Positively Resilient

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Doug Hensch. He is the author of Positively Resilient. Great book, by the way. Doug and his philosophy is simply to set meaningful goals. Identify your strengths and work on them regularly. He applies this approach with clients such as Verizon, TWC, and Baker Tilly.

He received three degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, a bachelor's in economics, a master's in education, and a master's in organizational management. Doug, thank you so much for making the time today. Let's really briefly, just so that we're all on the same page. Let's define if you would. Resilience.

Doug Hensch: First of all it's the differentiator. It's not just the ability to bounce back. I think it's seeing challenges as opportunities as well as connecting with other human beings. When you put all those together, it's a rich and deep concept.

Anita Brick: It's interesting you said, you know, turning obstacles into opportunities. And one of the alums asked this question, what is your advice around turning obstacles into opportunities, and how can I operationalize this and make it repeatable?

Doug Hensch: It starts with just a little bit of optimism and saying, you know what? If we actually did turn this ship around? The question is really interesting because how do you make it operational? This is where the human condition gets interesting to me. Repeatable can be very difficult, but particularly when it comes to emotions. My advice would be to regularly document the challenges you're going through.

I do think writing in journals a couple days at a time, to get to build some self-awareness and to build some thick skin so that you're more likely not to overreact because obstacles are a way of life. There's no getting around them. And sometimes when we wish that they weren't there, that's probably the worst thing that could happen as opposed to just taking them head on.

Anita Brick: I think you're right. There was a related question from another alum and she said, does resilience have to be born out of adversity? Do you have to go through trying times in order to develop a sense of resilience?

Doug Hensch: That also is a good question, and one that I think about a fair amount is if born out of adversity, not always. And I think it's a combination of genetics as well as the way that our parents, our coaches and our teachers spoke to us and the way they modeled certain behaviors. With that said, I believe we've got an epidemic of comfort, and these are not my words.

Todd Cashman and Robert Distrusting are authors of The Upside of Your Dark Side. In some ways, things are too easy for us. Then, when we are hit with small issues, they magnify and become much bigger than we expected. And the second part of that question, well, number one, you're not going to know if you're resilient unless something bad happens. In my opinion, we're not really going to know. The second thing that I would tell you is look for opportunities to fail, make failure your best friend. I think that's where we get our best learning from.

Anita Brick: What if you're not good at or comfortable with failing? One of the evening students said, and some of it is how he was raised. Failure was not really a good option growing up. His parents were not very open to his failing. How do you get started learning how to fail so that you can build that resilience?

Doug Hensch: Yeah, that's a good point. I completely understand this person's point of view, because I probably would have marked myself as somebody like that a number of years ago. And I'm thinking about Carol Dweck research. The more we focus on the process, instead of saying, I want to get an A, or I want to hit the sales target, I want to learn as much as I can about my consumer or how my product performs in the marketplace.

What happens? Ultimately, I believe that when we focus on the process and our hard work and we're learning and adjusting along the way, I actually think we're less likely to fail. With that said, it's not easy. I think it takes years of probably finding little ways to fail quickly, try something that is maybe not high profile, get comfortable with it, and it really does take a change in mindset.

Anita Brick: I am very sure. It doesn't feel good at the moment, but when you step back with a bit of the 2020 highest view, you know you could never be where you are today. Had that not happened. It was another related question, this time from an evening student who said, how do you know if it's time to keep trying or time to reset and give up?

Doug Hensch: Very good question. Once again, I think this comes down to a couple of things. The first is what are your most cherished values? What's important to you? I think sometimes we make these small decisions and we go down a certain path, and maybe we're not doing what we love to do. Maybe we're not working to our strengths. Maybe we're working in a way that we had thought years ago would be the antithesis of who we are and what's important to us about making the world a better place.

That's one thing. What's important to you? The second thing that I would say is the concept of just setting tripwires ahead of time. So much resilience in this particular case with goals is a little bit of planning goes a long way, right? Slowing down to speed up is what I love to tell my clients. Just let's just slow down for a second here, because the train's going too fast.

And I ask my clients to set tripwires. So some of them have some really, really big goals. What I think is a good practice is to set these tripwires to say, hey, in six months, if we have not hit these metrics, we need to call it quits. Now, it's not necessarily your goals, it's some level below those goals because we know we never exactly hit what the numbers are, but recognizing that we are so far off track and setting it ahead of time when you're a little bit more objective.

Because by the time you get to the six month mark, you're going to be rationalizing, justifying, and if you can look back to what your past self said when he or she was in a much calmer state, you're going to be more objective and make a better decision.

