Don't Get Mad - Get Over It!

Clusters of nervous people milled about the green room, behind the soundstage of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." They were waiting to snatch a nanosecond of fame as guests on a program about overcoming setbacks. Paul Stoltz, 39, an author and organizational consultant with 19 years of experience in studying the emotional and neurological dynamics of coping, was the show's expert. Hoping to put a fellow guest at ease, he walked over to her and extended his hand: "My name is Paul Stoltz."

"Nice to meet you," she replied.

"And you are...?" Stoltz was prompting for a name -- but what he got was a caption. "My boyfriend broke up with me two years ago, and I can't get over it," she said.

Recalling the incident six months later, Stoltz is still incredulous. "On the show, she might have been described as 'Dumped by Boyfriend,' " he says. "But that label didn't come off when she left the studio. 'Dumped by Boyfriend' had become her identity -- because, by her own admission, she couldn't get over being dumped."

Stoltz, president and CEO of Peak Learning Inc., based in Flagstaff, Arizona, helps people at companies such as Deloitte & Touche, Hewlett-Packard, and Abbott Labs to "get over" the inevitable round of bad news on the job. He says he frequently meets various workplace versions of that talk-show guest: "Missed Promotion," "Downsized," "Lost Big Account." But he's also met resilient folks -- people who know how to bounce back from workaday adversity.

"People who cope have developed what I call a high 'adversity quotient,' " says Stoltz. "AQ is the subconscious, underlying script that we rely on as we try to think through any difficult situation."

Stoltz contends that your AQ, unlike your IQ, can be readily improved: "Instead of giving in to a knee-jerk reaction to bad news, you can learn to slow down, to get a grip, and to decide consciously on the best way to proceed."

To see how this process plays out in practice, we tracked down three high-AQ businesspeople. These high achievers have trained their brains to spot the things that they can (and cannot) control whenever a hurricane-force problem blows through their lives. As a result, they have radically improved their ability to get over setbacks -- and to get on with their work.

Coordinates: Paul Stoltz, paul@peaklearning.com

Get Over: The Crisis You Inherited

It was late last September when Chris Powell, 31, was blindsided by a work emergency. Powell, the director of employment strategy for Marriott International, got a call asking why the hotel chain had dropped the ball on its sponsorship of the upcoming Black MBA Association conference. The annual event, which draws more than 10,000 people, is a prime recruiting opportunity for Marriott.

In fact, Powell wasn't even aware that the ball had been dropped. The sales department, not his department, was usually responsible for planning the event. Even worse, Marriott usually spent six months getting ready for it. Powell had just five days.

"There's no way that we can pull this together in time," thought Powell. He wanted to unload his anger on the sales department, but he checked that entirely human impulse and used the tight deadline to help him focus. "The more you vent, the more you waste time," he says. "I had more important things to do."

Even though he hadn't caused the problem, Powell was responsible for resolving it, since his department would suffer most from the fallout. He stopped thinking about the difficulty of the task and concentrated instead on what he could do. He made a list: Someone had to write and shoot a video that would run during the awards dinner at the conference. He also had to find a senior executive who would speak at the event and who would present a scholarship -- a tough request, especially on such short notice.

The next day, Powell flew a prop plane to Detroit, where the conference would be held. He wrote a script and took the lead in producing the video, and he found a Marriott manager to hand out the scholarship. He also made amends with the Black MBA Association, which was more baffled than angered by Marriott's performance.

"I was pretty pleased with what we accomplished in such a short period of time," Powell says. "Behind the stage, it was completely chaotic. But when the curtain went up, we were calm and steady."

Stoltz says that "taking ownership" is one of the critical steps toward getting over a setback. Powell recalls that he took ownership once he realized that the crisis was really an opportunity for him to prove himself. "It's like getting a chance to play Superman," he says. "You fly in and save the day. The problem became a high-adrenaline project that tested my resolve."

Coordinates: Chris Powell, chris.powell@marriott.com