Developing the Leader in You - Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation - page 112

3. Read literature on creativity and join a blog or electronic site to receive
information regularly on creativity.
4. Allow yourself to indulge in fantasy and totally out of the box thinking for
solutions, particularly when you are swamped with technical detail.
5. For any problem, force yourself to consider many solutions.
6. Defer immediate dismissal or evaluation of an idea (toy with it, explore its
ramifications).
The “unlearning” of unhealthy behaviors to enhance leadership effective-
ness and creativity is a task that must be aggressively confronted. Coupling
these efforts with the engagement in actions that enhance strengths and promote
results-oriented leadership which is consistent with our personal and organiza-
tional goals will provide a powerful combination in moving us forward toward
our optimal innovation and leadership abilities.
Learn to Deal With Adversity
While we all aspire to lead, we oftentimes do not consider the “cost” of leader-
ship. This cost can be varying levels of adversity, isolation, loneliness, guilt,
and, in some cases, loss of relationships we have held closely for years. The
leader must be prepared for these situations by acquiring coping skills, resil-
ience strategies, and a mindset that prepares you, to the degree possible, for the
unexpected. More powerfully, if we can find ways to “harness adversity” we can
actually use these unpleasant situations to propel us further ahead than had we
not experienced them. Yes, it is possible to use these negative circumstances to
our benefit as individuals and organizations.
A theory that encompasses the management of adversity and resilience has
been the basis for the development of the Adversity Quotient (AQ) [9] and sug-
gests that we can all “learn” to be more resilient. This is a powerful theory
and, if true, we should all seek to learn how we can increase our ability to deal
with adversity as it is a certainty in life. To begin the process we must under-
stand where we currently reside with respect to our relationship with adversity.
Stoltz [10] created the Adversity Continuum that provides five categories of the
relationship we have with adversity. The categories and associated definitions
are shown in Table 5.5. Take a moment to rate yourself on how you handle
adversity using Table 5.5 . In this exercise you will rate the approximate percent-
age of the time your approach to addressing adversity is compatible with the cat-
egory described. If you do not feel the category fully describes your approach,
find the most compatible category so you will begin to gain an understanding of
how you view adversity.
If you found that most of the time you're not in the “harnessing adver-
sity” category with your responses, don't despair - for two reasons. The
first reason is that you can change! The second reason is much of response
to adversity is conditioning and, unfortunately or fortunately, you're in
good company. A survey by Stoltz included more than 1,000 companies in