The Resilience Advantage promotes the notion that we want to be prepared for difficult events before they happen. That may mean that we are able to predict them ahead of time or that we are strengthen our overall resources so that when adversity strikes, we have the resources needed to take on the challenge. That kind of preparation requires us to think differently and creatively. The girl in today’s photo is cleverly using the shadow of the giraffe as a...

On Saturday afternoon, 19-year-old Canadian Leylah Fernandez lost the US Women Open Tennis Tournament final but won the hearts of everyone who watched the match. Fernandez lost to 18-year-old Emma Raducanu of Great Britain in the first women’s match of teenagers in 22 years. The US Tennis Open was always played close to my home when I was growing up, so I have a special affinity to enjoying those raucous NY crowds cheering on the favorites and the long shots....

I was on the tarmac at DFW Airport 20 years ago waiting for my American Airlines plane to take off for an early morning business trip. Our pilot announced that we had a mechanical problem and had to return to the terminal. None of us knew that he had been ordered back to the gate after United Airline Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He didn’t want to take a chance that there might be...

Nike announced this week that they are offering their corporate employees a week off to rest, recover and recharge. Their action is in line with other organizations such as Microsoft (added 5 wellbeing days to employee benefits) and Intel (4 weeks of sabbatical after 4 years at the company). Over the course of my career as a clinical and now organizational psychologist, I’ve watched as companies have struggled to address mental well-being. Almost everyone offers medical support such as employee...

Deborah called me last week to tell me it worked!  Yea I thought, and then I realized I had no idea what I had told her that worked so well. In our coaching session the previous week, I suggested to her that she could consider the choices she wanted to exercise in meetings with her team. She described her leadership style as being open and collaborative and for her, that meant that she would almost always go full disclosure with...

Susan B. Anthony spoke those words in 1902 in reference to the women’s suffrage movement and she was right.   Today, those words are often used by business leaders to motivate their teams to work tirelessly in pursuit of a workplace outcome that will drive success for the organization. Perhaps, it is time to reconsider the whole notion of “failure is impossible” by beginning to think differently about failure. I’ve been suggesting to my clients that we look at failure based...