HBR'S 10 MUST READS On Mental Toughness

HBR'S 10 MUST READS

On Mental Toughness

If you read nothing else on mental toughness, read these definitive articles from Harvard Business Review.

BONUS ARTICLE An interview with Martin E.P. Seligman

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Contents

Bow the Best of the Best Get Better and Better 1

by Women G. Bennis and Robert Thomas

Building Resilience 25 by Martin E.P. Seligman

by Roderick Gilley and Clint Kits

The Making of a Corporate Athlete 53

Stress Can Be a Good Thing If You Know How to Use It 71

How to Bounce Back from Adversity 77

by Joshua D. Margallis and Paul G. Stoltz

Rebounding from Career Setbacks 89

by Mitchell Lee Marks, Philip Minis, and Ron Ashkenas

Realizing What You're Made Of 97 by Glenn E. Mangurian

Extreme Negotiations 107

by Jeff weiss, Arom Donigion, and Jonatihan Hughes:

BONUS

Post-Traumatic Growth and Building Resilience 125 An interview wich Martin Seligman by Sarah Green Carmichael

Index 135

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How the Best of the Best Get Better and Better

by Graham Jones

UNTIL 1954, MOST PEOPLE BELIEVED that a human being was incapable of running a mile in less than four minutes. But that very year, En glish miler Roger Bannister proved them wrong.

"Doctors and scientists said that breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt," Bannister is re ported to have said afterward. "Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead." Which goes to show that in sports, as in business, the main obstacle to achieving "the impossible" may be a self-limiting mind-set.

As a sports psychologist, I spent much of my career as a consultant to Olympic and world champions in rowing, swimming, squash, track and field, sailing, trampolining, and judo. Then in 1995, I teamed up with Olympic gold medal swimmer Adrian Moorhouse to start Lane4, a firm that has been bringing the lessons from elite athletic performance to Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies, with the help of other world-class athletes such as Greg Searle, Alison Mowbray, and Tom Murray. Sport is not business, of course, but the parallels are striking. In both worlds, elite performers are not born but made. Obviously, star athletes must have some innate, natural ability coordination, physical flexibility, anatomical capacities-just as suc cessful senior executives need to be able to think strategically and

relate to people. But the real key to excellence in both sports and

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business is not the ability to swim fast or do quantitative quickly in your head; rather, it is mental toughness.

Elite performers in both arenas thrive on pressure; they when the heat is turned up. Their rise to the top is the result careful planning-of setting and hitting hundreds of small Elite performers use competition to hone their skills, and the invent themselves continually to stay ahead of the pack. whenever they score big wins, top performers take time to c their victories. Let's look at how these behaviors translate to ecutive suite.

Love the Pressure

You can't stay at the top if you aren't comfortable in high-stre ations. Indeed, the ability to remain cool under fire is the on of elite performers that is most often thought of as inborn. fact you can learn to love the pressure-for driving you to per better than you ever thought you could. To do that, however have to first make a choice to devote yourself passionately to improvement. Greg Searle, who won an Olympic gold medalin ing, is often asked whether success was worth the price. He a gives the same reply: "I never made any sacrifices; I made cho

Managing pressure is a lot easier if you can focus just on own excellence. Top sports performers don't allow themselve be distracted by the victories or failures of others. They conce on what they can control and forget the rest. They rarely let selves be sidetracked by events outside a competition. World golfer Darren Clarke, for example, helped lead the European te a Ryder Cup victory in 2006, six weeks after the death of his be wife. Elite performers are masters of compartmentalization.

If you want to be a high flier in business, you must be e inner-focused and self-directed. Consider one executive I'll call When he was a young man, wrestling was his passion, and he t down an offer from Harvard to attend a less-prominent underg ate school that had a better-ranked wrestling team. Later, after ing his MBA, Jack was recruited by a prestigious investment-ban

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firm, where he eventually rose up to the rank of executive director. Even then, he wasn't driven by any need to impress others. "Don't think for a minute I'm doing this for the status," he once told me. "I'm doing it for myself. This is the stuff I think about in the shower. I'd do it even if I didn't earn a penny."

People who are as self-motivated as Jack or Darren Clarke rarely indulge in self-flagellation. That's not to say that elite performers aren't hard on themselves; they would not have gotten so far with out being hard on themselves. But when things go awry, business and sports superstars dust themselves off and move on.

Another thing that helps star performers love the pressure is their ability to switch their involvement in their endeavors on and off. A good way to do this is to have a secondary passion in life. Rower Alison Mowbray, for example, always set time aside to practice the piano, despite her grueling athletic-training schedule. Not only did she win a silver medal in the Olympics in 2004, but she also became an accomplished pianist in the process.

For top executives, the adrenaline rush of the job can be so ad dictive that it's difficult to break away. But unless you are able to put the day behind you, as elite athletes can, you'll inevitably run the risk of burning out. Many leading businesspeople are passionate about their hobbies; Richard Branson is famous for his hot-air bal loon adventures, for instance. However, even small diversions such as bridge or the opera can be remarkably powerful in helping execu tives tune out and reenergize.