Anita Brick: It's a really good point. People have an expectation that those early stages, whether it's starting a company or a new stage of your career where you have that steep learning curve and there's a lot of action and a lot of growth happening very quickly. When it slows down, it can be really disconcerting. So there was another alum who said, how do you determine whether a lack of progression in a stage of your career is an actual obstacle versus that? You've gotten lazy?

Doug Hensch: Yeah, that's a really hard question. And the coach in me wants to talk to this person. First of all, I don't think that there's a formula for that. And I would go back to maybe some journaling the value, by the way, in the journaling that I mentioned, this work from James Baker at the University of Texas is invaluable because it does create almost a little bit of objectivity where we write about our emotions and we can step back for a second and put things on paper.

We slow down many times. A lack of resilience comes from, in my humble opinion, we're too close to the issue and our minds are racing. We write much slower than we think. That allows us to get a more clear objective. The other thing that I think might be helpful is just popping into my mind is, you know, what would you tell your best friend?

What advice would you give to step out of yourself when you're watching this? What would you say if your best friend came to you? So much of this comes back to trying to create some objectivity for yourself, because you were in the thick of it.

Anita Brick: Good point. And I think it was a related study, but in the early 90s, there was a study about journaling with people who were in. They were in a job search mode. They didn't say why. Even I could probably speculate as to why, but at the end of the study, they had one group journal, and they had and they were given some direction around that.

And then the control group received things like help with resumes and interviews, as did the experimental group. Both groups had the same number of first round interviews, but very dramatically, the group that journals has three times as many offers. So I think self-awareness can then be translated into either continuing to take action on this in the same way and or to pivot so that you don't get derailed. I'm a big believer of tracking that allows you to have both the awareness and the platform to then go and make decisions.

Doug Hensch: Anita, you make a great point. I think it even surprised Pennebaker when he did, when he got the results. There's a couple of things about journaling. This isn't an everyday journal. This isn't like a diary. 3 or 4 days, just 15 minutes apart. And the value in the journaling is not in going back and reading it. The values and writing the value is slowing things down.

Creating structure to your thoughts. Sometimes we actually can even figure out a solution, and I think that's why those people were able to move on, have more job offers, as they probably came across as not necessarily having that resentment towards their old employer and just looking forward.

Anita Brick: There was a weekend student. I am resilient, my optimism keeps me moving along. But I hate to be judged. And when people judge me, I have a hard time bouncing back from that. Any advice? Greatly appreciated.

Doug Hensch: Yeah. You know, the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear something like that one, when we start talking about other people, the thing that I would say to this particular student and anyone who's got something similar, like I'm just dealing with a lot of negative people, something to that effect, or there's this one person who is getting in my way is to do your best to separate the stories from the facts.

When I run workshops, I have a couple of flip charts, and then I write down dangerous phrases. Some of the dangerous phrases are always and never. For instance, he always insults me or he always interrupts me, or he never comes to my meetings and he never responds to my emails. That's probably factually untrue. And when you use language like that, you are literally training your brain to create an image of this person that is not necessarily accurate, which then heightens the emotions and gets you down and gets you down longer.

And then the other one that's just as relevant that I would say, is the dangerous phrases he thinks she thinks because it's mind reading. I would say that's probably the place to start and find a way to have a conversation with that person and be honest and give them that feedback. Yeah.

Anita Brick: It takes a lot of courage to do that. So maybe start with easy people who already know and love you.

Doug Hensch: Yes, a little bit of practice. It's not always easy for me when I'm emotionally connected to someone to give them that feedback that I don't like what they're doing. However, let's be honest, if someone keeps behaving in a certain way, it's not going to change unless there's a conversation.

Anita Brick: Totally agree. And second, be a student, she said. I'm really good at critical evaluations. I'm not so good at taking the next step and finding the value in obstacles, especially if they are big. Did you use your help?

Doug Hensch: What advice would you have? I'm feeling this fear of failure. So here's a couple of things. First of all, I'm doing some mind reading here myself. So I apologize. But this is coming from some working with MBA graduates for 20 plus years. And what I view is sometimes that there's a lot of social comparison going on. What we do is we identify failure in comparison to what maybe our classmates are doing, or friends who went to Wharton or Columbia. We may even be misinterpreting the data and not necessarily seeing reality very well. The other thing that I think comes to mind is the idea of introducing a little bit of negative thinking into any goal you've got, any initiative you jump into. One of the reasons I wrote the book was because I do believe that there's a little too much of this, hey, everything's going to be okay.

