Managing risk is critical to business and personal success. We saw it in how Wells Fargo’s business practices resulted in fines and loss of customers. Fox News has seen its franchise diminish because it failed to consider the impact of not addressing sexual harassment in the workplace. Hospitals, insurers and providers are in a state of panic thinking about another major change in health care models. Risk tolerance is not just for business, however. It is also for individuals. Our...

This past weekend I had to the opportunity to co-facilitate a workshop for the 4th Community Leadership Course for Veterans, which is a program of Leadership Pittsburgh. This experience provides a group of post 9/11 veterans, from every branch of military services, the opportunity to participate in a six-month course that helps them become engaged community leaders. One of their activities was a low rope course in which they work as a team to climb a big wall, balance their...

In the natural world, resilience occurs without forethought or planning. Forests recover from raging wildfires, beaches find a way to replenish their foundations after hurricanes and volcanic eruptions use spewed lava to create new land. Nature has a way of making triumphs out of tragedy. Human resilience is a bit harder to recognize. Our flawed approach to addressing stress and challenges (which we call the “stress management model”) tells us that we can only try to cope with our stress...

Katherine Switzer’s ninth run at the Boston Marathon was a lot easier than her first and much more celebrated. I wrote about K.V. Switzer’s (the name she used to register for the race) in The Resilience Advantage. Her gritty first effort at that storied event 50 years ago, when women were not permitted to enter the Marathon, transformed long distance running. Her training that occurred during the cold New England winter of 1967 led to her quiet start where she...

I received lots of comments from last week’s RW regarding Time and Priorities. It seems that the idea that we beat ourselves up about not having “enough time,” resonated with many readers and that by reframing that message as a need to clarify our priorities, we usually serve ourselves better. Another way to think about productivity is the evolving neuroscience research about work and rest. Studies tells us that our bodies and minds run in a 90-minute cycle from a...

I was facilitating a leadership workshop at a technology company this past week and the team got into a discussion about how they “do not have time” to meet with any other leaders in Pittsburgh’s increasingly impressive tech landscape. They agreed that from a strategic perspective it would benefit them to know more people at Google, Uber, and Carnegie Mellon but their work schedules prohibited such activities. I reached a bit of a frustration point as I saw that several...