Resilience and Adversity

Nobody teaches you how to grieve and lead at the same time. There’s no chapter in any MBA program about what to do when you’re running a team of 50 and you can barely get out of bed. No workshop on how to run a quarterly review when you’re processing a loss that rewrites your…

People in corporate environments like to talk about resilience in the abstract. Bouncing back from setbacks. Embracing change. Leaning into discomfort. They discuss it in climate-controlled conference rooms with catered lunches and motivational slides. I learned about resilience on rooftops in Wisconsin winters. Thirty feet up, wind chill below zero, with a crew of 15…

There’s a moment in every talk I give where I can feel the room shift. I’ve just said the words: my mother died by suicide when I was 20 months old. The energy changes. People lean in. Some look away. Others get very still. That moment is powerful. And it’s dangerous. Because the temptation, for…

After every talk I give about resilience and adversity, there’s a Q&A. And after the Q&A, there’s the real Q&A. The one that happens in the hallway, at the signing table, in quiet conversations as the room empties. Those questions are different from the ones people ask with a microphone in their hand. I’ve spoken…