We went to the beach in the Mediterranean on our recent holiday (now sadly just a memory) to find the sea was very rough with too many waves to snorkel and not many people in the water. However, despite this it was ideal for trying out a new bodyboard and for surfing into the beach with the large waves. Once in the sea you forget how rough the water is and are always looking for and welcoming the next big wave to ride in on.
It struck me at the time, that this reflects the right attitude to our complex jobs in the professional world, where we are asked to deal with repeated difficult and time critical demands. One approach which is easy to fall into is to become swamped by the repeated “waves” of challenges. The better attitude is to welcome the opportunity of each wave, the larger the better, and see how far dealing with the issue can take you in solving the problem and learning from the experience.
Then suddenly instead of worrying about the “rough seas” we are looking forward to them and to conquering the challenge they bring. Instead of being concerned and defensive this attitude puts you on the front foot and somehow the problems are then easier to solve.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines rising to the challenge as to perform so as to succeed. Dealing with successive problems and issues is commonplace these days for professionals in this changing world. See this Forbes article How To Respond To Workplace Adversity With Resilience which suggests that adversity tends to spark a counter-productive responsewhen instead of dealing with a new challenge:
“When our brains are preoccupied, …….. we engage in counterproductive behavior. “We demonize, we retreat from the problem itself and from others who might provide counsel, and then we redouble those efforts. We do more and more of the behavior that didn’t help us in the first place.”
It then proposes an “adversity toolkit” with some ideas on how to recognise and understand the crisis and develop a plan to deal with it rather than being overwhelmed.
In this Harvard Gazette article on How Leaders are Shaped Nancy F. Koehn a historian at Harvard Business School suggests that leaders rise by responding effectively and thoughtfully to challengescommenting that it starts with the realization of the individual that a crisis is a great classroom. This is the realization of many of us who have been through a major challenge, that there is something fertile in all this adversity, all this confusion, all this ambiguity, and at times borderline despair, in that “I can learn something important for myself of what I might be.
The 17th century French playwright Moliere wrote The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
So as the academic and author of Mindset Carol Dweck advisesLove challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning.
And in my case as the Beachboys sang:
We're waxing down our surfboards
We can't wait for June
We'll all be gone for the summer
We're on surfari to stay
Tell the teacher we're surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.
It struck me at the time, that this reflects the right attitude to our complex jobs in the professional world, where we are asked to deal with repeated difficult and time critical demands. One approach which is easy to fall into is to become swamped by the repeated “waves” of challenges. The better attitude is to welcome the opportunity of each wave, the larger the better, and see how far dealing with the issue can take you in solving the problem and learning from the experience.
Then suddenly instead of worrying about the “rough seas” we are looking forward to them and to conquering the challenge they bring. Instead of being concerned and defensive this attitude puts you on the front foot and somehow the problems are then easier to solve.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines rising to the challenge as to perform so as to succeed. Dealing with successive problems and issues is commonplace these days for professionals in this changing world. See this Forbes article How To Respond To Workplace Adversity With Resilience which suggests that adversity tends to spark a counter-productive responsewhen instead of dealing with a new challenge:
“When our brains are preoccupied, …….. we engage in counterproductive behavior. “We demonize, we retreat from the problem itself and from others who might provide counsel, and then we redouble those efforts. We do more and more of the behavior that didn’t help us in the first place.”
It then proposes an “adversity toolkit” with some ideas on how to recognise and understand the crisis and develop a plan to deal with it rather than being overwhelmed.
In this Harvard Gazette article on How Leaders are Shaped Nancy F. Koehn a historian at Harvard Business School suggests that leaders rise by responding effectively and thoughtfully to challengescommenting that it starts with the realization of the individual that a crisis is a great classroom. This is the realization of many of us who have been through a major challenge, that there is something fertile in all this adversity, all this confusion, all this ambiguity, and at times borderline despair, in that “I can learn something important for myself of what I might be.
The 17th century French playwright Moliere wrote The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
So as the academic and author of Mindset Carol Dweck advisesLove challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning.
And in my case as the Beachboys sang:
We're waxing down our surfboards
We can't wait for June
We'll all be gone for the summer
We're on surfari to stay
Tell the teacher we're surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.
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