What a Special Forces Commander Taught Me About Resilience
Finding perspective in times of adversity.
How do we inspire others when times are hard and the chips are down? How do we balance being competent with being compassionate, and still push forward? How do we self-manage and deal with adversity at the personal level?
These are questions that more and more of us have been facing, even before the current pandemic dialed the volume up to 11. I brought these questions to a friend of mine, Chris Schmitt, because he has more of the answers than anyone else I know.
Chris was a Green Beret — he was in the Army for decades and commanded a range of special operations units across three continents. He has a PhD in adversity (figuratively, although he does have a masters in organizational development).
My conversation with Chris also led to this article about the Competence/Compassion Model of leadership. And while this model is a great lens for leadership more broadly, this is also a big component of resilient leadership that I’ll mention below.