Fixate on the Long Term

Much of star athletes' ability to rebound from defeat comes from an intense focus on long-term goals and aspirations. At the same time, both sports stars and their coaches are keenly aware that the road to long-term success is paved with small achievements.

The trick here is to meticulously plan short-term goals so that performance will peak at major, rather than minor, events. For athletes who participate in Olympic sports, for example, the train ing and preparation are geared to a four-year cycle. However, these

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athletes may also be competing in world championships every ye The inevitable tension arising from this complicated timetable quires very careful management.

Adrian Moorhouse's Olympic gold medal success in 1988 is a c in point. His long-term goal was to swim the 100-meter breaststro in a time of 62 seconds, because he and his coach had calculated fo years in advance that this time should be good enough to win t gold. Of course, Adrian thought about winning in the interim, b all of his training and practice was geared toward hitting a time 62 seconds or better in the Summer Olympics in Seoul. He mappe out specific short-term goals in every area that would affect performance-strength training, nutrition, mental toughness, te nique and more-to make sure he achieved that ultimate goal.

Successful executives often carefully plan out their path to long-term goal too. I once coached a woman I'll call Deborah, ant manager who worked for a low-budget airline. Her long-term go was to become a senior executive in three years. To that end, identified several performance areas in which she needed to excel for example, increasing her reputation and influence among exe tives in other departments of the company and managing comple initiatives. We then identified short-term goals that underpinne achievements in each performance area, such as joining a comp nywide task force and leading an international project. Together w built a system that closely monitored whether Deborah was achie ing the interim goals that would help her fulfill her long-term vision It paid off. Two months short of her three-year target, Deborah wa offered an opportunity to head up the $12 million in-flight busines sales unit.

Use the Competition

s common in track-and-field sports for two elite athletes from different countries to train together. I was at a pre-1996 Olymp training camp for the British team where 100-meter sprinter an then current Olympic champion Linford Christie had a "guest" trai

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with him. His training partner just happened to be Namibian Frankie Fredericks, a silver medalist who had been one of the major threats to Christie's Olympic crown.

World champion rower Tom Murray told me just how competing with the best inspired him to higher achievement. Murray was part of a group of 40 rowers selected to train together with the hopes of gaining one of the 14 spots on the 1996 U.S. Olympic rowing team. Because the final team was chosen only two months before the At lanta games, this meant that the group of 40 trained together for al most four years.

As Murray recalled, one of the last performance evaluations during the final week leading up to the naming of the Olympic team involved a 2,000-meter test on the rowing machine. The 40 athletes took it in four waves of 10; Murray went in the third wave. During the first two waves, 15 rowers set personal best times, and two recorded times that were faster than anyone in the U.S. had ever gone. The benchmark was immediately raised. Murray realized that he needed to row faster than he'd anticipated. He ended up bettering his previous personal best by three seconds and subsequently made the 1996 team.

If you hope to make it to the very top, like Murray, you too will need to make sure you "train" with the people who will push you the hardest. I once coached an executive I'll call Karl. He declined an opportunity to take a position as the second-in-command at a com petitor's firm at twice his current salary. Karl passed up what looked like a standout career opportunity because his current company was deeply committed to coaching him and a cohort of other senior ex ecutives on how to become better leaders. Karl had a reputation for burning people out, and he realized that if he moved on, he would continue that pattern of behavior. He remained in the same job be cause he knew that his coach and peers would help him grow and change his ways.

Smart companies consciously create situations in which their elite performers push one another to levels they would never reach if they were working with less-accomplished colleagues. Tal ent development programs that bring together a company's stars

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for intensive training often serve precisely such a purpose want to become a world-class executive, getting into such a should be one of your first goals.

Reinvent Yourself

It's hard enough getting to the top, but staying there is event You've won that Olympic medal or broken that world re racked up more wins than anyone in your sport. So how do you tivate yourself to embark on another cycle of building the ne and physical endurance required to win the next time, espe now that you have become the benchmark? That is one of the difficult challenges facing elite performers, who have to keep venting themselves.

Consider trampolinist Sue Shotton. I was working with her she achieved the number one ranking among women in 198 is, she was considered to be the best female trampolinist in world. Yet she had still not won a world championship.

Shotton was determined to capture that title, and she left ing to chance. She challenged herself constantly by working specialists such as physiologists, biomechanists, and elite s coaches who kept her up to date on cutting-edge thinking. Ste fected new moves based on video analysis; she tried different of boosting her energy based on nutritional intake. Her effor find ways of staying ahead of fiercely ambitious competitors p when she won the world championship in 1984, becoming the British woman ever to hold the title.

Shotton had an insatiable appetite for feedback-a quality seen in all the top business performers I have worked with have a particularly strong need for instant, in the moment feed One top sales and marketing director I worked with told me the yould never have stayed at his current position if the CEO given him relentless, sometimes brutally honest critiques. If you're like the elite business performers I have coached too are hungry for advice on how to develop and progress word of caution, however: While it's good to feel challenged

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need to make sure that any feedback you get is constructive. If criti cism doesn't seem helpful at first, probe to see if you can get useful insights about what's behind the negative feedback. Get more spe cifics. You should be able to see concrete improvements in your per formance after getting detailed coaching advice.

