Resilience That Works: Eight Practices for Leadership and Life

Resilience

That Works

Resilience

That Works

Eight Practices

for Leadership

and Life

Marian N. Ruderman

Cathleen Clerkin

Katya C. Fernandez

CCL Press

One Leadership Place, Greensboro, NC 27410

© 2022 Center for Creative Leadership

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published 2022

ISBN-13: 978-1-64761-015-9 (print)

ISBN-13: 978-1-64761-016-6 (ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-1-64761-017-3 (epdf)

CCL No. 2504

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ruderman, Marian N., author. | Clerkin, Cathleen, author. |

Fernandez, Katya C., author.

Title: Resilience that works : eight practices for leadership and life /

Marian N. Ruderman, Cathleen Clerkin, Katya C. Fernandez.

Description: Greensboro, NC : Center for Creative Leadership, 2022. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022001613 (print) | LCCN 2022001614 (ebook) | ISBN 9781647610159 (paperback) | ISBN 9781647610166 (ebook) | ISBN 9781647610173 (adobe pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Resilience (Personality trait) | Leadership.

Classification: LCC BF698.35.R47 R84 2022 (print) | LCC BF698.35.R47 (ebook) | DDC 155.2--dc23/eng/20220126

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001613

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001614

About The Center for Creative Leadership

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is a top-ranked, global provider of leadership development. By leveraging the power of leadership to drive results that matter most to clients, CCL transforms individual leaders, teams, organizations, and society. Our array of cutting-edge solutions is steeped in extensive research and experience gained from working with hundreds of thousands of leaders at all levels. Ranked among the world’s top providers of executive education, CCL has offices in countries worldwide.

Preface

It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself, that determines how your life’s story will develop.

—Dieter F. Uchtdorf

The three of us have spent our professional careers trying to better understand human behaviors and attitudes in the context of leadership, and in the years prior to publishing this book, our work adopted a holistic view emphasizing how physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being related to and impacted leadership outcomes. The necessity of this approach became clear as we further explored the idea that how leaders approach their work is more than simply an understanding of the competencies, credentials, or personality traits they possess; rather, it’s a practice in which the whole self dynamically interacts with collections of people and circumstances. Internalizing this truth was one of the many impetuses that guided us toward writing this book.

When we began writing this book in earnest, the COVID-19 pandemic descended upon the world. The irony of writing about how to adaptively respond to challenges in the middle of a deadly, global pandemic was not lost on us. We saw everyone—friends, family, coworkers, clients—struggle with fear of infection, business disruptions, and isolation. We were no exception and experienced firsthand the personal and professional toll the pandemic wrought. Despite the adversity, however, we moved steadily forward with our writing and used our observations of how people we knew and worked with were coping with the pandemic to inform our discussions of resilience and its various practices.

There is a saying in the field of psychology that all research starts as me-search, meaning that personal experiences precede and influence the process of research. With this book, it’s especially true. We have encountered many challenges in our lives; some were welcome and inspired hope and motivation, others were tremendously difficult and took a significant toll on our well-being. Some were personal in nature, others professional, and many an inextricable mix of both. Through these challenges, we learned that although none of us can control what challenges emerge, each of us has some control over how to respond to such challenges—and how we respond to challenges can greatly affect how that challenge impacts our lives. To illustrate this point, Marian shares a personal challenge journey from her own life:

On September 28, 2012, I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (also known as ALL), a deadly disease of the blood and bone marrow systems. At the time of my diagnosis, approximately two-thirds of adult patients died either of complications from the treatment or from the illness itself. My only option for survival was to check myself into a major cancer hospital and undergo approximately two and a half years of treatment. It started off with six months of intensive chemotherapy, much of which was administered over the course of nine long hospital stays and frequent outpatient visits. The chemotherapy put me at an extremely high risk for infection, meaning that I had to severely limit my contact with others and that I was at risk for noxious side effects.