Just smile. Just be positive and everything works out. The most resilient people are not. That's not how they are. They feel sad. They express anger, right? They're worried and embarrassed. Some of the most resilient people, they're the realistically optimistic people. They're the ones who hope for the best, prepare for the worst. There's some interesting research out there around something called mental, contrasting.

What the researcher found was people who introduced negative thinking into larger goals were more likely to lose weight, reach their fitness goals, and get jobs. And I think smoking cessation was a part of that. Some of those studies as well, some pretty interesting stuff.

Anita Brick: It kind of makes sense, though, because I think people who set goals and say, yeah, I'm going to do this, I'm going to go into private equity. But unless you put negative thinking or you put some critical thinking behind it, you may not solve the problems that are going to emerge anyway and you won't be prepared for them.

Doug Hensch: Yeah, exactly.

Anita Brick: You know, there was an evening student and this is kind of related. He said, I read in your book that stretch goals should be set with caution. Not sure I agree. I really only accomplish things and feel good about them when I go beyond my present capacity. Two things. Am I limiting my achievements with too many stretch goals, and if so, how do I choose the best ones?

Doug Hensch: First of all, I love that people push back. I think this is a key idea to at least my philosophy as well as being resilient and inviting disagreement. Invite debate. So let's get back to stretching goals here. I think goals are absolutely wonderful for a very large percentage of the population in terms of motivation and achievement. And then when you tackle this concept of stretch goals, we do know from the research that the higher the goal, the higher the performance.

Generally speaking, there is a point where stretch goals have some drawbacks. One, if they're too high and they're not set by us, effort goes down because we crave autonomy. We crave that agency and that ability to feel as if we have some say in our lives. And the second thing that happens is, we are more likely to invite unethical behavior because it becomes about the goal as opposed to the process.

So I like to tell people, be super open minded. And, you know, we've been trained, we're almost like zombies with Smart goals. And it starts off with being specific. What I say is that's great as long as you don't put blinders on. Because what if your goal is to be the vice president of sales and marketing in a certain organization, and you just want to be the youngest person who's ever gotten there?

But another opportunity comes up at a startup where you're making one third as much, but it would be closer to your values. And when you look back in terms of what you want your legacy to be, it would be much more fun. It would be a great example for your kids. Goals sometimes can create tunnel vision. Does that make sense?

Anita Brick: Oh it does. I think you're absolutely right. It can. And it's multifaceted. And I think it goes back to something you said. Goals need to be consistent with who we are and our values, because stretch goals can be fun and exciting as long as we build a plan out of it if we want them. If we are driven by other people's goals and we latch on to them and take them on as ours, we might even achieve them and be very unhappy. A stretch goal is very hard to achieve if you don't believe in it. But on the other hand, I do see that people who have not impossible goals, but things that stretch them, even coming to a graduate program is going to be a stretch.

Doug Hensch: You know, it's so funny you mentioned that, Anita, because I had a client, I think it was about a year ago who was telling me the story of her nephew, who was miserable as an accountant, and he was at a big four firm. His career was going in the right direction, and he was absolutely miserable. And she sat down with him over lunch and said, what's going on?

And he's like, I just hate my job. And she said, get a different one. And of course she has some questions. What don't you like? And it really did come down to the type of work he was doing, it was just not interesting to him. And he wanted out. He wanted to be an attorney, he said, but I can't. And she said, why? Because my dad would be completely disappointed with me. Right? Obviously that's living your life. It's someone else's values that comes back to that concept of social comparison is very, very powerful. It's not just our next door neighbors who we are competing with each other. We are constantly thinking about how happy my family is going to be when I get to tell them. I graduated from Booth at the University of Chicago, one of the greatest schools in the world. That's powerful. It's dangerous. At the same time, hopefully it's more intrinsic value that people pull out of this program as opposed to doing it for somebody else.

Anita Brick: I think it's a good point. I'd like to shift gears one more time. Do you have time for a couple more questions?

Doug Hensch: Absolutely, yes.

Anita Brick: And I like this one. And I especially like this example too. In the book this weekend, students said, I really like your example of using rookies in Star Wars. I am a rookie and I want to make a career change. How do you find someone like George Lucas who might find and value curiosity over tons of experience?

Doug Hensch: Maybe we should define rookies first. Good. Yeah, rookies are not just people coming out of school. The concept is mostly where we're thinking, obviously in business terms here, and it's not that first year player or business person. A rookie is someone who's new. That's the new definition of this. And there's a really cool book out there by a woman named Liz Wiseman, and the title is Rookie Smarts.