Celebrate the Victories

Elite performers know how to party-indeed, they put almost as much effort into their celebrations as they do into their accom plishments. I once worked with a professional golfer who, as he worked his way up the ranks to the top of his sport, would reward himself with something he had prized as a young player-an expen sive watch, a fancy car, a new home. These were reminders of his achievements and symbolized to him the hard work, commitment, and dedication he had put into golf for so many years.

Celebration is more than emotional release. Done effectively, it involves a deep level of analysis and enhanced awareness. The very best performers do not move on before they have scrutinized and understood thoroughly the factors underpinning their success. I saw that discipline in the Welsh rugby team, which I advised from 2000 to 2002. After each game, the team members made a special effort to highlight not only what they did poorly but what they did particularly well. They typically split into small groups to identify and discuss the positive aspects of their performance, so that they could focus on reproducing them in the next game. The exercise was a powerful way to build expertise-and self-confidence. Indeed, the most important function of affirming victory is to provide encour agement for attempts at even tougher stretch goals.

In business, where companies are pressed to meet quarterly earn ings and stockholders are impatient, managers must consider the timing and duration of the celebration. Dwelling on success for too long is a distraction and, worse, leads to complacency. Celebrate but push on. Don't get stuck in the rituals of success. At the end of the day, getting to the next level of performance is what celebrating is really all about.

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Smart companies know how to manage the tension be celebrating and looking hungrily for their next achievemen UK mobile telecom provider puts on an annual ball for its pe spending over £1 million a year. The company hires out wel venues and brings in pop bands to entertain all the employe one factor in the company's success is that its managers k partying comes number nine on the list of top 10 reasons for w to win. Like all elite performers, they also know that partying be deserved. Without victory, celebrations are meaningless.

The Will to Win

As the spectacle of the Olympics unfolds, it will be easy to be vated by the flawless performance of elite athletes who makes accomplishments seem almost effortless. Such effortlessne an illusion, though. Even the most youthful star has typically in countless years of preparation and has endured repeated ures. But what drives all these elite performers is a fierce de to compete-and win. Even so, most of those participating in Olympics this summer will walk away from the games without g bing a single medal. Those with real mettle will get back into t ing again. That's what truly separates elite performers from ordin high achievers. It takes supreme, almost unimaginable grit and age to get back into the ring and fight to the bitter end. That's the Olympic athlete does. If you want to be an elite performe business, that's what you need to do, too.

Originally published in June 2008. Reprint R

Crucibles of Leadership by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas

AS LIFELONG STUDENTS OF LEADERSHIP, we are fascinated with the no tion of what makes a leader. Why is it that certain people seem to naturally inspire confidence, loyalty, and hard work, while others (who may have just as much vision and smarts) stumble, again and again? It's a timeless question, and there's no simple answer. But we have come to believe it has something to do with the different ways that people deal with adversity. Indeed, our recent research has led us to conclude that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual's ability to find meaning in nega tive events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.

Take Sidney Harman. Thirty-four years ago, the then-48-year-old businessman was holding down two executive positions. He was the chief executive of Harman Kardon (now Harman International), the audio components company he had cofounded, and he was serving as president of Friends World College, now Friends World Program, an experimental Quaker school on Long Island whose essential phi losophy is that students, not their teachers, are responsible for their education. Juggling the two jobs, Harman was living what he calls a "bifurcated life," changing clothes in his car and eating lunch as he drove between Harman Kardon offices and plants and the Friends

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World campus. One day while at the college, he was told his c pany's factory in Bolivar, Tennessee, was having a crisis. He immediately rushed to the Bolivar factory, a facility that w as Harman now recalls, "raw, ugly, and, in many ways, dem ing." The problem, he found, had erupted in the polish and b department, where a crew of a dozen workers, mostly Africa

Americans, did the dull, hard work of polishing mirrors and othe

parts, often under unhealthy conditions. The men on the night sh

were supposed to get a coffee break at 10 p.m. When the buzzer the

announced the workers' break went on the fritz, management arti

trarily decided to postpone the break for ten minutes, when another

buzzer was scheduled to sound. But one worker, "an old black man

with an almost biblical name, Noah B. Cross," had "an epiphany," a

Harman describes it. "He said, literally, to his fellow workers, 'I don't

work for no buzzer. The buzzer works for me. It's my job to tell me

when it's ten o'clock. I got me a watch. I'm not waiting another ten

minutes. I'm going on my coffee break.' And all 12 guys took their

coffee break, and, of course, all hell broke loose."

The worker's principled rebellion-his refusal to be cowed by

management's senseless rule-was, in turn, a revelation to Harman:

"The technology is there to serve the men, not the reverse," he re

members realizing. "I suddenly had this awakening that everything

was doing at the college had appropriate applications in business."

the ensuing years, Harman revamped the factory and its work

s, turning it into a kind of campus-offering classes on the prem

including piano lessons, and encouraging the workers to take

of the responsibility for running their workplace. Further, he

dan environment where dissent was not only tolerated but

couraged. The plant's lively independent newspaper, the

Mirror, gave workers a creative and emotional outlet-and

asiastically skewered Harman in its pages.

had, unexpectedly, become a pioneer of participative

, a movement that continues to influence the shape of

sound the world. The concept wasn't a grand idea con

CEO's office and imposed on the plant, Harman says.

ly out of his going down to Bolivar to, in his words,

CRUCIBLES OF LEADERSHIP

Idea in Brief

what enables one leader to inspire

confidence, loyalty, and hard work,

while others-with equal vision

and intelligence-stumble? How

individuals deal with adversity

provides a clue.

