap-based approach or
map and that there is nothing new here. And they would be
correct. However, the difference in this approach is so
fundamental that it will shake the entire organizational
development paradigm in the next sentence. People in
large part don’t change. Can they change their behavior?
Yes; and often people do, especially over time. Yet in most
of the business and organizational frameworks, changing
people is a bet that is not paying off, or is paying off too
slow.
If we operate on the
fundamental principle that people, in large part, do not
change their map of capability for resilience except over
very long periods of time, then what are we going to do in
the short term? This is going to become hyper-important
in globalization, or the flat world as Thomas Friedman would
relate in his 2005 book, The World Is Flat.
In a lot of cases, people
go from one training and development program to another,
each failing to change the person’s resilience profile, or
what we might call their design—flawed or incomplete as it
might be. This is hard on the people, inefficient for the
system and a waste of energy. Change is expensive and
inefficient, as well as extremely disconcerting to the
person who cannot learn as a result of having a resilience
capability profile that is stable, yet out of
alignment with demand conditions—the territory.
This suffering that
occurs in a blank slate (change) driven systems—in its
attempt at equality—is nothing short of sad and at worst,
increasingly devastating. I am not advocating a retreat from
equality. I am advocating that not all people are created
with the same capacity for resilience. In order to end a
large part of the suffering we can support people in
creating designs that carry the weight they cannot in terms
of the requirements of the demand environment.
So, what is the
difference in this system of intervention?
Essentially the CPR
System is a system guided by natural capability which has
acquired capability as a set of sub-routines nurtured by
specific learning directed by and with this natural program
into a design that does not require the person to change
their fundamental core attributes, yet provides additional
alignment, support and action, either synchronously, or
asynchronously?
Notice that when I map
the demands area outlined in RED to the capability area
outlined in BLUE on the map of infinite possibilities, part
of the demand environment requirements are not satisfied
through the natural or nurtured area of capability. Notice
also, there is what you might say, capability left over in
the area of inclusion and accountability.
In a gap-based approach
driven fundamentally by “we can be anything we really want
to be” philosophies, we would construct a design
intervention to promote fitness and to increase power, to
balance our system, to develop our limitations. This
is the current standard approach in learning and
development.
That sounds logical and
is certainly what is required to reduce the tensions not
resolved by the natural system of capability. It is a
practice to change the system of natural capability through
any of a million intervention methods designed by people
who make their living trying to change people. Go
figure....
If we were looking at
this objectively, and we are, we would never take advice
from someone who makes their living doing what they are
giving advice about, i.e., accepting advise from someone who
benefits from giving the advice. We would say that they have
a biased opinion.
Even expert witnesses are
not allowed to be seen as objective unless they have no
relationship to the parties in question; otherwise a bias is
said to be present. Yet how many times a day do we listen to
people, who are in the change business, about our change?
Seems silly that we think they would not be biased, does it
not? Well, you might think that is the case here, but I am
suggesting to you that through the CPR system, I am
attempting to provide you with objectivity—and then YOU
decide which intervention method you want.
I am saying you don’t
have to change, but you do have to have the conversation!
We are NOT in
the change business; we are in the design business!
At this stage, we have
identified through a visual mapping approach that there is
an area or areas that have tensions which are not satisfied
sufficiently in the demand environment. And because of such
tensions not being satisfied, the result will create
failure…to cope, live, grow, develop, win, reach consensus,
you name whatever it is… that will happen when alignment
between demand and supply fails to occur.
Let us go back to our
examples to show you what it might look like in real life:
Ø
A
salesperson does not quite overcome negative attitudes and
does not get the sale.
Ø
An athlete
overcomes a stumble but loses the race.
Ø
A leader
transcends negative stock market news only to fail to
merge his/her company.
Ø
A person
fights back feelings of self-doubt but does not ask
someone for help.
Ø
A parent
picks up a fallen child and allows them to quit the game.
Ø
A partner,
after losing a significant other, finds the first
relationship that soothes him/her.
In each of these cases,
there was some resilience, but not enough to resolve all the
tensions in the demand environment. And failure is deemed to
be the result, based on the ‘outcome expectations’ driving
the behavioral events. In all cases, we have artificially
set this up to be a single event that is often
representative of real life situations. What makes the
difference between failure and success over time? It is the
performance along of a path of resilience, rather
than a set of event-driven outcomes.
In the map example, I
could work on the gap of fitness and power. Something has
to close the gap. Most people think it is supposed to be
you!
