Narrative 6 "i'm Able to Bounce Back from Setbacks"

• Library: Positive Professionals: Creating High-Performing Profitable Firms Through Engagement (ABA) (2017 Ed.)

Narrative 6 "I'm Able to Bounce Back from Setbacks"

"I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall." These are the words of one of my all-time favorite athletes, tennis champion Serena Williams. She's not only an awesome tennis player with plenty of wins under her belt, she's a model of resilience. Ms. Williams began playing tennis on her neighborhood courts in Compton, California, when she was four years old. Over the course of her career, she suffered the murder of her sister, serious injuries, and life-threatening blood clots in her lungs. Her world ranking went from top ten down to 139, then up to 1, then down to 169, then back up to 1. During her journey, she was called a "lost cause" and "deluded" for thinking she could make a comeback. Many viewed her as an overweight, out-of-shape, has-been champion. And they were wrong. In 2015, Sports Illustrated honored Ms. Williams as the sports person of the year. In her acceptance speech, she said: "I've had people put me down because I didn't look like them. I look stronger. I've had people look past me because of the color of my skin. I've had people overlook me because I'm a woman. I've had critics say I will never win another Grand Slam . . . Now here I stand today with 21 grand slam titles. And I'm still going."

A champion is defined by how they recover when they fall.

Stories like Ms. Williams's can inspire us to visualize what we might achieve with plenty of perseverance, optimism, and resilience. While many aspects of practicing law are exciting and rewarding, it's no secret that lawyers also are served a hefty helping of stress and anxiety-inducing job demands. Despite the notoriety of these issues, few firms address them directly with their lawyers. To help develop the psychological experience that "I'm able to bounce back from setbacks," we'll explore two strategies:

1. Develop Optimism and Resilience: Cultivate these personal strengths that can help lawyers better manage the demands of their jobs.
2. Create a New Associate Orientation to Boost Resilience and "Start Tough": Launch new lawyers' careers with tools and strategies for resilience to help them manage all their new challenges and maintain engagement.

1. Develop Optimism and Resilience

Optimists tend to believe that good things will happen in the future. Optimism is affected by our "explanatory style" or habits of thought that automatically are triggered when we face setbacks or successes. People with an optimistic explanatory style believe that bad events will not be long-lasting. They place bad events in their specific context while continuing to see what's going well elsewhere in their lives (Forgeard & Seligman, 2012). While optimists acknowledge negative events, they confront them with a constructive attitude. Optimism increases well-being, the ability to cope with stress, and resilience while it buffers against depression (Forgeard & Seligman, 2012; Seligman & Schulman, 1986). Optimists are more likely to set high goals and take risks because they have greater confidence in their ability to succeed (Forgeard & Seligman, 2012).

On the other hand, people with a pessimistic explanatory style believe that negative events likely will be long lasting and will impact their whole lives. They tend to exaggerate how bad things really are, the probability of bad outcomes occurring, and their ability to cope with the consequences (Kalisch et al., 2015). As to good events, they often don't take credit for their own contribution and believe they'll be short-lived. Pessimism has been linked to depression, stress, and anxiety as well as lower productivity and high turnover (Kamen & Seligman, 1987; Seligman & Schulman, 1986). Pessimists are less likely to set high goals and more likely to give up or not try to begin with.

I sense that a number of skeptics are waving their hands to try to make an important point: We can't always wear rose-colored glasses. If we always look on the bright side in the face of adversity, we may fail to detect our own need for further learning and growth. This is absolutely true. Being overly optimistic can be detrimental too. Exaggerated optimism is not healthy, and may lull people into a false sense of reality. The desired state is realistic optimism in which people seek to understand the reality of the situation but actively favor a positive interpretation in instances of ambiguity. In other words, where the facts or meaning of an event are ambiguous and allow for interpretation, optimists favor a positive interpretation.

To illustrate the different styles, a pessimistic lawyer who loses a motion might think "I'm in way over my head. I'm going to lose all my clients and end up living with my parents." A lawyer with a more optimistic explanatory style might think: "This stinks, but I know I'm a good lawyer. I've won in the past and I'll win again in the future."

Research suggests that lawyers and law students tend toward a pessimistic explanatory style (Howerton, 2004...