Extraordinary leaders find mean

ing in-and learn from-the most

negative events. Like phoenixes

rising from the ashes, they emerge from adversity stronger, more confident in themselves and their purpose, and more committed to their work.

Such transformative events are called crucibles-a severe test or trial. Crucibles are intense, often traumatic-and always unplanned.

"put out this fire." Harman's transformation was, above all, a cre

ative one. He had connected two seemingly unrelated ideas and cre

ated a radically different approach to management that recognized

both the economic and humane benefits of a more collegial work

place. Harman went on to accomplish far more during his career. In

addition to founding Harman International, he served as the deputy

secretary of commerce under Jimmy Carter. But he always looked

back on the incident in Bolivar as the formative event in his profes

sional life, the moment he came into his own as a leader. The details of Harman's story are unique, but their significance is not. In interviewing more than 40 top leaders in business and the public sector over the past three years, we were surprised to find that all of them-young and old-were able to point to intense, often traumatic, always unplanned experiences that had transformed them and had become the sources of their distinctive leadership abilities. We came to call the experiences that shape leaders "crucibles,"

after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn

base metals into gold. For the leaders we interviewed, the crucible

experience was a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that

forced them to question who they were and what mattered to them.

I required them to examine their values, question their assump

tions, hone their judgment. And, invariably, they emerged from the

crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose

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The Crucible Experience

Credes force leaders into deep sell reflection, where they examine their values, question their assump

Exemple: Sidney Harman 60-founder of sudio.com ponents company Harman Kardon and president of an experimental college an couraging student driven education-encountered his crucible when "all hell broke toose" in one of his factories. After managers postponed a scheduled break because the buzzer didn't sound, workers rebelled, "I don't work for no buzzer one proclaimed.

To Harman, this refusal senseless rule suggested a surprising link between student-driven education and business. Pioneering

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participative manag Harman transformed his g into a kind of campus, ing classes and encou dissent. He considers the rebellion the formative eve in his career the moment became a true leader,

The Many Shapes of Crucibles

some crucibles are violent and life-threatening (encounters with prejudice, illness), others are more positive, yet profoundly challenging (such as demanding bosses or mentors). Whatever the shape, leaders create a narrative telling how they met the chal lenge and became better for it

Example: While working for former Atlanta mayor Robert F. Maddox, Vernon Jordan en dured repeated racial heckling from Maddox. Rather than let ting Maddox's sadism destroy him, Jordan interpreted the be

Leadership crucibles can take many forms. Some are violent, life threatening events, Others are more prosaic episodes of self-doubt. But whatever the crucible's nature, the people we spoke with were able, like Harman, to create a narrative around it, a story of how the were challenged, met the challenge, and became better leaders. A we studied these stories, we found that they not only told us how ividual leaders are shaped but also pointed to some characteristic at seem common to all leaders-characteristics that were formed at least exposed, in the crucible.

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havior as a desperate lashing out by someone who knew the era of the Old South was ending. Jor dan's response empowered him to become an esteemed lawyer and presidential advisor.

Essential Leadership skills Four skills enable leaders to learn from adversity:

1. Engage others in shared meaning. For example, Sidney Harman mobilized employees around a radical new manage ment approach-amid a fac tory crisis.

2. A distinctive, compelling voice. With words alone, col lege president Jack Coleman preempted a violent clash between the football team and anti-Vietnam War demonstrators threatening to burn the Ameri can flag, Coleman's suggestion to the protestors? Lower the flag, wash it, then put it back up.

Learning from Difference

3. Integrity. Coleman's values prevailed during the emotion ally charged face-off between antiwar demonstrators and irate football players.

4. Adaptive capacity. This most critical skill includes the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. Grasping context requires weighing many fac tors (e.g., how different people will interpret a gesture). With out this quality, leaders can't connect with constituents.

Hardiness provides the perseverance and toughness needed to remain hopeful despite disaster. For instance, Michael Klein made millions in real estate during his teens, lost it all by age 20-then built several more businesses, including transforming a tiny software company into a Hewlett-Packard acquisition.

A crucible is, by definition, a transformative experience through which an individual comes to a new or an altered sense of identity. It is perhaps not surprising then that one of the most common types of crucibles we documented involves the experience of prejudice. Being a victim of prejudice is particularly traumatic because it forces an individual to confront a distorted picture of him-or herself, and it often unleashes profound feelings of anger, bewilderment, and even

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gatherings, a turn of events that probably wouldn't have occurred if Altman had alienated her female coworkers on that first day. "Had I just gone to try to break in with [the men] and not had her as an ally, it would never have happened," she says.