I was overwhelmed by my cancer diagnosis. It was as though the ground beneath me had suddenly shifted, and I was facing a terrible new reality, one far from my everyday life as a Manager of Research at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), a wife, and mother of two adult children. I experienced none of the classic symptoms of leukemia, such as a fever, weight loss, or unusual bleeding, making the diagnosis a complete surprise. Both my parents had lived into their 90s and I assumed I would as well. An abnormality in my white blood cell count had been picked up in a physical, and it was the follow-up with a hematologist that resulted in this diagnosis. My comfortable life fell apart and I was pushed into the bewildering territory of the seriously ill. I knew that my journey to safety, if I could get there, would be long and painful, as only a small percentage of patients reach full recovery. It was like going from having a clear map of my life to wandering in a foggy haze with an unknown endpoint. The American writer Susan Sontag’s description of illness in Illness as Metaphor is particularly apt. Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.¹

During my first days in the hospital, I read everything I could about ALL and underwent a series of painful tests. I had never heard of this type of leukemia before. When I wasn’t crying, I was simply numbed by the information the doctors gave me. Frankly, it was hard to believe that any of this could be true.

At some point early on in my life as a professional patient, I came across some stories of leukemia survivors who described the experience of cancer as having a silver lining. Amid the despair, they learned how to better appreciate life and develop resilience. I realized that, even though many choices were taken away from me, I still had control over how I could respond to my diagnosis. I made up my mind that I would respond as resiliently as possible. I might not be able to influence my bone marrow and white blood cells, but I could influence my mind, spirit, and physical strength. I decided to make the most of every minute I had, especially those with my husband and children. Although I believe that responses to treatment are independent of mental state, on the chance that my attitude could make a difference, I decided to learn to respond as best as I could to the treatments, tests, and side effects. I wanted to do a better job of living in the here and now. Further, I wanted to help my children and husband cope with my diagnosis. I knew that if I coped in a resilient way, there would be a ripple effect, making it easier for them as well.

No stranger to the topic of resilience through my work as a psychologist at CCL, I realized that my understanding of leadership resilience could help me adapt to this difficult new reality. Resilience is one of the most desired leadership capabilities. It’s also the goal of most cancer patients. You want to recover and, especially if full recovery is not possible, you want to be able to adapt to what life gives you. Recovery and survivorship provide the opportunity to consider how you would change your life.

I took advantage of all the available help. I talked to cancer survivors, social workers, doctors, and nutritionists. I focused on helping myself adapt to the uncertainty of the diagnosis and the treatment side effects. I am one of the lucky ones: I responded well to the chemotherapy. I was indeed able to recover and get my life back. By the time this book is published, I will have been in remission for over nine years. When I finished my treatments, I had a new appreciation for life. Through my illness, I learned how to better put my life in perspective and respond in healthy ways to uncertainty. The practices described in this book were essential to my regaining my well-being. They became my tools in a journey toward acceptance of my new reality.

I returned to work after eight months of intensive treatment, as the remainder of my course of treatment didn’t require me to be a full-time patient. One of the drivers of my return to work was that I wanted to widely share what I had learned about the self-strengthening capacity of resilience, and CCL offered a forum for doing so. CCL has a long-standing interest in resilience and psychological well-being for leaders. This book is a result of my desire to share resources that others could use to generate resilience to better understand a given situation and make wise choices.

As noted previously, in the years prior to publishing this book, we worked on a variety of projects examining well-being at work. As part of a leadership development organization, our research findings were applied during interactions with organizational clients. We worked with numerous CCL colleagues who also had deep interest in helping leaders build resilience. Together, we helped to create content for CCL articles, reports, workshops, and other CCL-sponsored work on resilience, which gave us opportunities to test our ideas.

The resources we generated with our colleagues were used with people at all stages of their leadership journey, across business and nonprofit sectors, and in different countries, and the feedback we received told us that these materials were helpful and effective in dealing with challenges. Writing Resilience That Works became a joint project for the three of us. We wanted to help people understand the resources at their disposal for generating resilience, thereby acting with greater wisdom in those inevitable times of leadership and life distress. We combined our knowledge of psychology with our understanding of leadership development. Resilience That Works combines CCL’s efforts to help leaders build resilience, our original research on resilience practices, and conclusions drawn from the scientific literature. The result is a portfolio of practices that you can use to generate and strengthen your own resilience.