Yet would that really
prepare me for the next set of events? What if we are in a
high change, turbulent or volatile environments? Would
what I did today, work for tomorrow and so forth?
In most cases, unless the
demand environment is very stable and predictable, a
gap-based strategy will not be efficient, effective or
sustainable over time. It will however, keep change agents
fully employed and in demand. Yet this is not what life is
all about. Suffering from one moment to the next is a
journey that neither I, nor any other person wants to
endure. To alleviate suffering, we use the resources
that are currently being employed as a result of a
fundamental blank slate belief, “you can be anything you
want to be” paradigm and utilize them in an “I can be
everything I can be” paradigm and that means I’ll need
other resources and support from design. Although,
seemingly a subtle shift in thinking or feeling, it is a
monumental leap in action and the application of resources!
While all paradigms of
resilience are enhanced by fundamental knowledge of self,
the system of resilient design does not assume you can be
anything you want to be, nor does it focus on growing
self-awareness per se (yet another blank slate modality
which has been seen to be largely fruitless for all but a
handful of people).
“Social cognitive theory
distinguishes among three modes of agency. In personal
agency exercised individually, people bring their influence
to bear on their own functioning and on environmental
events. In many spheres of functioning, people do not have
direct control over conditions that affect their lives. In
such instances, they turn to proxy agency, by influencing
others who have the resources, knowledge, and means to act
on their behalf to secure the outcomes they desire. Children
turn to parents; marital partners turn to their spouses; and
citizens turn to their elected representatives to get what
they want. Those devoted to religious faith often appeal to
proxy agency, especially in times of crisis or physical and
emotional distress through prayer to divine agency to alter
the course of detrimental events. People do not live as
isolates. They have to work together to manage and improve
their lives. In the exercise of collective agency, they pool
their knowledge, skills and resources and act in concert to
shape their future.” – Albert Bandura
In many cases, resources
may be limited in and during the remediation or design
process. If you continue to use resources in a quest to be
anything you want to be—it is globally unsustainable for
everyone to have unlimited access to unlimited resources.
Those people who are
naturally hardy will not need these resources because they
are naturally resilient. In most cases, they would not
qualify, or need a support net that MUST be provided to
those who are not naturally resilient. Those who are not
hardy will use resources from time to time from mental
health, food assistance, healthcare, job retraining, or even
user-purchased interventions such as training, development,
coaching, counseling, or consulting in creating more
resilience capability through partnerships, alliances and
design to augment their natural limitations.
Why not make available
the same resources we are using in a failed blank slate
morality for a different paradigm of intervention? A
paradigm of design that realizes a fundamental difference in
philosophy, that each of us has unique gifts and not
everyone can learn anything. It is up to those in the
intervention to support us in identifying those gifts and
applying those gifts in a manner that promotes a resilient
design in sustainable ways—NOT WORKING on our weaknesses!
Over the course of time,
I will demonstrate how resilient design can be accomplished
as well as show you how to create a path of resilience which
provides both event-driven resilience as well as path-driven
resilience. While this system will not end all your
suffering, as suffering is part of the journey of life…it
will provide you with an efficient, effective and
sustainable set of tools that you can rely on to live your
life in the pursuit of happiness with an eye towards our
collective sustainability.
In Summary
|
Ø
Instead of trying to be anything you want to be,
be everything you can be and know your
strengths. |
|
Ø
Resilience is designed over time through an
inter-connected path rather than from disparate
events in which we rise to the occasion, so to
speak. |
|
Ø
Our
current change methodology emphasizes personal
change as the answer to disparities between demand
requirements and capability to meet those
requirements. |
|
Ø
Personal and organizational change efforts often do
not work and even when they do, they cost too much,
or work too slowly. |
|
Ø
A
shift in focus is being advocated with the CPR
System to put efforts towards creating effective
design rather than changing the person. |
|
Ø
The
current solution-sets, operational paradigms or
schemas give advantage to certain types of gifted
persons and disadvantage to the rest which leads to
lower levels of sustainability across systems.
|
|
Ø
The
vast majority of our educational resources are
devoted to building KSA’s that support the favored
blank slate rule-set rather than educating people in
learning about how to design systems and lives that
actualize oneself and one’s gifts—those gifts
contributing to the macro system sustainability or
collective design which takes advantage of
self-knowledge of our unique strengths. |
|
Ø
We’re all suffering more than we have to as a result
of holding flawed beliefs about the structure of
reality. |
Without a path of
resilience, success often results from a lucky intersection,
not an ability to respond out of design, and is like the
shifting sands in a desert—here today and gone tomorrow in
many cases.