Looking back, Altman believes the experience greatly helped her gain a clearer sense of her personal strengths and capabilities, pre paring her for other difficult situations. Her tenure in Japan taught her to observe closely and to avoid jumping to conclusions based on cultural assumptions-invaluable skills in her current position at Motorola, where she leads efforts to smooth alliances with other corporate cultures, including those of Motorola's different regional operations.

Altman has come to believe that she wouldn't have been as able to do the Motorola job if she hadn't lived in a foreign country and expe rienced the dissonance of cultures: "... even if you're sitting in the same room, ostensibly agreeing... unless you understand the frame of reference, you're probably missing a bunch of what's going on." Altman also credits her crucible with building her confidence-she feels that she can cope with just about anything that comes her way.

People can feel the stigma of cultural differences much closer to home, as well. Muriel ("Mickie") Siebert, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, found her crucible on the Wall Street of the 1950s and 1960s, an arena so sexist that she couldn't get a job as a stockbroker until she took her first name off her résumé and substituted a genderless initial. Other than the secretaries and the occasional analyst, women were few and far between. That she was Jewish was another strike against her at a time, she points out, when most of big business was "not nice" to either women or Jews. But Siebert wasn't broken or defeated. Instead, she emerged stron ger, more focused, and more determined to change the status quo that excluded her.

When we interviewed Siebert, she described her way of address ing anti-Semitism-a technique that quieted the offensive comments of her peers without destroying the relationships she needed to do her job effectively. According to Siebert, at the time it was part of

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withdrawal. For all its trauma, however, the experience of prejudica is for some a clarifying event. Through it, they gain a clearer vision of who they are, the role they play, and their place in the world. Consider, for example, Liz Altman, now a Motorola vice pres

dent, who was transformed by the year she spent at a Sony can corder factory in rural Japan, where she faced both estrangement and sexism. It was, says Altman, "by far, the hardest thing I've ever done. The foreign culture-particularly its emphasis on groups over individuals-was both a shock and a challenge to a young American woman. It wasn't just that she felt lonely in an alien world. She had to face the daunting prospect of carving out a place for herself as the only woman engineer in a plant, and nation, where women usually serve as low-level assistants and clerks known as "office ladies"

Another woman who had come to Japan under similar circum stances had warned Altman that the only way to win the men's te spect was to avoid becoming allied with the office ladies. But on her very first morning, when the bell rang for a coffee break, the men headed in one direction and the women in another-and the women saved her a place at their table, while the men ignored her. Instinct told Altman to ignore the warning rather than insult the women by ebuffing their invitation.

Over the next few days, she continued to join the women during reaks, a choice that gave her a comfortable haven from which to bserve the unfamiliar office culture. But it didn't take her long to otice that some of the men spent the break at their desks reading magazines, and Altman determined that she could do the same on ccasion. Finally, after paying close attention to the conversations ound her, she learned that several of the men were interested in mountain biking. Because Altman wanted to buy a mountain bike, e approached them for advice. Thus, over time, she established self as something of a free agent, sometimes sitting with the and other times engaging with the men.

as it happened, one of the women she'd sat with on her very y, the department secretary, was married to one of the eng The secretary took it upon herself to include Altman in social

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doing business to have a few drinks at lunch. She remembers, " somebody a couple of drinks, and they would talk about the lew She had a greeting card she used for those occasions that went this:

Roses are reddish,

Violets are bluish, In case you don't know, I am Jewish.

Siebert would have the card hand-delivered to the person who had made the anti-Semitic remarks, and on the card she had writ ten, "Enjoyed lunch." As she recounts, "They got that card in the a ternoon, and I never had to take any of that nonsense again. And never embarrassed anyone, either." It was because she was unable to get credit for the business she was bringing in at any of the large Wall Street firms that she bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and started working for herself.

In subsequent years, she went on to found Muriel Siebert & Com pany (now Siebert Financial Corporation) and has dedicated herself to helping other people avoid some of the difficulties she faced as a young professional. A prominent advocate for women in business and a leader in developing financial products directed at women, she's also devoted to educating children about financial opportuni ties and responsibility.

We didn't interview lawyer and presidential adviser Vernon Jor dan for this article, but he, too, offers a powerful reminder of how prejudice can prove transformational rather than debilitating. In Vernon Can Read! A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2001), Jordan describes the vicious baiting he was subjected to as a young man. The man who treated him in this offensive way was his employer, Robert F. Maddox. Jordan served the racist former mayor of Atlanta at dinner, in a white jacket, with a napkin over his arm. He also functioned as addox's chauffeur. Whenever Maddox could, he would derisively nnounce, "Vernon can read!" as if the literacy of a young African American were a source of wonderment.

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Geeks and Geezers

WE DIDN'T SET OUT TO LEARN about crucibles. Our research for this article and for our new book, Geeks and Geezers, was actually designed to uncover the ways that era influences a leader's motivation and aspirations. We inter viewed 43 of today's top leaders in business and the public sector, limiting our subjects to people born in or before 1925, or in or after 1970. To our de light, we learned a lot about how age and era affect leadership style.