And she did some interesting research. She found out that, you know, it used to be that people really gained prestige, power, a story and all the accolades and extrinsic rewards that you can imagine by gathering and retaining knowledge. What's happened with technology allowing us to instantaneously get information? I mean, think about this. Think about the last barbecue or gathering you were at and someone said, hey, who's that guy in that movie?

Everyone just talks to Siri or looks up on their phone and they don't have a conversation. So it's so easy to get this information that it is becoming less of a differentiator for people. The real differentiator is your ability to learn and adapt, which is obviously core. With the resilience definition I offered before, what I would offer up to this person is it's fantastic that you're valuing curiosity.

You're thinking about yourself as a rookie. And what I would offer to this person is to think about your transferable skills, to think about your intrinsic motivation and your psychological strengths. What is it that gets you up in the morning and what are you really good at at your core? What would everybody say you're good at? And it gives you energy.

And then the last thing that I would tell you is to network your tail off to find George Lucas, who values this like you do and make it a part of your brand. I'm not saying post on LinkedIn that you are a rookie and you're looking for this opportunity, and here's what I did a couple of years ago, who I think is a good example.

I made a shift. I was doing a fair amount of corporate training and consulting. I wanted to make the move and do more executive coaching. It didn't matter who I was talking to. Somehow I was working into the conversation that I was an executive coach, and then I loved what I did. I wish I had been doing coaching, I had my certification.

I just was making it more prominently known. And the reason I did that is because people can then help you, and it becomes at the forefront of your mind and becomes a part of your brand. Not only is you more likely to find that George Lucas, the George Lucas, is more likely to find you. Does that make sense?

Anita Brick: Oh, totally makes sense. All of this is a differentiator. It clearly is, because it's not that hard to find people to network with. It's not that hard to find knowledge these days. The big prize is being able to build those career advocates who are willing to help us as we go along.

Doug Hensch: You know, we talk about networking so much, and that's the word I use. And I got some feedback from a client the other day. There's sometimes a very negative connotation to that, that it's really a quid pro quo saying I'm doing it for a reason. And what I would offer up is maybe a different term, which is make connections with other human beings and making these connections, these deep, intimate connections with other people is so incredibly rewarding, because I just can't do this on my own.

This quick point here I want to make is that making connections and building your network needs to become a part of your job. It can't just be a saying, I'm out of work. I just got my degree. Whatever it may be, I'm looking for a job because then you look needy. Go out and network when times are good, and then if you're doing it when times are bad, you are much more likely to have someone lend a helping hand.

Anita Brick: Oh, absolutely. What are three things that you would recommend that students and alumni from both begin doing to increase their resiliency?

Doug Hensch: Good question. Three things I usually get: what's the one thing? So you actually made it a little bit easier because I usually go to two, but you made it harder because now I have to do three. So the first thing, find a way to bring mindfulness into your life. It doesn't have to be candles in a room with incense burning, and you're meditating for three hours at a time.

And I completely believe in meditation. However, finding a way to be objective, even about your own thoughts to remove yourself from statements like I am angry, that can be, believe it or not, very powerful against you and change it to statements like I am experiencing thoughts of anger right now. It's temporary and it's objective, and we know it's going to end at some point.

When we create these micro habits, they become much bigger parts of our lives. The second thing that I would tell you is try to find a way to adopt this flexibility in your thinking so that you can see things from different points of view. Introduce some humility and vulnerability into the way that you connect with other people. People make jokes about MBA students with arrogance and that they don't listen. Be different, be that humble person. And then the third thing I would say is obviously very related to the second, which is to invest in relationships, connect, connect, connect.

Anita Brick: Got it. One of the things that really touched me in your book when you were having, dare I say, maybe a little insecurity about a program that was coming up. You expressed it to your son and he basically said to paraphrase, hey dad, you do this all the time, you're brilliant. And so it's good to have people in our corner who are willing to remind us. And it doesn't have to be someone who's CEO of a company. It could actually be a friend, a child, a parent, someone who loves us and is going to remind us of things that we may “forget.”

Doug Hensch: Forget. Absolutely. And you know, that's why I have the biggest smile. I wish we were on TV right now. Right? Because my son brought me out of one of the worst professional days I've ever had by simply adding some objectivity, and I would put the end in there. Don't just seek out the opinions of people who like to agree with you. Go for the opposite. Look for people who are very good at being objective.

Anita Brick: Got it? Thank you so much. This was great. It was fun. I hope that I get to talk to you again at some point, but I really appreciate your insights and the time that you were willing to take with us today.

Doug Hensch: Oh you bet. Thank you indeed. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.