Obviously, leadership comes with radically different challenges than those Marian faced in her journey from patient to survivor, but the need to cope with fears of the unknown and the exhaustion that comes with it are similar. Resilience helps you gain control and adaptively respond to all sorts of disruptions. It’s our hope that the practices in this book will make you feel stronger, more capable, and wiser. This book is intended for as broad an audience as possible. No matter where you may be on your life journey, we encourage you to experiment with the many ways to promote your own resilience. Your job, as the reader, is to ask yourself what will work for you. The brain, body, and mind need attention when the challenges of leadership loom large. We hope this book helps engrain in you a lasting belief: At tough moments in your life, you can generate strength and resilience.

Marian N. Ruderman

Cathleen Clerkin

Katya C. Fernandez

Acknowledgements

A book such as Resilience That Works requires tremendous resources. The Center for Creative Leadership provided us with access to some of the sharpest minds in the leadership development field. We worked with numerous colleagues to explore how to build and present these ideas in useful ways. Although only our names are on this book, dozens of colleagues participated in developing this material. The content exists in CCL’s online learning and face-to-face training classes. We would especially like to thank Lisa Sinclair, who incorporated these ideas with thousands of leaders engaging in leadership development programs before this book was even a glimmer of an idea. We would also like to thank Elena Svetievia, who as a postdoctoral researcher at CCL worked with us on the study of sleep. Many of our CCL colleagues offered support and advice: Peter Ronayne, Marin Burton, Carol Connolly, Susan Reinecke, Sharon McDowell-Larsen, Jessica Glazer, Jennifer Deal, Stephanie Wormington, Stephanie Trovas, George Hallenbeck, and Rachel Peterson were especially generous with their ideas. Peter Scisco, Lyndon Rego, Heather Braddy, Dawn Farabee, Tamara Talansky, and Henry Browning went to great lengths to help us make our ideas actionable and useful to practicing leaders. A special thanks goes to Shaun Martin, our editor, without whom we would not have had a book. Shaun kept us on track and never let us forget our goal was to help the reader grow more resilient. We also want to thank Emily Hoole, Jennifer Martineau, John Ryan, and Cheryl Flink, who gave us the time and support to work on this material. We also worked with colleagues from outside CCL who were especially generous with their time. They include Jessica Payne of the University of Notre Dame, a pioneer in the study of sleep, and Martin Boroson of the One Moment Company, who has reframed meditation techniques for the business world.

While we don’t take credit for all the ideas in this book, we do take credit for the imperfections and mistakes, as it was our responsibility to curate, synthesize, and translate the efforts of many experts on the topic of resilience.

Marian’s Acknowledgements

My greatest appreciation goes to my family, my husband, Lewis Weinstock, daughter, Rachel Weinstock, and son, Joshua Weinstock, who have been amazing sources of love and support. I could not have written this book without them. I also wish to thank Dr. Joseph O. Moore and the hematological oncology team at Duke University Cancer Center, who literally saved my life.

Cathleen’s Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I want to thank my partner, Grey Putnam, who offered so many forms of support during the writing of this book—from doing the dishes, to listening to me complain about the struggles of writing, to reviewing an early version of this manuscript. I am fairly certain I would have given up on this project were it not for his unflappable faith and love. I also want to acknowledge and thank all of my chosen kin: the Psych-Ward, the Old Town Crew, the CareBears, my C’ville family, and others: you are a part of who I am, you are why I’ve made it this far, and you are how I know what resilience looks like.

Katya’s Acknowledgements

My deepest appreciation goes to my family and friends, who have walked by my side through life with grace and love. I am especially grateful for my mother, Vivian Fernandez, who taught me resilience at a very young age through her own courage, strength, and tenacity. It’s because of her endless support and love that I was able to pursue my dream of becoming a psychology researcher, a dream that has allowed me to, in turn, help others build resilience.

Chapter 1

Resilience:

The Currency of Effective Leadership

Every leader’s journey is different. But no matter who you are, one thing is for certain: at some point, you’ll face a challenge that you don’t feel prepared for. The challenge may