Our geeks and geezers (the affectionate shorthand we eventually used to de scribe the two groups) had very different ideas about paying your dues, work life balance, the role of heroes, and more. But they also shared some striking similarities-among them a love of learning and strong sense of values. Most intriguing, though, both our geeks and our geezers told us again and again how certain experiences inspired them, shaped them, and, indeed, taught them to lead. And so, as the best research often does, our work turned out to be even more interesting than we thought it would be. We continued to explore the influences of era-our findings are described in our book-but at the same time we probed for stories of these crucible experiences. These are the stories we share with you here.

Subjected to this type of abuse, a lesser man might have allowed Maddox to destroy him. But in his memoir, Jordan gives his own in terpretation of Maddox's sadistic heckling, a tale that empowered Jordan instead of embittering him. When he looked at Maddox through the rearview mirror, Jordan did not see a powerful member of Georgia's ruling class. He saw a desperate anachronism, a person who lashed out because he knew his time was up. As Jordan writes about Maddox, "His half-mocking, half-serious comments about my education were the death rattle of his culture. When he saw that I was... crafting a life for myself that would make me a man in...

ways he thought of as being a man, he was deeply unnerved." Maddox's cruelty was the crucible that, consciously or not, Jor dan imbued with redemptive meaning. Instead of lashing out or being paralyzed with hatred, Jordan saw the fall of the Old South and imagined his own future freed of the historical shackles of rac ism. His ability to organize meaning around a potential crisis turned it into the crucible around which his leadership was forged.

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BENNIS AND THOMAS

Reinvention in the Extreme: The Power of Neoteny

ALL OF OUR INTERVIEW SUBJECTS described their crucibles as opportu for reinvention-for taking stock of their lives and finding meaning in ci stances many people would see as daunting and potentially incapac ing. In the extreme, this capacity for reinvention comes to resemble e youth-a kind of vigor, openness, and an enduring capacity for wonder th the antithesis of stereotyped old age.

We borrowed a term from biology-"neoteny," which, according to the Am can Heritage Dictionary, means "retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species"-to describe this quality, this delight in lifelong learning which every leader we interviewed displayed, regardless of age. To a pers they were full of energy, curiosity, and confidence that the world is a placed wonders spread before them like an endless feast.

Robert Galvin, former Motorola chairman now in his late 70s, spends h weekends windsurfing. Arthur Levitt Jr., former SEC chairman who turne 71 this year, is an avid Outward Bound trekker. And architect Frank Gehry now a 72-year-old ice hockey player. But it's not only an affinity for phys cal activity that characterizes neoteny-it's an appetite for learning and se development, a curiosity and passion for life.

To understand why this quality is so powerful in a leader, it might help to tale a quick look at the scientific principle behind it-neoteny as an evolutiona engine. It is the winning, puppyish quality of certain ancient wolves that a lowed them to evolve into dogs. Over thousands of years, humans favored wolves that were the friendliest, most approachable, and most curious. Nat urally, people were most drawn to the wolves least likely to attack withog warning, that readily locked eyes with them, and that seemed almost human in their eager response to people; the ones, in short, that stayed the most e puppies. Like human infants, they have certain physical qualities that elicta nurturing response in human adults.

Prevailing over Darkness

Some crucible experiences illuminate a hidden and suppressed are of the soul. These are often among the harshest of crucibles, invol ing, for instance, episodes of illness or violence. In the case of Sidner Rittenberg, now 79, the crucible took the form of 16 years of unjus imprisonment, in solitary confinement, in Communist China. I

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When infants see an adult, they often respond with a smile that begins small and slowly grows into a radiant grin that makes the adult feel at center of the universe. Recent studies of bonding indicate that nursing and other intimate interactions with an infant cause the mother's system to be flooded with oxytocin, a calming, feel-good hormone that is a powerful antidote to corti sol, the hormone produced by stress. Oxytocin appears to be the glue that produces bonding. And the baby's distinctive look and behaviors cause oxy tocin to be released in the fortunate adult. That appearance-the one that pults an involuntary "aaah" out of us whenever we see a baby-and those axytocin-inducing behaviors allow infants to recruit adults to be their nur turers, essential if such vulnerable and incompletely developed creatures are to survive.

The power of neoteny to recruit protectors and nurturers was vividly illus trated in the former Soviet Union. Forty years ago, a Soviet scientist decided to start breeding silver foxes for neoteny at a Siberian fur farm. The goal was to create a tamer fox that would go with less fuss to slaughter than the typical silver fox. Only the least aggressive, most approachable animals were bred.

The experiment continued for 40 years, and today, after 35 generations, the farm is home to a breed of tame foxes that look and act more like juvenile foxes and even dogs than like their wild forebears. The physical changes in the animals are remarkable (some have floppy, dog-like ears), but what is truly stunning is the change neoteny has wrought in the human response to them. Instead of taking advantage of the fact that these neotenic animals don't snap and snarl on the way to their deaths, their human keepers appear to have been recruited by their newly cute and endearing charges. The keep ers and the foxes appear to have formed close bonds, so close that the keep ers are trying to find ways to save the animals from slaughter.

1949 Rittenberg was initially jailed, without explanation, by former friends in Chairman Mao Zedong's government and spent his first year in total darkness when he wasn't being interrogated. (Rittenberg later learned that his arrest came at the behest of Communist Party officials in Moscow, who had wrongly identified him as a CIA agent.) Thrown into jail, confined to a tiny, pitch-dark cell, Rittenberg did

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not rail or panic. Instead, within minutes, he remembered a stan verse, four lines recited to him when he was a small child

They drew a circle that shut me out, Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,

But love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle that took them in

That bit of verse (adapted from "Outwitted," a poem by Markham) was the key to Rittenberg's survival. "My God," thought, "there's my strategy." He drew the prison guards into b circle, developing relationships that would help him adapt to b confinement. Fluent in Chinese, he persuaded the guards to delive him books and, eventually, provide a candle so that he could tead He also decided, after his first year, to devote himself to improving his mind-making it more scientific, more pure, and more dedicate to socialism. He believed that if he raised his consciousness, his cap tors would understand him better. And when, over time, the year in the dark began to take an intellectual toll on him and he found his reason faltering, he could still summon fairy tales and childhood stories such as The Little Engine That Could and take comfort from their simple messages.

By contrast, many of Rittenberg's fellow prisoners either lashed out in anger or withdrew. "They tended to go up the wall... They couldn't make it. And I think the reason was that they didn't under stand. that happiness... is not a function of your circumstances it's a function of your outlook on life."

Rittenberg's commitment to his ideals continued upon his t lease. His cell door opened suddenly in 1955, after his first six-yea term in prison. He recounts, "Here was a representative of the cen tral government telling me that I had been wronged, that the gover ment was making a formal apology to me...and that they would do everything possible to make restitution. When his captors offered him money to start a new life in the United States or to travel in E pe, Rittenberg declined, choosing instead to stay in China and co ue his work for the Communist Party

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And even after a second arrest, which put him into solitary con finement for ten years as retaliation for his support of open democ y during the Cultural Revolution, Rittenberg did not allow his spirit to be broken. Instead, he used his time in prison as an opportunity to question his belief system-in particular, his commitment to Marxism and Chairman Mao. "In that sense, prison emancipated me," he says. Rittenberg studied, read, wrote, and thought, and he learned something about himself in the process: "I realized I had this great fear of being a turncoat, which... was so powerful that it prevented me from even looking at [my assumptions]... Even to question was an act of betrayal. After I got out... the scales fell away from my eyes and I understood that ... the basic doctrine of arriving at de

mocracy through dictatorship was wrong." What's more, Rittenberg emerged from prison certain that abso lutely nothing in his professional life could break him and went on to start a company with his wife. Rittenberg Associates is a consult ing firm dedicated to developing business ties between the United States and China. Today, Rittenberg is as committed to his ideals-if not to his view of the best way to get there-as he was 50 years ago, when he was so severely tested.

Meeting Great Expectations

Fortunately, not all crucible experiences are traumatic. In fact, they can involve a positive, if deeply challenging, experience such as having a demanding boss or mentor. Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, for instance, attri butes much of his success to his interaction with a splendid mentor. That mentor was J. Maynard Dickerson, a successful attorney-the first black city prosecutor in the United States-and editor of a local African-American newspaper.

Dickerson influenced Jones at many levels. For instance, the older man brought Jones behind the scenes to witness firsthand the great civil rights struggle of the 1950s, inviting him to sit in on con versations with activists like Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Robert C. Weaver. Says Jones, "I was struck by their

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resolve, their humor... and their determination not to let the s

tem define them. Rather than just feel beaten down, they turned around." The experience no doubt influenced the many important opinions Judge Jones has written in regard to civil rights. Dickerson was both model and coach. His lessons covered every aspect of Jones's intellectual growth and presentation of self, in cluding schooling in what we now call "emotional intelligence Dickerson set the highest standards for Jones, especially in the are of communication skills-a facility we've found essential to leader ship. Dickerson edited Jones's early attempts at writing a sports co umn with respectful ruthlessness, in red ink, as Jones remembers this day-marking up the copy so that it looked, as Jones says, "like something chickens had a fight over." But Dickerson also took the time to explain every single mistake and why it mattered.

His mentor also expected the teenage Jones to speak correctly at all times and would hiss discreetly in his direction if he stumblet Great expectations are evidence of great respect, and as Jones learned all the complex, often subtle lessons of how to succeed, he was motivated in no small measure by his desire not to disappoint the man he still calls "Mr. Dickerson." Dickerson gave Jones the king of intensive mentoring that was tantamount to grooming him for a kind of professional and moral succession-and Jones has indeed become an instrument for the profound societal change for which Dickerson fought so courageously as well. Jones found life-changing meaning in the attention Dickerson paid to him-attention fueled by a conviction that he, too, though only a teenager, had a vital role to play in society and an important destiny.

Another story of a powerful mentor came to us from Michael Klein, a young man who made millions in Southern California real estate while still in his teens, only to lose it by the time he turned 20 and en go on to start several other businesses. His mentor was his grand ther Max S. Klein, who created the paint-by-numbers fad that swept the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Klein was only four or five years old when his grandfather approached him and offered to share his business expertise. Over the years, Michael Klein's grandfather taught him to learn from and to cope with change, and the two spoke by phone for an hour every day until shortly before Max Klein's death. 22

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21 CRUCIBLES OF LEADERSHIP

The Essentials of Leadership

In our interviews, we heard many other stories of crucible experi ences. Take Jack Coleman, 78-year-old former president of Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He told us of one day, during the Vietnam War, when he heard that a group of students was planning to pull down the American flag and burn it-and that former members of the school's football team were going to make sure the students didn't succeed. Seemingly out of nowhere, Coleman had the idea to preempt

the violence by suggesting that the protesting students take down the

flag, wash it, and then put it back up-a crucible moment that even

now elicits tremendous emotion in Coleman as he describes that day. There's also Common Cause founder John W. Gardner, who died earlier this year at 89. He identified his arduous training as a Marine during World War II as the crucible in which his leadership abilities emerged. Architect Frank Gehry spoke of the biases he experienced as a Jew in college. Jeff Wilke, a general manager at a major manu facturer, told us of the day he learned that an employee had been killed in his plant-an experience that taught him that leadership was about much more than making quarterly numbers.

So, what allowed these people to not only cope with these dif ficult situations but also learn from them? We believe that great leaders possess four essential skills, and, we were surprised to learn, these happen to be the same skills that allow a person to find meaning in what could be a debilitating experience. First is the abil ity to engage others in shared meaning. Consider Sidney Harman, who dived into a chaotic work environment to mobilize employees around an entirely new approach to management. Second is a dis tinctive and compelling voice. Look at Jack Coleman's ability to de fuse a potentially violent situation with only his words. Third is a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values). Here, we point again to Coleman, whose values prevailed even during the emotion ally charged clash between peace demonstrators and the angry (and strong) former football team members.

But by far the most critical skill of the four is what we call "adap tive capacity." This is, in essence, applied creativity-an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses,

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and to emerge stronger than before. It's composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. The ability to s an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to grasp context imp being able to put a situation in perspective. Without this, leaders are utterly lost, because they cannot connect with their constituents. M. Douglas Ivester, who succeeded Roberto Goizueta at Coca-Cola, exhibited a woeful inability to grasp context, lasting just 28 months on the job. For example, he demoted his highest-ranked African American employee even as the company was losing a $200 million class-action suit brought by black employees-and this in Atlanta, a city with a powerful African-American majority. Contrast Ivester with Vernon Jordan. Jordan realized his boss's time was up-not just his time in power, but the era that formed him. And so Jordan was able to see past the insults and recognize his boss's bitterness for what it was-desperate lashing out.

Hardiness is just what it sounds like-the perseverance and tough ness that enable people to emerge from devastating circumstances without losing hope. Look at Michael Klein, who experienced failure but didn't let it defeat him. He found himself with a single asset a tiny software company he'd acquired. Klein built it into Transoft Networks, which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 1999. Consider, too. Mickie Siebert, who used her sense of humor to curtail offensive conversations. Or Sidney Rittenberg's strength during his impris onment. He drew on his personal memories and inner strength to emerge from his lengthy prison term without bitterness.

It is the combination of hardiness and ability to grasp context that, above all, allows a person to not only survive an ordeal, but to leam from it, and to emerge stronger, more engaged, and more committed than ever. These attributes allow leaders to grow from their cruci bles, instead of being destroyed by them-to find opportunity where others might find only despair. This is the stuff of true leadership. Originally published in September 2002. Reprint Ro2098

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Building Resilience

by Martin E.P. Seligman

DOUGLAS AND WALTER, two University of Pennsylvania MBA gradu ates, were laid off by their Wall Street companies 18 months ago. Both went into a tailspin: They were sad, listless, indecisive, and anxious about the future. For Douglas, the mood was transient. After two weeks he told himself, "It's not you; it's the economy going through a bad patch. I'm good at what I do, and there will be a mar ket for my skills." He updated his résumé and sent it to a dozen New York firms, all of which rejected him. He then tried six companies in his Ohio hometown and eventually landed a position. Walter, by contrast, spiraled into hopelessness: "I got fired because I can't per form under pressure," he thought. "I'm not cut out for finance. The economy will take years to recover." Even as the market improved, he didn't look for another job; he ended up moving back in with his parents.

Douglas and Walter (actually composites based on interviewees) stand at opposite ends of the continuum of reactions to failure. The Douglases of the world bounce back after a brief period of malaise; within a year they've grown because of the experience. The Walters go from sadness to depression to a paralyzing fear of the future. Yet failure is a nearly inevitable part of work; and along with dashed romance, it is one of life's most common traumas. People like Wal ter are almost certain to find their careers stymied, and companies full of such employees are doomed in hard times. It is people like Douglas who rise to the top, and whom organizations must recruit

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HBR'S 10 MUST READS

On Mental Toughness

Come back from every setback a stronger and better leader.

If you read nothing else on mental toughness, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you build your emotional strength and resilience-and to achieve high performance.

This book will inspire you to: • Thrive on pressure like an Olympic athlete

• Manage and overcome negative emotions by acknowledging them • Plan short-term goals to achieve long-term aspirations

• Surround yourself with the people who will push you the

hardest

• Use challenges to become a better leader • Use creativity to move past trauma

Understand the tools your mind uses to recover from setbacks

ISBN-13: 978-1-63369-436-1

MANAGEMENT